THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY (continued).

In the last chapter we have been concerned with the philology of predication. In the present chapter I propose to consider the philology of conception. Of course the distinction is not one that can be very sharply drawn, because, as fully shown in my chapter on Speech, every concept embodies a judgment, and therefore every denominative term is a condensed proposition. Nevertheless, as my opponents have laid so much stress on full or formal predication, as distinguished from conception, I have thought it desirable, as much as possible, to keep these two branches of our subject separate. Therefore, having now disposed of all opposition that can possibly be raised on the ground of formal predication, I will conclude by throwing the light of philology on the origin of material predication, or the passage of receptual denotation into conceptual denomination, as this is shown to have occurred in the pre-historic evolution of the race.

It will be remembered that, under my analysis of the growth of predication, much more stress has been laid in the last chapter than in previous chapters on what I have called the protoplasm of predication as this occurs in the hitherto undifferentiated “sentence-word.” While treating of the psychology of predication in the chapter on Speech, I did not go further back in my analysis than to point out how the “nascent” or “pre-conceptual” propositions of young children are brought about by the mere apposition of denotative terms—such apposition having been shown to be due to sensuous association when under the guidance of the “logic of events.” But when I came to deal with the philology of predication, it became evident that there was even an earlier phase of the faculty in question than that of apposing denotative terms by sensuous association. For, as we have so recently seen, philologists have proved that even before there were any denotative terms respectively significant of objects, qualities, actions, states, or relations, there were sentence-words which combined in one vague mass the meanings afterwards apportioned to substantives, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, &c., with the consequence that the only kind of apposition which could be called into play for the purpose of indicating the particular significance intended to belong to such a word on particular occasions, was the apposition of gesture-signs. Now, I had two reasons for thus postponing our consideration of what is undoubtedly the earliest phase of articulate sign-making. In the first place, it seemed to me that I might more easily lead the reader to a clear understanding of the subject by beginning with a phase of predication which he could most readily appreciate, than by suddenly bringing him into the presence of a germ-like origin which is far from being so readily intelligible. But over and above this desire to proceed from the familiar to the unfamiliar, I had, in the second place, a further and a better reason for not dealing with the ultimate germ of articulate sign-making so long as I was dealing only with the psychology of our subject. This reason was, that in the development of speech as exhibited by the growing child—which, of course, furnishes our only material for a study of the subject from a psychological point of view—the original or germinal phase in question does not appear to be either so marked, so important, or, comparatively speaking, of such prolonged duration as it was in the development of speech in the race. To use biological terms, this the earliest phase in the evolution of speech has been greatly foreshortened in the ontogeny of mankind, as compared with what it appears to have been in the phylogeny. The result, of course, is that we should gain but an inadequate idea of its importance, were we to estimate it by a merely psychological analysis of what we now find in the life-history of the individual.

It is perfectly true, as Professor Max MÜller says, that “if an English child says ‘Up,’ that up is, to his mind, noun, verb, and adjective, all in one.” Nevertheless, in a young child, from the very first, there is a marked tendency to observe the distinctions which belong to the principal parts of speech. The earliest words uttered by my own children have always been nouns and proper names, such as “Star,” “Mamma,” “Papa,” “Ilda,” &c.; and although, later on, some of these earliest words might assume the functions of adjectives by being used in apposition with other nouns subsequently acquired (such as “Mamma-ba,” for a sheep, and “Ilda-ba” for a lamb), neither the nouns nor the adjectives came to be used as verbs. It has been previously shown that the use of adjectives is acquired almost as soon as that of substantives; and although the poverty of the child’s vocabulary then often necessitates the adjectives being used as substantives, the substantives as adjectives, and both as rudimentary propositions, still there remains a distinction between them as object-words and quality-words. Similarly, although action-words and condition-words are often forced into the position of object-words and quality-words, it is apparent that the primary idea attaching to them is that which properly belongs to a verb. And, of course, the same remarks apply to relation-words, such as “Up.”

Take, for instance, the cases of pre-conceptual predication which were previously quoted from Mr. Sully, namely, “Bow-wow” = “That is a dog;” “Ot” = “This milk is hot;” “Dow” = “My plaything is down;” “Dit ki” = “Sister is crying;” “Dit naughty” = “Sister is naughty;” “Dit dow ga” = “Sister is down on the grass.” In all these cases it is evident that the child is displaying a true perception of the different functions which severally belong to the different parts of speech; and so far as psychological analysis alone could carry us, there would be nothing to show that the forcing of one part of speech into the office of another, which so frequently occurs at this age, is due to anything more than the exigencies of expression where as yet there are scarcely any words for the conveyance of meaning of any kind. Therefore, on grounds of psychological analysis alone, I do not see that we are justified in arguing from these facts that a young child has no appreciation of the difference between the functions of the different parts of speech—any more than we should were we to argue that a grown man has no such appreciation when he extends the meaning of a substantive (such as “pocket”) so as to embrace the function of an adjective on the one hand (e.g. “pocket-book”), and of a verb on the other (e.g. “he cannoned off the white, and pocketed the red”). What may be termed this grammatical abuse of words becomes an absolute necessity where the vocabulary is small, as we well know when trying to express ourselves in a foreign language with which we are but slightly acquainted. And, of course, the smaller the vocabulary, the greater is such necessity; so that it is greatest of all when an infant is only just emerging from its infancy. Therefore, as just remarked, on grounds of psychological analysis alone, I do not think we should be justified in concluding that the first-speaking child has no appreciation of what we understand by parts of speech; and it is on account of the uncertainty which here obtains as between necessity and incapacity, that I reserved my consideration of “sentence-words” for the independent light which has been thrown upon them by the science of comparative philology.

