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THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
324 Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company

THE EVOLUTION
OF
GENERAL IDEAS

BY
TH. RIBOT
PROFESSOR IN THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH
BY
FRANCES A. WELBY

CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.
1899

COPYRIGHT BY
The Open Court Publishing Co.
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
1899

All rights reserved.

PREFACE.

The principal aim of this work is to study the development of the mind as it abstracts and generalises, and to show that these two operations exhibit a perfect evolution: that is to say, they exist already in perception, and advance by successive and easily determined stages to the more elevated forms of pure symbolism, accessible only to the minority.

It is a commonplace to say that abstraction has its degrees, as number its powers. Yet it is not sufficient to enunciate this truism; the degrees must be fixed by clear, objective signs, and these must not be arbitrary. Thus we shall obtain precise knowledge of the various stages in this ascending evolution, and stand in less danger of confounding abstractions highly distinct by nature. Moreover, we avoid certain equivocal questions and discussions that are based entirely upon the very extended sense of the terms to abstract and to generalise.

Accordingly we have sought to establish three main periods in the progressive development of these operations: (1) inferior abstraction, prior to the appearance of speech, independent of words (though not of all signs); (2) intermediate abstraction, accompanied by words, which though at first accessory, increase in importance little by little; (3) superior abstraction, where words alone exist in consciousness, and correspond to a complete substitution.[1]

These three periods again include subdivisions, transitional forms which we shall endeavor to determine.

This is a study of pure psychology, from which we have rigorously to eliminate all that relates to logic, to the theory of knowledge, to first principles of philosophy. We are concerned with genesis, with embryology, with evolution only. We are thus thrown upon observation, upon the facts wherein mental processes are enunciated, and discovered. Our material, and principal sources of information, lie therefore: (1) for inferior abstracts, in the acts of animals, of children, of uneducated deaf-mutes; (2) for intermediate abstracts, in the development of languages, and the ethnographical documents of primitive or half-civilised peoples; (3) for superior abstracts, in the progressive constitution of scientific ideas and theories, and of classifications.

This volume is a résumé of lectures given at the Collège de France in 1895. It is the first of a forthcoming series, designed to include all departments of psychology: the unconscious, percepts, images, volition, movement, etc.

Th. Ribot.

March, 1897.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE LOWER FORMS OF ABSTRACTION.

ABSTRACTION PRIOR TO SPEECH.

Save in extremely rare cases,—supposing such to occur at all, as perhaps in the instant of surprise, and in states approximating to pure sensation,—save in such extremely rare cases, where the mind, like a mirror, passively reflects external impressions, intellectual activity may always be reduced to one of the two following types: associating, combining, unifying, or dissociating, isolating, and separating. These cardinal operations underlie all forms of cognition, from the lowest to the highest, and constitute its unity of composition.

Abstraction belongs to the second type. It is a normal and necessary process of the mind, dependent on attention, i. e., on the limitation, willed or spontaneous, of the field of consciousness. The act of abstraction implies in its genesis both negative and positive conditions, and is the result of these.

The negative conditions consist essentially in the fact that we cannot apprehend more than one quality or one aspect, varying according to the circumstances, in any complex whole,—because consciousness, like the retina, is restricted to a narrow region of clear perception.

The positive condition is a state which has been appropriately termed a “psychical reinforcement” of that which is being abstracted, and it is naturally accompanied by a weakening of that which is abstracted from. The true characteristic of abstraction is this partial increment of intensity. While involving elimination, it is actually a positive mental process. The elements or qualities of a percept, or a representation, which we omit do not necessarily involve such suppression. We leave them out of account simply because they do not suit our ends for the moment, and are complementary.[2]

Abstraction being, then, in spite of negative appearances, a positive operation, how are we to conceive it? Attention is necessary to it, but it is more than attention. It is an augmentation of intensity, but it is more than an augmentation of intensity. Suppose a group of representations a + b + c = d. To abstract from b and c in favor of a, would ostensibly give a = d - (b + c). If this were so, b and c would be retained unaltered in consciousness; there would be no abstraction. On the other hand, since it is impossible for the whole representation d to be suppressed outright, b and c cannot be totally obliterated. They subsist, accordingly, in a residual state which may be termed x, and the abstract representation is hence not a but a + x or A. Thus the elements of abstract representations are the same as those of concrete representations; only some are strengthened, others weakened: whence arise new groupings. Abstraction, accordingly, consists in the formation of new groups of representations which, while strengthening certain elements of the concrete representations, weaken other elements of the same.[3]

We see from the above that abstraction depends genetically upon the causes which awaken and sustain attention. I have described these causes elsewhere,[4] and cannot here return to their consideration.

It is sufficient to remark that abstraction, like attention, may be instinctive, spontaneous, and natural; or reflective, voluntary, and artificial. In the first category the abstraction of a quality or mode of existence originates in some attraction, or from utility; hence it is a common manifestation of intellectual life and is even met with, as we shall see, among many of the lower animals. In its second form, the rarer and more exalted, it proceeds less from the qualities of the object than from the will of the subject; it presupposes a choice, an elimination, of negligible elements, which is often laborious, as well as the difficult task of maintaining the abstract element clearly in consciousness. In fine, it is always a special application of the attention which, adapted as circumstances require to observation, synthesis, action, etc., here functions as an instrument of analysis.

A deeply-rooted prejudice asserts that abstraction is a mental act of relative infrequency. This fallacy obtains in current parlance, where “abstract” is a synonym of difficult, obscure, inaccessible. This is a psychological error resulting from an incomplete view: all abstraction is illegitimately reduced to its higher forms. The faculty of abstracting, from the lowest to the highest degrees, is constantly the same: its development is dependent on that of (general) intelligence and of language; but it exists in embryo even in those primitive operations which are properly concerned with the concrete, i. e., perception and representation. Several recent authors have emphasised this point.[5]

Perception is par excellence the faculty of cognising the concrete. It strives to embrace all the qualities of its object without completely succeeding, because it is held in check by an internal foe,—the natural tendency of the mind to simplify and to eliminate. The same horse, at a given moment, is not perceived in the same manner by a jockey, a veterinary surgeon, a painter, and a tyro. To each of these, certain qualities, which vary individually, stand in relief, and others recede into the background. Except in cases of methodical and prolonged investigation (where we have observation, and not perception) there is always an unconscious selection of some principal characteristics which, grouped together, become a substitute for totality. It must not be forgotten that perception is pre-eminently a practical operation, that its mainspring is interest or utility, and that in consequence we neglect—i. e., leave in the field of obscure consciousness—whatever at the moment concerns neither our desires nor our purposes. It would be superfluous to review all the forms of perception (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.), and to show that they are governed by this same law of utility; but it should be remarked that the natural mechanism by which the strengthened elements and the weakened elements are separated, is a rude cast of what subsequently becomes abstraction, that the same forces are in play, and are ultimately reducible to some definite direction given to the attention.

With the image, the intermediate stage between percept and concept, the reduction of the object represented to a few fundamental features is still more marked. Not merely is there among the different representations which I may have of some man, dog, or tree, one that for the time being necessarily excludes the others (my oak tree perforce appears to me in summer foliage, tinted by autumn, or bereft of leaves,—in bright light or in shade), but even this individual, concrete representation which prevails over the others is no more than a sketch, a reduction of reality with many details omitted. Apart from the exceptionally gifted men in whom mental vision and mental audition are perfect, and wholly commensurate (as it would seem) with perception, the representations which we call exact are never so, except in their most general features. Compare the image we have with our eyes closed of a monument, with the perception of the monument itself; the remembrance of a melody with its vocal or instrumental execution. In the average man, the image, the would-be copy of reality invariably suffers a conspicuous impoverishment, which is enormous in the less lavishly endowed; it is here reduced to a mere schema, limited to the inferior concepts.

Doubtless it may be objected that the work of dissociation in perception and representation is incomplete and partial. It would be strange and illogical indeed if the abstract were to triumph in the very heart of the concrete; we do but submit that it is here in germ, in embryonic shape. And hence, when abstraction appears in its true form, as the consciousness of one unique quality isolated from the rest, it is no new manifestation but a fruition, it is a simplification of simplifications.

The state of consciousness thus attained, by the fixation of attention on one quality exclusively, and by its ideal dissociation from the rest, becomes, as we know, a notion which is neither individual nor general, but abstract,—and this is the material of generalisation.

The sense of identity, the power of apprehending resemblances, is, as has justly been said, “the keel and backbone of our thinking”; without it we should be lost in the incessant stream of things.[6] Are there in nature any complete resemblances, any absolutely similar events? It is extremely doubtful. It might be supposed that a person who reads a sentence several times in succession, who listens several times to the same air, who tastes all the four quarters of the same fruit, would experience in each case an identical perception. But this is not so. A little reflexion will show that besides differences in time, in the varying moods of the subject, and in the cumulative effect of repeated perceptions, there is at least between the first perception and the second, that radical difference which separates the new from the repeated. In fact, the material given us by external and internal experience consists of resemblances alloyed by differences which vary widely in degree,—in other words, analogies. The perfect resemblance assumed between things vanishes as we come to know them better. At first sight a new people exhibits to the traveller a well-determined general type; later, the more he observes, the more the apparent uniformity is resolved into varieties. “I have taken the trouble,” says Agassiz, “to compare thousands of individuals of the same species; in one case I pushed the comparison so far as to have placed side by side 27,000 specimens of one and the same shell (genus Neretina). I can assure you that in these 27,000 specimens I did not find two that were perfectly alike.”

Is this faculty of grasping resemblances—the substrate of generalization—primitive, in the absolute signification of the word? Does it mark the first awakening of the mind, in point of cognition? For several contemporary writers (Spencer, Bain, Schneider, and others) the consciousness of difference is the primordial factor; the consciousness of resemblance comes later. Others uphold the opposite contention.[7] As a matter of fact this quest for the primum cognitum is beyond our grasp; like all genetical questions, it eludes our observation and experience.

No conclusion can be formed save on purely logical arguments, and each side advances reasons that carry a certain weight. There is, moreover, at the bottom of the whole discussion, the grave error of identifying the embryonic state of the mind with its adult forms, and of presupposing a sharp initial distinction between discrimination and assimilation. The question must remain open, incapable of positive solution by our psychology. The incontestable truth with regard to the mind, as we know it in its developed and organised state, is that the two processes advance pari passu, and are reciprocally causative.

In sum, abstraction and generalisation considered as elementary acts of the mind, and reduced to their simplest conditions, involve two processes:

1. The former, abstraction, implies a dissociative process, operating on the raw data of experience. It has subjective causes which are ultimately reducible to attention. It has objective causes which may be due to the fact that a determinate quality is given us as an integral part of widely different groups.

“Any total impression whose elements are never experienced apart must be unanalysable. If all cold things were wet and all wet things cold, if all liquids were transparent and no non-liquid were transparent, we should scarcely discriminate between coldness and wetness and scarcely ever invent separate names for liquidity and transparency.... What is associated now with one thing and now with another tends to become dissociated from either, and to grow into an object of abstract contemplation by the mind. One might call this the law of dissociation by varying concomitants.”[8]

2. The latter, generalisation, originates in association by resemblance, but even in its lowest degree it rises beyond this, since it implies a synthetic act of fusion. It does not, in fact, consist in the successive excitation of similar or analogous percepts, as in the case where the image of St. Peter’s in Rome suggests to me that of St. Paul’s in London, of the Pantheon in Paris, and of other churches with enormous dimensions, of like architecture, and with gigantic domes. It is a condensation. The mind resembles a crucible with a precipitate of common resemblances at the bottom, while the differences have been volatilised. In proportion as we recede from this primitive and elementary form, the constitution of the general idea demands other psychological conditions which cannot be hastily enumerated.

And thus we reach the principal aim of the present work, which purports, not to reinforce the time-worn dispute as to the nature of abstraction and generalisation, but to pursue these operations step by step in their development, and multiform aspects. Directly we pass beyond pure individual representation we reach an ascending scale of notions which, apart from the general character possessed by all, are extremely heterogeneous in their nature, and imply distinct mental habits. The question so often discussed as to “What takes place in the mind when we are thinking by general ideas?” is not to be disposed of in one definite answer, but finds variable response according to the circumstances. In order to give an adequate reply, the principal degrees of this scale must first be determined. And for this we require an objective notation which shall give them some external, though not arbitrary, mark.

The first distinguishing mark is given by the absence or presence of words. Abstraction and generalisation, with no possible aid from language, constitute the inferior group which some recent writers have designated by the appropriate name of generic images[9]—a term which clearly shows their intermediate nature between the pure image, and the general notion, properly so-called.

The second class, which we have termed intermediate abstraction, implies the use of words. At their lowest stage these concepts hardly rise above the level of the generic image: they can be reduced to a vague schema, in which the word is almost a superfluous accompaniment. At a stage higher the parts are inverted: the representative schema becomes more and more impoverished, and is obliterated by the word, which rises in consciousness to the first rank.

Finally, the third class, that of the higher concepts, has for its distinguishing mark that it can no longer be represented. If any image arises in consciousness it does not sensibly assist the movement of thought, and may even impede it. Everything, apparently at least, is subordinated to language.

This enumeration of the stages of abstraction can for the present only be given roughly and broadly. Every phase of its evolution should be studied in itself, and accurately determined by its internal and external characteristics. As to the legitimacy, the objective and practical value, of this schematic distribution, nothing less than a detailed exploration from one end to the other of our subject, can confirm or overthrow it.

