Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Again, as a result of his prolonged study of some of the most primitive forms of language still extant among the Bushmen of South Africa, Dr. Bleek entertains no doubt whatever that aboriginally the same word, without alteration, implied a substantival or a verbal meaning, and could be used indifferently also as an adjective, adverb, &c.[253] That is to say, primitive words were sentence-words, and as such were used by early man in just the same way as young children use their hitherto undifferentiated signs, Byby = sleep, sleeping, to sleep, sleeper, asleep, sleepy, &c.; and, by connotative extension, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.

Lastly, as already indicated, we are not left to mere inference touching the aboriginal state of matters with regard to predication. For in many languages still existing we find the forms of predication in such low phases of development, that they bring us within easy distance of the time when there can have been no such forms at all. Even Professor Max Müller allows that there are still existing languages “in which there is as yet no outward difference between what we call a root, and a noun or a verb. Remnants of that phase in the growth of language we can detect even in so highly developed a language as Sanskrit.” Elsewhere he remarks:—“A child says, ‘I am hungry,’ without an idea that I is different from hungry, and that both are united by an auxiliary verb.... A Chinese child would express exactly the same idea by one word, ‘Shi,’ to eat, or food, &c. The only difference would be that a Chinese child speaks the language of a child, an English child the language of a man.”[254]

It is no doubt remarkable that the Chinese should so long have retained so primitive a form; but, as we know, the functions of predication have here been greatly assisted by devices of syntax combined with conventionally significant intonation, which really constitute Chinese a well-developed language of a particular type. Among peoples of a much lower order of mental evolution, however, we are brought into contact with still more rudimentary forms of predication, inasmuch as these devices of syntax and intonation have not been evolved. As previously stated, the most primitive of all actually existing forms of predication where articulate language is concerned, is that wherein the functions of a verb are undertaken by the apposition of a noun with what is equivalent to the genitive case of a pronoun. Thus, in Dayak, if it is desired to say, “Thy father is old,” “Thy father looks old,” &c., in the absence of verbs it is needful to frame the predication by mere apposition, thus:—“Father-of-thee, age-of-him.” Or, to be more accurate, as the syntax follows that of gesture-language in placing the predicate before the subject, we should translate the proposition into its most exact equivalent by saying, “His age, thy father.” Similarly, if it is required to make such a statement as that “He is wearing a white jacket,” the form of the statement would be, “He-with-white with-jacket,” or, as we might perhaps more tersely translate it, “He jackety whitey.”[255]

Again, in Feejee language the functions of a verb may be discharged by a noun in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix, e.g., loma-qu = heart or will-of-me, = I will.[256]

So likewise, “almost all philologists who have paid attention to the Polynesian languages, concur in observing that the divisions of parts of speech received by European grammarians are, as far as external form is concerned, inapplicable, or nearly so, to this particular class. The same element is admitted to be indifferently substantive, adjective, verb, or particle.”[257] “I will eat the rice,” would require to be rendered, “The-eating-of-me-the-rice = My eating will be of the rice.” “The supposed verb is, in fact, an abstract noun, including in it the notion of futurity of time in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix; and the ostensible object of the action is not a regimen in the accusative case, but an apposition. It is scarcely necessary to say how irreconcilable this is with the ordinary grammatical definition of a transitive verb; and that, too, in a construction where we should expect that true verbs would be infallibly employed, if any existed in the language.”[258] And, not to overburden the argument with illustrations, it will be enough to add with this writer, “there can be no question that nouns in conjunction with oblique cases of pronouns may be, and, in fact, are employed as verbs. Some of the constructions above specified admit of no other analysis; and they are no accidental partial phenomena, but capable of being produced by thousands.”[259]

It would be easy to multiply quotations from other authorities to the same effect; but these, I think, are enough to show how completely the philology of predication destroys the philosophy of predication, as this has been presented by my opponents. Not only, as already shown, have they been misled by the verbal accident of certain languages with which they happen to be familiar identifying the copula with the verb “to be” (which itself, as we have also seen, has no existence in many languages); but, as we now see, their analysis is equally at fault where it deals with the subject and predicate. Such a fully elaborated form of proposition as “A negro is black,” far from presenting “the simplest element of thought,” is the demonstrable outcome of an enormously prolonged course of mental evolution; and I do not know a more melancholy instance of ingenuity misapplied than is furnished by the arguments previously quoted from such writers, who, ignoring all that we now know touching the history of predication, seek to show that an act of predication is at once “the simplest element of thought,” and so hugely elaborate a process as they endeavour to represent. The futility of such an argument may be compared with that of a morphologist who should be foolish enough to represent that the Vertebrata can never have descended from the Protozoa, and maintain his thesis by ignoring all the intermediate animals which are known actually to exist.

Take an instance from among the quotations previously given. It will be remembered that the challenge which my opponents have thrown down upon the grounds of logic and psychology, is to produce the brute which “can furnish the blank form of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B.’”[260]

Now, I cannot indeed produce a brute that is able to supply such a form; but I have done what is very much more to the purpose: I have produced many nations of still existing men, in multitudes that cannot be numbered, who are as incapable as any brute of supplying the blank form that is required. Where is the “is,” in “Age-of-him Father-of-thee” = “His-age-thy-father” = “Thy-father-is-old”? Or, in still more primitive stages of human utterance, how shall we extract the blank form of predication from a “sentence-word,” where there is not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence of any differentiation between the subject and the predicate? The truth, in short, is, as now so repeatedly shown, that not only the brute, but likewise the young child—and not only the young child, but likewise early man—and not only early man, but likewise savage man—are all and equally unable to furnish the blank form of predication, as this has been slowly elaborated in the highest ramifications of the human mind.

Of course all this futile (because erroneous) argument on the part of my opponents, rests upon the analysis of the proposition as this was given in the Aristotelian system of logic—an analysis which, in turn, depends on the grammar of the Greek language. Now, it goes without saying that the whole of this system is obsolete, so far as any question of the origin either of thought or of speech is concerned. I do not doubt the value of this grammatical study, nor of the logic which is founded upon it, provided that inferences from both are kept within their legitimate sphere. But at this time of day to regard as primitive the mode of predication which obtained in so highly evolved a language as the Greek, or to represent the “categories” of Aristotle’s system as expressive of the simplest elements of human thought, appears to me so absurd that I can only wonder how intelligent men can have committed themselves to such a line of argument.[261]