Now, when investigated by this light, it appears, as already observed, that the protoplasmic condition of language prior to its differentiation into parts of speech was of much longer duration in the race than, relatively speaking, it is in the individual. Moreover, it appears to have been of relatively much greater importance to the subsequent development of language. How, then, is this difference to be explained? I think the explanation is sufficiently simple. An infant of to-day is born into the medium of already-spoken language; and long before it is itself able to imitate the words which it hears, it is well able to understand a large number of them. Consequently, while still literally an infant, the use of grammatical forms is being constantly borne in upon its mind; and, therefore, it is not at all surprising that, when it first begins to use articulate signs, it should already be in possession of some amount of knowledge of their distinctive meanings as names of objects, qualities, actions, states, or relations. Indeed, it is only as such that the infant has acquired its knowledge of these signs at all; and hence, if there is any wonder in the matter, it is that the first-speaking child should exhibit so much vagueness as it does in the matter of grammatical distinction.

But how vastly different must have been the case of primitive man! The infant, as a child of to-day, finds a grammar already made to its use, and one which it is bound to learn with the first learning of denotative names. But the infant, as an adult in primeval time, was under the necessity of slowly elaborating his grammar together with his denotative names; and this, as we have previously seen, he only could do by the aid of gesture and grimace. Therefore, while the acquisition of names and forms of speech by infantile man must have been thus in chief part dependent on gesture and grimace, the acquisition by the infantile child is now not only independent of gesture and grimace, but actively inimical to both. The already-constructed grammar of speech is the evolutionary substitute of gesture, from which it originally arose; and, hence, so soon as a child of to-day begins to speak, gesture-signs begin at once to be starved out by grammatical forms. But in the history of the race gesture-signs were the nursing-mothers of grammatical forms; and the more that their progeny grew, the greater must have been the variety of functions which the parents were called upon to perform. In other words, during the infancy of our race the growth of articulate language must not only have depended, but also reacted upon that of gesture-signs—increasing their number, their intricacy, and their refinement, up to the time when grammatical forms were sufficiently far evolved to admit of the gesture-signs becoming gradually dispensed with. Then, of course, Saturn-like, gesticulation was devoured by its own offspring; the relations between signs appealing to the eye and to the ear became gradually reversed; and, as is now the case with every growing child, the language of formal utterance sapped the life of its more informal progenitor.

We are now in a position to consider the exact psychological relation of sentence-words to denotative and receptually connotative words. It will be remembered that I have everywhere spoken of sentence-words as representing an even more primitive order of ideation than denotative words, and, a fortiori, than receptually connotative words. On the other hand, in earlier parts of this treatise I showed that both the last-mentioned kinds of words occur in children when they first begin to speak, and may even be traced so low down in the psychological scale as the talking birds. This apparent ambiguity, therefore, now requires to be cleared up. Can anything, it may be reasonably asked, in the shape of spoken language be more primitive than the very first words which are spoken by a child, or even by a parrot? But, if not, how can I agree with those philologists who conclude that there is an even still more primitive stage of conceptual evolution to be recognized in sentence-words?

Briefly, my answer to these questions is that in the young child and the talking bird denotative-words, connotative-words, and sentence-words are all equally primitive; or, if there is any priority to be assigned, that it must be assigned to the first-named. But the reason of this, I hold to be, is, that the child and the bird are both living in an already-developed medium of spoken language, and, therefore, as recently stated, have only to learn their denotative names by special association, while primitive man had himself to fashion his names out of the previously inarticulate materials of his own psychology. Now this, as we have also seen, he only could do by such associations of sounds and gestures as in the first instance must have conveyed meanings of a pre-conceptually predicative kind. In the absence of any sounds already given—and therefore already agreed upon—as denotative names, there could be no possibility of primitive man arbitrarily assigning such names; and thus there could have been no parallel to a young child who receptually acquires them. In order that he should assign names, primitive man must first have had occasion to make his pre-conceptual statements about the objects, qualities, &c., the names of which afterwards grew out of these statements, or sentence-words. Adam, indeed, gave names to animals; but Adam was already in possession of conceptual thought, and therefore in a psychological position to appreciate the importance of what he was about. But the “pre-Adamite man” who is now before us could not possibly have invented names for their own sakes, unless he were already capable of thinking about names as names, and, therefore, already in possession of that very conceptual thought which, as we have now so often seen, depends upon names for its origin. Even with all our own fully developed powers of conceptual thought, we cannot name an object when in the society of men with whose language we are totally unacquainted, without predicating something about that object by means of gestures or other signs. Therefore, without further discussion, it must be obvious—not only, as already shown, that there is here no exact parallel between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and that we have thus a full explanation why sentence-words were of so much more importance to the infant man than they are to the infant child, but further and consequently—that the question whether sentence-words are more primitive than denotative words is not a question that is properly stated, unless it be also stated whether the question applies to the individual or to the race. As regards the individual of to-day, it cannot be said that there is any priority, historical or psychological, of sentence-words over denotative words, or even over receptually connotative words of a low order of extension. Nay, we have seen that the leading principles of grammatical form admit of being acquired by the child together with his acquisition of words of all kinds, and that even talking birds are able to distinguish between names as severally names of objects, qualities, states, or actions.

