THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY.

We are now in a position to consider certain matters which are of high importance in relation to the subject of the present work. In earlier chapters I have had occasion to show that the whole stress of the psychological distinction between man and brute must be laid—and, in point of fact, has been laid by all competent writers who are against me—on the distinctively human faculty of judgment. Moreover, I have shown that, by universal consent, this faculty is identical with that of predication. Any mind that is able, in the strict psychological signification of the term, to judge, is also able to predicate, and vice versÂ. I claim, indeed, to have conclusively shown that certain writers have been curiously mistaken in their analysis of predication. These mistakes on their part, however, do not relieve me of the burden of explaining the rise of predication; and I have sought to discharge the burden by showing how the faculty must have been given in germ so soon as the denotative stage of sign-making passed into the connotative, and thus furnished the condition to bringing into contact, or apposition, the names of objects and the names of qualities or actions. The discussion of this important matter, however, has so far proceeded on grounds of psychological analysis alone. The point has now arrived when we may turn upon the subject the independent light of philological analysis. Whereas we have hitherto considered, on grounds of mental science only, what must have been the genesis of predication—supposing predication to have had a genesis,—we have next to ascertain whether our deduction admits of corroboration by any inductive evidence supplied by the science of language, as to what this genesis actually was.

And here I had better say at once that the results of philological science will be found to carry us back to an even more primitive state of matters than any which I have hitherto contemplated. For, so long as I was restricted to psychological analysis, I was obliged to follow my opponents where they take language as it now exists. In order to argue with them at all upon these grounds, it was necessary for me to consider what they had said on the philosophy of predication; and, in order to do this, it was further necessary that I should postpone for independent treatment those results of philological inquiry which they have everywhere ignored. But now we have come to the place where we can afford to abandon psychological analysis altogether, and take our stand upon the still surer ground of what I have already termed the palÆontological record of mental evolution as this has actually been preserved in the stratified deposits of language. Now, when we do this, we shall find that hitherto we have not gone so far back in tracing the genesis of conceptual out of receptual ideation as in point of fact we are able to go on grounds of the most satisfactory evidence.

Up to this time, then, I have been meeting my opponents on their own assumptions, and one of these assumptions has been that language must always have existed as we now know it—at least to the extent of comprising words which admit of being built up into propositions to express the semiotic intention of the speaker. But this assumption is well known by philologists to be false. As a matter of fact, language did not begin with any of our later-day distinctions between nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and the rest: it began as the undifferentiated protoplasm of speech, out of which all these “parts of speech” had afterwards to be developed by a prolonged course of gradual evolution.” Die Sprache ist nicht stÜckweis order atomistisch; sie ist gleich in allen ihren Theilen als Ganzes und demnach organisch entstanden.”[218]

This highly general and most important fact is usually stated as it was, I believe, first stated by the anthropologist Waitz, namely, that “the unit of language is not the word, but the sentence;”[219] and, therefore, that historically the sentence preceded the word. Or, otherwise and less ambiguously expressed, every word was originally itself a proposition, in the sense that of and by itself it conveyed a statement. Of course the more that a single word thus assumed the functions now discharged by several words when built into a proposition, the more generalized—that is to say, the less defined—must have been its meaning. The sentence or proposition as we now have it represents what may be termed a psychological division of labour as devolving upon its component parts: subject-words, attributive-words, qualifying-words indicative of time, place, agent, instrument, and so forth, are now all so many different organs of language, which are set apart for the performance of as many different functions of language. The life of language under this its fully evolved form is, therefore, much more complex, and capable of much more refined operations, than it was while still in the wholly undifferentiated condition which we have now to contemplate.

In order to gain a clear conception of this protoplasmic condition of language, we had better first take an example of it as it is presented to our actual observation in the child which is just beginning to speak. For instance, as Professor Max MÜller points out, “if a child says ‘Up,’ that up is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one. If an English child says ‘Ta,’ that ta is both noun (thanks), and a verb (I thank you). Nay, even if a child learns to speak grammatically, it does not yet think grammatically; it seems, in speaking, to wear the garments of its parents, though it has not yet grown into them.”[220]

Again, as Professor Friedrich MÜller says, “the child’s word Ba-ba, sleep, does not mean sleep only, as a particular kind of repose, but rather also all the circumstances which appertain to sleep, such as cot, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.[221] It likewise and indifferently means, sleeping, sleepy, sleeper, &c., and may stand for any variety of propositions, such as “I am sleepy,” “I want to go to sleep,” “He is asleep,” &c.

Of course innumerable other illustrations might be given; but these are enough to show what is meant by a “sentence-word.” The next thing we have to notice is the manner in which a young child particularizes the meanings of its sentence-words, so as to limit their highly generic significance per se, and thus to make them convey the special significance intended. Briefly, the one and only means which the child has of doing this is by the employment of tone and gesture. Here the suiting of the action to the word is a necessary condition to semiotic utterance; the more primitive forms of sign-making are the needful supplements to these commencements of higher forms. And not only so; they are likewise in large part the parents of these higher forms. It is by pointing (i.e. falling back on what I have called the earliest or “indicative stage” of language) that a child is able to signify the place, agent, instrument, &c., to which it requires a sentence-word to apply; and thus we catch our first glimpse of the highly important fact that the earliest indications of grammar are given by the simultaneous use of sentence-words and gesture-signs.

It will now be my object to prove, that in the history of the race spoken language began in the form of sentence-words; that grammar is the child of gesture; and, consequently, that predication is but the adult form of the self-same faculty of sign-making, which in its infancy we know as indication. Being myself destitute of authority in matters philological, I will everywhere rely upon the agreement of recognized leaders of the science.