We shall begin, then, with the lower forms, dwelling upon these at some length, because they are usually neglected, or altogether omitted. This is the pre-linguistic period of abstraction and generalisation: words are totally wanting; they are an unknown factor. How far is it possible without the aid of language to transcend the level of perception, and of consecutive images, and to attain a more elevated intellectual standpoint? In replying empirically, we have three fairly copious sources of information: animals, children who have not yet acquired speech, and uneducated deaf-mutes.

ANIMALS.

It is a commonplace to say that animal psychology is full of obscurities and difficulties. These arise mainly with regard to the question now occupying us; for we are concerned with ascertaining, not whether animals perceive, remember, and even, when their organisation is sufficiently advanced, imagine (which no one denies), but if they are capable in the intellectual order of still better and greater achievements. The common opinion is in the negative; yet this may rest entirely upon ambiguity of language. Without prejudging anything, we must interrogate the facts to hand, and link them as closely as possible in our interpretation.

As to the facts themselves we may be sparing of detail; they are to be found in special treatises, and it is superfluous to repeat them in these pages. It is moreover evident that a large portion of the animal kingdom may be neglected. In its lowest regions it is so remote from us, and has so obscure and scant a psychology, that nothing can be learned from it. In the higher forms alone can we have any chance of finding what we seek, i. e., (1) equivalents of concepts, (2) processes comparable with reasoning.

In the immense realm of the invertebrates, the highest psychical development is, by general acknowledgment, met with among the social Hymenoptera; and the capital representatives of this group are the ants. To these we may confine ourselves. Despite their tiny size, their brain, particularly among the neuters, is remarkable in structure—“one of the most marvellous atoms,” says Darwin, “in all matter, not excepting even the human brain.” Injuries to this organ, which are frequent in their sanguinary combats, cause disorders quite analogous to those observed in mammals. It is useless to recall what every one knows of their habits: their organisation of labor, varied methods of architecture, their wars, plundering and rape, practice of slavery, methods of education, and (in certain species) their agricultural labors, harvesting, construction of granaries,[10] etc. We, on the contrary, must examine the exceptional cases in which the ants depart from their general habits; for their ability to abstract, to generalise, and to reason, can only be established by new adaptations to unaccustomed circumstances. The following may serve as examples:

“A nest was made near one of our tramways,” says Mr. Belt, “and to get to the trees, the leaves of which they were harvesting, the ants had to cross the rails, over which the cars were continually passing and re-passing. Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the cars were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh tunnels underneath them.”

Another observer, Dr. Ellendorf, who has carefully studied the ants of Central America, recounts a similar experience. These insects cut off the leaves of trees and carry them to their nests, where they serve various purposes. One of their columns was returning laden with spoils.

“I placed a dry branch, nearly a foot in diameter, obliquely across their path, which was lined on either side by an impassable barrier of high grass, and pressed it down so tightly on the ground that they could not creep underneath. The first comers crawled beneath the branch as far as they could, and then tried to climb over, but failed owing to the weight on their heads.... They then stood still as if awaiting a word of command, and I saw with astonishment that the loads had been laid aside by more than a foot’s length of the column, one imitating the other. And now work began on both sides of the branch, and in about half an hour a tunnel was made beneath it. Each ant then took up its burden again, and the march was resumed in the most perfect order.”

They also show considerable inventiveness in the construction of bridges. It appears from numerous observations that they know how to place straws on the surface of water, and to keep them in equilibrium or unite their several ends together with earth, moisten them with their saliva, restore them when destroyed, and to construct a highway made of grains of sand, etc. (Réaumur.) They even employ living bridges: “The ground about a maple tree having been smeared with tar so as to check their ravages, the first ants who attempted to cross stuck fast. But the others were not to be thus entrapped. Turning back to the tree they carried down aphides which they deposited on the tar one after another until they had made a bridge over which they could cross the tarred spot without danger.”[11]

I shall cite no observations on the intelligence of wasps and bees, but I wish to note one rudimentary case of generalisation. Huber remarked that bees bite holes through the base of corollas when these are so long as to prevent them from reaching the honey in the ordinary way. They only resort to this expedient when they find they cannot reach the nectar from above; “but having once ascertained this, they forthwith proceed to pierce the bottoms of all the flowers of the same species.” Doubtless association and habit may be invoked here, but before these were produced, was there not an extension of like to like?

For the higher animals I shall also restrict myself to the upper types. We shall of course reject all observations relating to “performing” animals, all acquirements due to education and training by man, as also the cases in which, as in the beaver, there is a perplexing admixture of instinct so called (a specific property), and adaptation, varying according to time and place.

The elephant has a reputation for intelligence which may be somewhat exaggerated. His psychology is fairly well known. We may cite a few characteristic traits that bear upon our subject. He will tear up bamboo canes from the ground, break them with his feet, examine them, and repeat the operation until he has found one that suits him; he then seizes the branch with his trunk and uses it as a scraper to remove the leeches which adhere to his skin at some inaccessible part of his body. “This is a frequent occurrence, such scrapers being used by each elephant daily.” When he is tormented by large flies he selects a branch which he strips of its leaves, except at the top, where he leaves a fine bunch. “He will deliberately clean it down several times, and then laying hold of its lower end he will break it off, thus obtaining a fan or switch about five feet long, handle included. With this he keeps the flies at bay. Say what we may, these are both really bona fide implements, each intelligently made for a definite purpose.”

“What I particularly wish to observe,” says an experienced naturalist, “is that there are good reasons for supposing that elephants possess abstract ideas; for instance, I think it is impossible to doubt that they acquire through their own experience notions of hardness and weight, and the grounds on which I am led to think this are as follows. A captured elephant, after he has been taught his ordinary duty, say about three months after he is taken, is taught to pick up things from the ground and give them to his mahout sitting on his shoulders. Now for the first few months it is dangerous to require him to pick up anything but soft articles, such as clothes, because the things are often handed up with considerable force. After a time, longer with some elephants than others, they appear to take in a knowledge of the nature of the things they are required to lift, and the bundle of clothes will be thrown up sharply as before, but heavy things, such as a crowbar or piece of iron chain, will be handed up in a gentle manner; a sharp knife will be picked up by its handle and placed on the elephant’s head, so that the mahout can also take it by the handle. I have purposely given elephants things to lift which they could never have seen before, and they were all handled in such a manner as to convince me that they recognised such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight.”

Lloyd Morgan, who, in his books on comparative psychology, is evidently disposed to concede as small a measure of intelligence to animals as possible, comments upon the above observation as follows:[12]

“Are we to suppose that these animals possess abstract ideas? I reply—That depends upon what is meant by abstract ideas. If it is implied that the abstract ideas are isolates; that is, qualities considered quite apart from the objects of which they are characteristic, I think not. But if it be meant that elephants, in a practical way, ‘recognise such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight,’ as predominant elements in the constructs they form, I am quite ready to assent to the proposition.”

I agree fully with this conclusion, adding the one remark that between the pure abstract notion and the “predominant” notion so called, there is only a difference of degree. If the predominant element is not isolated, detached, and fixed by a sign, it is certainly near being so, and deserves on this ground to be called an abstract of the lower order.

The observation of Houzeau has been frequently quoted respecting dogs, which, suffering from thirst in arid countries, rush forty or fifty times into the hollows that occur along their line of march in the hope of finding water in the dry bed. “They could not be attracted by the smell of the water, nor by the sight of vegetation, for these are wanting. They must thus be guided by general ideas, which are doubtless of an extremely simple character, and, in some measure, supported by experience.”

It is on this account that the term “generic image” would in my opinion be preferable for describing cases of this character.

“I have frequently seen not only dogs, but horses, mules, cattle, and goats, go in search of water in places which they had never visited before. They are guided by general principles, because they go to these watering places at times when the latter are perfectly dry.”[13] Undoubtedly it may be objected that association of images here plays a preponderating part. The sight of the hollows recalls the water which, though absent, forms part of a group of sensations which has been perceived many times; but since the generic image is, as we shall see later, no more than an almost passive condensation of resemblances, these facts clearly indicate its nature and its limits.

I shall merely allude without detailed comment to the numerous observations on the aptitude of dogs and cats for finding means to accomplish their aims, the anecdotes of their mechanical skill, and the ruses (so well described by G. Leroy) which the fox and the hare employ to outwit the hunter, “when they are old and schooled by experience; since it is to their knowledge of facts that they owe their exact and prompt inductions.” The most intelligent of all animals, the higher orders of monkeys, have not been much studied in their wild state, but such observations as have been made, some of which have been contributed by celebrated naturalists, fix with sufficient distinctness the intellectual level of the better endowed. The history of Cuvier’s orang-outang has been quoted to satiety. The more recent books on comparative psychology contain ample testimony to their ability to profit by experience[14] and to construct instruments. A monkey, not having the strength to lift up the lid of a chest, employed a stick as a lever. “This use of a lever as a mechanical instrument is an action to which no animal other than a monkey has ever been known to attain.” Another monkey observed by Romanes, also “succeeded by methodical investigation, without assistance, in discovering for himself the mechanical principle of the screw; and the fact that monkeys well understand how to use stones as hammers, is a matter of common observation.” They are also skilful in combining their stratagems, as in the case of one who, being held captive by a chain, and thus unable to reach a brood of ducklings, held out a piece of bread in one hand, and on tempting a duckling within his reach, seized it by the other, and killed it with a bite in the breast.[15]

One mental operation remains which must be examined separately, and in its study we shall pursue the same method, wherever it occurs, throughout this work. The process in question has the advantage of being perfectly definite, of restricted scope, completely evolved, and accessible to research in all the phases of its development, from the lowest to the highest. It is that of numeration.

Are there animals capable of counting? G. Leroy is, I believe, the first who answered this question in the affirmative, in a passage which is worth transcribing, although it has been often quoted. “Among the various ideas which necessity adds to the experience of animals, that of number must not be overlooked. Animals count,—so much is certain; and although up to the present time their arithmetic appears weak, it may perhaps be possible to strengthen it. In countries where game is preserved, war is made upon magpies because they steal the eggs of other birds.... And in order to destroy this greedy family at a blow, game-keepers seek to destroy the mother while sitting. To do this it is necessary to build a well-screened watch-house at the foot of the tree where the nests are, and in this a man is stationed to await the return of the parent bird, but he will wait in vain if the bird has been shot at under the same circumstances before.... To deceive this suspicious bird, the plan was hit upon of sending two men into the watch-house, one of them passed on while the other remained; but the magpie counted and kept her distance. The next day three went, and again she perceived that only two withdrew. It was eventually found necessary to send five or six men to the watch-house in order to put her out of her calculation.... This phenomenon, which is repeated as many times as the attempt is made, is one of the most extraordinary instances of the sagacity of animals.” Since then the question has been repeatedly taken up. Lubbock devotes to it the three last pages of his book The Senses of Animals. According to his observations on the nests of birds, one egg may be taken from a nest in which there are four, but if we take away two, the bird generally deserts its nest. The solitary wasp provisions its cell with a fixed number of victims. Sand wasps are content with one. One species of Eumenes prepares five victims for its young, another species ten, another fifteen, another twenty-four; but the number of the victims is always the same for the same species. How does the insect know its characteristic number?[16]

An experiment, methodically conducted by Romanes, proved that a chimpanzee can count correctly as far as five, distinguishing the words which stand for one, two, three, four, five, and at command deliver the number of straws requested of her.[17]

Although the observations on this point are not yet sufficiently varied and extended to enable us to speak of them as we should wish, it must be remarked that the cases cited are not alike, and that it would be illegitimate to reduce them all to one and the same psychological mechanism.

1. The case of insects is the most embarrassing. It is but candid to state a non liquet, since to attribute their achievements to unconscious numeration, or to some special equivalent instinct, is tantamount to saying nothing. Besides, we are not concerned with anything relating to instinct.

2. The case of the monkey and his congeners stands high in the scale: it is a form of concrete numeration which we shall meet again in children, and in the lowest representatives of humanity.

3. All the other cases resemble the alleged “arithmetic” of G. Leroy’s magpie and similar observations. I see here not a numeration, but a perception of plurality, which is something quite different. There are in the brain of the animal a number of co-existing perceptions. It knows if all are present, or if some are lacking; but a consciousness of difference between the entire group, and the diminished defective group, is not identical with the operation of counting. It is a preliminary state, an introduction, nothing more, and the animal does not pass beyond this stage, does not count in the exact sense of the word. We shall see further on that observations with young children furnish proofs in favor of this assertion, or at least show that it is not an unfounded presumption, but the most probable hypothesis.

We may now without further delay (while reserving the facts which are to be studied in the sequel to this chapter) attempt to fix the nature of the forms of abstraction, and of reasoning, accessible to the higher animal types.

1. The generic image results from a spontaneous fusion of images, produced by the repetition of similar, or very analogous, events. It consists in an almost passive process of assimilation; it is not intentional, and has for its subject only the crudest similarities. There is an accumulation, a summation of these resemblances; they predominate by force of numbers, for they are in the majority. Thus there is formed a solid nucleus which predominates in consciousness, an abstract appurtenant to all similar objects; the differences fall into oblivion. Huxley’s comparison of the composite photographs (above cited) renders it needless to dwell on this point. Their genesis depends on the one hand on experience; only events that are frequently repeated can be condensed into a generic image: on the other hand on the affective dispositions of the subject (pleasure, pain, etc.), on interest, and on practical utility, which render certain perceptions predominant. They require, accordingly, no great intellectual development for their formation, and there can be no doubt that they exist quite low down in the animal scale. The infant of four or five months very probably possesses a generic image of the human form and of some similar objects. It may be remarked, further, that this lower form of abstraction can occur also in the adult and cultivated man. If, e. g., we are suddenly transported into a country whose flora is totally unknown to us, the repetition of experiences suggests an unconscious condensation of similar plants; we classify them without knowing their names, without needing to do so, and without clearly apprehending their distinguishing characteristics, those namely which constitute the true abstract idea of the botanist.