Thus we find that to almost any order of intelligence which is already surrounded by the medium of spoken language, the understanding—and, in the presence of any power of imitative utterance, the acquisition—of denotative names as signs or marks of corresponding objects, qualities, &c., is, if anything, a more primitive act than that of using a sentence-word; but that in the absence of such an already-existing medium, sentence-words are more primitive than denotative names. Nevertheless, it is of importance to note how low an order of receptual ideation is capable of learning a denotative name by special association, because this fact proves that as soon as mankind advanced to the stage where they first began to coin their sentence-words, they must already have been far above the psychological level required for the acquisition of denotative words, if only such words had previously been in existence. Consequently, we can well understand how such words would soon have begun to come into existence through the habitual employment of sentence-words in relation to particular objects, qualities, states, actions, &c.; by such special associations, sentence-words would readily degenerate into merely semiotic marks. How long or how short a time this genesis of relatively “empty words” out of the primordially “full words” may have occupied, it is now impossible to say; but the important thing for us to notice is, that during the whole of this time—whatever it may have been—the mind of primitive man was already far above the psychological level which is required for the apprehension of a denotative name.[264]

So much, then, for the first class of considerations which has been opened up by throwing upon the results of our psychological analysis the independent light of philological research. I will now pass on to a second class, which is even of more importance.

From the fact that sentence-words played so all-important a part in the origin of speech, and that in order to do so they essentially depended on the co-operation of gestures with which they were accompanied, so that in the resulting “complex of sound and gesture the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture;” from these now well-established facts, we may gain some additional light on a question previously considered—namely, the extent to which primitive words were “abstract” or “concrete,” “particular” or “general,” and, therefore, “receptual” or “conceptual.” According to Professor Max MÜller, “the science of language has proved by irrefragable evidence that human thought, in the true sense of that word—that is, human language—did not proceed from the concrete to the abstract, but from the abstract to the concrete. Roots, the elements out of which all language has been constructed, are abstract, never concrete; and it is by predicating these abstract concepts of this or that, by localizing them here or there, in fact by applying the category of ????a or substance, to the roots, that the first foundation of our language and our thought were laid.”[265]

Here, to begin with, there is an inherent contradiction. When it is said that the roots in question already presented abstract concepts, it becomes a contradiction to add that “the first foundations of language and thought were laid by applying the category of substance to the roots.” For, if these roots already presented abstract concepts, they already presented the distinctive feature of human “thought,” whose “foundations,” therefore, must have been “laid” somewhere further back in the history of mankind. But, besides this inherent contradiction, we have here an emphatic re-statement of the two radical errors which I previously mentioned, and which everywhere mar the philosophical value of Professor Max MÜller’s work. The first is his tacit assumption that the roots of Aryan speech represent the original elements of articulate language. The second is that, upon the basis of this assumption, the science of language has proved, by irrefragable evidence, that human thought proceeded from the abstract to the concrete—or, in other words, that it sprang into being Minerva-like, already equipped with the divine inheritance of conceptual wisdom. Now, in entertaining this theory, Professor Max MÜller is not only in direct conflict with all his philological brethren, but likewise, as we have previously seen, often compelled to be irreconcilably inconsistent with himself.[266] Moreover, as we have likewise seen, his assumption as to the aboriginal nature of Aryan roots, on which his transcendental doctrine rests, is intrinsically absurd, and thus does not really require the united voice of professed philologists for its condemnation. Therefore, what the science of language does prove “by irrefragable evidence” is, not that these roots of the Aryan branch of language are the aboriginal elements of human speech, or indices of the aboriginal condition of human ideation; but that, being the survivals of incalculably more primitive and immeasurably more remote phases of word-formation, they come before us as the already-matured products of conceptual thought—and, a fortiori, that on the basis of these roots alone the science of language has absolutely no evidence at all to furnish as touching the matter which Professor Max MÜller here alludes to in such positive terms. In this connection there can be no possible escape from the tersely expressed conclusion previously quoted from Geiger, and unanimously entertained as an axiom by philologists in general:—“These roots are not the primitive roots: we have perhaps in no one single instance the first aboriginal articulate sound—just as little, of course, the aboriginal signification.”[267]

