Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Quitting, then, all these old-world fallacies which were based on an absence of information, we must accept the analysis of predication as this has been supplied to us by the advance of science. And this analysis has proved to demonstration, that “the division of the sentence into two parts, the subject and the predicate, is a mere accident; it is not known to the polysynthetic languages of America, which herein reflect the condition of primeval speech.... So far as the act of thought is concerned, subject and predicate are one and the same, and there are many languages in which they are so treated.”[262] Consequently, it appears to me that the only position which remains for my opponents to adopt is that of arguing in some such way as follows.

Freely admitting, they may say, that the issue must be thrown back from predication as it occurs in Greek to predication as it occurs in savage languages of low development, still we are in the presence of predication all the same. And even when you have driven us back to the most primitive possible form of human speech, wherein as yet there are no parts of speech, and predication therefore requires to be conducted in a most inefficient manner, still most obviously it is conducted, inasmuch as it is only for the purpose of conducting it that speech can have ever come into existence at all.

Now, in order to meet this sole remaining position, I must begin by reminding the reader of some of the points which have already been established in previous chapters.

First of all, when seeking to define “the simplest element of thought,” I showed that this does not occur in the fully formed proposition, but in the fully formed concept; and that it is only out of two such concepts as elements that full or conceptual propositions can be formed as compounds. Or, as this was stated in the chapter on Speech, “conceptual names are the ingredients out of which is formed the structure of propositions; and, in order that this formation should take place, there must be in the ingredients that element of conceptual ideation which is already present in every denominative term.” Or, yet again, as the same thing was there quoted from Professor Sayce, “it is a truism of psychology that the terms of a proposition, when closely interrogated, turn out to be nothing but abbreviated judgments.”[263]

Having thus defined the simplest element of thought as a concept, I went on to show from the psychogenesis of children, that before there is any power of forming concepts—and therefore of bestowing names as denominative terms, or, a fortiori, of combining such terms in the form of conceptual propositions—there is the power of forming recepts, of naming these recepts by denotative terms, and even of placing such terms in apposition for the purpose of conveying information of a pre-conceptual kind. The pre-conceptual, rudimentary, or unthinking propositions thus formed occur in early childhood, prior to the advent of self-consciousness, and prior, therefore, to the very condition which is required for any process of conceptual thought. Moreover, it was shown that this pre-conceptual kind of predication is itself the product of a gradual development. Taking its origin from the ground of gesture-signs, when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between “parts of speech.” Every word is what we now know as a “sentence-word,” any special applications of which can only be defined by gesture. Next, these sentence-words, or others that are afterwards acquired, begin to be imperfectly differentiated into denotative names of objects, qualities, actions, and states; and the greater the definition which they thus acquire as parts of speech, the more do they severally undergo that process of connotative extension as to meaning which is everywhere the index of a growing appreciation of analogies. Lastly, object-words and attributive-words (i.e. denotative names of things and denotative names of qualities or actions), come to be used in apposition. But the rudimentary or unthinking form of predication which results from this is due to merely sensuous associations and the external “logic of events;” like the elements of which it is composed, it is not conceptual, but pre-conceptual. With the dawn of self-consciousness, however, predication begins to become truly conceptual; and thus enters upon its prolonged course of still gradual development in the region of introspective thought.

All these general facts, it will be remembered, were established on grounds of psychological observation alone; I nowhere invoked the independent witness of philology. But the time having now come for calling in this additional testimony, the corroborating force of it appears to me overwhelming. For it everywhere proves the growth of predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former, I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? Will he still seek to take refuge in the only position now remaining, and argue, as above supposed, that not only in the childish appositions of denotative names, but even in the earlier and hitherto undifferentiated protoplasm of a “sentence-word,” we have that faculty of predication on which he founds his distinction between man and brute? Obviously, if he will not do this, his argument is at an end, seeing that in the race, as in the individual, there is now no longer any question as to the continuity between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved structure of a formal proposition. On the other hand, if he does elect to argue thus, the following brief considerations will effectually dislodge him.

If the term “predication” is extended from a conceptual proposition to a sentence-word, it thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon which alone the whole argument of my opponents is reared. For, when used by a young child (or primitive man), sentence-words require to be supplemented by gesture-signs in order to particularize their meaning, or to complete the “predication.” But, where such is the case, there is no longer any psychological distinction between speaking and pointing: if this is called predication, then the predicative “category of language” has become identified with the indicative: man and brute are conceded to be “brothers.”

Take an example. At the present moment I happen to have an infant who has not yet acquired the use of any one articulate word. Being just able to toddle, he occasionally comes to grief in one way or another; and when he does so he seeks to communicate the nature of his mishap by means of gesture-signs. To-day, for instance, he knocked his head against a table, and forthwith ran up to me for sympathy. On my asking him where he was hurt, he immediately touched the part of his head in question—i.e. indicated the painful spot. Now, will it be said that in doing this the child was predicating the seat of injury? If so, all the distinctive meaning which belongs to the term predicating, or the only meaning on which my opponents have hitherto relied, is discharged. The gesture-signs which are so abundantly employed by the lower animals would then also require to be regarded as predicatory, seeing that, as before shown at considerable length, they differ in no respect from those of the still speechless infant.

Therefore, whether my opponents allow or disallow the quality of predication to sentence-words, alike and equally this argument collapses. Their only logical alternative is to vacate their argument altogether; no longer to maintain that “Speech is the Rubicon of Mind,” but to concede that, as between the indicative phase of language which we share with the lower animals, and the truly predicative phase which belongs only to man, there is no distinction of kind to be attributed; seeing that, on the contrary, whether we look to the psychogenesis of the individual or to that of the race, we alike find a demonstrable continuity of evolution from the lowest to the highest level of the sign-making faculty.