Bunsen, I believe, was the first to point out that in Egyptian there is no formal distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle; such a word as anh, for instance, meaning indifferently, life, alive, to live, lively, &c.[222] Similarly, in Chinese “the word can still be used indifferently as a noun, a verb, an adverb, or the sign of a case, much like such English words as silver, and picture, and its place in the sentence alone determines in what sense it shall be construed. This is an excellent illustration of the early days of speech, when the sentence-words contained within themselves all the several parts of speech at once—all that was needed for a complete sentence; and it was only by bringing them into contact and contrast [i.e. apposition] with other sentence-words, that they came to be restricted in their meaning and use, and to be reduced to mere ‘words.’”[223]

Later on I will give abundant evidence of a similar state of matters in the case of other existing languages presenting a low order of development—especially those of savages. But perhaps it is even of more importance to prove that the most highly developed of all languages—namely, the Indo-European group—still bears unmistakable evidence of having passed through this primitive phase. This is a statement which it would be easy to substantiate by any number of quotations; but I will only call the testimony of one witness in the person of Professor Max MÜller, whose evidence on this point may be regarded as that of an opponent.

“Nothing, it is true, can exist in language except what is a sentence, i.e. that conveys a meaning; but for that very reason it ought to have been perceived that every word must originally have been a sentence. The mere root, qu root, cannot be called a sentence, and in that sense a mere root may be denied the dignity of a word. But as soon as a root is used for predication, it becomes a word, whether outwardly it is changed or not. What in Chinese is effected by position or by tone, namely, the adaptation of a root to serve the purposes of words, is in the Aryan languages achieved by means of suffixes and terminations, though often also by change of tone. We saw that, in an earlier stage, the Aryan languages, too, could raise a root into a word, without the aid of suffixes, and that, for instance, yudh, to fight, could be used in the five senses of the act of fighting, the agent of fighting, the instrument of fighting, the place of fighting, and the result of fighting. For the sake of distinction, however, as soon as the necessity began to be felt, the Aryan language introduced derivative elements, mostly demonstrative or pronominal.”

“The imperative may truly be called the most primitive sentence, and it is important to observe how little in many languages it deviates from what has been fixed upon as the true form of a root ... va, weave, whether as a reminder or as a command, would have as much right to be called a sentence as when we say, ‘Work,’ i.e. ‘Let us work.’ ... From the use of a root in the imperative, or in the form of a general assertion, there is a very easy transition to its employment in other senses and for other purposes.... A master requiring his slaves to labour, and promising them their food in the evening, would have no more to say than ‘Dig—Feed,’ and this would be quite as intelligible as ‘Dig, and you shall have food,’ or, as we now say, ‘If you dig, you shall have food.’”[224]

Thus we may lay it down as a general doctrine or well-substantiated principle of philological research, that “Language begins with sentences; not with single words;”[225] or that originally every word in and of itself required to convey a meaning, after the manner of the early utterances of children. “The sentence is the only unit which language can know, and the ultimate starting-point of all our linguistic researches.... If the sentence is the unit of significant speech, it is evident that all individual words must once have been sentences; that is to say, when first used they must each have implied or represented a sentence.”[226]

“The making of words as distinct from sentences was a long and laborious process, and there are many languages, like those of North America, in which the process has hardly yet begun. A dictionary is the result of reflection, and ages must elapse before a language can enter upon its reflective stage.”[227]

Or, to give only one more quotation, as Professor Max MÜller says, “it is difficult for us to think in Chinese, or in any radical language, without transferring to it our categories of thought. But if we watch the language of a child, which is really Chinese spoken in English, we see that there is a form of thought, and of language, perfectly rational and intelligible to those who have studied it, in which, nevertheless, the distinction between noun and verb, nay, between subject and predicate, is not yet realized.”[228]

Starting, then, from this undifferentiated condition of language, let us next see how the “parts of speech” became evolved.

There appears to be no doubt that one of the earliest parts of speech to become differentiated was the pronoun. Moreover, all the pronouns (or “pronominal elements”) as originally differentiated were indistinguishable from what we should now call adverbs; and they were all concerned with denoting relations of place.[229] No exception to this general statement can be made even as regards the personal pronouns. “Hic, iste, ille, are notoriously a sort of correlatives to ego, tu, sui, and, if the custom of the languages had allowed it, might, on every occasion, be substituted for them.”[230] Now, there is very good reason to conclude that these pronominal adverbs, or adverbial pronouns, were in the first instance what may be termed articulate translations of gesture-signs—i.e. of a pointing to place-relations. I being equivalent to this one, he or she or it to that one, &c., we find it easy to supply the indicative gestures out of which these denotative terms arose; and although we are not now able to supply the phonetic source of these highly ancient “pronominal” or “demonstrative elements,” it is easy to imagine that they may have arisen in the same apparently spontaneous way as very young children will now devise arbitrary sounds, both as proper names and as adverbs of position. That we should not err in thus comparing the grade of mental evolution exhibited by the earliest framers of spoken language with that of a young child, is rendered apparent by the additional and highly interesting fact, that, just as a young child begins by speaking of the Ego in the third person, so it was with early man in his use of personal pronouns. “Man regarded himself as an object before he learnt to regard himself as a subject; and hence ‘the objective cases of the personal as well as of the other pronouns are always older than the subjective;’ and the Sanskrit mÂm, ma (Greek [Greek: me], Latin me) is earlier than aham ([Greek: egÔn] and ego).”[231]