But the point which I now wish to bring forward is this. We have previously seen the source of these unfortunate utterances in Professor Max MÜller’s philology appears to reside in certain prepossessions which he exhibits in the domain of psychology. For he adopts the assumption that there can be no order of words which do not, by the mere fact of their existence, imply concepts: he does not sufficiently recognize that there may be a power of bestowing names as signs, without the power of thinking these signs as names. Consequently, the distinction which, on grounds of comparative psychology, appears to me so obvious and so necessary—i.e. between names as merely denotative marks due to pre-conceptual association, and denominative judgments due to conceptual thought—has escaped his sufficient notice. Consequently, also, he has failed to distinguish between ideas as “general” and what I have called “generic;” or between an idea that is general because it is born of an intentional synthesis of the results of a previous analysis, and an idea that is generalized[268] because not yet differentiated by any intentional analysis, and therefore representing simply an absence of conceptual thought. My child on first beginning to speak had a generalized idea of similarity between all kinds of brightly shining objects, and therefore called them all by the one denotative name of “star.” The astronomer has a general idea answering to his denominative name of “star;” but this has been arrived at after a prolonged course of mental evolution, wherein conceptual analysis has been engaged in conceptual classification in many and various directions: it therefore represents the psychological antithesis of the generalized idea, which was due to the merely sensuous associations of pre-conceptual thought. Ideas, then, as general and as generic severally occupy the very antipodes of Mind.

All this we have previously seen. My object in here recurring to the matter is to show that much additional light may be thrown upon it by the philological doctrine of “sentence-words,” which Professor Max MÜller, in common with other philologists, fully accepts.

Of all the writers on primitive modes of speech as represented by existing savages, no one is entitled to speak with so much authority as Bleek. Now, as a result of his prolonged and first-hand study of the subject, he is strongly of opinion that aboriginal words were expressive “not at all of an abstract or general character, but exclusively concrete or individual.” By this he means that primitive ideas were what I have called generic. For he says that had a word been formed from imitation of the sound of a cuckoo, for instance, it could not possibly have had its meaning limited to the name of that bird; but would have been extended so as to embrace “the whole situation so far as it came within the consciousness of the speaker.” That is to say, it would have become a generic name for the whole recept of bird, cry, flying, &c., &c., just as to our own children the word Ba=sheep, bleating, grazing, &c. Now, this process of comprising under one denotative term the hitherto undifferentiated perceptions of “a whole situation so far as it comes within the consciousness of the speaker,” is the very opposite of the process whereby a denominative term is brought to unify, by an act of “generalization,” the previously well-differentiated concepts between which some analogy is afterwards discovered. Therefore the absence of any parts of speech in primitive language is due to a generic order of ideation, whereas the unions of parts of speech in any languages which present them is due to the generalizing order of ideation. Or, as Bleek puts it while speaking of the comparatively undifferentiated condition of South African languages, “this differs entirely from the principle which prevails in modern English, where a word, without undergoing any change of form, may nevertheless belong to different parts of speech. For in English the parts of speech, though not always differing in sound, are always accurately distinguished in concept; while in the other case there was as yet no consciousness of any difference, inasmuch as neither form nor position had hitherto called attention to anything of the kind. For forms had not yet made their appearance, and determinate position [i.e. significance expressed by syntax], as, for example, in Chinese, could only arise in a language of highly advanced internal formation.”[269]

Indeed, if we consider the matter, it is not conceivable that the case could be otherwise. No one will maintain that the sentence-words of young children exhibit the highest elaborations of conceptual thought, on the ground that they present the highest degree of “generality” which it is possible for articulate sounds to express. But if this is not to be suggested as regards the infant child, what possible ground can there be for suggesting it as regards the infant man, or for inferring that aboriginal speech must have been expressive of “general” and “abstract” ideas, merely because the further backwards that we trace the growth of language the less organized do we find its structure to be? Clearly, the contradiction arises from a confusion between ideas as generic and general, or between the extension which is due to original vagueness and that which is laboriously acquired by subsequent precision. An Amoeba is morphologically more “generalized” than a Vertebrate; but for this very reason it is the less highly evolved as an organism. The philology of sentence-words, therefore, leads us back to a state of ideation wherein as yet the powers of conceptual thought were in that nascent condition which betokens what I have called their pre-conceptual stage—or a stage which may be observed in a comparatively foreshortened state among children before the dawn of self-consciousness.

There can be no reasonable doubt that during this stage of mental evolution sentence-words arose in the race as they now do in the individual, the only difference being that then they had to be invented instead of learnt. This difference would probably have given a larger importance to the principle of onomatopoeia,[270] and certainly a much larger importance to the co-operation of gesture, than now obtains in the otherwise analogous case of young children. But in the one case as in the other, I think there can be no reasonable question that sentence-words must have owed their origin to receptual and pre-conceptual apprehensions of all kinds, whether of objects, qualities, actions, states, relations, or of any two or more of these “categories” as they may happen to have been blended in the hitherto undifferentiating perceptions of aboriginal man.