In sum, the generic image comes half way between individual representation, and abstraction properly so called. It results almost exclusively from the faculty of apprehending resemblances. The rôle of dissociation is here extremely feeble. Everything takes place, as it were, in an automatic, mechanical fashion, in consequence of the unequal struggle set up in consciousness between the resemblances which are strengthened, and the differences, each of which remains isolated.

2. It has been said that the principal utility of abstraction is as an instrument in ratiocination. We may say the same of generic images. By their aid animals reason. This subject has given rise to extended discussion. Some writers resent the mere suggestion that ants, elephants, dogs, and monkeys, should be able to reason. Yet this resentment is based on nothing but the extremely broad and elastic signification of the word reasoning—an operation which admits of many degrees, from simple, empirical consecutiveness to the composite, quantitative reasoning of higher mathematics. It is forgotten that there are here, as for abstraction and for generalisation, embryonic forms—those, i. e., which we are now studying.

Taken in its broadest acceptation, reasoning is an operation of the mind which consists in passing from the known to the unknown; in passing from what is immediately given, to that which is simply suggested by association and experience. The logician will unquestionably find this formula too vague, but it must necessarily be so, in order to cover all cases.

Without pretending to any rigorous enumeration, beyond all criticism, we can, in intellectual development, distinguish the following phases in the ascending order: perceptions and images (memories) as point of departure; association by contiguity, association by similarity; then the advance from known to unknown, by reasoning from particular to particular, by analogical reasoning, and finally by the perfect forms of induction and deduction, with their logical periods. Have all these forms of reasoning a common substrate, a unity of composition? In other words, can they be reduced to a single type—of induction according to some, of deduction according to others? Although the supposition is extremely probable, it would not be profitable to discuss the question here. We must confine ourselves to the elementary forms which the logicians omit, or despise, for the most part, but which, to the psychologist, are intellectual processes as interesting as any others.

Without examining whether, as maintained by J. S. Mill, all inference is actually from particular to particular (general propositions being under this hypothesis only simple reminders, brief formulæ serving as a base of operations) it is clear that we have in it the simplest form of mental progress from the known to the unknown. At the same time it is more than mere association, though transcending it only in degree. Association by similarity is not, as we have seen, identical with formation of generic images; this last implies fusion, mental synthesis. So, too, reasoning from particular to particular implies something more than simple association; it is a state of expectation equivalent to a conclusion in the empirical order; it is an anticipation. The animal which has burned itself in swallowing some steaming food, is on its guard in future against everything that gives off steam. Here we have more than simple association between two anterior experiences (steam, burning); and this state “differs from simple associative suggestion, by the fact that the mind is less occupied with the memory of past burns than with the expectation of a repetition of the same fact in the present instance; that is to say, that it does not so much recall the fact of having once been burnt as it draws the conclusion that it will be burnt.”[18]

Otherwise expressed, he is orientated less towards the past than towards the future. Granted that this tendency to believe that what has occurred once or twice will occur invariably, is a fruitful source of error, it remains none the less a logical operation (judgment or ratiocination) containing an element more than association: an inclusion of the future, an implicit affirmation expressed in an act. Doubtless, between these two processes,—association, inference from particular to particular—the difference is slight enough; yet in a study of genesis and evolution, it is just these transitional forms that are the most important.

Reasoning by analogy is of a far higher order. It is the principal logical instrument of the child and of primitive man: the substrate of all extension of language, of vulgar and empirical classifications, of myths, of the earliest, quasi-scientific knowledge.[19] It is the commencement of induction, differing from the latter, not in form, but in its imperfectly established content. “Two things are alike in one or several characteristics; a proposition stated is true of the one, therefore it is true of the other. A is analogous to B; m is true of A, therefore m is true of B also.” So runs the formula of J. S. Mill. The animal, or child, which when ill-treated by one person extends its hatred to all others that resemble the oppressor, reasons by analogy. Obviously this procedure from known to unknown will vary in degree,—from zero to the point at which it merges into complete induction.

With these general remarks, we may return to the logic of animals or rather to the sole kind of logic possible without speech. This is, and can only be, a logic of images (Romanes employs a synonymous expression, logic of recepts), which is to logic, properly so called, what generic images are to abstraction and to generalisation proper. This denomination is necessary; it enables us to form a separate category, well defined by the absence of language; it permits us, in speaking of judgment and ratiocination in animals, and in persons deprived of speech, to know exactly what meaning is intended.

It follows that there are two principal degrees in the logic of images.

1. Inference from particular to particular. The bird which finds bread upon the window, one morning, comes back next day at the same hour, finds it again, and continues to come. It is moved by an association of images, plus the state of awaiting, of anticipation, as described above.

2. Procedure by analogy. This (at least in its higher forms in animal intelligence) presupposes mental construction: the aim is definite, and means to attain it are invented. To this type I should refer the cases cited above of ants digging tunnels, forming bridges, etc. The ants are wont to practise these operations in their normal life; their virtue lies in the power of dissociation from their habitual conditions, from their familiar ant-heap, and of adaptation to new and unknown cases.

The logic of images has characteristics which pertain to it exclusively, and which may be summarised as follows:

1. As material it employs concrete representations or generic images alone, and cannot escape from this domain. It admits of fairly complex constructions, but not of substitution. The tyro finds no great difficulty in solving problems of elementary arithmetic (such as: 15 workmen build a wall 3 metres high in 4 days; how long will it take 4 men to build it?), because he uses the logic of signs, replacing the concrete facts by figures, and working out the relations of these. The logic of images is absolutely refractory to attempts at substitution. And while it thus acts by representation only, its progress even within this limit is necessarily very slow, encumbered, and embarrassed by useless details, for lack of adequate dissociation. At the same time it may, in the adult who is practised in ratiocination, become an auxiliary in certain cases; I am even tempted to regard it as the main auxiliary of constructive imagination. It would be worth while to ascertain, from authentic observations, what part it plays in the inventions of novelists, poets, and artists. In a polemic against Max Müller, who persists in affirming that it is radically impossible to think and reason without words, a correspondent remarks:

“Having been all my life since school-days engaged in the practice of architecture and civil engineering, I can assure Prof. Max Müller that designing and invention are done entirely by mental pictures. I find that words are only an encumbrance. In fact, words are in many cases so cumbersome that other methods have been devised for imparting knowledge. In mechanics the graphic method, for instance.”[20]

2. Its aim is always practical. It should never be forgotten that at the outset, the faculty of cognition is essentially utilitarian, and cannot be otherwise, because it is employed solely for the preservation of the individual (in finding food, distinguishing enemies from prey, and so on). Animals exhibit only applied reasoning, tested by experience; they feel about and choose between several means,—their selection being justified or disproved by the final issue. Correctly speaking, the logic of images is neither true nor false; these epithets are but half appropriate. It succeeds or fails; its gauge is success or defeat; and as we maintained above that it is the secret spring of æsthetic invention, let it be noticed that here again there is no question of truth or error, but of creating a successful or abortive work.

Accordingly, it is only by an unjustifiable restriction that the higher animals can be denied all functions beyond that of association, all capacity for inference by similarity. W. James (after stating that, as a rule, the best examples of animal sagacity “may be perfectly accounted for by mere contiguous association, based on experience”), arrives virtually at a conclusion no other than our own. After recalling the well-known instance of arctic dogs harnessed to a sledge and scattering when the ice cracked to distribute their weight, he thus explains it: “We need only suppose that they have individually experienced wet skins after cracking, that they have often noticed cracking to begin when they were huddled together and that they have observed it to cease when they scattered.” Granting this assumption, it is none the less true that associations by contiguity are no more than the material which serves as a substratum for inference by similarity, and for the act which follows. Again, a friend of James, accompanied by his dog, went to his boat and found it filled with dirt and water. He remembered that the sponge was up at the house, and not caring to tramp a third of a mile to get it, he enacted before his terrier (as a forlorn hope) the necessary pantomime of cleaning the boat, saying: “Sponge, sponge, go fetch the sponge.” The dog trotted off and returned with it in his mouth, to the great surprise of his master. Is this, properly speaking, an act of reasoning? It would only be so, says James, if the terrier, not finding the sponge, had brought a rag, or a cloth. By such substitution he would have shown that, notwithstanding their different appearance, he understood that for the purpose in view, all these objects were identical. “This substitution, though impossible for the dog, any man but the stupidest could not fail to do.” I am not sure of this, despite the categorical assertion of the author; yet, discussion apart, it must be admitted that this would be asking the dog to exhibit a man’s reason.[21] As a matter of fact, notwithstanding contrary appearances, James arrives at a conclusion not very different from our own. “The characters extracted by animals are very few, and always related to their immediate interests and emotions.” This is what we termed above, empirical reasoning.[22]

G. Leroy said: “Animals reason, but differently from ourselves.” This is a negative position. We advance a step farther in saying: their reasoning consists in a heritage of concrete or generic images, adapted to a determined end,—intermediary between the percepts and the act. It is impossible to reduce everything to association by similarity, much less by contiguity, alone; since such procedure results necessarily in the formation of unchangeable habits, in limitation to a narrow routine, whereas we have seen that certain animals are capable of breaking through such restrictions.

ON CHILDREN.

We are here concerned with children who have not yet learned to speak, and with such alone. In contradistinction to animals, and to deaf-mutes when left to themselves, infancy represents a transitory state of which no upper limit can be fixed, seeing that speech appears progressively. The child forms his baby-vocabulary little by little, and at first imposes it upon others, until such time as he is made to learn the language of his country. We may provisionally neglect this period of transition, studying only the dumb, or monosyllabic and gesture phase.

The problem proposed at the end of the seventeenth century (perhaps before), which divided philosophers into two camps, was whether the human individual starts with general terms, or with particulars. At a later time, the question was proposed for the human race as a whole, in reference to the origin of language.

Locke maintained the thesis of the particular: “The ideas that children form of the persons with whom they converse resemble the persons themselves, and can only be particular.”

So, too, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and the majority of those who represent the so-called sensationalist school.

The thesis of the general was upheld by authors of no less authority, commencing with Leibnitz:

“Children, and those who are ill-acquainted with the language they desire to speak, or the matter whereof they discourse, make use of general terms, such as thing, animal, plant, in lieu of the proper terms which are wanting to them; and it is certain that all proper or individual names were originally appellative or general.”[23]

The problem cannot be accepted under this form by contemporary psychology. It is equivocal. Its capital error is in applying to the embryonic state of intelligence and of language, formulæ that are appropriate to adult life only—to the growing mind, categories valid for the formed intellect alone. A reference to the physiology of the human embryo will render this more intelligible. Has this embryo, up to three months, a nose or mouth? Is it male or female? etc. Students of the development of intra-uterine life in its first phases are very cautious in propounding these and similar questions in such a manner; they do not admit of definite answers. That which is in the state of envelopment and of incessant becoming, can only be compared remotely with that which is fixed and developed.

The sole permissible formula is this: Intelligence progresses from the indefinite to the definite. If “indefinite” is taken as synonymous with general, it may be said that the particular does not appear at the outset; but neither does the general in any exact sense: the vague would be more appropriate. In other words, no sooner has the intellect progressed beyond the moment of perception and of its immediate reproduction in memory, than the generic image makes its appearance, i. e., a state intermediate between the particular and the general, participating in the nature of the one and of the other—a confused simplification.

Recent works on the psychology of infancy abound in examples of these abstractions and inferior generalisations, which appear very early.[24] A few examples will suffice.

Preyer’s child (aged thirty-one weeks) interested itself exclusively in bottles, water-jugs, and other transparent vases with white contents; it had thus seized upon a characteristic mark of one thing that was important to it, to wit—milk. At a later period it designated these by the syllable môm. Taine records an analogous case of a child to whom mm and um, and then nim at first signified the pleasure of seeing its pap, and subsequently everything eatable. We are assisting at the genesis of the sign; the crude sound attached to a group of objects becomes at a later period the sign of those objects, and later still an instrument of substitution. Sigismund showed his son, aged less than one year, and incapable of pronouncing a single word, a stuffed grouse, saying “bird.” The child immediately looked across to the other side of the room where there was a stuffed owl. Another child having listened first with its right ear, then with its left, to the ticking of a watch, stretched out its arms gleefully towards the clock on the chimney-piece (auditory, not vocal, generic image).

Without multiplying examples known to every one, which give peremptory proof of the existence of abstraction (partial dissociation), and of generalisation, prior to speech, let us rather consider the heterogeneous nature of these generic images, the result of their mode of formation. They are in fact constructed arbitrarily,—as it were by accident, depending partly on the apprehension of gross resemblances, partly, and chiefly, on subjective causes, emotional dispositions, practical interests. More rarely they are based upon essential qualities.