Lest it should be thought that I am assuming too much in thus referring the origin of pronominal elements to gesture-signs, I will here quote the opinion of Professor Max MÜller, who of all philologists is least open to suspicion of bias towards my side of the present argument. Speaking of these “demonstrative elements, which point to an object in space and time, and express what we now express by then, this [= I], that [= there, he, she, it, &c.], near, far, above, below, &c.;” he says, “in their primitive form and intention they are addressed to the senses rather than to the intellect: they are sensuous, not conceptual.”[232] And elsewhere he adds, “I see no reason why we should not accept them as real survivals of a period of speech during which pantomime, gesture, pointing with the fingers to actual things were still indispensable ingredients of all conversation.”[233] Again, “it was one of the characteristic features of Sanskrit, and the other Aryan languages, that they tried to distinguish the various applications of a root by means of what I have called demonstrative roots or elements. If they wished to distinguish the mat as the product of their handiwork, from the handiwork itself, they would say ‘Platting—there;’ if they wished to encourage the work they would say, ‘Platting—they, or you, or we.’ We found that what we call demonstrative roots or elements must be considered as remnants of the earliest and almost pantomimic phase of language, in which language was hardly as yet what we mean by language, namely logos, a gathering, but only a pointing.”[234]

It is the opinion of some philologists, however, that these demonstrative elements were probably “once full or predicative words, and that if we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language, we should meet with the original forms of which they are the maimed half-obliterated representatives.”[235] But as even these philologists do not question that all originally “predicative words” would be found to have had their predicative value determined by gesture, “if we could penetrate to an earlier stage of language,” the question whether such demonstrative elements as have come down to us were or were not themselves of originally predicative value, is not of vital importance in the present connection. For there is no doubt that pronominal elements which really were aboriginal as such, depended on accompanying gesture-signs for a conveyance of their predicative meaning; and although, as we might expect, there is a necessary absence of proof in particular cases whether these elements have come down to us in a practically aboriginal form, or whether they have done so as the worn-out remnants of independently predicative words, the general principles on which we are now engaged are not really affected by any such philological uncertainties in matters of detail. For even the authority just quoted as doubting whether we have evidence enough to conclude that demonstrative elements which have come down to us were never themselves predicative words, elsewhere says of early predicative utterance in general,—“It is certain that there was a time in the history of speech when the articulate, or semi-articulate, sounds uttered by primitive man were made the significant representatives of thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied; and this complex of sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered, the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest sentence.”[236] And, after giving examples from languages of Further India, he adds,—“But an inflectional language does not permit us to watch the word-making process so clearly as do those savage jargons, in which a couple of sounds, like the Grebo ni ne, signify ‘I do it,’ or ‘You do not,’ according to the context and the gestures of the speaker. Here by degrees, with the growth of consciousness and the analysis of thought, the external gesture is replaced by some portion of the uttered sounds which agrees in a number of different instances, and in this way the words by which the relations of grammar are expressed came into being. A similar process has been at work in producing those analogical terminations whereby our Indo-European languages adapt a word to express a new grammatical relation.”

Therefore, not unduly to multiply quotations, we may take it as the now established doctrine of philology that, as even this more sceptical authority puts it, “Grammar has grown out of gesture and gesticulation.”[237] Later on I will show in how interesting a manner early forms of articulate utterance follow in their structure the language of gesture already treated of in a previous chapter. It was for the sake of displaying this resemblance that I there occupied so much space with the syntax of gesture-language; and, therefore, it will now be my object to trace the family likeness between the constructions of primitive modes of utterance, and those of the parent gestures from which these constructions have been directly inherited. But in order to do this more completely, we must first consider the philology of predicative words.

The parts of speech which are primarily concerned in predication, and which, therefore, may be called par excellence predicative words, are substantives, adjectives, and verbs. I will, therefore, begin by briefly stating what is known touching the evolution of these parts of speech.

We have abundant evidence to show that originally there was no distinction between substantives and adjectives, or object-words and quality-words. Nor is this at all surprising when we remember that even in fully developed forms of speech one and the same word may stand as a substantive or an adjective according to its context. “Cannon” in “cannonball,” or “pocket” in “pocket-book,” &c., are adjectives in virtue of position—i.e. of apposition with the substantives which they thus serve to qualify.

Similarly as regards the genitive case. This, also, is of an attributive quality, and, therefore, like the now independent adjective, originally had no independent existence. When the force of the genitive had to be conveyed, it was conveyed by this same device of apposition. And, lastly, the same device was resorted to for purposes of predication. Or, to quote these important facts from responsible sources, Professor Sayce says:—“Even the genitive case, necessary as it appears to us to be, once had no existence, as indeed it still has none in groups of languages like the Taic or the Malay. Instead of the genitive, we here have two nouns placed in apposition to one another, two individuals, as it were, set side by side without any effort being made to determine their exact relations beyond the mere fact that one precedes the other, and is therefore thought of first.... Now, this apposition of two nouns, which still serves the purpose of the genitive in many languages, might be regarded as attributive or as predicative. If predicative, then the two contrasted nouns formed a complete sentence, ‘Cup gold,’ for instance, being equivalent to ‘The cup is gold.’ If attributive, then one of the two nouns took the place of an adjective, ‘gold cup’ being nothing more than ‘a golden cup.’”[238] Then, after giving examples from different languages of the artificial contrivances whereby in course of time these three grammatical differentiations originated (namely, by conventional changes of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form of predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A, while in other languages the reverse order has obtained), Professor Sayce goes on to say:—“These primitive contrivances for distinguishing between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three ideas had in the course of ages been evolved by the mind of the speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like.”[239]

For the sake of putting this point beyond the reach of question, I will quote another and independent authority to the same general effect.