I must now allude to the results of our previous inquiry touching “the syntax of gesture-language.” For comparison will show that in all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the most original and immediately graphic mode of communication, bears a striking resemblance to that which is presented by the earliest forms of articulate language, both as revealed by philology and in “baby-talk.”[271] Thus, as we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar properly so called. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’ ‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily distinguished by the deaf and dumb. Indeed, our elaborate system of parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language.” Next, to quote again only one of the numerous examples previously given to show the primitive order of apposition, whereby the language of gesture serves to convey a predication, “I should be punished if I were lazy and naughty” would be put, “I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy, naughty, I punished; yes!” Again, “to make is too abstract for the deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the coat and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful’ would not come into his way of thinking: ‘Rain, fall; plants, grow,’ would be his pictorial (i.e. receptual) expression.” Elsewhere this writer remarks that the absence of any distinction between substantive, adjective, and verb, which is universal in gesture-language, is customary in Chinese, and not unknown even in English. “To butter bread, to cudgel a man, to oil machinery, to pepper a dish, and scores of such expressions, involve action and instrument in one word, and that word a substantive treated as the root or crude form of a verb. Such expressions are concretisms, picture-words, gesture-words, as much as the deaf-and-dumb man’s one sign for ‘butter’ and ‘buttering.’” And similarly as to the substantive-adjective, in such words as iron-stone, feather-grass, chesnut-horse, &c.; here the mere apposition of the words constitutes the one an attribution of the other, as is the case in gesture-language. And not only in Chinese, but as shown in the last chapter, in a great number and variety of savage tongues this mode of construction is habitual. In all these cases distinctions between parts of speech can be rendered only by syntax; and this syntax is the syntax of gesture.

I will ask the reader to refer to the whole passage in which I previously treated of the syntax of gesture,[272] giving special attention to the points just noted, and also to the following:—invariable absence of the copula, and frequent absence of the verb (as “Apple-father-I” = “My father gave me an apple”); resemblance of sentences to the polysynthetic or unanalyzing type (as “I-Tom-struck-a-stick” = “Tom struck me with a stick”); the device whereby syntax, or order of apposition, is made to distinguish between predicative, attributive, and possessive meanings, and therefore also between substantives and adjectives; the importance of grimace in association with gesture (as when a look of inquiry converts an assertion into a question); the highly instructive means whereby relational words, and especially pronouns, are rendered in the gestures of pointing; the no less instructive manner whereby a general idea is rendered in a summation of particular ideas (as “Did you have soup? did you have porridge?” &c. = “What did you have for dinner?”); and the receptual or sensuous source of all gesture-signs which are concerned in expressing ideas presenting any degree of abstraction (as striking the hand to signify “hard,” &c.).

Hence, we may everywhere trace a fundamental similarity between the comparatively undeveloped form of conceptual thought as displayed in gesture, and that which philology has revealed as distinctive of early speech. Of course in both cases conceptual thought is there: the ideation is human, though, comparatively speaking, immature. But the important point to notice is the curiously close similarity between the forms of language-structure as revealed in gesture and in early speech. For no one, I should suppose, can avoid perceiving the idiographic character of gesture-language, whereby it is more nearly allied to the purely receptual modes of communication which we have studied in the lower animals, than is the case with our fully evolved forms of predication. It therefore seems to me highly suggestive that the earliest forms and records of spoken language that we possess (notwithstanding that they are still far from aboriginal), follow so closely the model which is still supplied to us in the idiographic gestures of deaf-mutes. Such syntax as there is—i.e. such a putting in order as is expressive of the mode of ideational grouping—so nearly resembles the syntax of gesture-language, that we can at once perceive their common psychological source. It is on account of this structural resemblance between gesture and early speech that I have devoted so much space to our consideration of the former; and if I do not now dwell at greater length upon the significance of the analogy, it is only because this significance appears too obvious to require further treatment.

There is, however, one point with reference to this analogy on which a few words must here be said. If there is any truth at all in the theory of evolution with reference to the human mind, we may be quite sure, from what has been said in earlier chapters, that tone, gesture, and grimace preceded articulation as the medium of pre-conceptual utterance. Therefore, the structural similarity between existing gesture-language and the earliest records of articulate language now under consideration, is presumably due, not only to a similarity of psychological conditions, but also to direct continuity of descent. Or, as Colonel Mallery well puts it, while speaking of the presumable origin of spoken language, “as the action was then the essential, and the consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be expected that a representation, or feigned reproduction of the action, would have been used to express the idea before the sound associated with that action could have been separated from it. The visual onomatopoeia of gestures, which even yet have been subjected to but slight artificial corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible. It is also contended that in the pristine days, when the sounds of the only words yet formed had close connection with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs were as much more copious for communication than speech as the sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of objects than does the sense of hearing.”[273]

All the foregoing and general conclusions thus reached, touching the genesis of conceptual from pre-conceptual ideation, admit of being strikingly corroborated through another line of philological research. On antecedent grounds the evolutionist would suppose that “the first language-signs must have denoted those physical acts and qualities which were directly apprehensible by the senses; both because these alone are directly significable, and because it was only they that untrained human beings had the power to deal with or the occasion to use.”[274] In other words, if, as we suppose, language had its origin in merely denotative sign-making, which gradually became more and more connotative and thus gradually more and more predicative; obviously the original denotations must have referred only to objects (or actions, states, and qualities) of merely receptual significance—i.e. “those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible by the senses.” And, no less obviously, the connotative extension of such denotative names must, for an enormously long period, have been confined to a pre-conceptual cognizance of the most obvious analogies—i.e. such analogies as would necessarily thrust themselves upon the merely sensuous perception by the force of direct association.