John Stuart Mill affirms that the majority of animals divide everything into two categories: that which is, and that which is not edible. Whatever we may think of this assertion, we should probably feel much astonishment if we could penetrate and comprehend certain animal generalisations. In the case of children we can do more than assume. Preyer’s son employed the interjection ass (which he had forged or imitated) first for his wooden horse, mounted on wheels, and covered with hair; next for everything that could be displaced or that moved (carts, animals, his sister, etc.), and that had hair. Taine’s little girl (twelve months), who had frequently been shown a copy of an infant Jesus, from Luini, and had been told at the same time, “That is the baby,” would in another room, on hearing anyone ask her, “Where is the baby?” turn to any of the pictures or engravings, no matter what they were. Baby signified to her some general thing: something which she found in common in all these pictures, engravings of landscapes, and figures, i. e., if I do not mistake, some variegated object in a shining frame. Darwin communicated the following observation on one of his grandsons to Romanes:

“The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a duck ‘quack,’ and, by special association, it also called water ‘quack.’ By an appreciation of the resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term ‘quack’ to denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventually called all coins ‘quack,’ because on the back of a French sou it had once seen the representation of an eagle.”[25]

In this case, to which we shall return later, there was a singular mixture of intellectual operations: creation of a word by onomatopœia (resemblance) and finally an unbridled extension of analogy.

Such observations might be multiplied. They would only confirm this remark: the generic image varies in one case and another, because the condensation of resemblances of which it is constituted depends often upon a momentary impression, upon most unexpected conditions.

The development of numeration in the child takes us to some extent out of the pre-linguistic period; but it is advisable to consider it at this point. In the first place we have to distinguish between what is learnt and what is comprehended. The child may recite a series of numerical words that have been taught to him: but so long as he fails to apply each term of the series correctly to a number of corresponding objects, he does not understand it. For the rest, this comprehension is only acquired slowly and at a somewhat late period.

“The only distinction which the child makes at first is between the simple object and plurality. At eighteen months, he distinguishes between one, two, and several. At the age of three, or a little earlier, he knows one, two, and four (2 × 2). It is not until later that he counts a regular series; one, two, three, four. At this point he is arrested for some time. Hence the Brahmans teach their pupils of the first class to count up to four only; they leave it to the second class to count up to twenty. In European children of average intelligence, the age of six to seven years is required before they can count to ten, and about ten years to count to one hundred. The child can doubtless repeat before this age a numeration which it has been taught, but this is not what constitutes knowledge of numbers; we are speaking of determining number by objects.”[26] B. Pérez states that his personal observations have not furnished any indication contradictory to the assertions of Houzeau. An intelligent child of two and a half was able to count up to nineteen, but had no clear idea of the duration of time represented by three days; it had to be translated as follows: “not to-day but to-morrow, and another to-morrow.”[27]

This brings us back to the question, discussed above, of the numeration claimed for animals. Preyer tells us of one of his children that “it was impossible to take away one of his ninepins without its being discovered by the child, while at eighteen months he knew quite well whether one of his ten animals was missing or not.” Yet this fact is no proof that he was able to count up to nine or ten. To represent to oneself several objects, and to be aware that one of them is absent, and not perceived—is a different thing from the capacity of counting them numerically. If the shelves of a library contain several works that are well known to me, I can see that one is missing without knowing anything about the total number of books upon the shelves. I have a juxtaposition of images (visual or tactile), in which a gap is produced.

For the rest, much light is thrown on this question by Binet’s ingenious experiments. Their principal result may be summarised as follows.[28] A little girl of four does not know how to read or count; she has simply learnt a few figures and applies them exactly to one, two, or three objects; above this she gives chance names, say six or twelve, indifferently to four objects. If a group of fifteen counters, and another group of eighteen, of the same size, are thrown down on the table, without arranging them in heaps, she is quick to recognise the most numerous group. The two groups are then modified, adding now to the right, now to the left, but so that the ratio fourteen to eighteen is constant. In six attempts the reply is invariably exact. With the ratio seventeen-eighteen, the reply is correct eight times, wrong once. If, however, the groups are found with counters of unequal diameter, everything is altered. Some (green) measure two and one-half centimetres, others (white) measure four centimetres. Eighteen green counters are put on one side, fourteen white counters on the other. The child then makes a constant error, and takes the latter group to be the more numerous, and the group of fourteen may even be reduced to ten without altering her judgment. It is not until nine that the group of eighteen counters appear the more numerous.

This fact can only be explained by supposing that the child appreciates by space, and not by number, by a perception of continuous and not by discontinuous size—a supposition which agrees with other experiments by the same author to the effect that, in the comparison of lines, children can appreciate differences of length. At this intellectual stage, numeration is accordingly very weak, and restricted to the narrowest limits. As soon as these are exceeded, the distribution between minus and plus rests, not upon any real numeration, but upon a difference of mass, felt in consciousness.

In children, reasoning prior to speech is, as with animals, practical, but well adapted to its ends. No child, if carefully watched, will fail to give proof of it. At seventeen months, Preyer’s child, which could not speak a word, finding that it was unable to reach a plaything placed above its reach in a cupboard, looked about to the right and left, found a small travelling trunk, took it, climbed up, and possessed itself of the desired object. If this act be attributed to imitation (although Preyer does not say this), it must be granted that it is imitation of a particular kind,—in no way comparable with a servile copy, with repetition pure and simple,—and that it contains an element of invention.

In analysing this fact and its numerous analogues, we became aware of the fundamental identity of these simple inferences with those which constitute speculative reasoning: they are of the same character. Take, for instance, a scientific definition, such as that of Boole, which seems at first sight little adapted to this connexion. “Reasoning is the elimination of the middle term in a system that has two terms.” Notwithstanding its theoretical aspect, this is rigorously applicable to the cases with which we are occupied. Thus, in the mind of Preyer’s child, there is a first term (desire for the plaything), a last term (possession); the remainder is the method, scaffolding, a mean term to be eliminated. The intellectual process in both instances, practical and speculative, is identical; it is a mediate operation, which develops by a series of acts in animals and children, by a series of concepts and words in the adult.

DEAF-MUTES.

In studying intellectual development prior to speech, the group of deaf-mutes is sufficiently distinct from those which we have been considering. Animals do not communicate all their secrets, and leave much to be conjectured. Children reveal only a transitory state, a moment in the total evolution. Deaf-mutes (those at least with whom we are dealing) are adults, comparable as such to other men, like them, save in the absence of speech and of what results from it. They have reached a stable mental state. Moreover, those who are instructed at a late period, who learn a language of analytical signs, i. e., who speak with their fingers, or emit the sounds which they read upon the lips of others, are able to disclose their anterior mental state. It is possible to compare the same man with himself, before and after the acquisition of an instrument of analysis. Subjective and objective psychology combine to enlighten us.

The intellectual level of such persons is very low (we shall return to this): still their inferiority has been exaggerated, especially in the last century, by virtue of the axiom, it is impossible to think without words. Discussion of this antique aphorism is unnecessary; in its rigorous form it finds hardly any advocates of note.[29] Since thought is synonymous with comparing, abstracting, generalising, judging, reasoning, i. e., with transcending in any way the purely sensorial and affective life, the true question is not, Do we think without words? but, To what extent can we think without words? Otherwise expressed, we have to fix the upper limit of the logic of images, which evidently reaches its apogee in adult deaf-mutes. Further, even in this last case, thought without language does not attain its full development. The deaf-mute who is left without special education, and who lives with men who have the use of speech, is in a less favorable situation than if he forms a society with his equals. Gérando, and others after him, remarked that deaf-mutes in their native state communicate easily with one another. He enumerates a long series of ideas, which they express in their mimicry, and gestures, and many of these expressions are identical in all countries.

“Children of about seven years old who have not yet been educated, make use of an astonishing number of gestures and very rapid signs in communicating with each other. They understand each other naturally with great facility.... No one teaches them the initial signs, which are, in great part, unaltered imitative movements.”

The study of this spontaneous, natural language is the sole process by which we can penetrate to their psychology, and determine their mode of thought. Like all other languages, it comprises a vocabulary and a syntax. The vocabulary consists in gestures which designate objects, qualities, acts; these correspond to our substantives and verbs. The syntax consists in the successive order of these gestures and their regular arrangement; it translates the movement of thought and the effort towards analysis.

I. Vocabulary—Gérando collected about a hundred and fifty signs, created by deaf-mutes living in isolation or with their fellows.[30] A few of these may be cited as examples:

Child—Infantile gesture, of taking the breast, or being carried, or rocking in the cradle.

Ox—Imitation of the horns, or the heavy tread, or the jaws chewing the cud.

Dog—Movement of the head in barking.

Horse—Movements of the ears, or two figures riding horseback on another, etc.

Bird—Imitation of the beak with two fingers of the left hand, while the other feeds it; or simulation of flight.

Bread—Signs of being hungry, of cutting, and of carrying to the mouth.

Water—Exhibition of saliva, imitation of a rower, or of a man pumping; accompanied always by the sign of drinking.

Letter (missive)—Gestures of writing and of sealing, or of unsealing and reading.

Monkeys, cocks, various trades (carpenter, shoemaker, etc.) all designated by imitative gestures. For sleep, sickness, health, etc., they employ an appropriate gesture.

For interrogation: expression of two contradictory propositions, and undecided glance towards the person addressed. This is rather a case of syntax than of vocabulary; but a few signs may be further indicated for some notions more abstract than the preceding.

Large—Raise the hand and look up.

Small—Contrary gestures.

Bad—Simulate tasting, and make grimace.

Number—Indicate with the help of the fingers; high numbers, rapid opening of the hand several times in succession.

Buy—gesture of counting money, of giving with one hand, and taking with the other.

Lose—Pretend to drop an object, and hunt for it in vain.

Forget—Pass the hand quickly across the forehead with a shrug of the shoulders.

Love—Hold the hand on the heart (universal gesture).

Hate—Same gesture with sign of negation.

Past—Throw the hand over the shoulder several times in succession.

Future—Indicate a distant object with the hand, repeated imitation of lying down in bed and getting up again.

It does not need much reflexion to see that all these signs are abstractions as well as imitations. Among the different characters of an object, the deaf-mute chooses one that he imitates by a gesture, and which represents the total object. Herein he proceeds exactly like the man who speaks. The difference is that he fixes the abstract by an attitude of the body instead of by a word. The primitive Aryan who denominated the horse, the sun, the moon, etc., the rapid one, the shining one, the measurer (of months), did not act otherwise; for him also, a chosen characteristic represents the total object. There is a fundamental identity in the two cases; thus justifying what was said above: abstraction is a necessary operation of the mind, at least in man; he must abstract, because he must simplify.

The inferiority of these imitative signs consists in their being often vague, with a tendency to the opposite sense; moreover, since they are never detached completely from the object or the act which they figure, and cannot attain to the independence of the word, they are but very imperfect instruments of substitution.

II. Syntax—The mere fact of the existence of a syntax in the language of the deaf-mutes proves that they possess a commencement of analysis, i. e., that thought does not remain in the rudimentary state. This point has been carefully studied by different authors: Scott, Tylor, Romanes,[31] who assign to it the following characteristics:

1. It is a syntax of position. There are no “parts of speech,” i. e., terms having a fixed linguistic function: substantive, adjective, verb, etc. The terms (gestures) borrow their grammatical value from the place which they occupy in the series, and the relations between the terms are not expressed.

2. It is a fundamental principle that the signs are disposed in the order of their relative importance, everything superfluous being omitted.

3. The subject is placed before the attribute, the object (complement) before the action, and, most frequently, the modified part before the modifying.

Some examples will serve for the better comprehension of the ordinary procedure of this syntax. To explain the proposition: After running, I went to sleep, the order of gesture would be: to run, me, finished, to sleep.—My father gave me an apple: apple, father, me, give.—The active state is distinguished from the passive by its position: I struck Thomas with a stick; me, Thomas, strike, stick. The Abbé Sicard, on asking a deaf-mute, Who created God? obtained the answer: God created nothing. Though he had no doubt as to the meaning of this inversion, he asked the control question, Who makes shoes? Answer, shoes makes cobbler.

The dry, bare character of this syntax is evident: the terms are juxtaposed without relation; it expresses the strictest necessity only; it is the replica of a sterile, indistinct mode of thought.

Since we are endeavoring by its aid to fix an intellectual level, it is not without interest to compare it with a syntax that is frequent among the weak in intellect. “These do not decline or conjugate; they employ a vague substantive, the infinitive alone, or the past participle. They leave out articles, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, reject prepositions, employ nouns instead of pronouns. They call themselves “father,” “mother,” “Charles,” and refer to other people by indeterminate substantives, such as man, woman, sister, doctor, etc. They invert the regular order of substantives and adjectives.”[32] Although this is a case of mental regression, hence not rigorously comparable with a mind that is sane but little developed, the mental resemblance between the two syntaxes, and especially the absence of all expression of relations deserves to be signalised, because it cannot be the result of a fortuitous coincidence. It is the work of intellectual inferiority and of relative discontinuity of thought.

There is little to say about numeration in deaf-mutes. When untrained, they can count up to ten with the help of their fingers, like many primitive people. Moreover (according to Sicard and Gérando), they make use of notches upon a piece of wood or some other visible mark.

To conclude, their mental feebleness, known since the days of antiquity by Aristotle, by the Roman law which dispossessed them of part of their civil rights, later on by many philosophers who refused even to concede them memory, arises from their inaptitude to transcend the inferior forms of abstraction and kindred operations. In regard to the events of ordinary life, in the domain of the concrete (admitting, as is not always done, that there are individual varieties, some being intelligent, and others stupid), deaf-mutes are sufficiently apt to seize and to comprehend the practical connexion between complex things.[33] But the world of higher concepts, moral, religious, cosmological, is closed to them. Observations to this effect are abundant, though here again—as must be insisted on—they reveal great individual differences.

