Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Now, the first thing which strikes one on reading this list is, that it unquestionably justifies the inference of its compiler, namely, “if the Science of Language has proved anything, it has proved that every term which is applied to a particular idea or object (unless it be a proper name) is already a general term.” But the next thing which immediately strikes one is that the list, surprisingly short as it is, nevertheless is much too long to admit of being interpreted as, in any intelligible sense of the words, an inventory of “original concepts”—unless by “original” we are to understand the ultimate results of philological analysis. That all these concepts are not “original” in the sense of representing the ideation of really primitive man, is abundantly proved by two facts.

The first is that fully a third of the whole number might be dispensed with, and yet leave no important blank in the already limited resources of the list for the purposes either of communication or reflection. To yawn, to spew, to vomit, to sweat, and so on, are not forms of activity of any such vital importance to the needs of a primitive community, as to demand priority of naming by any aboriginal framers of language. Moreover, as Professor Max Müller himself elsewhere observes, “even these 121 concepts might be reduced to a much smaller number, if we cared to do so. Any one who examines them carefully, will see how easy it would have been to express to dig by to cut or to strike; to bite by to cut or to crush; to milk by to squeeze; to glean by to gather; to steal by to lift.... If we see how many special purposes can be served by one root, as I, to go, or Pas, to fasten, the idea that a dozen of roots might have been made to supply the whole wealth of our dictionary, appears in itself by no means so ridiculous as is often supposed.”[181]

Again, in the second place, a large proportional number of the words have reference to a grade of culture already far in advance of that which has been attained by most existing savages. “Many concepts, such as to cook, to roast, to measure, to dress, to adorn, belong clearly to a later phase of civilized life.”[182] It might have been suitably added that such “concepts” as to dig, to plant, to milk, &c., betoken a condition of pastoral life, which, as we know from abundant evidence, is representative of a comparatively high level of social evolution.[183] But if “many” of these concepts are thus unmistakably referable to semi-civilized as distinguished from savage life, what guarantee can we have that the remainder are “original”? Obviously we can have no such guarantee; but, on the contrary, find the very best, because intrinsic evidence, that they belong to a more or less high level of culture, far removed from that of primitive man. In other words, we must conclude that these 121 concepts are “original” only in the sense that they do not now admit of further analysis at the hands of comparative philologists: they are not original in the sense of bringing us within any measurable distance of the first beginnings of articulate speech.[184]

Nevertheless, they are of the utmost value and significance, in that they bring us down to a period of presumably restricted ideation, as compared with the enormous development since attained by various branches of this Indo-European stock—so far, at least, as the growth of language can be taken as a fair expression of such development. They are likewise of the highest importance as showing in how presumably short a period of time (comparatively speaking) so immense and divergent a growth may proceed from such a simple and germ-like condition of thought.[185] Lastly, they serve to show in a most striking manner that the ideas represented, although all of a general character, are nevertheless of the lowest degree of generality. Scarcely any of them present us with evidence of reflective thought, as distinguished from the naming of objects of sense-perception, or of the simplest forms of activity which are immediately cognizable as such.[186] In other words, few of these “original concepts” rise much higher in the scale of ideation than the level to which I have previously assigned what I have called “named recepts” or “pre-concepts.” A dumb animal, or an infant, presents a full receptual appreciation of the majority of actions which the catalogue includes; and, therefore, so that a society of human beings can speak at all (i.e. presents the power of naming their recepts), it is difficult to see how they could have avoided a denotation of the more important recepts which are here concerned.

Another most interesting feature of a general kind which the list presents is, that it is composed exclusively of verbs.[187] This peculiarity of the ultimate known roots of all languages, which shows them to have been expressive of actions and states as distinguished from objects and qualities, is a peculiarity on which Professor Max Müller lays much stress. But the inference which he draws from the fact is clearly not justifiable. This inference is that, as every root expresses “the consciousness of repeated acts, such as scraping, digging, striking,” &c., the naming of actions, as distinguished from objects, “must be considered as the first step in the formation of concepts.” Now, in drawing this inference—and, indeed, throughout all his works as far as I remember—Professor Max Müller has entirely overlooked two most important considerations. First, as already observed, that the roots in question are demonstrably very far from having been the original material of language as first coined by primitive man; and, next, that whatever this original material may have been, from the first there must have been a struggle for existence among the really primitive roots—only those surviving which were most fitted to survive as roots, i.e. as the parent stems of subsequent word-formations. Now, it appears to me obvious enough that archaic—though not necessarily aboriginal—words which were expressive of actions, would have stood a better chance of surviving as roots than those which may have been expressive of objects; first because they were likely to have been more frequently employed, and next because many of them must have lent themselves more readily to metaphorical extension—especially under a system of animistic thought.[188] And, if these things were so, there is nothing remarkable in words significant of actions having alone survived as roots.[189]

