Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, if we were to rely on authority alone, the halting and often contradictory opinions which from time to time have been expressed by Professor Max Müller with reference to our subject, are greatly outweighed by those of all his brother philologists. But, without in any way appealing to authority further than to accept matters of fact on which all philologists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max Müller an even more representative place than any of the others, fully stated the nature of his objections, and supplied what appears to me abundantly sufficient answers. So far as I can understand the reasons of his dissent from conclusions which his own admirable work has materially helped to support, they appear to arise from the following grounds. First, a want of clearness with regard to the principles of evolution in general:[341] second, a failure clearly or constantly to recognize that the roots of Aryan speech are demonstrably very far from primitive in the sense of being aboriginal: third, a want of discrimination between ideas as general and generic, or synthetic and unanalytical: fourth, the gratuitous and demonstrably false assumption that in order to name a mind must first conceive. Of these several grounds from which his dissent appears to spring, the last is perhaps the most important, seeing that it is the one upon which he most expressly rears his objections. But if I have proved anything, I have proved that there is a power of affixing verbal or other signs as marks of merely receptual associations, and that this power is invariably antecedent to the origin of conceptual utterance in the only case where this origin admits of being directly observed—i.e., in the psychogenesis of a child. Again, in the case of pre-historic man, so far as the palæontology of speech furnishes evidence upon the subject, this makes altogether in favour of the view that in the race, as in the individual, denotation preceded denomination, as antecedent and consequent. Nay, I doubt whether Max Müller himself would disagree with Geiger where the latter tersely says, in a passage hitherto unquoted, “Why is it that the further we trace words backwards the less meaning do they present? I know not of any other answer to be given than that the further they go back the less conceptuality do they betoken.”[342] Nor can he refuse to admit, with the same authority, that “conceptual thought (Begriff) allows itself to be traced backwards into an ever narrowing circle, and inevitably tends to a point where there is no longer either thought or speech.”[343] But if these things cannot be denied by Max Müller himself, I am at a loss to understand why he should part company with other philologists with regard to the origin of conceptual terms. With them he asserts that there can be no concepts without words (spoken or otherwise), and with them he maintains that when the meanings of words are traced back as far as philology can trace them, they obviously tend to the vanishing point of which Geiger speaks. Yet, merely on the ground that this vanishing point can never be actually reached by the investigations of philology—i.e., that words cannot record the history of their own birth,—he stands out for an interruption of the principle of continuity at the place where words originate. A position so unsatisfactory I can only explain by supposing that he has unconsciously fallen into the fallacy of concluding that because all A is B, therefore all B is A. Finding that there can be no concepts without names, he concludes that there can be no names without concepts.[344] And on the basis of such a conclusion he naturally finds it impossible to explain how either names or concepts could have had priority in time: both, it seems, must have been of contemporaneous origin; and, if this were so, it is manifestly impossible to account for the natural genesis of either. But the whole of this trouble is imaginary. Once discard the plainly illogical inference that because names are necessary to concepts, therefore concepts are necessary to names, and the difficulty is at an end. Now, I have proved, ad nauseam, that there are names and names: names denotative, and names denominative; names receptual, as well as names conceptual. Even if we had not had the case of the growing child actually to prove the process—a case which he, in common with all my other opponents, in this connexion ignores,—on general grounds alone, and especially from our observations on the lower animals, we might have been practically certain that the faculty of sign-making must have preceded that of thinking the signs. And whether these pre-conceptual signs were made by gesture, grimace, intonation, articulation, or all combined, clearly no difference would arise so far as any question of their influence on psychogenesis is concerned. As a matter of fact, we happen to know that the semiotic artifice of articulating vocal tones for purposes of denotation, dates back so far as to bring us within philologically measurable distance of the origin of denomination, or conceptual thought—although we have seen good reason to conclude that before that time tone, gesture, and grimace must have been much more extensively employed in sign-making by aboriginal man than they now are by any of the lower animals. So that, upon the whole, unless it can be shown that my distinction between denotation and denomination is untenable—unless, for instance, it can be shown that an infant requires to think of names as such before it can learn to utter them,—then I submit that no shadow of a difficulty lies against the theory of evolution in the domain of philology. While, on the other hand, all the special facts as well as all the general principles hitherto revealed by this science make entirely for the conclusion, that pre-conceptual denotation laid the psychological conditions which were necessary for the subsequent growth of conceptual denomination; and, therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of Geiger, “Speech created Reason; before its advent mankind was reasonless.”[345]
And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true of psychology. For “the development of speech is only a copy of that chain of processes, which began with the dawn of [human] consciousness, and eventually ends in the construction of the most abstract idea.”[346] Unless, therefore, it can be shown that my distinction between ideation as receptual and conceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents are to meet the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this distinction should be denied, not only would they require to construct the science of psychology anew; they would place themselves in the curious position of repudiating the very distinction on which their whole argument is founded. For I have everywhere been careful to place it beyond question that what I have called receptual ideation, in all its degrees, is identical with that which is recognized by my opponents as non-conceptual; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with them I fully recognize the psychological difference between this order of ideation and that which is conceptual. The only point in dispute, therefore, is as to the possibility of a natural transition from the one to the other. It is for them to show the impossibility. This they have hitherto most conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I now claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach of a reasonable question. For I claim to have shown that the probability of such a transition having previously occurred in the race, as it now occurs in every individual, is a probability that has been raised tower-like by the accumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century. Or, to vary the metaphor, this probability has been as a torrent, gaining in strength and volume as it is successively fed by facts and principles poured into it by the advance of many sciences.