Thus, a deaf-mute whose friends had tried to inculcate in him a few religious notions, believed before he came under instruction that the Bible was a book that had been printed in heaven by workmen of Herculean strength. This was the sole interpretation he gave to the gestures of his parents, who endeavored to make him understand that the Bible contains a revelation, coming from an all-powerful God who is in heaven.[34] Another who was taken regularly to church on Sunday, and exhibited exemplary piety, only recognised in this ceremony an act of obedience to the clergy. There are many similar cases on record. Others on the contrary, seek to inquire into, and to penetrate, the nature of things. W. James[35] has published the autobiography of two deaf-mutes who became professors, one at the asylum of Washington, the other in California.

The principal interest attaching to the first is the spontaneous appearance of the moral sense. After stealing small sums of money from the till of a merchant, he accidentally took a gold coin. Although ignorant of its value, he was seized with scruples, feeling “that it was not for a poor man like him, and that he had stolen too much.” He got rid of it as best he could, and never began again.

The other biography—from which we make a few brief extracts—may be taken as the type of an intelligent and curious deaf-mute. He was not placed in an institution until he was eleven years old. During his childhood he accompanied his father on long expeditions, and his curiosity was aroused as to the origin of things: of animals and vegetables, of the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars (at eight or nine years). He began to understand (from five years) how children were descended from parents, and how animals were propagated. This may have been the origin of the question he put to himself: whence came the first man, first animal, first plant, etc. He supposed at first that primæval man was born from the trunk of a tree, then rejected this hypothesis as absurd, then sought in various directions without finding. He respected the sun and moon, believed that they went under the earth in the West, and traversed a long tunnel to reappear in the East, etc. One day, on hearing violent peals of thunder, he interrogated his brother, who pointed to the sky, and simulated the zigzag of the lightning with his finger; whence he concluded for the existence of a celestial giant whose voice was thunder. Puerile as they may be, are these cosmogonic, theological conceptions inferior to those of the aborigines of Oceanica and of the savage regions of South America, who, nevertheless, have a vocal idiom, a rudimentary language?

To sum up. That which dominates among the better gifted, is the creative imagination: it is the culminating point of their intellectual development. Their primitive curiosity does not seem inferior to that of average humanity; but since they cannot get beyond representation by images they lack an instrument of intellectual progress.

ANALYTICAL GESTURES.

The question of signs is so closely allied to our subject—the evolution of general ideas—that we must insist upon the language of gesture as an instrument of analysis, before going on to speech—of which it is an imperfect substitute.

St. George Mivart (Lessons from Nature) gives the following as a complete classification of every species of sign, omitting those that are written:

1. Sounds which are neither articulate nor rational, such as cries of pain, or the murmur of a mother to her infant.

2. Sounds which are articulate but not rational, such as the talk of parrots, or of certain idiots, who will repeat, without comprehending, every phrase they hear.

3. Sounds which are rational but not articulate, such as the inarticulate ejaculations by which we sometimes express assent to or dissent from given propositions.

4. Sounds which are both rational and articulate, constituting true “speech.”

5. Gestures which do not answer to rational conceptions, but are merely the manifestations of emotions and feelings.

6. Gestures which do answer to rational conceptions, and are therefore “external” but not “oral” manifestations of the verbum mentale.

This last group, the only one which concerns us for the moment, would to my thinking be conveniently designated by the term analytic gestures, as opposed to the synthetic gestures which manifest the different modes of affective life, and constitute what is called the expression of the emotions.

This language of gesture, intellectual and non-emotional, which translates ideas, not sentiments, is more widely distributed than is generally known, among primitive peoples. It has been observed in very distinct regions of our globe; among the aborigines of North and South America, the Bushmen, etc. It is a means of communication between tribes who do not speak the same language; often, indeed, it is an indispensable auxiliary to these indigent idioms. The most important work on this subject is by an American, Col. Mallery, who with indefatigable patience has collected and interpreted the gestures in use among the Indians of North America.[36] This work alone reveals the variety of sign-language, which hardly ever leaves the region of practical life: description of the countries traversed, hints for travellers, directions to be followed, distances, time required for halts, manner, habits, and dispositions of tribes. We may cite a brief quotation, from another author:

“Meeting an Indian, I wish to ask him if he saw six waggons drawn by horned cattle, with three Mexican and three American teamsters, and a man mounted on horseback. I make these signs: I point ‘you,’ then to his eyes, meaning ‘see’; then hold up all my fingers on the right hand and the forefinger on the left, meaning ‘six’; then I make two circles by bringing the ends of my thumbs and forefingers together, and, holding my two hands out, move my wrists in such a way as to indicate waggon-wheels revolving, meaning ‘waggons’; then, by making an upward motion with each hand from both sides of my head, I indicate ‘horns,’ signifying horned cattle; then by first holding up three fingers, and then by placing my extended right hand below my lower lip and moving it downward, stopping it mid way down the chest, I indicate ‘beard,’ meaning Mexican; and with three fingers again, and passing my right hand from left to right in front of my forehead, I indicate ‘white brow’ or ‘pale face.’ I then hold up my forefinger, meaning one man, and by placing the forefinger of my left hand between the fore and second finger of my right hand, representing a man astride of a horse, and by moving my hands up and down, give the motion of a horse galloping with a man on his back. I in this way ask the Indian, ‘You see six waggons, horned cattle, three Mexicans, three Americans, one man on horseback?’... The time required to make these signs would be about the same as if you asked the question verbally.”[37]

Tylor says that the language of gestures is substantially the same all the world over, and this assertion is confirmed by all who have practised and studied it. Its syntax resembles that of deaf-mutes, and it is unnecessary to repeat it. The parable of the Prodigal Son was translated by Mallery into analytic gestures; and from this language translated afresh into the spoken tongue: “Formerly, man one, sons two,” etc., etc. The comparison of the two texts is instructive: in the one, the thought unfolds itself by a movement of complete analysis with relations and shades of meaning: in the other, it resembles a line of badly quarried blocks, put together without cement.

After what has already been said, there is nothing surprising in finding a fundamental analogy, or even identity, between the language of deaf-mutes and the analytic gestures of primitive peoples. It was indeed pointed out by Akerly in an institution in New York in the beginning of the century. Gérando gave a good many examples,[38] remarking that the “gestures of reduction,” i. e., abridged gestures, are often enough identical in the two cases. Mallery brought together some Utah Indians, and a deaf-mute, who gave them a long account of a marauding expedition, followed by a dialogue: they understood each other perfectly.

The language of analytical gesture is thus a substitute for spoken language, and this leads us to a question which, though purely speculative, deserves our attention for a moment.

At a time when it was almost universally admitted that man is unable to think without words, Dugald Stewart ventured to write: “If men had been deprived of the organs of voice or the sense of hearing, there is no doubt that they would have invented an alphabet of visible signs wherewith to express all their ideas and sentiments.”[39] This is no rash assertion; we have just seen proofs of it. But is this pantomime-language susceptible of progress?

We can hardly doubt that if humanity, with its proper cerebral constitution, had at the same time been unable to speak, the language of analytic gesture would, by the initiative of certain inventors, under press of necessity, and by the influence of co-operation and of life in common, have advanced beyond the imperfect phase at which it has remained; and no one can say what it might have become in the accumulated effort of centuries. Speech, too, had to traverse an embryonic period, and oral language developed slowly and painfully. At the same time it is an exaggeration to say that “phonetic language assumed its extraordinary importance almost by chance, and that we cannot doubt that the language of mimicry, had it been fashioned by social relations during secular ages, would be hardly inferior to speech in force, facility, and variety.”[40] In fact, man had originally two languages at his disposal; he used the one and the other interchangeably and simultaneously. They helped each other in the development of ideas that were as yet chaotic and vacillating. Under these conditions, speech prevailed; the language of gesture remained only as a survival or a substitute. There is nothing fortuitous in this: speech has won because of its greater value.

First, for practical reasons. And this is the capital factor, since the main point is to communicate with one’s fellow-men. The language of gesture—besides monopolising the hands, and thus keeping them from other work—has the great disadvantage of not carrying far, and of being impossible in the dark. To this we may add the reasons cited above: its vague character, and (with regard to the abstract) its imitative nature, which forbids emancipation, or complete detachment, from the concrete, or the translation of that which cannot be represented. It is to be remarked, however, that the invention of “reduced” signs seems to be a transition from pure imitation to symbolism, a first step in the path of emancipation.

Speech, on the contrary, is transmitted to a distance, and challenges darkness. It is dependent upon the ear, an organ whose sensations are infinite in number and kind; and in the finest expression of ideas and of feelings, language participates in this opulence. It lends itself to variety, delicacy, to an extreme complexity of movement in a small space, with very little effort. We are, for the moment, citing physiological reasons only. But these will suffice to show that the triumph of speech has not been fortuitous, but that it is a very special case of natural supremacy.[41]

In conclusion, there is nothing to add as to generic images, and the logic of images. The important part which they play amongst children and deaf-mutes testifies to their extension and importance as inferior forms of abstraction, without in any way altering their essential nature, as previously determined.

CHAPTER II.
SPEECH.

Before we inquire into abstraction, as fixed and expressed in words,—whether such words are the complement of an actual or possible representation, or exist alone in consciousness, as complete substitutes,—it is indispensable that we should study the origin, and still more the evolution, of this new factor. Although many linguists resolutely abstain from considering the origin of speech (which is certainly, like all other genetic problems, beyond the grasp of psychology), the question is so intimately allied with that of the evolution of articulate language, allied again in itself with the progressive development of abstraction and of generalisation, that we should not be justified in withholding a brief summary of the principal hypotheses relating to this subject, while limiting ourselves to the most recent.

I.

Launching forth then into this region of conjecture—do we, in the first place, find among some animals, signs and means of communication which for them are the equivalents of language? In considering this point it matters little whether or no we accept the evolutionary thesis. It must not be forgotten, in fact, that the problem of the origin of speech is only a particular case of the origin of language in general: speech being but one species among several others of the facultas signatrix, which can only be manifested in the lower animals in its humblest form.

There can be no doubt that pain, joy, love, impatience, and other emotional states are translated by proper signs, easy to determine. Our problem, however, is different; we are concerned with signs of the intellectual, not of the affective, life. In other words, can certain animals transmit a warning, or an order, to their fellows? Can they muster them for a co-operative act, and make themselves intelligible? Although the interpretation is necessarily open to the suspicion of anthropomorphism, it is difficult not to recognise a sort of language in certain acts of animal life. Is it a priori probable that animals, which form stable and well-organised societies, should be bereft of all means of intercommunication and comprehension?

With regard to ants, we learn from such observers as Kirby and Spence, Huber, Franklin, that they employ a system of signs. To elucidate this point, Lubbock undertook a series of patient experiments, certain of which may be quoted.[42] He pinned down a dead fly so that no ant could carry it off. The first that came made vain attempts to remove it. It then went to the ant-hill and brought seven others to the rescue, but hurried imprudently in front of them. “Seemingly only half awake,” they lost the track and wandered alone for twenty minutes. The first returned to the nest and brought back eight, who, so soon as they were left behind by the guide, turned back again. During this time the band of seven (or at least some of them) had discovered the fly, which they tore in pieces and carried off to the nest. The experiment was several times repeated, with different species, and always with the same result. Lubbock concluded that ants were able to communicate their discoveries, but without indicating locality. In another experiment he placed three glasses at a distance of thirty inches from a nest of ants. One of the glasses contained two or three larvæ, the second three hundred to six hundred, the third none at all. He connected the nest with the glasses by means of three parallel tapes, and placed one ant in the glass with many larvæ and another ant in that with two or three. Each of them took a larva and carried it to the nest, returning for another, and so on. After each journey he put another larva into the glass with only two or three larvæ, to replace that which had been removed, and every stranger brought was imprisoned until the end of the experiment. Were the number of visits to all three glasses the same? And if not, which of the two glasses containing larvæ received the greater number of visitors? A difference in number would seem to be conclusive as proving power of communication. The result was that during forty-seven and a half hours two hundred and fifty-seven friends were brought by the ants having access to the glass containing numerous larvæ, while during an interval of fifty-three hours there were only eighty strange visitors to the glass containing two or three larvæ; there were no visits to the glass containing none. Communication for bees as for ants, appears to be made by rubbing the antennæ. If the queen is carried off in a hive, some of the bees are sure to discover it before long. They become greatly agitated, and run about the hive frantically, touching any companions they meet with their crossed antennæ, and thus spreading the news through the whole community. The bee-hunters in America discover them by choosing a clearing where they catch a few wandering bees, which are then gorged with honey and suffered to fly when replete. These bees return with a numerous escort. The same process is repeated with the new comers, and by observing the direction which they follow at their departure, the nest is discovered.

