Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

“It often happens that deaf and dumb children of poor parents are so far neglected that they are never taught finger-language, or any other system of signs, whereby to converse with their fellow-creatures. The consequence, of course, is that these unfortunate children grow up in a state of intellectual isolation, which is almost as complete as that of any of the lower animals. Now, when such a child grows up and falls into the hands of some competent teacher, it may of course be educated, and is then in a position to record its experiences when in its state of intellectual isolation. I have therefore obtained all the evidence I can as to the mental condition of such persons, and I find that their testimony is perfectly uniform. In the absence of language, the mind is able to think in the logic of feelings; but can never rise to any ideas of higher abstraction than those which the logic of feelings supplies. The uneducated deaf-mutes have the same notions of right and wrong, cause and effect, and so on, as we have already seen that animals and idiots possess. They always think in the most concrete forms, as shown by their telling us (when educated) that so long as they were uneducated they always thought in pictures. Moreover, that they cannot attain to ideas of even the lowest degree of abstraction, is shown by the fact that in no one instance have I been able to find evidence of a deaf-mute who, prior to education, had evolved for himself any form of supernaturalism. And this, I think, is remarkable, not only because we might fairly suppose that some rude form of fetishism, or ghost-worship, would not be too abstract a system for the unaided mind of a civilized man to elaborate; but also because the mind in this case is not wholly unaided. On the contrary, the friends of the deaf-mute usually do their utmost to communicate to his mind some idea of whatever form of religion they may happen to possess. Yet it is uniformly found that, in the absence of language, no idea of this kind can be communicated. For instance, the Rev. S. Smith tells me that one of his pupils, previous to education, supposed the Bible to have been printed by a printing-press in the sky, which was worked by printers of enormous strength—this being the only interpretation the deaf-mute could assign to the gestures whereby his parents had sought to make him understand, that they believed the Bible to contain a revelation from a God of power who lives in heaven. Similarly, Mr. Graham Bell informs me of another, though similar case, in which the deaf-mute supposed the object of going to church to be that of doing obeisance to the clergy.”

To the same effect Mr. Tylor says, in the passage already quoted, that deaf-mutes cannot form ideas of any save the lowest degree of abstraction, and further on he gives some interesting illustrations of the fact. Thus, for instance, a deaf-mute who had been educated said that before his instruction his fingers had taught him his numbers, and that when the number was over ten, he made notches on a piece of wood. Here we see the inherited capability of numerical computation united with the crudest form of numerical notation, or symbolism. And so in all other cases of deaf-mutes before instruction; they present an inherited capacity of abstract ideation, and yet do not find their sign-language of much service in assisting them to develop this capacity: it is too essentially pictorial to go far beyond the region of sensuous perception.

Thus, on the whole, although I deem it profitless to speculate on what the language of gestures might have become in the absence of speech, I think it is highly questionable whether it would have reached any considerable level of excellence; and I think it is not improbable that, in the absence of articulation, the human race would not have made much psychological advance upon the anthropoid apes. For we must never forget the important fact that thought is quite as much the effect as it is the cause of language, whether of speech or of gesture; and seeing how inferior gesture is to speech as a system of language, especially in regard to precision and abstraction, I do not think it probable that, in the absence of speech, gesture alone would have supplied the exact and delicate conditions which are essential to the growth of any highly elaborate ideation.

The next point which I desire to consider is that, although gesture language is not in my opinion so efficient a means of developing abstract ideation as is spoken language, it must nevertheless have been of much service in assisting the growth of the latter, and so must have been of much service in laying the foundation of the whole mental fabric which has been constructed by the faculty of speech. Whether we look to young children, to savages, or in a lesser degree to idiots, we find that gesture plays an important part in assisting speech; and in all cases where a vocabulary is scanty or imperfect, gesture is sure to be employed as the natural means of supplementing speech. Therefore, supposing speech to have had a natural mode of genesis, it is, in my opinion, perfectly certain that its origin and development must have been greatly assisted by gesture. In subsequent chapters I will adduce direct evidence upon this head. At present I wish to draw attention to another point. This is, that although gesture psychologically precedes speech, when once articulate sounds have been devised for the expression of ideas, the faculty of using these articulate sounds as signs of their corresponding ideas does not involve the presence of a higher psychological development than does the faculty of using tones and gestures for the conveyance of similar ideas.

As already shown, it is a matter of observable fact that the only animals which are able to articulate are able to employ nouns, adjectives, and verbs, as expressive of concrete ideas; while animals which are not able to articulate similarly employ tones, and in many cases are able to understand words. Therefore, it is a matter of observable fact that the psychological level required for using tones as vocal gestures, understanding words as expressive of simple ideas, and even uttering words with a correct appreciation of their meaning, is a level not higher than that which obtains in some existing animals.

If we turn from animals to man, we find the same truth exemplified. For in the descending grade of human intelligence as exhibited by idiots, we see that while the use of simple gestures as signs occurs in idiots somewhat too low in the scale to utter any articulate words, nevertheless the interval between such an idiot and one capable of uttering the simplest words is a short interval. Again, in the ascending grade of human intelligence, as exhibited by the growing child, we find the same observation to apply; although, on account of some children requiring a longer time than others to develop the mechanique of articulation, we might by considering their cases alone over-estimate the psychological interval which separates gesticulation from speech.[91]

Thus all the evidence at our disposal goes to show that, while the language of tone and gesture is distinctive, in its least-developed form, of a comparatively low grade of mental evolution, in all but its least-developed form it is not thus distinctive; for as soon as the language of gesture becomes in the smallest degree conventional, so soon is the psychological level sufficiently high to admit of the use of articulate sounds, vocal gestures, or words expressive of concrete ideas—always supposing that these are already supplied by the psychological environment. Whether or not articulate sounds are then actually made depends, of course, on conditions of a purely anatomical kind.

And here it may be as well to remember the point previously mentioned, namely, that although no existing quadrumanous animal has shown itself able to articulate, we may be quite sure that this fact depends on anatomical as distinguished from psychological conditions; for not only are the higher monkeys much more intelligent than talking birds, but they are likewise much more imitative of human gestures; and for both these reasons they are the animals which, more than any others, would be psychologically apt to learn the use of words from man, were it not for some accident of anatomy which stands in the way of their uttering them. And in this connection it is worth while to bear in mind the remark of Professor Huxley, that an imperceptibly small difference of innervation, or other anatomical character of the parts concerned, might determine or prevent the faculty of making articulate sounds.

Looking to the direction in which my argument is tending, this appears to be the most convenient place to dispose of a criticism that is not unlikely to arise. It may be suggested, by way of objection to my views, that if all the foregoing discussion is accepted as paving the way to the conclusion that human intelligence has been developed from animal intelligence, the discussion itself is proving too much. For, if animals possess in so conspicuous a degree the germ of the sign-making faculty, why, it may be asked, has this germ been developed only in the case of our own ancestors?