Of course it is always easy to withhold assent from a probability, however strong: “My belief,” it may be said, “is not to be wooed; it shall only be compelled.” Indeed, a man may even pride himself on the severity of his requirements in this respect; and in popular writings we often find it taken for granted that any scientific doctrine is then only entitled to be regarded as scientific when it has been demonstrated. But in science, as in other things, belief ought to be proportionate to evidence; and although for this very reason we should ever strive for the attainment of better evidence, scientific caution of such a kind must not be confused with a merely ignorant demand for impossible evidence. Actually to demonstrate the transition from non-conceptual to conceptual ideation in the race, as it is every day demonstrated in the individual, would plainly require the impossible condition that conceptual thought should have observed its own origin. To demand any demonstrative proof of the transition in the race would therefore be antecedently absurd. But if, as Bishop Butler says, “probability is the very guide of life,” assuredly no less is it the very guide of science; and here, I submit, we are in the presence of a probability so irresistible that to withhold from it the embrace of conviction would be no longer indicative of scientific caution, but of scientific incapacity. For if, as I am assuming, we already accept the theory of evolution as applicable throughout the length and breadth of the realm organic, it appears to me that we have positively better reasons for accepting it as applicable to the length and breadth of the realm mental. In other words, looking to all that has now been said, I cannot help feeling that there is actually better evidence of a psychological transition from the brute to the man, than there is of a morphological transition from one organic form to another, in any of the still numerous instances where the intermediate links do not happen to have been preserved. Thus, for example, in my opinion an evolutionist of to-day who seeks to constitute the human mind a great exception to the otherwise uniform principle of genetic continuity, has an even more hopeless case than he would have were he to argue that a similar exception ought to be made with regard to the structure of the worm-like creature Balanoglossus.
If this comparison should appear to betray any extravagant estimate on my part of the cogency of the evidence which has thus far been presented, I will now in conclusion ask it to be remembered that my case is not yet concluded. For hitherto I have almost entirely abstained from considering the mental condition of savages. The reason why this important branch of my subject has not been touched is because I reserve it for the next instalment of my work. But when we leave the groundwork of psychological principles on which up to this point we have been engaged, and advance to the wider field of anthropological research in general, we shall find much additional evidence of a more concrete kind, which almost uniformly tends to substantiate the conclusions already gained. The corroboration thus afforded is indeed, to my thinking, superfluous; and, therefore, will not be adduced in this connection. Nevertheless, while tracing the principles of mental evolution from the lowest levels which are actually occupied by existing man, we shall find that no small light is incidentally thrown upon the demonstrably still more primitive intelligence of pre-historic man. Thus shall we find that we are led back by continuous stages to a state of still human ideation, which brings us into contact almost painfully close with that of the higher apes. This, indeed, is a side of the general question which my opponents are prone to ignore—just as they ignore the parallel side which has to do with the psychogenesis of a child. And, of course, when they thus ignore both the child and the savage, so as directly to contrast the adult psychology of civilized man with that of the lower animals, it is easy to show an enormous difference. But where the question is as to whether this is a difference of degree or of kind, the absurdity of disregarding the intermediate phases which present themselves to actual observation is surely too obvious for comment. At all events I think it may be safely promised, that when we come to consider the case of savages, and through them the case of pre-historic man, we shall find that, in the great interval which lies between such grades of mental evolution and our own, we are brought far on the way towards bridging the psychological distance which separates the gorilla from the gentleman.
INDEX.
A
Abstraction. See [Ideas]