Now, if this were the case, what would the evolutionist expect to find in language as it now exists? Clearly, he would expect to find more or less well-marked traces, in the fundamental constitution of all languages, of what has been called “fundamental metaphor”—by which is meant an intellectual extension of terms that originally were of no more than sensuous signification. And this is precisely what we do find. “The whole history of language, down to our own day, is full of examples of the reduction of physical terms and phrases to the expression of non-physical conceptions and relations; we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth. So pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to its physical origin.”[275]

Now, I hold that this receptual nucleus of all our conceptual terms furnishes the strongest possible evidence, not only of the historical priority of the former, but also of what Professor Max MÜller calls their “dire necessity” to the growth of the latter.[276] In other words, the facts appear conclusively to show that conceptual connotation (denomination) has always had—and can only have had—a receptual core (denotation) around which to develop. Psychological analysis has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by actually finding the recept in the body of every concept.

How this large and general fact is to be met by my antagonists I know not. It certainly does not satisfy the case to say, with Professor Max MÜller,[277] NoirÉ,[278] and those who think with them, that in no other way could the growth of conceptual thought have been possible; for this is merely to reiterate on a priori grounds the conclusion which I have reached a posteriori. And the more that this historical priority of denotation can thus be shown an a priori necessity to the subsequent genesis of denomination, the greater becomes the cogency of our evidence a posteriori that, as a matter of fact, such has been invariably the order of historical succession. For, if conceptual ideation differs from receptual in kind, why this necessity for the historical priority of the latter? Why should denotation thus always require to precede denomination—or receptual connotation thus always require to precede conceptual predication—unless it be that the one is a further and a continuous development of the other? Surely as well might the botanist institute a specific distinction between the root and the flower of the self-same plant, as the psychologist, with these results of philological research before him, still persist in drawing a distinction of kind between the receptual denotation of “radical elements,” and the full efflorescence of conceptual thought.

A single illustration may serve to convey the force of this argument more fully than any abstract discussion of it. But I will introduce the illustration with an analogous case. The following well-established fact I quote from Geiger:—

“Man had language before he had tools.... On considering a word denoting an activity carried on with a tool, we shall invariably find that this was not its original meaning, but that it previously implied a similar activity requiring only the natural organs.... This fact of the activity with implements deriving its name from one more simple, ancient, and brute-like, is quite universal, and I do not know how otherwise to account for it but that the name is older than the activity with tools which it denotes at the present time—that, in fact, the word was already extant before men used any other organs but the native and natural ones.... The vestiges of his earliest conceptions still preserved in language proclaim it loudly and distinctly that man has developed from a state in which he had solely to rely on the aid of his organs—a state, therefore, in which he differed little in his habits from the brute creation, and with respect to the enjoyment of his existence, nay, to his preservation, depended almost entirely on whatever lucky chance presented to him.”[279]

Now, to this special illustration on the general principle of “fundamental metaphor” it will doubtless be said—Very interesting in itself; but, after all, it merely amounts to a philological proof that tools are younger than words; that men did not always possess tools; that tools were gradually invented; and that, when invented, they were named by a metaphorical application of words previously in use.—Well, if we are all agreed so far, I will proceed to adduce my illustration.

Judging from the now extensive literature which is opposed to evolutionary teaching in the case of man, I gather that the great majority of writers are quite as much impressed by the moral and religious aspects of human psychology as they are by the intellectual. Now, as already stated in the Preface, I reserve for a future volume a full consideration of these distinctively human faculties. In the present part of my work I am concerned exclusively with the question as to the origin of those powers of conceptual thought which, under any point of view, must be regarded as the necessary and antecedent condition to the possibility both of conscience and religion. Nevertheless, merely for the sake of supplying an illustration touching the point now before us, I may here forestall a little of what I shall hereafter have to present in detail touching the evidence that we have of the genesis of conscience. And this I will do by another quotation from the same philologist, seeing that he is an authority whom none of my opponents can afford to ignore.

“If we examine the words, those oldest pre-historic testimonies, we shall find that all moral notions contain something morally indifferent.” That is to say, they all contain what I have termed a “receptual core,” expressive of some simple physical process, or condition, the name of which has been afterwards transferred, by “fundamental metaphor,” to the moral “concept.” Omitting the illustrations, the passage continues as follows:—“But why have not the morally good and bad their own names in language? Why do we know them from something else that previously had its appellation? Evidently because language dates from a period when a moral judgment, a knowledge of good and evil, had not yet dawned in the human mind.”[280]

Now, at present I am not concerned with this conclusion, further than to remark that I do not see how it is to be obviated, if our previous agreement is to stand with regard to the precisely analogous case of the names of tools. That is to say, if any one allows that the philological evidence is sufficient to prove the priority of words to the tools which they designate, consistency must constrain him also to allow that the fundamental concepts of morality are of later origin than the names by which they have been baptized, and in virtue of which they must be regarded as having become concepts at all. These names—just like the names of tools—were all originally of nothing more than pre-conceptual significance, serving to denote such obvious physical states or activities as were immediately cognizable by the powers of sensuous perception and direct association. Then, as the moral sense began to dawn, and the utilitarian significance of conduct as ethical began to be appreciated, the principles of “fundamental metaphor” were applied to the naming of these newly found concepts—presumably at about the same time as these same principles were applied to the naming of newly found tools.