“It is a curious fact hitherto overlooked by grammarians and logicians, that the definition of a noun applies strictly only to the nominative case. The oblique cases are really attribute-words, and the inflection is practically nothing but a device for turning a noun into an adjective or adverb. This is perfectly clear as regards the genitive, and, indeed there is historical evidence to show that the genitive in Aryan languages was originally identical with an adjective ending; ‘man’s life’ and ‘human life’ being expressed in the same way. It is also clear that ‘noctem’ in ‘flet noctem’ is a pure adverb of time. It is not so easy to see that the accusative in such sentences as ‘He beats the boy’ is also a sort of adverb, because the connection between verb and object is so intimate as almost to form one simple idea, as in the case of noun-composition. But it is clear that if ‘boy’ in the compound ‘boy-beating’ is an attribute-word, it can very well be so also when ‘beating’ is thrown into the verbal form without any change of meaning.”[240]

Lastly, upon this point Professor Max MÜller says, while speaking of Aryan adjectives:—“These were not used for the first time when people said ‘The sun is bright,’ but when they predicated the quality of brightness, or the act of shooting out light, and said, as it were, ‘Brightness-here.’ Adjectives, in fact, were formed, at first, exactly like substantives, and many of them could be used in both characters. There are languages in which adjectives are not distinguished from substantives. But though outwardly alike, they are conceived as different from substantives the moment they are used in a sentence for the purpose of predicating or of qualifying a substantive.”[241]

So much, then, for substantives and adjectives: it cannot be said that there is any evidence of historical priority of the one over the other; but rather that so soon as the denotative meanings of substantives became fixed, they admitted of having imparted to them the meanings of adjectives, genitives, and predicates, by the simple expedient of apposition—an expedient which, as we have seen in earlier chapters, is rendered inevitable by the laws of association and “the logic of events:” it is an expedient that must have been furnished to the mind, and therefore need never have been intentionally devised by it.

Turning next to the case of verbs, or the class of words upon which more especially devolves the office of predication, it is the opinion of some philologists that these arose through the apposition of substantives with the genitives of pronouns.[242] And there can be no doubt that in many actually existing languages the functions of predication are still discharged in this way, without the existence of any verbs at all, as we shall see later on. But, on the other hand, it is shown that a great many Aryan substantives were formed by joining pronominal elements to previously existing verbal roots, in a manner so strongly suggestive of pointing-gestures, that it is difficult to doubt the highly primitive source of the construction. For example “digging-he” = labourer, “digging-it” = spade, “digging-here” = labour, “digging-there” = hole,[243] &c. Or again, “‘The hole is dark’ would have been expressed originally (in Aryan) by ‘digging-it,’ ‘hiding here,’ or, ‘hiding-somewhere.’ ‘Hiding-here’ might afterwards be used in the sense of a hiding-place. But when it was used as a mere qualifying predicate in a sentence in which there was but one subject, it assumed at once the character of an adjective.”[244]

To me it appears evident that there is truth in both these views, which, therefore, are in no way contradictory to one another. We have evidence that many substantives were of later origin than many verbs, and vice versÂ; but this does not show which of these two parts of speech preceded the other as a whole. Nor does it appear that we are likely to obtain any definite evidence upon the point. On psychological grounds, and from the analogy furnished by children, we might be prepared to think it most probable that substantives preceded verbs; and this view is no doubt corroborated by the remarkable paucity of verbs in certain savage languages of low development. But as a matter of pure philology “we cannot derive either the verb from the noun, or the noun from the verb.”[245] This writer goes on to say, “they are co-existent creations, belonging to the same epoch and impulse of speech.” But whether or not this inference represents the truth is a matter of no importance for us. With or without verbs, primitive man would have been able to predicate—in the one case after the manner of children who have just begun to learn the use of them, and in the other case after the manner of those savages recently mentioned, who throw upon their nouns, in conjunction with pronouns, the office of verbs.

Seeing that my psychological opponents have laid so much stress upon the substantive verb as this is used by the Romance languages in formal predication, I will here devote a paragraph to its special consideration from a philological point of view. It will be remembered that I have already pointed out the fallacy which these opponents have followed in confounding the substantive verb, as thus used, with the copula—it being a mere accident of the Romance languages that the two are phonetically identified. Nevertheless, even after this fallacy has been pointed out to them, my opponents may seek to take refuge in the substantive verb itself: forced to acknowledge that it has nothing especially to do with predication, they may still endeavour to represent that elsewhere, or in itself, it represents a high order of conceptual thought. This, of course, I allow; and if, as my opponents assume, the substantive verb belonged to early, not to say primitive modes of speech, I should further allow that it raises a formidable difficulty in the otherwise even path of evolutionary explanation. But, as a matter of fact, these writers are no less mistaken about the primitive nature of the substantive verb itself, than they are upon the function which it accidentally discharges in copulation.[246] In order to prove this, or to show that the substantive verb is really very far from primitive, I will furnish a few extracts from the writings of philological authorities upon the subject.

“Whatever our a priori estimate of the power of the verb-substantive may be, its origin is traced by philology to very humble and material sources. The Hebrew verbs ????? (houa) or ??? (haia) may very probably be derived from an onomatopoeia of respiration. The verb kama, which has the same sense, means primitively ‘to stand out,’ and the verb koum, ‘to stand,’ passes into the sense of ‘being.’ In Sanskrit, as-mi (from which all the verbs-substantives in the Indo-European languages are derived, as [Greek: eimi], sum, am; Zend ahmi; Lithuanic, esmi, Icelandic, em, &c.) is, properly speaking, no verbal root, but ‘a formation on the demonstrative pronoun sa, the idea meant to be conveyed being simply that of local presence.’ And of the two other roots used for the same purpose, namely, bhu ([Greek: phuÔ], fui, &c.) and sth (stare, &c.), the first is probably an imitation of breathing, and the second notoriously a physical verb, meaning ‘to stand up.’ May we not, then, ask with Bunsen, ‘What is to be in all languages but the spiritualization of walking or standing or eating?’”[247]

Again, to quote only one other authority:—“In closing, for the present, the discussion of this extensive subject, it is proposed to make a few remarks upon the so-called verb-substantive, respecting the nature and functions of which there has perhaps been more misapprehension than about any other element of language. It is well known that many grammarians have been accustomed to represent this element as forming the basis of all verbal expression, and as a necessary ingredient in every logical proposition. It would seem to follow, from this statement, that nations so unfortunate as to be without it, could neither employ verbal expression nor frame a logical proposition. How far this is the case will be seen hereafter: at present we shall make some brief remarks on this verb, and on the substitutes usually employed in dialects where it is formally wanting. It will be sufficient to produce a few prominent instances, as the multiplying of examples from all known languages would be a mere repetition of the same general phenomena.