The consideration that it is only those words which were successful in the struggle for existence that can have become the progenitors of subsequent language—and therefore the only words that have been handed down to us as roots—has a still more important bearing upon another of Professor Max Müller’s generalizations. From the fact that all his 121 Sanskrit roots are expressive of “general” ideas (by which term he of course includes what I call generic ideas), he concludes that from its very earliest origin speech must have been thus expressive of general ideas; or, in other words, that human language could not have begun by the naming of particulars: from the first it must have been concerned with the naming of “notions.” Now, of course, if any vestige of real evidence could be adduced to show that this “must have been” the case, most of the foregoing chapters of the present work would not have been written. For the whole object of these chapters has been to show, that on psychological grounds it is abundantly intelligible how the conceptual stage of ideation may have been gradually evolved from the receptual—the power of forming general, or truly conceptual ideas, from the power of forming particular and generic ideas. But if it could be shown—or even rendered in any degree presumable—that this distinctly human power of forming truly general ideas arose de novo with the first birth of articulate speech, assuredly my whole analysis would be destroyed: the human mind would be shown to present a quality different in origin—and, therefore, in kind—from all the lower orders of intelligence: the law of continuity would be interrupted at the terminal phase: an impassable gulf would be fixed between the brute and the man. As a matter of fact, however, there is not only no vestige of any such proof or even presumption; but, as we shall see in our two following chapters, there is uniform and overwhelming proof of precisely the opposite doctrine—proof, indeed, so uniform and overwhelming that it has long ago induced all other philologists to accept this opposite doctrine as one of the axioms of their science. Leaving, however, this proof to be adduced in its proper place, I have now merely to point out the futility of the evidence on which Professor Max Müller relies.

This evidence consists merely in fact that the “121 original concepts,” which are embodied in the roots of Aryan speech, are expressive of “general ideas.” Now, this argument might be worth considering if there were the smallest reason to suppose that in these roots of Aryan speech we possess the aboriginal elements of language as first spoken by man. But as we well know that this is immeasurably far from being the case, the whole argument collapses. The mere fact that many words which have survived as roots are words expressive of general ideas, is no more than we might have antecedently expected. Remembering that it is a favourable condition to a word surviving as a root that it should prove itself a prolific parent of other words, obviously it is those words which were expressive of ideas presenting some degree of generality that would have had the best chance of thus coming down to us, even from the comparatively high level of culture which, as we have seen, is testified to by “the 121 original concepts.” Of course, as I have already said, the case would have been different if any one were free to suppose, even as a merely logical possibility, that this level of culture represented that of primitive man when he first began to employ articulate speech. But any such supposition is beyond the range of rational discussion. The 121 concepts themselves yield overwhelming evidence of belonging to a time immeasurably remote from that of any speechless progenitor of Homo sapiens; and in the enormous interval (whatever it may have been) many successive generations of words must certainly have flourished and died.[190]

These remarks are directed to the comparatively few instances of general ideas which, as a matter of fact, the list of “121 concepts” presents. As already observed, the great majority of these “concepts” exhibit no higher degree of “generality” than belongs to what I have called a “pre-concept,” i.e. a “named recept.” But precisely the same considerations apply to both. For, even supposing that a named recept was originally a word used only to designate a “particular” as distinguished from a “generic” idea, obviously it would have stood but a poor chance of surviving as a root unless it had first undergone a sufficient degree of extension to have become what I call receptually connotative. A proper name, for instance, could not, as such, become a root. Not until it had become extended to other persons or things of a like class could it have secured a chance of surviving as a root in the struggle for existence. As a matter of fact, I think it most probable—not only from general considerations, but also from a study of the spontaneous names first coined in “baby-language,”—that aboriginal speech was concerned simultaneously with the naming both of particular and of generic ideas—i.e. of individual percepts and of recepts. It will be remembered that in Chapter III., while treating of the Logic of Recepts, I dealt at some length with this subject. Here, therefore, it will be sufficient to quote the conclusion to which my analysis led.

“A generic idea is generic because the particular ideas of which it is composed present such obvious points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness; but a general idea is general for precisely the opposite reason—namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized are obscured from immediate perception, and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classification with which all processes of so called perceptual inference depend—such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but in the one order it is due to the closeness of resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other it is due to their remoteness.”[191]

Of course it goes without saying that this “closeness of resemblances in an act of perception” may be due either to similarities of sense-perceptions themselves (as when the colour of a ruby is seen to resemble that of “pigeon’s blood”), or to frequency of their associations in experience (as when a sea-bird groups together in one recept the sundry sensations which go to constitute its perception of water, with its generic classification of water as a medium in which it is safe to dive). Now, if we remember these things, can we possibly wonder that the palæontology of speech should prove early roots to have been chiefly expressive of “generic” as distinguished from “general” ideas on the one hand, or “particular” ideas on the other? By failing to observe this real distinction between classification as receptual and conceptual—i.e. as given immediately in the act of perception itself, or as elaborated of set purpose through the agency of introspective thought, Professor Max Müller founds his whole argument on another and an unreal distinction: he everywhere regards the bestowing of a name as in itself a sufficient proof of conceptual thought, and therefore constitutes the faculty of denotation, equally with that of denomination, the distinctive criterion of a self-conscious mind. But, as we have now so repeatedly seen, such is certainly not the case. Actions and processes so habitual, or so immediately apparent to perception, as those with which the great majority of these “121 concepts” are concerned, do not betoken any order of ideation higher than the pre-conceptual, in virtue of which a young child is able to give expression to its higher receptual life prior to the advent of self-consciousness. Or, as Geiger tersely says:—“In enzelnen Fällen ist die Entstehung von Gattungsbegriffe aus Mangel an Unterscheidung gleichwohl kaum zu bezweifeln.”[192]