Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Now, without at all doubting the important part which originally meaningless sounds may have played in furnishing material for vocal sign-making, and still less disputing the agency of association in the matter, I must nevertheless refuse to accept the above hypothesis as anything like a full explanation of the origin of speech. For it manifestly ignores the whole problem which stands to be solved—namely, the genesis of those powers of ideation which first put a soul of meaning into the previously insignificant sounds. Nearly all the warm-blooded animals so far share with mankind the same physiological nature as to give forth a variety of vocal sounds under as great a variety of mental states. Therefore, if in accordance with the above hypothesis we regard all such sounds as meaningless (or arising from the “purely physiological basis” of reflex movement), the question obviously presents itself, Why have not the lower animals developed speech? According to the above doctrine, aboriginal and hitherto speechless man started without any superiority in respect of the sign-making faculty, and thus far precisely resembled what is taken to be the present psychological condition of the lower animals.[303] Why, then, out of the same original conditions has there arisen so enormous a difference of result? If, in the case of mankind, associations of meaningless sounds with particular states, objects, &c., led to a substitution of the former for the latter, and thus gave to them the significance of names, how are we to account for the total absence of any such development in brutes? To me it appears that this is clearly an unanswerable difficulty; and therefore I do not wonder that the so-called interjectional theory of the origin of speech has brought discredit on the whole philosophy of the subject. But, as so often happens in philosophical writings, we have here a case where an important truth is damaged by imperfect or erroneous presentation. All the principles set forth in the above hypothesis are sound in themselves, but the premiss from which they start is untrue. This premiss is, that aboriginal man presented no rudiments of the sign-making faculty—that this faculty itself required to be originated de novo by accidental associations of sounds with things. But, as we now well know from all the facts previously given, even the lower animals present the sign-making faculty in no mean degree of development; and, therefore, it is perfectly certain that the “Urmenschen,” at the time when they were “sprachlosen,” were not on this account zeichenlosen. The psychological germ of communication, which probably could not have been created by merely accidental associations between sounds and things, must already have been given in those psychological conditions of receptual ideation which are common to all intelligent animals.

But to this all-essential germ, as thus given, I doubt not that the soil of such associations as the interjectional theory has in view must have been of no small importance; for this would naturally help to nourish its semiotic nature. And the reason why the similar germ of sign-making which occurs in the brute creation has not been similarly nurtured, I have already considered in Chapter VIII. For, it is needless to add, on every ground I disagree with the above quotations where they represent articulate sounds as having been aboriginally uttered by “Urmenschen” in the way of instinctive cries, without any vestige of semiotic intention.[304]

I will now pass on to consider the two other hypotheses; and by way of introduction to both we must remember that our materials of study on the side of the apes is very limited. I do not mean only that no single representative of any of the anthropoid apes has ever been made the object of even so much observation with respect to its intelligence as I bestowed upon a cebus. Yet this, no doubt, is an important point, because we know that of all quadrumana—and, therefore, of all existing animals—the anthropoid apes are the most intelligent, and, therefore, if specially trained would probably display greater aptitude in the matter of sign-making than is to be met with in any other kind of brute. But I do not press this point. What I now refer to is the fact that the existing species of anthropoid apes are very few in number, and appear to be all on the high-road to extinction. Moreover, it is certain that none of these existing species can have been the progenitor of man; and, lastly, it is equally certain that the extinct species (or genus) which did give origin to man must have differed in several important respects from any of its existing allies. In the first place, it must have been more social in habits; and, in the next place, it was probably more vociferous than the orang, the gorilla, or the chimpanzee. That there is no improbability in either of these suppositions will be at once apparent if we remember that both are amply sustained by analogies among existing and allied species of the monkey tribe. Or, to state these preliminary considerations in a converse form, when it is assumed[305] that because the few existing and expiring species of anthropoid apes are unsocial and comparatively silent, therefore the simian ancestors of man must have been so, it is enough to point to the variability of both these habits among certain allied genera of monkeys and baboons, in order at the same time to dispose of the assumption, and to indicate the probable reasons why one genus of ape gradually became evolved into Homo, while all the allied genera became, or are still becoming, extinct.

Again, and still by way of preliminary consideration, we must remember that the analogy of the growing child, although most valuable up to a certain point, is not to be unreservedly followed where we have to deal with the genesis of speech. For, as previously noted, to the infancy of the individual language is supplied from without, and has only to be learnt; while to the infancy of the race language was not supplied, but had to be made. Therefore, even apart from any question of heredity, we have here an immense difference in the psychological conditions between the case of a growing child and that of aboriginal man. Only in so far as the growing child displays the tendency on which I have dwelt of spontaneously extending the significance of denotative words, or of spontaneously using such words in apposition for the purpose of pre-conceptual predication—only to this extent may we hope to find any true analogy between the individual and the race in respect of that “transition” from receptual to conceptual ideation with which we are now concerned.[306]