Now, this is only one illustration out of a practically infinite number of others which it would be easy to quote—seeing, indeed, as Whitney observes, that “we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth.” And whatever may be thought (at this premature stage of our inquiry) concerning the application of the general principle before us to the special case of conscience, it appears to me there can be no question at all that this general principle of “fundamental metaphor” reveals the fact of an intellectual growth from what I have called the pre-conceptual to the conceptual phase; and, moreover, that it proves such a growth to have been the universal characteristic of human faculty in those pre-historic times of which language preserves to us the only record.[281]

There still remains one other department of philological inquiry to be considered, and its consideration will tend yet further and most forcibly to corroborate all the general conclusions already attained. Hitherto we have been engaged for the most part on what I have already called the palÆontology of human thought as revealed, fossil-like, in the linguistic petrifactions of pre-historic man. But the science of comparative philology is not confined in its researches upon early forms of speech to the bygone remnants of a distant age. On the contrary, just like the science of comparative anatomy, it is furnished with still existing materials for study, which are of the nature of living organisms, and which present so many grades of evolution that the lowest members of the series bring us within easy distance of those aboriginal forms which can only be studied in the fossil state. Hitherto I have considered these lowest existing languages only with reference to their forms of predication. Here I desire to consider them with reference to the quality of ideation that they betoken.

In the next instalment of my work I shall have to treat of the psychology of savages, and then it will become apparent that there is no very precise relation to be constantly traced between grades of mental evolution in general, and of language-development in particular. Nevertheless there is a general relation: and therefore it is among the lowest savages that we meet with the lowest types of language-structure.[282] In the present connection I shall have to treat of these languages only in so far as they throw light upon the quality of ideation with which they are concerned, or so far as they are related to the general principles with which we have already been occupied. And, even as thus limited, I will endeavour to make my exposition as brief as possible.

I will begin by supplying a few quotations from the more competent authorities who have written upon the subject from a linguistic point of view.

“It requires but the feeblest power of abstraction—a power even possessed by idiots—to use a name as the sign of a conception, e.g. to say ‘sun’;[283]—to say ‘sheen,’ as the description of a phenomenon common to all shining objects, is a higher effort, and to say ‘to shine’ as expressive of the state or act is higher still. Now, familiar as such efforts may be to us, there is ample proof that they could not have been so to the inventors of language, because they are not so, even now, to some nations of mankind after all their long millenniums of existence. Instances of this fact have been repeatedly adduced.”[284] Thus, for example, the Society Islanders have separate words for dog’s-tail, bird’s-tail, sheep’s-tail, &c., but no word for tail itself—i.e. tail in general.[285] The Mohicans have words to signify different kinds of cutting, but no verb “to cut;” and forms for “I love him,” “I love you,” &c., but no verb “to love;” while the Choctanis have names for different species of oak, but no word for the genus oak.[286] Again, the Australians have no word for tree, or even for bird, fish, &c.;[287] and the Eskimo, although he has verbs which signify to fish-seal, to fish-whale, &c., has not any verb “to fish.” “Ces langues,” Du Ponceau remarks, “gÉnÉralisent rarement;” and he shows that they have not even any verb to imply “I will,” or “I wish,” although they have separate verbal forms for “I wish to eat meat,” “I wish to eat soup;” neither have they any general noun-substantive which means “a blow,” although they have a variety which severally mean blows with as many different kinds of instruments.[288] Similarly, Mr. Crawford tells us, “the Malay is very deficient in abstract words; and the usual train of ideas of the people who speak it does not lead them to make a frequent use even of the few they possess. With this poverty of the abstract is united a redundancy of the concrete,”—and he gives many instances of the same kind as those above rendered from other languages.[289] So, likewise, we are told, “the dialect of the Zulus is rich in nouns denoting different objects of the same genus, according to some variety of colour, or deficiency of members, or some other peculiarity,” such as “white-cow,” “red-cow,” “brown-cow;”[290] and the SechuÂna has no fewer than ten words all meaning “horned cattle.”[291] Cheroki presents thirteen different verbs to signify different kinds of washing, without any to indicate “washing” itself;[292] and Milligan says that the aborigines of Tasmania had “no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of gum-tree, wattle-tree, &c., they had a name, but they had no equivalent for the expression of ‘a tree;’ neither could they express abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round.”[293]

Lastly, to give only one other example, Dr. Latham states that a Kurd of the Zaza tribe, who furnished Dr. Sandwith with a list of native words, was not “able to conceive a hand or father, except so far as they were related to himself, or something else; and so essentially concrete rather than abstract were his notions, that he combined the pronoun with the substantive whenever he had a part of the human body or a degree of consanguinity to name,” saying sere-min, “my head,” and pie-min, “my father.”