“In the portion of the essay relating to the Coptic, it was observed: ‘What are called the auxiliary and substantive verbs in Coptic are still more remote from all essential verbal character (than the so-called verbal roots). On examination they will almost invariably be found to be articles, pronouns, particles, or abstract nouns, and to derive their supposed verbal functions entirely from their accessories, or from what they imply.’ In fact any one who examines a good Coptic grammar or dictionary will find that there is nothing formally corresponding to our am, art, is, was, &c., though there is a counterpart to Lat. fieri (sthopi) and another to poni (chi, neuter passive of che); both occasionally rendered to be, which, however, is not their radical import. The Egyptians were not, however, quite destitute of resources in this matter, but had at least half a dozen methods of rendering the Greek verb-substantive when they wished to do so. The element most commonly employed is the demonstrative pe, te, ne; used also in a slightly modified form for the definite article; pe = is, having reference to a subject in the singular masculine; te, to a singular feminine; and ne = are, to both genders in the plural. The past tense is indicated by the addition of a particle expressing remoteness. Here, then, we find as the counterpart of the verb-substantive an element totally foreign to all the received ideas of a verb; and that instead of its being deemed necessary to say in formal terms ‘Petrus est,’ ‘Maria est,’ ‘Homines sunt,’ it is quite sufficient, and perfectly intelligible, to say, ‘Petrus hic,’ ‘Maria hÆc,’ ‘Homines hi.’ The above forms, according to Champollion and other investigators of ancient hieroglyphics, occur in the oldest known monumental inscriptions, showing plainly that the ideas of the ancient Egyptians as to the method of expressing the category to be, did not exactly accord with those of some modern grammarians.... Every Semitic scholar knows that personal pronouns are employed to represent the verb-substantive in all the known dialects, exactly as in Coptic, but with less variety of modification. In this construction it is not necessary that the pronoun should be of the same person as the subject of the proposition. It is optional in most dialects to say either ego ego, nos nos, for ego sum, nos sumus, or ego ille, nos illi. The phrase ‘Ye are the salt of the earth,’ is, in the Syriac version, literally ‘You they (i.e. the persons constituting) the salt of the earth.’ Nor is this employment of the personal pronoun confined to the dialects above specified, it being equally found in Basque, in Galla, in Turco-Tartarian, and various American languages.... It is true that the Malayan, Javanese, and Malagassy grammarians talk of words signifying to be; but an attentive comparison of the elements which they profess to give as such, shows clearly that they are no verbs at all, but simply pronouns or indeclinable particles, commonly indicating the time, place, or manner of the specified action or relation. It is not therefore easy to conceive how the mind of a Philippine islander, or of any other person, can supply a word totally unknown to it, and which there is not a particle of evidence to show that it was ever thought of.... A verb-substantive, such as is commonly conceived, vivifying all connected speech, and binding together the terms of every logical proposition, is much upon a footing with the phlogiston of the chemists of the last generation, regarded as a necessary pabulum of combustion, that is to say, vox et prÆterea nihil.... If a given subject be ‘I,’ ‘thou,’ ‘he,’ ‘this,’ ‘that,’ ‘one;’ if it be ‘here,’ ‘there,’ ‘yonder,’ ‘thus,’ ‘in,’ ‘on,’ ‘at,’ ‘by;’ if it ‘sits,’ ‘stands,’ ‘remains,’ or ‘appears,’ we need no ghost to tell us that it is, nor any grammarian or metaphysician to proclaim that recondite fact in formal terms.”[248]

Having thus briefly considered the philology of predicative words, we must next proceed to the not less important matter of the philology of predication itself. And here we shall find that the evidence is sufficiently definite. We have already seen good reason for concluding that what Grimm has called the “antediluvian” pronominal roots were the phonetic equivalents of gesture-signs—or rather, that they implied accompanying gesture-signs for the conveyance of their meaning. Now, it is on all hands allowed that these pronominal roots, or demonstrative elements, afterwards became attached to nouns and verbs as affixes or suffixes, and so in older languages constitute the machinery both of declension and conjugation. Thus, we can trace back, stage by stage, the form of predication as it occurs in the most highly developed, or inflective, languages, to that earliest stage of language in general, which I have called the indicative. In order to show this somewhat more in detail, I will begin by sketching these several stages, and then illustrate the earliest of them that still happen to survive by quoting the modes of predication which they actually present.

As we thus trace language backwards, its structure is found to undergo the following simplification. First of all, auxiliary words, suffixes, affixes, prepositions, copulas, particles, and, in short, all inflections, agglutinations, or other parts of speech which are concerned in the indication of relationship between the other component parts of a sentence, progressively dwindle and disappear. When these, which I will call relational words, are shed, language is left with what may be termed object-words (including pronominal words), attributive-words, action-words, and words expressive of states of mind or body, which, therefore, may be designated condition-words. Roughly speaking, this classification corresponds with the grammatical nouns, pronouns, adjectives, active verbs, and passive verbs; but as our regress through the history of language necessitates a total disregard of all grammatical forms, it will conduce to clearness in my exposition if we consent to use the terms suggested.