As regards the higher animals, the truth (notwithstanding the exaggerations of G. Leroy—who asserts that when they hunt together, wait for one another, find each other again, and give mutual aid, “these operations would be impossible without conventions that could only be communicated in detail by means of an articulate language [sic]”) is that we know singularly little about them. It is certain that, in addition to sounds that translate their emotions, many species have other means of communication. According to Romanes[43] the more intelligent dogs have the faculty of communicating with one another, by the tone of barking, or by gesture, such simple ideas as “follow me.” This gesture is invariably the same; being a contact of heads with a motion between a rub and a butt, and always resulting in a definite but never complex course of action. In a troop of reindeer the leader makes one sign for the halt, another for the march forward, hitting the laggards one after another with his horns. Monkeys are known to produce various sounds (the gibbon compasses a complete octave), and several species will meet and hold a kind of conversation. Unfortunately, notwithstanding recent researches, we have only vague and doubtful data in regard to monkey language.

We know finally, that certain birds are able to articulate, and possess all the material conditions of speech, the faculty being indeed by no means uncommon. Parrots do even more; there is no doubt that they can apply words, parts of sentences, and airs, to persons, things, or definite events, without varying the application, which is always the same.[44] Association by contiguity sufficiently explains this fact, but, granting that they do not as a rule make a right intellectual use of articulate sounds, they seem in certain instances to attach to them the value of a sign. Romanes actually observed a more extraordinary case, implying generalisation, with apposition of a sound. In the first instance, one of his parrots imitated the barking of a terrier which lived in the house. Later on, this barking became a denotative sound, the proper name of the dog; for the bird barked as soon as it saw the terrier. Finally, at a still later stage, it got into the habit of barking when any dog, known or unknown, came into the house; but ceased to bark at the terrier. While distinguishing individuals it therefore perceived their resemblance. “The parrot’s name for an individual dog became extended into a generic name for all dogs.”[45]

In short, the language of animals—so far as we know it—exhibits a very rudimentary development, by no means proportionate to that of the logic of images, and highly inferior to that of analytical gesture. It throws no light, notwithstanding all that has been said, upon the problem of the origin of speech.

In respect to this subject, which has excited human curiosity for centuries without satiation, there appear to me (when we have eliminated old or abandoned hypotheses) to be only two theories which have any solidity: the one presupposes instinct; the other a slow evolution.

I. It must be remarked that if the partisans of the first theory seem at the outset to have frankly admitted innate disposition (the fundamental characteristic of instinct), it is more difficult to distinguish between some of the later writers and the evolutionists.

Thus it has been said: speech is a necessary product in which neither reflexion nor will participate, and which is derived from a secret instinct in man (Heyse). Renan sustained a similar thesis. For Max Müller, “man is born speaking, as he is born thinking; speech marks the transition from (concrete) intuitions to ideas; it is a fact in the development of the mind; it is created with no distinct consciousness of means and end.” For Steinthal, on the contrary, “language is neither an invention nor an innate product; man creates it himself, but it is not begotten of the reflecting mind.” Through all these formulæ, and others somewhat tinged with mysticism, we can discover but one point of fact, analogous to that which states that it is in the nature of the bee to form its comb, of the spider to weave its web. The last word of the enigma is unconscious activity, and whether directly, or by evasions, this school must return to innate faculties.

A somewhat recent theory,—that of L. Noiré,[46]—is distinct from the foregoing. In these, speech is the direct (although, it is true, unconscious) expression of intelligence; for Noiré, on the other hand, it is the outcome of will. “Language is the result of association, of community of feeling, of a sympathetic activity which, at the outset, was accompanied by sounds...; it is the child of will and not of sensation.” Speech is derived from community of action, from the collaboration of primitive men, from the common use of their activities. When our muscles are in action, we feel it a relief to utter sounds. The men who work together, the peasants who dig or thresh the grain, sailors rowing, soldiers marching, emit more or less vibrant articulations, sounds, exclamations, humming, songs, etc. These sounds present the requisite characters of the constitution of articulate language; they are common to all; they are intelligible, being associated by all with the same acts. Action, according to Noiré, is the primitive element in all language. Human labor is the content of primitive roots; to cut, knock, dig, hollow, weave, row, etc. Although Max Müller adhered almost unreservedly to this hypothesis, it has, like all others, encountered much criticism which we need not dwell on. Is it probable, it has been asked, that the first names should have been for acts only, not for objects? How explain the synonyms and homonyms so frequent in primitive language? etc.

II. The hypothesis of a progressive evolution of speech, while dating from antiquity, has only taken a consistent form in our own days, under the influence of transformist doctrines. The work of anthropologists and of linguists, above all of the former, it finds support in the study of inferior idioms and of the comparative method. Its fundamental thesis is that articulate language is the result of a long elaboration, lasting for centuries, in which we may with some probability reconstitute the stages. While its authors are not in complete agreement it may be said that, generally speaking, they admit three periods: the cry, vocalisation, articulation.

The cry is the primordial fact, the pure animal language, a simple vocal aspiration, without articulation. It is either reflex, expressing needs and emotions, or, at a stage higher, intentional (to call, warn, menace, etc.). It has been said that the speechlessness of animals is due to the imperfection of their auditory[?] organs, and want of organic correspondence between their acoustic images and the muscular movements that produce sound: but the cause of this aphasia must also, and above all, be referred to their weak cerebral development; this applies also to primitive man. “What function could words have fulfilled when the anthropoid of the Neanderthal or the Naulette roamed, naked and solitary, from ditch to ditch, through the thick atmosphere, over marshy soil, stone in hand, seeking edible plants or berries, or the trail of females as savage as himself?”[47] It is intelligence that creates its instruments, as well speech as all the rest.

Vocalisation (emission of vowels only) does not in itself contain the essential elements of speech. Many animals practise it; our vowels, long or short, even our diphthongs, can readily be recognised in the voice of different species (dog, cat, horse, birds in large numbers, etc.). In the child, it succeeds the period of the simple cry; and since it is admitted that the development of the individual hints at that of the race; that, moreover, many primitive languages or rudimentary idioms (as such, near the time of their origin) are very rich in vowels,—it has been concluded that there existed a longer or shorter period intermediate between those of the cry and of articulation (this thesis has close affinities with the theory of Darwin, Spencer, etc., which has been rejected by other evolutionists); that speech is derived from song, intellectual language from emotional language; in other words, that man could sing before he could speak. Various facts are alleged in support of this theory: (1) In monosyllabic languages, which are generally held to be the most ancient, the accent plays a cardinal rôle; the same syllable, according to the tone which accompanies it, takes on the most widely different meanings. Such is the case of the Chinese. In Siamese, hă = to seek; hâ = plague; hà = five. (2) Other languages in which intonation is of less importance, are nevertheless in close relation with song, and by reason of their vocabulary and of the grammatical construction, modulation is necessary for giving a complete sense to the words and phrases. (3) Even in our own languages, which are completely dissociated from song, the voice is not even in tone; it can be greatly modified according to circumstances. Helmholtz showed that for such banal phrases as “I have been for a walk,” “Have you been for a walk?” the voice drops a quarter-tone for the affirmation, and rises a fifth for the interrogation. H. Spencer called attention to several facts of the same order, all commonplace. (4) The impassioned language of emotion resembles song: the voice returns to its original form; “it tends,” according to Darwin, “to assume a musical character, in virtue of the principle of association.”

Whatever may be the force of this reasoning, conclusive for some, doubtful for others, the conditions necessary to the existence of speech arose with articulation only, consonants being its firmest element. The origin of speech has been much disputed. Romanes invokes natural selection: “The first articulation probably consisted in nothing further than a semiotic breaking of vocal tones, in a manner resembling that which still occurs in the so-called chattering of monkeys,—the natural language for the expression of their mental states.”[48] It should, however, be noted that the question, under this form, has merely a physiological interest. The voice is as natural to man as are the movements of his limbs; between simple voice and articulate voice there is but the same distance as between the irregular movements of the limbs of the newly born, and such well-co-ordinated movements as walking. Articulation is merely one of the forms of expression: it is so little human that it is met with, as we have seen, among many of the lower animals. The true psychological problem lies elsewhere: in the employment of articulate sounds as objective signs, and the attaching of these to objects with which they are related by no natural tie.

Geiger in his Ursprung der Sprache (1878) brought forward a hypothesis which has been sustained by other authors. It may be summed up as follows: words are an imitation of the movements of the mouth. The predominant sense in man is that of sight; man is pre-eminently visual. Prior to the acquisition of speech, he communicated with his fellows by the aid of gestures, and movements of the mouth and face; he appealed to their eyes. Their facial “grimaces,” fulfilled and elucidated by gesture, became signs for others; they fixed their attention on them. When articulate sounds came into being, these lent themselves to a more or less conventional language by reason of their acquired importance. For support of this hypothesis, we are referred to the case of non-educated deaf-mutes. These invent articulate sounds (which of course they cannot hear), and use them to designate certain things. While many of these words appear to be an arbitrary creation (e. g., ga = one, ricke = I will not, etc.), others result from the imitation by their mouth of the movements perceived on the mouth of others. Such are mumm = to eat; chip = to drink; be-yr = barking of a dog, etc.[49] Why should primitive man have done less than the deaf-mute, when he not only saw the movements but heard the sounds to boot?

To conclude with a subject in which individual hypotheses abound, and which for us is only of indirect interest, we may summarise the sketch given recently enough (1888) by one of the principal partisans of the evolutionary theory:

“Starting from the highly intelligent and social species of anthropoid ape as pictured by Darwin, we can imagine that this animal was accustomed to use its voice freely for the expression of its emotions, uttering of danger-signals, and singing. Possibly enough also it may have been sufficiently intelligent to use a few imitative sounds; and certainly sooner or later the receptual life of this social animal must have advanced far enough to have become comparable with that of an infant at about two years of age. That is to say, this animal, although not yet having begun to use articulate signs, must have advanced far enough in the conventional use of natural signs (or signs with a natural origin in tone and gesture, whether spontaneous only or intentionally imitative) to have admitted of a tolerably free exchange of receptual ideas, such as would be concerned in animal wants, and even, perhaps, in the simplest forms of co-operative action. Next, I think it probable that the advance of receptual intelligence which would have been occasioned by this advance in sign-making, would in turn have led to a further development of the latter,—the two thus acting and reacting on each other until the language of tone and gesture became gradually raised to the level of imperfect pantomime, as in children before they begin to use words. At this stage, however, or even before it, I think very probably vowel-sounds must have been employed in tone-language, if not also a few of the consonants. Eventually the action and reaction of receptual intelligence and conventional sign-making must have ended in so far developing the former as to have admitted of the breaking up (or articulation) of vocal sounds, as the only direction in which any further improvement of vocal sign-making was possible. I think it not improbable that this important stage in the development of speech was greatly assisted by the already existing habit of articulating musical notes, supposing our progenitors to have resembled the gibbons or the chimpanzees in this respect. But long after this first rude beginning of articulate speech, the language of tone and gesture would have continued as much the most important machinery of communication. Even if we were able to strike in again upon the history thousands of years later, we should find that pantomime had been superseded by speech. I believe it was an inconceivably long time before this faculty of articulate sign-making had developed sufficiently far to begin to starve out the more primitive and natural systems; and I believe that, even after this starving-out process did begin, another inconceivable lapse of time must have been required for such progress to have eventually transformed Homo alalus into Homo sapiens.”[50]

Among all these hypotheses we may choose or not choose; and while we have dwelt briefly on this debated problem, whose literature is copious, we may yet have said too much on what is mere conjecture.

One certain fact remains, that—notwithstanding the theory by which speech is likened to an instinct breaking forth spontaneously in man—it was at its origin so weak, so inadequate and poor, that it perforce leaned upon the language of gesture to become intelligible. Specimens of this mixed language are still surviving among inferior races that have nothing in common between them, inhabiting regions of the earth with no common resemblances.

In some cases speech coexists with the language of action (Tasmanians, Greenlanders, savage tribes of Brazil, Grebos of Western Africa, etc.). Gesture is here indispensable for giving precision to the vocal sounds; it may even modify the sense. Thus, in one of these idioms, ni ne signifies “I do it,” or “You do it,” according to the gesture of the speaker. The Bushman vocabulary is so incomplete and has to be reinforced by so many mimic signs, that it cannot be understood in the dark. In order to converse at night, the tribe is obliged to gather round the fire.

In other cases, speech coexists with inarticulate sounds (Fuegians, Hottentots, certain tribes of North America) which travellers have compared, respectively, to clinking and clapping. These sounds have been classified according to the physiological process by which they are produced, into four (or even six) species: dental, palatal, cerebral, lateral; it is impossible to translate them by an articulated equivalent. “Their clappings survive,” says Sayce, “as though to show us how man, when deprived of speech, can fix and transmit his thought by certain sounds.” Among the Gallas, the orator haranguing the assembly marks the punctuation of his discourse by cracking a leather thong. The blow, according to its force, indicates a comma, semi-colon, or stop; a violent blow makes an exclamation.[51]

It was advisable to recall these mixed states in which articulate language had not yet left its primitive vein. They are transitional forms between pure pantomime and the moment when speech conquered its complete independence.

II.

In passing from the origin of speech to the study of its development, we enter upon firmer ground. Although this development has not occurred uniformly in every race, and the linguists—who are here our guides—do not always agree in fixing its phases, it is nevertheless the surest indication of the march of the human mind in its self-analysis in passing from extreme confusion to deliberate differentiation; while the materials are sufficiently abundant to admit of an objective study of intellectual psychogenesis, based upon language.

