Here, then, I bring to a close this brief and imperfect rendering of the “Witness of Philology.” But, brief and imperfect as the rendering is, I am honestly unable to see how it is conceivable that the witness itself could have been more uniform as to its testimony, or more multifarious as to its facts—more consistent, more complete, or more altogether overwhelming than we have found it to be. In almost every single respect it has corroborated the results of our psychological analysis. It has come forward like a living thing, which, in the very voice of Language itself, directly and circumstantially narrates to us the actual history of a process the constituent phases of which we had previously inferred. It has told us of a time when as yet mankind were altogether speechless, and able to communicate with one another only by means of gesticulation and grimace. It has described to us the first articulate sounds in the form of sentence-words, without significance apart from the pointings by which they were accompanied. It has revealed the gradual differentiation of such a protoplasmic form of language into “parts of speech;” and declared that these grammatical structures were originally the offspring of gesture-signs. More particularly, it has shown that in the earliest stages of articulate utterance pronominal elements, and even predicative words, were used in the impersonal manner which belongs to a hitherto undeveloped form of self-consciousness—primitive man, like a young child, having therefore spoken of his own personality in objective terminology. It has taught us to find in the body of every conceptual term a pre-conceptual core; so that, as the learned and thoughtful Garnett says, “nihil in oratione quod non prius in sensu may now be regarded as an incontrovertible axiom.”[298] It has minutely described the whole of that wonderful aftergrowth of articulate utterance through many lines of divergent evolution, in virtue of which all nations of the earth are now in possession, in one degree or another, of the god-like attributes of reason and of speech. Truly, as Archdeacon Farrar says, “to the flippant and the ignorant, how ridiculous is the apparent inadequacy of the origin to produce such a result.”[299] But here, as elsewhere, it is the method of evolution to bring to nought the things that are mighty by the things that are of no reputation; and when we feel disposed to boast ourselves in that we alone may claim the Logos, should we not do well to pause and remember in what it was that this our high prerogative arose? “So hat auch keine Sprache ein abstractum, zu dem sie nicht durch Ton und Gefühl gelangt wäre.”[300] To my mind it is simply inconceivable that any stronger proof of mental evolution could be furnished, than is furnished in this one great fact by the whole warp and woof of the thousand dialects of every pattern which are now spread over the surface of the globe. We cannot speak to each other in any tongue without declaring the pre-conceptual derivation of our speech; we cannot so much as discuss the “origin of human faculty” itself, without announcing, in the very medium of our discussion, what that origin has been. It is to Language that my opponents have appealed: by Language they are hopelessly condemned.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE.
At this point I shall doubtless be expected to offer some remarks on the probable mode of transition between the brute and the human being. Having so fully considered both the psychology and philology of ideation, it may be thought that I am now in a position to indicate what I suppose to have been the actual stepping-stones whereby an intelligent species of ape can be conceived to have crossed “the Rubicon of Mind.” But, if I am expected to do this, I might reasonably decline, for two reasons.
In the first place, the attempt, even if it could be successful, would be superfluous. The only objection I have had to meet is one which has been raised on grounds of psychology. This objection I have met, and met upon its own grounds. If I have been successful, for the purposes of argument nothing more remains to be said. If I have not been successful, it is obviously impossible to strengthen my case by going beyond the known facts of mind, as they actually exist before us, to any hypothetical possibilities of mind in the dim ages of an unrecorded past.
In the second place, any remarks which I have to offer upon this subject must needs be of a wholly speculative or unverifiable character. As well might the historian spend his time in suggesting hypothetical histories of events known to have occurred in a pre-historic age: his evidence that such and such events must have occurred may be conclusive, and yet he may be quite in the dark as to the precise conditions which led up to them, the time which was occupied by them, and the particular method of their occurrence. In such cases it often happens that the more certain an historian may be that such and such an event did take place, the greater is the number of ways in which he sees that it might have taken place. Merely for the sake of showing that this is likewise the case in the matter now before us, I will devote the present chapter to a consideration of three alternative—and equally hypothetical—histories of the transition. But, from what has just been said, I hope it will be understood that I attach no argumentative importance to any of these hypotheses.
Sundry German philologists have endeavoured to show that speech originated in wholly meaningless sounds, which in the first instance were due to merely physiological conditions. In their opinion the purely reflex mechanisms connected with vocalization would have been sufficient to yield not only many differences of tone under different states as to suffering, pleasure, effort, &c., but even the germ of articulation in the meaningless utterance of vowel sounds and consonants. Thus, for example, Lazarus says:—“Der Process der eigenthümlich menschlichen Laut-Erzeugung, die Articulation der Tone, die Hervorbringung von Vocalen und Consonanten, ist demnach auf rein physiologischem Boden gegeben—in der urprünglichen Natur des menschlichen physischen bewegten Organismus begründet, und wird vor aller Willkür und Absicht also ohne Einwirkung des Geistes obwohl auf Veranlassung von Gefühlen und Empfindungen vollzogen.”[301]
This, it will be observed, is the largest possible extension of the interjectional theory of the origin of speech. It assumes that not only inarticulate, but also articulate sounds were given forth by the “sprachlosen Urmenschen,” in the way of instinctive cries, wholly destitute of any semiotic intention. By repeated association, however, they are supposed to have acquired, as it were automatically, a semiotic value. For, to quote Professor Friedrich Müller, “Sie sind zwar Anfangs bedeutungslos: sie können aber bedeutungsvoll werden. Alles, was in unserem Inneren vorgeht, wird von der Seele wahrgenommen. Sobald durch gewisse aüssere Einflüsse in Folge einer Combination mehrerer Empfindungen eine Anschauung entsteht, nimmt die Seele dieselbe an, Diese Anschauung hat—in Folge der durch eine der Empfindungen hervorgebrachten Reflexbewegung in den Stimmorganen—einen Laut zum Begleiter, welcher in gleicher Weise wie die Anschauung von der Seele wahrgenommen wird, diese beiden Wahrnehmungen, nämlich jene der Anschauung und jene des Lautes, verbinden sich miteinander vermöge ihrer Gleichzeitigkeit im menschlichen Bewusstsein, es findet also eine Association der Laut-Anschauung mit jener der Sach-Anschauung statt, die Elemente der Sach-Anschauung bekommen an der Laute-Anschauung einen festen Mittelpunkt, durch den die Anschauung zur Vorstellung sich entwickelt. Wir sind damit bei der menschlichen Sprache angelangt, welche also ihrem Wesen nach auf der Substituirung eines Klang-oder Tonbildes für das Bild einer Anschauung beruht.”[302]