Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

We have now repeatedly seen that there is only one argument in favour of the view that the elsewhere continuous and universal process of evolution—mental as well as organic—was interrupted at its terminal phase, and that this argument stands on the ground of psychology. But we have also seen that even upon this its own ground the argument admits of abundant refutation. In order the more clearly to show that such is the case, I have hitherto designedly kept my discussion within the limits of psychological science. The time, however, has now come when I can afford to take a new point of departure. It is to Language that my opponents appeal: to Language they shall go.

In previous chapters I have more than once remarked that the science of historical psychology is destitute of fossils: unlike pre-historic structures, pre-historic ideas leave behind them no record of their existence. But now a partial exception must be taken to this general statement. For the new science of Comparative Philology has revealed the important fact that, if on the one hand speech gives expression to ideas, on the other hand it receives impression from them, and that the impressions thus stamped are surprisingly persistent. The consequence is that in philology we possess the same kind of unconscious record of the growth and decay of ideas, as is furnished by palæontology of the growth and decay of species. Thus viewed, language may be regarded as the stratified deposit of thoughts, wherein they lie embedded ready to be unearthed by the labours of the man of science.

In now turning to this important branch of my subject, I may remark in limine that, like all the sciences, philology can be cultivated only by those who devote themselves specially to the purpose. My function, therefore, will here be that of merely putting together the main results of philological research, so far as this has hitherto proceeded, and so far as these results appear to me to have any bearing upon the “origin of human faculty.” Being thus myself obliged to rely upon authority, where I find that authorities are in conflict—which, I need hardly say, is often the case—I will either avoid the points of disagreement, or else state what has to be said on both sides of the question. But where I find that all competent authorities are in substantial agreement, I will not burden my exposition by tautological quotations.

Among the earlier students of language it was a moot question whether the faculty had its origin in Divine inspiration or in human invention. So long as the question touching the origin of language was supposed to be restricted to one or other of these alternatives, the special creationists in this department of thought may be regarded as having had the best of the argument. And this for the following reasons. Their opponents, for the most part, were unfairly handicapped by a general assumption of special creation as regards the origin of man, and also by a general belief in the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. The theory of evolution having been as yet unformulated, there was an antecedent presumption in favour of the Divine origin of speech, since it appeared in the last degree improbable that Adam and Eve should have been created “with full-summed powers” of intellect, without the means of communicating their ideas to one another. And even where scientific investigators were not expressly dominated by acceptance of the biblical cosmology, many of them were nevertheless implicitly influenced by it, to the extent of supposing that if language were not the result of direct inspiration, it can only have been the result of deliberate invention. But against this supposition of language having been deliberately invented, it was easy for orthodox opponents to answer—“Daily experience informs us, that men who have not learned to articulate in their childhood, never afterwards acquire the faculty of speech but by such helps as savages cannot obtain; and therefore, if speech were invented at all, it must have been either by children who were incapable of invention, or by men who were incapable of speech. A thousand, nay, a million, of children could not think of inventing a language. While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to frame the conception of a language; and by the time that there is understanding, the organs are become too stiff for the task, and therefore, say the advocates for the Divine origin of language, reason as well as history intimates that mankind in all ages must have been speaking animals—the young having constantly acquired this art by imitating those who are older; and we may warrantably conclude that our first parents received it by immediate inspiration.”[142]

There remained, however, the alternative that language might have been the result neither of Divine inspiration nor of human invention; but of natural growth. And although this alternative was clearly perceived by some of the earlier philologists, its full significance could not be appreciated before the advent of the general theory of evolution.[143] Nevertheless, it is here of interest to observe that the theory of evolution was clearly educed from, and applied to, the study of languages by some of the more scientific philologists, before it had been clearly enunciated by naturalists. Thus, for instance, Dr. Latham, while criticizing the passage above quoted, wrote in 1857:—“In the actual field of language, the lines of demarcation are less definitely marked than in the preceding sketch. The phenomena of growth, however, are, upon the whole, what it suggests.... In order to account for the existing lines of demarcation, which are broad and definite, we must bear in mind a fresh phenomenon, viz. the spread of one dialect at the expense of others, a fact which obliterates intermediate forms, and brings extreme ones into geographical juxtaposition.”[144]

Now, at the present day—owing partly to the establishment of the doctrine of evolution in the science of biology, but much more to direct evidence furnished by the science of philology itself—students of language are unanimous in their adoption of the developmental theory. Even Professor Max Müller insists that “no student of the science of language can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wherever he looks, he sees nothing but evolution going on all around him;”[145] while Schleicher goes so far as to say that “the development of new forms from preceding forms can be much more easily traced, and this on even a larger scale, in the province of words, than in that of plants and animals.”[146]

Here, however, it is needful to distinguish between language and languages. A philologist may be firmly convinced that all languages have developed by way of natural growth from those simplest elements, or “roots,” which we shall presently have to consider. But he may nevertheless hesitate to conclude, with anything like equal certainty, that these simplest elements were themselves developed from still lower ingredients of the sign-making faculty; and hence that not only all languages in particular, but the faculty of language in general, has been the result of a natural evolution.

Here then, let it be noted, we are in the presence of exactly the same distinction with regard to the origin of language, as we were at the beginning of this treatise with regard to the origin of man. For we there saw that while we have the most cogent historical evidence in proof of the principles of evolution having governed the progress of civilization, we have no such direct evidence of the descent of man from a brutal ancestry. And here also we find that, so long as the light of history is able to guide us, there can be no doubt that the principles of evolution have determined the gradual development of languages, in a manner strictly analogous to that in which they have determined the ever-increasing refinement and complexity of social organization. Now, in the latter case we saw that such direct evidence of evolution from lower to higher levels of culture renders it well-nigh certain that the method must have extended backwards beyond the historical period; and hence, that such direct evidence of evolution uniformly pervading the historical period, in itself furnishes a strong primâ facie presumption that this period was itself reached by means of a similarly gradual development of human faculty. And thus, also, it is in the case of language. If philology is able to prove the fact of evolution in all known languages as far back as the primitive roots out of which they have severally grown, the presumption becomes exceedingly strong that these earliest and simplest elements, like their later and more complex products, were the result of a natural growth.

Nevertheless, as I have said, it is important to distinguish between demonstrated fact and speculative inference, however strong; and, therefore, I will begin by briefly stating the stages of evolution through which languages are now generally recognized by philologists to have passed, without at present considering the more difficult question as to the origin of roots.