This attempt has nothing in common with the “general or philosophical grammar” of the beginning of this century. The Idealogues who founded this had the pretension, while taking language as their basis, to analyse the fundamental categories of intelligence: substance, quality, action, relation. A laudable enterprise, but one which, by reason of the method employed, could only be abortive. Knowing only the classical or modern languages, the products of a long civilisation, they had no suspicion of the embryonic phases; accordingly, they made a theoretical construction, the work of logicians rather than of psychologists. Any positive genetic investigation was inaccessible to them; they were lacking in material, and in instruments. If by a comparison borrowed from geology, the adult languages are assimilated to the quaternary layer; the tertiary, secondary, and primary strata will correspond with certain idioms of less and less complexity, which themselves contain the fossils of psychology. These lower forms—the semi-organised or savage languages which are a hundred times more numerous than the civilised languages—are now familiar to us; hence there is an immense field for research and comparison. This retrogression to the primitive leads to a point that several linguists have designated by a term borrowed from biology: it is the protoplasmic state “without functions of grammatical categories” (Hermann Paul). How is it that speech issued from this undifferentiated state, and constituted little by little its organs and functions? This question is interesting to the linguist on certain sides, to the psychologist on others. For us it consists in seeking how the human mind, through long groping, conquered and perfected its instrument of analysis.

I. At the outset of this evolution, which we are to follow step by step, we find the hypothesis of a primitive period, that of the roots so called, and it is worth our while to pause over this a little. Roots—whatever may be our opinion as to their origin—are in effect general terms. But in what sense?

Chinese consists of 500 monosyllables which, thanks to varieties of intonation, sufficed for the construction of the spoken language; Hebrew, according to Renan, has about 500 roots; for Sanskrit there is no agreement. According to a bold hypothesis of Max Müller, it is reducible to 121, perhaps less, and “these few seeds have produced the enormous intellectual vegetation that has covered the soil of India from the most distant antiquity to the present day.”[52] Whatever their number may be, the question for us reduces itself into knowing their primitive intellectual content, their psychological value. Here we are confronted by two very different theses. For one camp, roots are a reality; for the other, they are the simple residuum of analysis.

“Roots are the phonetic types produced by a force inherent in the human mind; they were created by nature,” etc., etc. Thus speaks Max Müller. Whitney, who is rarely of the same mind, says, notwithstanding, that all the Indo-European languages are descended from one primitive, monosyllabic language, “that our ancestors talked with one another in simple syllables indicative of ideas of prime importance, but wanting all designation of their relations.”

In the other camp it is sustained that roots are the result of learned analysis, but that there is nothing to prove that they really existed (Sayce); that they are reconstructed by comparison and generalisation; that, e. g., in the Aryan languages, roots bear much the same relation to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin words as Platonic ideas to the objects of the real world (Bréal). It has been calculated that the number of articulate sounds which the human voice is capable of producing amounts to three hundred and eighty-five. These sounds, for physiological reasons, constitute a fundamental theme in the various words created by man. Later on, linguists in comparing the vocables used in different languages, established the frequent recurrence of certain sounds common to several words. These have been isolated, but we must not see in them aught besides extracts. Moreover, “the first stammerings of man have nothing in common with phonetic types so arrested in form and abstract in signification, as dhâ, to place, vid, to see, man, to think, and other analogous words.”

To sum up. In the first thesis roots come into existence, ab initio; words are derived from them by reduplication, flexions, affixes, suffixes, etc.; they are the trunk upon which a whole swarm of languages has proliferated.

In the second thesis, words come first; then the common element disengaged by analysis, but which never existed as such in the pure and primitive condition.

Whether the one opinion or the other be adopted, I see no conclusion to be drawn from it save that the first terms designated qualities or manners of being, varying with the race. The first thesis seems the more apt in revealing to us the primitive forms of abstraction and generalisation. If it be selected despite its fragility, one finds in the list of roots (even when most reduced) an extraordinary mixture of terms applied to the most disparate things (e. g., tears, break, measure, milk, to choose, to clean, to vomit, cold, to fear, etc.). To assert with Max Müller (from whom I borrow the preceding terms) that “these are the one hundred and twenty-one original concepts, the primitive intellectual baggage of the Aryan family” is to employ an unfortunate formula, for nothing could less resemble concepts than the contents of this list. If the second thesis be adopted, the root then being nothing but “the exposed kernel of a family of words,” “a phonogram,” analogous to composite photographs, formed like these by a condensation of the similarities between several terms, then clearly primitive abstraction and generalisation must be sought in words, and not in roots.[53]

II. Leaving this question which, from its relation to that of the origin of speech, shares in the same obscurity, we have further to ask if the primitive terms (whatever nature be attributed to them) were, properly speaking, words or phrases? Did man initially give utterance to simple denominations, or to affirmations and negations? On this point all linguists seem to be in agreement. “Speech must express a judgment.” In other words it is always a phrase. “Language is based on the phrase, not on the single word: we do not think by means of words, but by means of phrases.”[54]

This phrase may be a single word,—or composite, formed by confusion of words as in the so-called agglutinative, polysynthetic, holophrastic languages,—or two words, subject and attribute; or three distinct words, subject, attribute, and copula; but beneath all these forms the fundamental function is unalterably to affirm or deny.

The same remark has been made of children. “We must,” says Preyer, “reject the general notion that children first employ substantives, and afterwards verbs. My son, at the age of twenty-three months first used an adjective to express a judgment, the first which he enunciated in his maternal tongue; he said heiss (hot) for ‘the milk is too warm.’” Later on, the proposition was made in two words: heim-mimi, ‘I want to go home and drink some milk’ (heim = home, mimi = milk). Taine and others have cited several observations of the same order.[55]

According to some authors, all language that has reached complete development has perforce passed through the three successive periods of monosyllabism, polysynthetism, and analysis; so that the idioms that remain monosyllabic or agglutinative would correspond to an arrest in development. To others, this is a hypothesis, only, to be rejected. However this may be (and it is not a question that we need to examine), it seems rash to assert, with Sayce, “that the division of the phrase into two parts, subject and predicate, is a pure accident, and that if Aristotle had been Mexican (the Aztec language was polysynthetic), his system of logic would have assumed a totally different form.” The appearance and evolution of analytical language is not pure accident, but the result of mental development. It is impossible to pass from synthesis to analysis without dividing, separating, and arraying the isolated parts in a certain order. The logic of a Mexican Aristotle might have differed from our own in its form; but it could not have constituted itself without fracture of its linguistic mould, without setting up a division, at least in theory, between the elements of the discourse. The unconscious activity by which certain idioms made towards analysis, and passed from the period of envelopment to that of development, imposed upon them a successive order. Polysynthetic languages have been likened to the performance of children who want to say everything at once, their ideas all surge up together and form a conglomeration.[56] Evidently this method must be given up, or we must renounce all serious progress in analysis.

To sum up the psychological value of the phrase, independently of its multiple forms, we may conclude by the following remarks of Max Müller:

“We imagine that language is impossible without sentences, and that sentences are impossible without the copula. This view is both right and wrong. If we mean by sentence an utterance consisting of several words, and a subject, and a predicate, and a copula, it is wrong.... When the sentence consists only of subject and predicate, we may say that a copula is understood, but the truth is that at first it was not expressed, it was not required to be expressed; in primitive languages it was simply impossible to express it. To be able to say vir est bonus, instead of vir bonus, is one of the latest achievements of human speech.”[57]

III.

The evolution of speech, starting from the protoplasmic state without organs or functions, and acquiring them little by little, proceeding progressively from indefinite to definite, from fluid to fixed state, can only be sketched in free outline. In details it falls within neither our subject nor our cognisance. But the successive points of this differentiation, which creates grammatical forms, and parts of discourse, are under an objective form the history of the development of intelligence, inasmuch as it abstracts, generalises, analyses, and tends towards an ever-growing precision. The completely developed languages—and we are speaking only of such—bear throughout the print of the unconscious labor that has fashioned them for centuries: they are a petrified psychology.

We must return to the roots or primitive terms, whatever may be their nature. Two distinct categories are generally admitted: pronominal or demonstrative roots, verbal or predicative roots.

The first form a small group that properly indicate rather the relative position of the speaker, than any concrete quality. They are equivalent to here, there, this, that, etc. They are few in number, and very simple in their phonetic relations: a vowel or vowel followed by a consonant. Many linguists refuse to admit them as roots, and think they have dropped from the second class by attenuation of meaning.[58] Possibly they are a survival of gesture language.

The second (verbal or predicative) is the only class that interests us. These have swarmed in abundance. They indicate qualities or actions; that is the important point. The first words denominated attributes or modes of being; they were adjectives, at least in the measure in which a fixed and rigid terminology can be applied to states in process of forming. Primitive man was everywhere struck with the qualities of things, ergo words were all originally appellative. They expressed one of the numerous characteristics of each object; they translated a spontaneous and natural abstraction: another proof of the precocious and indispensable nature of this operation. From its earliest developments intelligence has tended to simplify, to substitute the part for the whole. The unconscious choice of one attribute among many others depends on various causes; doubtless on its predominance, but above all on the interest it has for man. “A people,” remarks Renan, “have usually many words for what most interests them.” Thus, in Hebrew, we find 25 synonyms for the observance of the law; 14 for faith in God; 11 for rain, etc. In Arabic, the lion has 500 names, the serpent 200, money more than 80; the camel has 5,744, the sword 1,000 as befits a warrior race. The Lapp whose language is so poor, has more than 30 words to designate the reindeer, an animal indispensable to his life.[59] These so-called synonyms each denominate a particular aspect of things; they witness to the abundance of primitive abstractions.

This apparent wealth soon becomes an embarrassment and an encumbrance. Instead of 100 distinct terms, one generic substantive, plus one or two epithets, would suffice. But the substantive was not born of the deliberate desire to obviate this inconvenience. It is a specialisation, a limitation of the primitive meaning. Little by little the adjective lost its qualificative value, to become the name of one of the objects qualified. Thus in Sanskrit dêva (shining) finally signified the god; sourya (the dazzling) became the sun; akva (rapid) the name of a horse, etc. This metamorphosis of adjective into substantive by a specialisation of the general sense occurs even in our actual languages; as, e. g., when we say in French un brilliant (diamond); le volant (of a machine); un bon (of bread, counting-house, bank, etc.). What is only an accident now was originally a constant process.[60] Thus the substantive was derived from the primitive adjective; or rather, within the primitive organism, adjective-substantive, a division has been produced, and two grammatical functions constituted.

Many other remarks could be made on the determination of the substantive by inflexions, declensions, the mark of the gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); I shall confine myself to what concerns number, since we are proposing to consider numeration under all its aspects. Nothing appears more natural and clear-cut than the distinction between one and several; as soon as we exceed pure unity, the mother of numbers, plurality appears to us to be homogeneous in all its degrees. It has not been so from the beginning. This is proved by the existence of the dual in an enormous number of languages: Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Hottentot, Australian, etc. One, two, were counted with precision; the rest was vague. According to Sayce, the word “three” in Aryan language at first signified “what goes beyond.” It has been supposed that the dual was at first applied to the paired parts of the body: the eyes, the arms, the legs. Intellectual progress caused it to fall into disuse.

At the close of the period of first formation which we have been considering, the sentence was only a defaced organism reproduced by one of the following forms: (1) that; (2) that shining; (3) that sun, that shining.[61] The verb is still absent.

With it we enter on the period of secondary formation. It was long held to be an indisputable dogma that the verb is the word par excellence (verbum), the necessary and exclusive instrument of an affirmation. Yet there are many inferior idioms which dispense with it, and express affirmation by crude, roundabout processes, with no precision,—most frequently by a juxtaposition: snow white = the snow is white; drink me wine = I drink (or shall drink) wine, etc. Plenty of examples can be found in special works.

In fact, the Indo-European verb is, by origin, an adjective (or substantive) modified by a pronoun: Bharâmi = carrier-me, I carry. It is to be regretted that we cannot follow the details of this marvellous construction,—the result of unconscious and collective labor that has made of the verb a supple instrument, suited for all expressions, by the invention of moods, voices, and tenses. We may note that, as regards tenses, the distinction between the three parts of duration (which seems to us so simple) appears to have been established very slowly. Doubtless it can be asserted that it existed, actually, in the mind of primitive man, but that the imperfection of his verbal instrument failed in translating it. However this may be, it is a moot point whether the verb, at the outset, expressed past or present. It seems at first to have translated a vague conception of duration, of continuity in action; it was at first “durative,” a past which still continues, a past-present. The adjective notion contained in the verb, indefinitely as to time, only became precise by little and little. The distinction between the moments of duration did not occur by the same process in all languages, and in some, highly developed, otherwise like the Semitic languages, it remained very imperfect.[62]

The main point was to show how the adjective-substantive, modified by the adjunction of pronominal elements, constituted another linguistic organ, and losing its original mark little by little, became the verb with its multiple functions. The qualificatory character fundamental to it makes of it an instrument proper to express all degrees of abstraction and generalisation from the highest to the lowest, to run up the scale of lower, medium, and higher abstractions. Ex., to drink, eat, sleep, strike;—higher, to love, pray, instruct, etc.; higher still, to act, exist, etc. The supreme degree of abstraction, i. e., the moment at which the verb is most empty of all concrete sense, is found in the auxiliaries of the modern analytical languages. These, says Max Müller, occupy the same place among the verbs, as abstract nouns among the substantives. They date from a later epoch, and all had originally a more material and more expressive character. Our auxiliary verbs had to traverse a long series of vicissitudes, before they reached the desiccated, lifeless form that makes them so appropriate to the demands of our abstract prose. Habere, which is now employed in all Roman languages to express simply a past time, at first signified “to hold fast,” “to retain.”