There is another preliminary consideration which I think is well worth mentioning. The philologist Geiger is led by his study of language to entertain, and somewhat elaborately to sustain, the following doctrine. First he points out that man, much more than any other animal, uses the sense of sight for the purposes of perceptual life. By this he does not mean that man possesses a keener vision than any other animal, but merely that of all his special senses that of sight is most habitually used for taking cognizance of the external world. And this, I think, must certainly be admitted. Even a hitherto speechless infant may be seen to observe objects at great distances, carefully to investigate objects which it holds in its hands, and generally to employ its eyes much more effectively than any of the lower animals at a comparable stage of development. Now, from this relative superiority of the sense of sight in man, Geiger argues that before the origin of articulate speech he, more than any other animal, must have been accustomed to communicate with his fellows by means of signs which appealed to that sense—i.e. by gesture and grimace. But, if this be admitted, it follows that from the time when a particular species of the order Primates began to use its eyesight more than the allied species, a condition was given favourable to the subsequent and gradual development of a gesticulating form of ape-like creature. Here grimace also would have played an important part, and where attention was particularly directed towards movements of the mouth for semiotic purposes, articulate sounds would begin to acquire more or less conventional significations. In this way Geiger supposes that the conditions required for the origin of articulate signs were laid down; and, in view of all that he says, it certainly is suggestive that the animal which relies most upon the sense of sight is also the animal which has made so prodigious an advance in the faculty of sign-making. In this greater reliance on the sense of sight, therefore, we probably have another among the many and complex conditions which determined the difference in respect of sign-making between the remote progenitors of man and their nearest zoological allies—a difference which would naturally become more and more pronounced the more that vision and gesticulation acted and reacted on one another.

It appears to me that this suggestion of Geiger admits of being strikingly supported by certain facts which are known to obtain in the case of deaf-mutes. Even when wholly uneducated, the born mute, as we have previously seen, habitually invents articulate sounds as his own names of things. These sounds are, of course, unheard by the mute himself, and their use must be ascribed—as I have already ascribed it—to the hereditary transmission of an acquired propensity. But the point now is that, although the majority of these articulate sounds appear to be wholly arbitrary (e.g. ga for “one,” schuppatter for “two,” riecke for “I will not”), a certain proportion are often clearly traceable to vocalizations incidental to movements of the mouth in performing the actions signified (e.g. mumm for “eating,” schipp for “drinking”).[307] Similarly, observation of a dog’s mouth, while in the act of barking, leads to an imitative action on the part of a mute as his sign for a dog, and this in turn may lead to the utterance of such an articulate sound as be-yer, which the mute afterwards uses as his name for a dog.[308] Now, if words may thus be coined even by deaf-mutes as a result of observing movements of the mouth, much more is this likely to have been the case among the “Urmenschen,” who were able not only to see the movements, but also to hear the sounds.

I will now adduce the two hypotheses above alluded to as conceivable suggestions touching the mode of transition. First, let us try to imagine an anthropoid ape, social in habits, using its voice somewhat extensively as an organ of sign-making after the manner of all other species of social quadrumana, and possibly somewhat more sagacious than the orang-outang mentioned in my previous work,[309] or the remarkable chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens, which, in respect of intelligence as well as comparative hairlessness and carnivorous propensities, appears to be the most human-like of animals hitherto discovered in the living state.[310] It does not seem to me difficult further to imagine that such an animal should extend the vocal signs which it habitually employs in the expression of its emotions and the logic of its recepts, to an association with gesture-signs, so as to constitute sentence-words indicative of such simple and often-repeated ideas as the presence of danger, discovery of food, &c. Nay, I do not think it is too much to suppose that such an animal may even have gone so far as to make sounds which were denotative of a few of the most familiar objects, such as food, child, enemy, &c., and also, possibly, of frequently repeated forms of activity; for this, as I have shown at considerable length, is no more than we actually observe to be done by animals which are lower in the scale of intelligence; and although it is not done by articulate signs (except in the psychologically poor instance of talking birds), this, as I have also shown, is a matter of no psychological import. Whether the denotative stage of language in the ape was first reached by articulation, or (as I think is very much more probable) by vocal sounds of other kinds assisted by gestures and grimace, is similarly immaterial. In either case the advance of intelligence which would thus have been secured would in time have reacted upon the sign-making faculty, and so have led to the extension of the vocabulary, both as to sounds and gestures. Sooner or later the vocal signs—assisted out by gestures and ever leading to a gradual advance of intelligence—would have become more or less conventional, and so, in the presence of suitable anatomical and social conditions, articulate. Thus far I cannot see anything to stumble over, when we remember all that has been said upon the conventional signs which are used by the more intelligent of our domesticated animals, and even by talking birds.[311]

This is the hypothesis which is countenanced by Mr. Darwin in his Descent of Man. He says:—“I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man’s own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures.... Since monkeys certainly understand much that is said to them by man, and, when wild, utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows; and since fowls give distinct warnings for danger on the ground, or in the sky from hawks (both, as well as a third cry, intelligible to dogs),[312] may not some unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of prey, and thus told his fellow-monkeys the nature of the expected danger? This would have been a first step in the formation of a language.”[313]