The next thing we notice is that the distinction between object-words and attributive-words begins to grow indistinct, and eventually all but disappears: substantives and adjectives are fused in one, and whether the resulting word is to be understood as subject or predicate—as the name of the object or the name of a quality—depends upon its position in the sentence, upon the tone in which it is uttered, or, in still earlier stages, upon the gestures by which it is accompanied. Thus, as Professor Sayce remarks, “the apposition of two substantives [and, a fortiori, of two such partly or wholly undifferentiated words as we are now contemplating] is the germ out of which no less than three grammatical conceptions have developed—those of the genitive, of the predicate, and of the adjective.”[249]

While this process of fusion is being traced in the case of substantives and adjectives, it becomes at the same time observable that the definition of verbs is gradually growing more and more vague, until it is difficult, and eventually impossible, to distinguish a verb at all as a separate part of speech.

Thus we are led back by continuous stages, or through greater and greater simplifications of language-structure, to a state of things where words present what naturalists might term so generalized a type as to include, each within itself, all the functions that afterwards severally devolve upon different parts of speech. Like those animalcules which are at the same time but single cells and entire organisms, these are at the same time single words and independent sentences. Moreover, as in the one case there is life, in the other case there is meaning; but the meaning, like the life, is vague and unevolved: the sentence is an organism without organs, and is generalized only in the sense that it is protoplasmic. In view of these facts (which, be it observed, are furnished by languages still existing, as well as by the philological record of languages long since extinct) it is impossible to withhold assent from the now universal doctrine of philologists—“language diminishes the farther we look back in such a way, that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had no existence at all.”[250]

From all the evidence which has now been presented showing that aboriginally words were sentences, it follows that aboriginally there can have been no distinction between terms and propositions. Nevertheless, although this follows deductively from the general truth in question, it is desirable that we should study in more detail the special application of the principle to the case of formal predication, seeing that, as so often previously remarked, this is the place where my opponents have taken their stand. The reader will remember that I have already disposed of their assertions with regard to the copula. It will now be my object to show that their analysis is equally erroneous where it is concerned with both the other elements of which a formal proposition consists. Not having taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the results of linguistic research, and therefore relying only on what may be termed the accidents of language as these happen to occur in the Aryan branch of the great language-tree, these writers assume that a proposition must always and everywhere have been thrown into the precisely finished form in which it was analyzed by Aristotle. As a matter of fact, however, it is now well known that such is not the case; that the form of predication as we have it in our European languages has been the outcome of a prolonged course of evolution; and that in its most primitive stage, or in the earliest stage which happens to have been preserved in the palÆontology of language, predication can scarcely be said to have been differentiated from what I have called indication. For the sake of placing this important fact beyond the reach of doubt, I will begin by quoting the statements of a few among the leading authorities upon the philology of the subject.

“Primitive man would not trouble himself much with such propositions as ‘Man is mortal,’ ‘Gold is heavy,’ which are a source of such unfailing delight to the formal logician; but if he found it necessary to employ permanent attribute-words, would naturally throw them into what is called the attributive form, by placing them in immediate proximity with the noun, whose inflections they would afterwards assume. And so the verb gradually came to assume the purely formal function of predication. The use of verbs denoting action necessitated the formation of verbs to denote ‘rest,’ ‘continuance in state,’ and when, in course of time, it became necessary in certain cases to predicate permanent as well as changing attributes, these words were naturally employed for the purpose, and such a sentence as ‘The sun continues bright’ was simply ‘The bright sun’ in another form. By degrees these verbs became so worn away in meaning, gradually coming to signify simple existence, that at last they lost all vestiges of meaning whatever, and came simply to be marks of predication. Such is the history of the verb ‘to be,’ which in popular language has entirely lost even the sense of ‘existence.’ Again, in a still more advanced state, it was found necessary to speak, not only of things, but of their attributes. Thus such a sentence as ‘Whiteness is an attribute of snow,’ has identically the same meaning as ‘Snow is white’ and ‘White snow;’ and the change of ‘white’ into ‘whiteness’ is a purely formal device to enable us to place an attribute-word as the subject of a proposition.”[251]

“Now comes a very important consideration, that not only is the order of subject and predicate to a great extent conventional, but that the very idea of the distinction between subject and predicate is purely linguistic, and has no foundation in the mind itself. In the first place, there is no necessity for a subject at all: in such a sentence as ‘It rains,’ there is no subject whatever, the it and the terminal s being merely formal signs of predication. ‘It rains: therefore I will take my umbrella,’ is a perfectly legitimate train of reasoning, but it would puzzle the cleverest logician to reduce it to any of his figures. Again, the mental proposition is not formed by thinking first of the subject, then of the copula, and then of the predicate; it is formed by thinking of the three simultaneously. When we formulate in our minds the proposition ‘All men are bipeds,’ we have two ideas, ‘all men’ and ‘an equal number of bipeds,’ or, more tersely, ‘as many men, as many bipeds,’ and we think of the two ideas simultaneously [i.e. in apposition] not one after the other, as we are forced to express them in speech. The simultaneity of conception is what is expressed by the copula in logic, and by the various forms of sentences in language. It by no means follows that logic is entirely destitute of value, but we shall not arrive at the real substratum of truth until we have eliminated that part of the science which is really nothing more than an imperfect analysis of language.”[252]

Again, as a result of his prolonged study of some of the most primitive forms of language still extant among the Bushmen of South Africa, Dr. Bleek entertains no doubt whatever that aboriginally the same word, without alteration, implied a substantival or a verbal meaning, and could be used indifferently also as an adjective, adverb, &c.[253] That is to say, primitive words were sentence-words, and as such were used by early man in just the same way as young children use their hitherto undifferentiated signs, Byby = sleep, sleeping, to sleep, sleeper, asleep, sleepy, &c.; and, by connotative extension, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.