The author continues, retracing the history of several other auxiliary verbs. Among them all there is one that merits particular mention on account of its divagations: this is the verb être, verb par excellence, verb substantive, unique; direct or understood expression of the existence that is everywhere present. The monopoly of affirmation, and even the privilege of an immaterial origin have been attributed to it.[63] In the first place, it is not met with under any form in certain languages which supplement its absence by divers processes. In the second, it is far from being primitive; it is derived, according to the idioms, from multiple and sufficiently discordant elements: to breathe, live, grow (Max Müller); to breathe, grow, remain, stand upright (stare) (Whitney).

Hitherto we have examined only the stable, solid parts of speech. There remain such as are purely transitive, translating a movement of thought, expressive of relation. Before we study these under their linguistic form, it is indispensable to take up the standpoint of pure psychology, and to know in the first place what is the nature of a relation. This can the less be avoided inasmuch as the question has scarcely been treated of, save by logicians, or after their fashion, and many very complete treatises of psychology do not bestow on it a single word.[64]

“A relation,” says Herbert Spencer, “is a state of consciousness which unites two other states of consciousness.” Although a relation is not always a link in the rigorous sense, this definition has the great advantage of presenting it as a reality, as a state existing by itself, not a zero, a naught of consciousness. It possesses intrinsic characters: (1) It is indecomposable. There are in consciousness greater and less states; the greater (e. g., a perception) are composite, hence accessible to analysis; they occupy an appreciable and measurable time. The lesser (relation) are naturally beyond analysis; rapid as lightning, they appear to be outside time. (2) It is dependent. Remove the two terms with which it is intercalated, and the relation vanishes; but it must be noted that the terms themselves presuppose relations; for, according to Spencer’s just remark, “There are neither states of consciousness without relations, nor relations without states of consciousness.” In fact: to feel or think a relation, is to feel or think a change.

But this psychical state may be studied otherwise than by internal observation, and the subsequent interpretation. It lends itself to an objective study, because it is incarnated in certain words. When I say, red and green, red or green, there are in either case, not two, but three states of consciousness; the sole difference is in the intermediate state which corresponds with an inclusion or an exclusion. So, too, all our prepositions and conjunctions (for, by, if, but, because) envelop a mental state, however attenuated. The study of languages teaches us that the expression of relations is produced in two ways, forming, as it were, two chronological layers.

The most ancient is that of the cases or declensions: a highly complex mechanism, varying in marked degree with the idioms, and consisting in appositions, suffixes, or modifications of the principal theme.

But these relations have only acquired their proper linguistic organ, specialised for this function, by means of prepositions and conjunctions. They are wanting in many languages; gesture being then substituted for them. The principal parts of the discourse are solitary, juxtaposed without links after the manner of the phrases used by children. Others, somewhat less poor, have only two conjunctions: and, but. In short, the terms on which devolved the expression of relations are of late formation, as it were, organs de luxe. In the analytical languages, prepositions and conjunctions are nouns or pronouns diverted from their primitive acceptation, which have acquired a value expressive of transition, condition, subordination, co-ordination, and the rest. The psychological notion common to the greater number, if not to all, is that of a movement. “All relations expressed by prepositions can be referred to repose, and to movement in space and time, i. e., to those with which the locative, accusative (movement of approximation) and ablative (movement of departure) correspond in declension.”[65] It may be admitted that this consciousness of movement, of change, which is no more, fundamentally, than the sense of different directions of thought, belongs less to the category of clear notions than to that of subconscious states, of tendencies, of actions, which explains why the terms of relation are wholly wanting, or rare, and only conquered their autonomy at a late period.

With these, the progressive work of differentiation is accomplished. Discourse has now its materials and its cement; it is capable of complex phrases wherein all is referred and subordinated to a principal state, contrary to those ruder essays which could only attain to simple phrases, denuded of connective apparatus.

We have rapidly sketched this labor of organogenesis, by which language has passed from the amorphous state to the progressive constitution of specialised terms and grammatical functions: an evolution wholly comparable with that which, in living bodies, starts from the fecundated ovule, to attain by division of labor among the higher species to a fixed adjustment of organs and functions. “Languages are natural organisms, which, without being independent of human volition, are born, grow, age, and die, according to determined laws.” (Schleicher.) They are in a state of continuous renovation, of acquisition, and of loss. In civilised languages, this incessant metamorphosis is partially checked by enforced instruction, by tradition, and respect for the great literary works. In savage idioms where these coercive measures are lacking, the transformation at times occurs with such rapidity that they become unrecognisable at the end of a few generations.

Spoken language, as a psycho-physiological mechanism, is regulated in its evolution by physiological and psychological laws.

Among the former (with which we are not concerned), the principal is the law of phonetic alteration, consisting in the displacement of an articulation in a determined direction. It is dependent on the vocal organ; thus, after the Germanic invasion, the Latin which this people spoke fell again under the power of physiological influences which modified it profoundly.

Among the latter, the principal is the law of analogy, the great artisan in the extension of languages. It is a law of economy, the basis of which is generalisation, the faculty of seizing on real or supposed resemblances. The word remains invariable, but the mind gives it different applications: it is a mask covering in turn several faces. It suffices to open a dictionary to see how ingenious and perilous is this unconscious labor. Such a word has only a few lines; it has no brilliant record. Such another fills pages; first we see it in its primitive sense; then—from analogy to analogy—from accident to accident—it departs from it more and more, and ends by having quite a contrary meaning.[66] Hence it has been said that “the object of a true etymology is to discover the laws that have regulated the evolution of thought.” Among primitive people, the process that entails such deviations from the primitive sense, is sometimes of striking absurdity; or at least appears to us as such by reason of the strange analogies that serve the extension of the word. Thus: certain Australian tribes gave the names of mussels (muyum), to books because they open and close like shell-fish; and many other no less singular facts could be cited. Much more might be said as to the rôle of analogy, but we must adhere to our subject.

In conclusion: it is to be regretted that linguistic psychology attracts so few people, and that many recent treatises on psychology, excellent on all other points, do not devote a single line to language. Yet this study, especially if comparative, from the lowest to the most subtle forms, would throw at least as much light on the mechanism of the intelligence as other highly accredited processes. Physiological psychology is much in vogue, since it is rightly concluded that if the facts of biology, normal and morbid, are being studied by naturalists and physicians, they are available to psychologists also, under another aspect. So too for languages: comparative philology has its own aim, psychology another, proper to it. It is incredible that any one who, with sufficient linguistic equipment, should devote himself to the task, would fail to find adequate return for his labors.

CHAPTER III.
INTERMEDIATE FORMS OF ABSTRACTION.

Having thus acquainted ourselves with this new factor—speech—which as an instrument of abstraction becomes steadily more and more important, we can take up our subject from the point at which we left it. In passing from the absence to the presence of the word, from the lower to the intermediate forms of abstraction, we must again insist on our principal aim: viz., to prove that abstraction and generalisation are functions of the completely evolved mind. They exist in embryo in perception, and in the image, and at their extreme limit involve suppression of all concrete representation. This conclusion will hardly be contradicted. The difficulty is to follow the evolution step by step, stage after stage, and to note the difference by objective marks.

For intermediate abstraction, this operation is very simple. It implies the use of words; it has passed the level of pre-linguistic abstraction and generalisation. We may go farther, and—always with the aid of words—establish two classes within the total category of mean abstraction:

1. The lower forms, bordering on generic images, whose objective mark is the feeble participation of the word: it can indeed be altogether foregone, and is only in the least degree an instrument of substitution.

2. The higher forms, approximating to the class of pure concepts, and having as their objective mark the fact that words are indispensable, since these have now become an instrument of substitution, though still accompanied by some sensory representation.

The legitimacy of this division can be justified only by a detailed comparison of the two classes.

I.

Before giving examples that determine the nature and intellectual trend of the lower forms, a theoretical question presents itself which cannot be eluded, albeit any profound discussion of it belongs to the theory of cognition rather than to psychology. It is as follows: Is the difference between generic images and the lowest concepts, one of nature or of degree? This question has sometimes been propounded in a less general and more concrete form; Is there any radical difference, any impassable gulf between animal intelligence[67] in its higher, and human intelligence in its lower aspects? Some authors give an absolute negation, others admit community of nature, and of transitional forms.

I shall first reject as inadmissible the argument that identifies abstraction with the use of words. Taine seems at times to admit this: “We think,” he says, “the abstract characters of things by means of the abstract names that are our abstract ideas, and the formation of our ideas is no more than the formation of names which are substitutes.”[68] Clearly if abstraction is impossible without words, this operation could only begin with speech. All that was said above ([Chap. I]) proves the inanity of such an assertion.

Let us, in order to discuss the question profitably, sum up the principal characteristics of generic images on the one hand, of inferior concepts on the other.

Generic images are: (1) simple and of the practical order; (2) the result of often-repeated experiences; (3) extracts from very salient resemblances; (4) a condensation into a visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory representation. They are the fruit of passive assimilation.

The inferior concepts most akin to them, which we are studying in the present instance, are in character: (1) less simple; (2) less frequently repeated in experience; (3) they assume as material, similarities mingled with sufficiently numerous differences; (4) they are fixed by a word. They are the fruit of active assimilation.

It may be said that the two classes, when thus opposed to each other, present but minimal differences, save for the addition of words. For the moment, indeed, the word is only an instrument handled by a bad workman, who ignores its efficacy and highest significance, as will be proved below. But were it otherwise, and were the delimitation between the two classes in no way fluctuating, the thesis of a progressive evolution must needs be given up, unless it be admitted to begin only with the appearance of speech.[69]

Romanes describes the passage from the generic image to the concept as follows:

“Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets) never do so upon land or ice. These facts prove that these animals have one recept answering to a solid substance, and another answering to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height over hard ground, or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as he jumps upon land. In other words, like the water-fowl, he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of locomotion are concerned, it is, of course, immaterial whether or not he thus raises his recepts into concepts; but, as we have seen, for many other purposes it is of the highest importance that he is able to do this. Now, in order to do it, he must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought: before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of “solid” and “fluid,” he must have cognised them as ideas. Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas differed in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl; neither for the requirements of his locomotion is it needful that they should: therefore, in so far as these requirements are concerned, the man makes no call upon his higher faculties of ideation. But, in virtue of this act of cognition whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he has created for himself—and for purposes other than locomotion—a priceless possession; he has formed a concept.”[70]

In point of fact, the transition is not so simple. Romanes omits the intermediate stages: for with fluid and liquid we penetrate into a more elevated order of concepts than those immediately bordering on the generic image. What he well brings out is that the bare introduction of words does not explain everything. It must not be forgotten that if the higher development of the intelligence depends upon the higher development of abstraction, which itself depends upon the development of speech, this last is conditioned, not simply by the faculty of articulation, which exists among many animals, but by anterior cerebral conditions that have to be sought out.

For these, we must return to the distinction loosely established above, between passive and active assimilation. We know that the fundamental mechanism of cognition may be reduced to two antagonistic processes, association and dissociation, assimilation and dissimilation; to combine, to separate; in brief, analysis and synthesis.[71] In the formation of the generic image, as we have seen, assimilation plays the principal part; the mind works only upon similarities. In proportion as we recede from this point, we have the contrary; the mind works more and more upon differences; the primitive and essential operation is a dissociation; the fusion of similarities only appears later. The further back we go, the more analysis preponderates, because we are pursuing resemblances more and more hidden by differences. Coarser minds do not rise above palpable similarities. The peasant who hears a dialect or patois closely akin to his own understands nothing of it; it is another language to him; whereas even a mediocre linguist immediately perceives the identity of words that differ only in accent.

We may represent the differences between generic images, and these general notions that most nearly approximate to them, by the following symbol:

where each line corresponds to an object, and each letter to one of the principal characters of the object. Table I is that of the generic image. A part, A B C, is constantly repeated in each experience; moreover, it is in relief, as indicated by the capitals; the elimination of differences is almost passive,—self-caused; they are forgotten.

Table II is that of a fairly simple general notion. Here A has to be disengaged from all the objects in which it is included. It still has a salient character, indicated by capitals, and recurring in each object; but as it is merged in the differences, as it represents but a poor fraction of the total event, it is not disengaged spontaneously; it exacts a preliminary labor of dissociation and elimination.

Thus understood, the difference between the two processes consists only in the faculty of greater or less dissociation, and we are in no way authorised in assuming a difference of nature.

But the question may be propounded in a different manner,—more precise and more embarrassing. I formulate it thus: the generic image is never, the concept is always a judgment. We know that for logicians (formerly at any rate) the concept is the simple and primitive element; next comes the judgment, uniting two or several concepts; then ratiocination, combining two or several judgments. For the psychologist, on the contrary, affirmation is the fundamental act; the concept is the result of judgments (explicit or implicit), of similarities with exclusion of differences. If in addition to this we recall what was said above: that speech commences with phrases only, that in its simplest form it is the word-phrase; then the debated question may be thus transformed: Is there, between the generic image and judgment in its lower forms, a break in continuity, or a passage by slow transformation?

For the partisans of the first theory, the appearance of judgment is a “passage of the Rubicon” (Max Müller). It is as impossible to deny this as to affirm it positively and indisputably. Romanes, who makes a stand against the “passage of the Rubicon,” admits the following stages in the development of signs, taken as indicative of the development of intelligence itself.

1. The indicative sign; gesture or pronominal root; a dog barking for a door to be opened, etc.