Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Indeed, if we consider the matter, it is not conceivable that the case could be otherwise. No one will maintain that the sentence-words of young children exhibit the highest elaborations of conceptual thought, on the ground that they present the highest degree of “generality” which it is possible for articulate sounds to express. But if this is not to be suggested as regards the infant child, what possible ground can there be for suggesting it as regards the infant man, or for inferring that aboriginal speech must have been expressive of “general” and “abstract” ideas, merely because the further backwards that we trace the growth of language the less organized do we find its structure to be? Clearly, the contradiction arises from a confusion between ideas as generic and general, or between the extension which is due to original vagueness and that which is laboriously acquired by subsequent precision. An Amœba is morphologically more “generalized” than a Vertebrate; but for this very reason it is the less highly evolved as an organism. The philology of sentence-words, therefore, leads us back to a state of ideation wherein as yet the powers of conceptual thought were in that nascent condition which betokens what I have called their pre-conceptual stage—or a stage which may be observed in a comparatively foreshortened state among children before the dawn of self-consciousness.

There can be no reasonable doubt that during this stage of mental evolution sentence-words arose in the race as they now do in the individual, the only difference being that then they had to be invented instead of learnt. This difference would probably have given a larger importance to the principle of onomatopœia,[270] and certainly a much larger importance to the co-operation of gesture, than now obtains in the otherwise analogous case of young children. But in the one case as in the other, I think there can be no reasonable question that sentence-words must have owed their origin to receptual and pre-conceptual apprehensions of all kinds, whether of objects, qualities, actions, states, relations, or of any two or more of these “categories” as they may happen to have been blended in the hitherto undifferentiating perceptions of aboriginal man.

I must now allude to the results of our previous inquiry touching “the syntax of gesture-language.” For comparison will show that in all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the most original and immediately graphic mode of communication, bears a striking resemblance to that which is presented by the earliest forms of articulate language, both as revealed by philology and in “baby-talk.”[271] Thus, as we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar properly so called. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’ ‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily distinguished by the deaf and dumb. Indeed, our elaborate system of parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language.” Next, to quote again only one of the numerous examples previously given to show the primitive order of apposition, whereby the language of gesture serves to convey a predication, “I should be punished if I were lazy and naughty” would be put, “I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy, naughty, I punished; yes!” Again, “to make is too abstract for the deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the coat and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful’ would not come into his way of thinking: ‘Rain, fall; plants, grow,’ would be his pictorial (i.e. receptual) expression.” Elsewhere this writer remarks that the absence of any distinction between substantive, adjective, and verb, which is universal in gesture-language, is customary in Chinese, and not unknown even in English. “To butter bread, to cudgel a man, to oil machinery, to pepper a dish, and scores of such expressions, involve action and instrument in one word, and that word a substantive treated as the root or crude form of a verb. Such expressions are concretisms, picture-words, gesture-words, as much as the deaf-and-dumb man’s one sign for ‘butter’ and ‘buttering.’” And similarly as to the substantive-adjective, in such words as iron-stone, feather-grass, chesnut-horse, &c.; here the mere apposition of the words constitutes the one an attribution of the other, as is the case in gesture-language. And not only in Chinese, but as shown in the last chapter, in a great number and variety of savage tongues this mode of construction is habitual. In all these cases distinctions between parts of speech can be rendered only by syntax; and this syntax is the syntax of gesture.

I will ask the reader to refer to the whole passage in which I previously treated of the syntax of gesture,[272] giving special attention to the points just noted, and also to the following:—invariable absence of the copula, and frequent absence of the verb (as “Apple-father-I” = “My father gave me an apple”); resemblance of sentences to the polysynthetic or unanalyzing type (as “I-Tom-struck-a-stick” = “Tom struck me with a stick”); the device whereby syntax, or order of apposition, is made to distinguish between predicative, attributive, and possessive meanings, and therefore also between substantives and adjectives; the importance of grimace in association with gesture (as when a look of inquiry converts an assertion into a question); the highly instructive means whereby relational words, and especially pronouns, are rendered in the gestures of pointing; the no less instructive manner whereby a general idea is rendered in a summation of particular ideas (as “Did you have soup? did you have porridge?” &c. = “What did you have for dinner?”); and the receptual or sensuous source of all gesture-signs which are concerned in expressing ideas presenting any degree of abstraction (as striking the hand to signify “hard,” &c.).