Lastly, as already indicated, we are not left to mere inference touching the aboriginal state of matters with regard to predication. For in many languages still existing we find the forms of predication in such low phases of development, that they bring us within easy distance of the time when there can have been no such forms at all. Even Professor Max MÜller allows that there are still existing languages “in which there is as yet no outward difference between what we call a root, and a noun or a verb. Remnants of that phase in the growth of language we can detect even in so highly developed a language as Sanskrit.” Elsewhere he remarks:—“A child says, ‘I am hungry,’ without an idea that I is different from hungry, and that both are united by an auxiliary verb.... A Chinese child would express exactly the same idea by one word, ‘Shi,’ to eat, or food, &c. The only difference would be that a Chinese child speaks the language of a child, an English child the language of a man.”[254]

It is no doubt remarkable that the Chinese should so long have retained so primitive a form; but, as we know, the functions of predication have here been greatly assisted by devices of syntax combined with conventionally significant intonation, which really constitute Chinese a well-developed language of a particular type. Among peoples of a much lower order of mental evolution, however, we are brought into contact with still more rudimentary forms of predication, inasmuch as these devices of syntax and intonation have not been evolved. As previously stated, the most primitive of all actually existing forms of predication where articulate language is concerned, is that wherein the functions of a verb are undertaken by the apposition of a noun with what is equivalent to the genitive case of a pronoun. Thus, in Dayak, if it is desired to say, “Thy father is old,” “Thy father looks old,” &c., in the absence of verbs it is needful to frame the predication by mere apposition, thus:—“Father-of-thee, age-of-him.” Or, to be more accurate, as the syntax follows that of gesture-language in placing the predicate before the subject, we should translate the proposition into its most exact equivalent by saying, “His age, thy father.” Similarly, if it is required to make such a statement as that “He is wearing a white jacket,” the form of the statement would be, “He-with-white with-jacket,” or, as we might perhaps more tersely translate it, “He jackety whitey.”[255]

Again, in Feejee language the functions of a verb may be discharged by a noun in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix, e.g., loma-qu = heart or will-of-me, = I will.[256]

So likewise, “almost all philologists who have paid attention to the Polynesian languages, concur in observing that the divisions of parts of speech received by European grammarians are, as far as external form is concerned, inapplicable, or nearly so, to this particular class. The same element is admitted to be indifferently substantive, adjective, verb, or particle.”[257] “I will eat the rice,” would require to be rendered, “The-eating-of-me-the-rice = My eating will be of the rice.” “The supposed verb is, in fact, an abstract noun, including in it the notion of futurity of time in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix; and the ostensible object of the action is not a regimen in the accusative case, but an apposition. It is scarcely necessary to say how irreconcilable this is with the ordinary grammatical definition of a transitive verb; and that, too, in a construction where we should expect that true verbs would be infallibly employed, if any existed in the language.”[258] And, not to overburden the argument with illustrations, it will be enough to add with this writer, “there can be no question that nouns in conjunction with oblique cases of pronouns may be, and, in fact, are employed as verbs. Some of the constructions above specified admit of no other analysis; and they are no accidental partial phenomena, but capable of being produced by thousands.”[259]

It would be easy to multiply quotations from other authorities to the same effect; but these, I think, are enough to show how completely the philology of predication destroys the philosophy of predication, as this has been presented by my opponents. Not only, as already shown, have they been misled by the verbal accident of certain languages with which they happen to be familiar identifying the copula with the verb “to be” (which itself, as we have also seen, has no existence in many languages); but, as we now see, their analysis is equally at fault where it deals with the subject and predicate. Such a fully elaborated form of proposition as “A negro is black,” far from presenting “the simplest element of thought,” is the demonstrable outcome of an enormously prolonged course of mental evolution; and I do not know a more melancholy instance of ingenuity misapplied than is furnished by the arguments previously quoted from such writers, who, ignoring all that we now know touching the history of predication, seek to show that an act of predication is at once “the simplest element of thought,” and so hugely elaborate a process as they endeavour to represent. The futility of such an argument may be compared with that of a morphologist who should be foolish enough to represent that the Vertebrata can never have descended from the Protozoa, and maintain his thesis by ignoring all the intermediate animals which are known actually to exist.

Take an instance from among the quotations previously given. It will be remembered that the challenge which my opponents have thrown down upon the grounds of logic and psychology, is to produce the brute which “can furnish the blank form of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B.’”[260]

Now, I cannot indeed produce a brute that is able to supply such a form; but I have done what is very much more to the purpose: I have produced many nations of still existing men, in multitudes that cannot be numbered, who are as incapable as any brute of supplying the blank form that is required. Where is the “is,” in “Age-of-him Father-of-thee” = “His-age-thy-father” = “Thy-father-is-old”? Or, in still more primitive stages of human utterance, how shall we extract the blank form of predication from a “sentence-word,” where there is not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence of any differentiation between the subject and the predicate? The truth, in short, is, as now so repeatedly shown, that not only the brute, but likewise the young child—and not only the young child, but likewise early man—and not only early man, but likewise savage man—are all and equally unable to furnish the blank form of predication, as this has been slowly elaborated in the highest ramifications of the human mind.

Of course all this futile (because erroneous) argument on the part of my opponents, rests upon the analysis of the proposition as this was given in the Aristotelian system of logic—an analysis which, in turn, depends on the grammar of the Greek language. Now, it goes without saying that the whole of this system is obsolete, so far as any question of the origin either of thought or of speech is concerned. I do not doubt the value of this grammatical study, nor of the logic which is founded upon it, provided that inferences from both are kept within their legitimate sphere. But at this time of day to regard as primitive the mode of predication which obtained in so highly evolved a language as the Greek, or to represent the “categories” of Aristotle’s system as expressive of the simplest elements of human thought, appears to me so absurd that I can only wonder how intelligent men can have committed themselves to such a line of argument.[261]

Quitting, then, all these old-world fallacies which were based on an absence of information, we must accept the analysis of predication as this has been supplied to us by the advance of science. And this analysis has proved to demonstration, that “the division of the sentence into two parts, the subject and the predicate, is a mere accident; it is not known to the polysynthetic languages of America, which herein reflect the condition of primeval speech.... So far as the act of thought is concerned, subject and predicate are one and the same, and there are many languages in which they are so treated.”[262] Consequently, it appears to me that the only position which remains for my opponents to adopt is that of arguing in some such way as follows.