Hence, we may everywhere trace a fundamental similarity between the comparatively undeveloped form of conceptual thought as displayed in gesture, and that which philology has revealed as distinctive of early speech. Of course in both cases conceptual thought is there: the ideation is human, though, comparatively speaking, immature. But the important point to notice is the curiously close similarity between the forms of language-structure as revealed in gesture and in early speech. For no one, I should suppose, can avoid perceiving the idiographic character of gesture-language, whereby it is more nearly allied to the purely receptual modes of communication which we have studied in the lower animals, than is the case with our fully evolved forms of predication. It therefore seems to me highly suggestive that the earliest forms and records of spoken language that we possess (notwithstanding that they are still far from aboriginal), follow so closely the model which is still supplied to us in the idiographic gestures of deaf-mutes. Such syntax as there is—i.e. such a putting in order as is expressive of the mode of ideational grouping—so nearly resembles the syntax of gesture-language, that we can at once perceive their common psychological source. It is on account of this structural resemblance between gesture and early speech that I have devoted so much space to our consideration of the former; and if I do not now dwell at greater length upon the significance of the analogy, it is only because this significance appears too obvious to require further treatment.

There is, however, one point with reference to this analogy on which a few words must here be said. If there is any truth at all in the theory of evolution with reference to the human mind, we may be quite sure, from what has been said in earlier chapters, that tone, gesture, and grimace preceded articulation as the medium of pre-conceptual utterance. Therefore, the structural similarity between existing gesture-language and the earliest records of articulate language now under consideration, is presumably due, not only to a similarity of psychological conditions, but also to direct continuity of descent. Or, as Colonel Mallery well puts it, while speaking of the presumable origin of spoken language, “as the action was then the essential, and the consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be expected that a representation, or feigned reproduction of the action, would have been used to express the idea before the sound associated with that action could have been separated from it. The visual onomatopœia of gestures, which even yet have been subjected to but slight artificial corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible. It is also contended that in the pristine days, when the sounds of the only words yet formed had close connection with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs were as much more copious for communication than speech as the sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of objects than does the sense of hearing.”[273]

All the foregoing and general conclusions thus reached, touching the genesis of conceptual from pre-conceptual ideation, admit of being strikingly corroborated through another line of philological research. On antecedent grounds the evolutionist would suppose that “the first language-signs must have denoted those physical acts and qualities which were directly apprehensible by the senses; both because these alone are directly significable, and because it was only they that untrained human beings had the power to deal with or the occasion to use.”[274] In other words, if, as we suppose, language had its origin in merely denotative sign-making, which gradually became more and more connotative and thus gradually more and more predicative; obviously the original denotations must have referred only to objects (or actions, states, and qualities) of merely receptual significance—i.e. “those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible by the senses.” And, no less obviously, the connotative extension of such denotative names must, for an enormously long period, have been confined to a pre-conceptual cognizance of the most obvious analogies—i.e. such analogies as would necessarily thrust themselves upon the merely sensuous perception by the force of direct association.

Now, if this were the case, what would the evolutionist expect to find in language as it now exists? Clearly, he would expect to find more or less well-marked traces, in the fundamental constitution of all languages, of what has been called “fundamental metaphor”—by which is meant an intellectual extension of terms that originally were of no more than sensuous signification. And this is precisely what we do find. “The whole history of language, down to our own day, is full of examples of the reduction of physical terms and phrases to the expression of non-physical conceptions and relations; we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth. So pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to its physical origin.”[275]

Now, I hold that this receptual nucleus of all our conceptual terms furnishes the strongest possible evidence, not only of the historical priority of the former, but also of what Professor Max Müller calls their “dire necessity” to the growth of the latter.[276] In other words, the facts appear conclusively to show that conceptual connotation (denomination) has always had—and can only have had—a receptual core (denotation) around which to develop. Psychological analysis has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by actually finding the recept in the body of every concept.

How this large and general fact is to be met by my antagonists I know not. It certainly does not satisfy the case to say, with Professor Max Müller,[277] Noiré,[278] and those who think with them, that in no other way could the growth of conceptual thought have been possible; for this is merely to reiterate on a priori grounds the conclusion which I have reached a posteriori. And the more that this historical priority of denotation can thus be shown an a priori necessity to the subsequent genesis of denomination, the greater becomes the cogency of our evidence a posteriori that, as a matter of fact, such has been invariably the order of historical succession. For, if conceptual ideation differs from receptual in kind, why this necessity for the historical priority of the latter? Why should denotation thus always require to precede denomination—or receptual connotation thus always require to precede conceptual predication—unless it be that the one is a further and a continuous development of the other? Surely as well might the botanist institute a specific distinction between the root and the flower of the self-same plant, as the psychologist, with these results of philological research before him, still persist in drawing a distinction of kind between the receptual denotation of “radical elements,” and the full efflorescence of conceptual thought.