Freely admitting, they may say, that the issue must be thrown back from predication as it occurs in Greek to predication as it occurs in savage languages of low development, still we are in the presence of predication all the same. And even when you have driven us back to the most primitive possible form of human speech, wherein as yet there are no parts of speech, and predication therefore requires to be conducted in a most inefficient manner, still most obviously it is conducted, inasmuch as it is only for the purpose of conducting it that speech can have ever come into existence at all.

Now, in order to meet this sole remaining position, I must begin by reminding the reader of some of the points which have already been established in previous chapters.

First of all, when seeking to define “the simplest element of thought,” I showed that this does not occur in the fully formed proposition, but in the fully formed concept; and that it is only out of two such concepts as elements that full or conceptual propositions can be formed as compounds. Or, as this was stated in the chapter on Speech, “conceptual names are the ingredients out of which is formed the structure of propositions; and, in order that this formation should take place, there must be in the ingredients that element of conceptual ideation which is already present in every denominative term.” Or, yet again, as the same thing was there quoted from Professor Sayce, “it is a truism of psychology that the terms of a proposition, when closely interrogated, turn out to be nothing but abbreviated judgments.”[263]

Having thus defined the simplest element of thought as a concept, I went on to show from the psychogenesis of children, that before there is any power of forming concepts—and therefore of bestowing names as denominative terms, or, a fortiori, of combining such terms in the form of conceptual propositions—there is the power of forming recepts, of naming these recepts by denotative terms, and even of placing such terms in apposition for the purpose of conveying information of a pre-conceptual kind. The pre-conceptual, rudimentary, or unthinking propositions thus formed occur in early childhood, prior to the advent of self-consciousness, and prior, therefore, to the very condition which is required for any process of conceptual thought. Moreover, it was shown that this pre-conceptual kind of predication is itself the product of a gradual development. Taking its origin from the ground of gesture-signs, when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between “parts of speech.” Every word is what we now know as a “sentence-word,” any special applications of which can only be defined by gesture. Next, these sentence-words, or others that are afterwards acquired, begin to be imperfectly differentiated into denotative names of objects, qualities, actions, and states; and the greater the definition which they thus acquire as parts of speech, the more do they severally undergo that process of connotative extension as to meaning which is everywhere the index of a growing appreciation of analogies. Lastly, object-words and attributive-words (i.e. denotative names of things and denotative names of qualities or actions), come to be used in apposition. But the rudimentary or unthinking form of predication which results from this is due to merely sensuous associations and the external “logic of events;” like the elements of which it is composed, it is not conceptual, but pre-conceptual. With the dawn of self-consciousness, however, predication begins to become truly conceptual; and thus enters upon its prolonged course of still gradual development in the region of introspective thought.

All these general facts, it will be remembered, were established on grounds of psychological observation alone; I nowhere invoked the independent witness of philology. But the time having now come for calling in this additional testimony, the corroborating force of it appears to me overwhelming. For it everywhere proves the growth of predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former, I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? Will he still seek to take refuge in the only position now remaining, and argue, as above supposed, that not only in the childish appositions of denotative names, but even in the earlier and hitherto undifferentiated protoplasm of a “sentence-word,” we have that faculty of predication on which he founds his distinction between man and brute? Obviously, if he will not do this, his argument is at an end, seeing that in the race, as in the individual, there is now no longer any question as to the continuity between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved structure of a formal proposition. On the other hand, if he does elect to argue thus, the following brief considerations will effectually dislodge him.

If the term “predication” is extended from a conceptual proposition to a sentence-word, it thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon which alone the whole argument of my opponents is reared. For, when used by a young child (or primitive man), sentence-words require to be supplemented by gesture-signs in order to particularize their meaning, or to complete the “predication.” But, where such is the case, there is no longer any psychological distinction between speaking and pointing: if this is called predication, then the predicative “category of language” has become identified with the indicative: man and brute are conceded to be “brothers.”

Take an example. At the present moment I happen to have an infant who has not yet acquired the use of any one articulate word. Being just able to toddle, he occasionally comes to grief in one way or another; and when he does so he seeks to communicate the nature of his mishap by means of gesture-signs. To-day, for instance, he knocked his head against a table, and forthwith ran up to me for sympathy. On my asking him where he was hurt, he immediately touched the part of his head in question—i.e. indicated the painful spot. Now, will it be said that in doing this the child was predicating the seat of injury? If so, all the distinctive meaning which belongs to the term predicating, or the only meaning on which my opponents have hitherto relied, is discharged. The gesture-signs which are so abundantly employed by the lower animals would then also require to be regarded as predicatory, seeing that, as before shown at considerable length, they differ in no respect from those of the still speechless infant.

Therefore, whether my opponents allow or disallow the quality of predication to sentence-words, alike and equally this argument collapses. Their only logical alternative is to vacate their argument altogether; no longer to maintain that “Speech is the Rubicon of Mind,” but to concede that, as between the indicative phase of language which we share with the lower animals, and the truly predicative phase which belongs only to man, there is no distinction of kind to be attributed; seeing that, on the contrary, whether we look to the psychogenesis of the individual or to that of the race, we alike find a demonstrable continuity of evolution from the lowest to the highest level of the sign-making faculty.