Thus, as Professor Sayce remarks, after alluding to some of the above facts, “we may be sure that it was not “the ‘ideas of prime importance’ which primitive man struggled to represent, but those individual objects of which his senses were cognisant.”[294] And, without further multiplying testimony, we may now be prepared to accept from him the general statement that, “all over the world, indeed, wherever we come across a savage race, or an individual who has been unaffected by the civilization around him, we find this primitive inability to separate the particular from the universal by isolating the individual word, and extracting it, as it were, from the ideas habitually associated with it.”[295] Or, in my own phraseology, among all primitive races still existing, we meet with what must seem to my opponents a wholly unintelligible incapacity to evolve a concept from any number of recepts, notwithstanding that the latter may all be most nearly related together, and severally named by as many denotative signs: even with their numberless already-formed words for different kinds of trees, the aborigines of Tasmania could not designate “a tree.” Of course they must have had a recept of a tree, or a generic image formed out of innumerable perceptions of particular trees—so that, for instance, it would doubtless have surprised a Tasmanian could he have seen a tree (even though it were a new species for which he had no name) standing inverted with its roots in the air and its branches in the ground. In just the same way a dog is surprised when it first sees a man walking on his hands: the dog will bark at such an object because it conflicts with the generic image which has been automatically formed by numberless perceptions of individual men walking on their feet. But, in the absence of any name for trees in general, there is nothing to show that the savage has a concept answering to “tree,” any more than that the dog has a concept answering to “man.” Indeed, unless my opponents vacate the basis of Nominalism on which their opposition is founded, they must acknowledge that in the absence of any name for tree there can be no conception of tree.

So much, then, for what Archdeacon Farrar has called “the hopeless poverty of the power of abstraction” in savages. Their various languages unite, in verbal testimony, to assure us that human thought does not “proceed from the abstract to the concrete;” but, on the contrary, that in the race, as in the individual, receptual ideation is the precursor of conceptual—denotation the antecedent of denomination, as in still earlier stages it was itself preceded by gesticulation. Such being the case with regard to names, it is no wonder, as we previously found, that low savages are so extraordinarily deficient in their forms of predication.

The palÆontology of human thought, then, as recorded in language, incontestibly proves that the origin and progress of ideation in the race was psychologically identical with what we now observe in the individual. All the stages of ideation which we have seen to be characteristic of psychogenesis in a child, are thus revealed to us as having been characteristic of psychogenesis in mankind.

First there was the indicative stage. This is proved in two ways. On the one hand, all philologists will now agree with Geiger—“But, what says more than anything, language diminishes the further we look back, in such a way that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had no existence at all.”[296] On the other hand, even if we tap the tree of language as high up in its stem as the pronominal roots of Sanskrit, what is the kind of ideational sap which flows therefrom? It is, as we have already seen, so strongly suggestive of gesture and grimace that even Professor Max MÜller allows that in it we have “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.”[297]

Secondly, we have clear evidence of sentence-words, as well as of what I have called the denotative phase, or the naming of simple recepts—whether only of actions, or, as we may safely assume, likewise also of objects and qualities; and whether arbitrarily, or, as seems virtually certain, in chief part by onomatopoeia. Both these subordinate points, however—which are rendered more doubtful on account of the struggle for existence among words having proved favourable to denotative terms expressive of actions, and unfavourable to the survival of onomatopoeia—are of comparatively little moment to us; the important fact is the one which is most clearly testified to by the philological record, namely, that the lowest strata of this record yield fossils of the lowest order of development: the “121 concepts,” appear to be, for the most part, denotations of simple recepts.

Thirdly, higher up in the stratified deposits, we meet with overwhelming evidence of the connotative extension of these denotative terms. Indeed, many of these terms have probably undergone a certain amount of connotative extension as the condition to their having survived as roots; and, therefore, in these lowest deposits it is difficult to be sure that an apparently denotative term is not really a term which has undergone the earlier stages of connotative extension. If such were the case, we can understand the loss of any onomatopoetic significance which it may originally have presented. But, however this may be, there is an endless mass of evidence to prove the subsequent and continuous growth of connotative extension throughout the whole range of philological time.

Lastly, as regards the predicative phase, we have seen that philology shows the same order and method to have been followed in the race as in the child. In the growing child, as we have seen, pre-conceptual predication is contemporary with—or occupies the same psychological level as—the connotative extension of denotative terms. Indeed, the very act of connotation is in itself an act of predication—if in the conceptual sphere, of conceptual predication (denomination); if in the pre-conceptual, of pre-conceptual. Again, in the psychogenesis of the child we noted how important a part is played in the development of pre-conceptual predication by the mere apposition of connotative terms—such apposition being rendered inevitable by the laws of association. If A is the connotative name for A, B the connotative name for B, when the young child sees that A and B occur together, the statement A B is rendered inevitable by “the logic of events;” and this statement is a pre-conceptual proposition. Now, in both these respects philology yields abundant parallels. The quotations which I have given conclusively prove that “every word must originally have been a sentence;” or, in my own terminology, a pre-conceptual proposition of precisely the same kind as that which is employed by a young child. If it be replied that the young child is without self-consciousness, while the primitive man was not without self-consciousness, this would merely be to beg the whole question on which we are engaged, and, moreover, to beg it in the teeth of every antecedent probability, as well as of every actual analogy, to which appeal can possibly be made. If it be true—and who will venture to doubt it?—that “language diminishes the further we look back, in such a way that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had no existence at all,” will it be maintained that the man-like being who was then unable to communicate with his fellows by means of any words at all was gifted with self-consciousness? Should so absurd a statement be ventured, it would be fatal to the argument of my adversaries; for the statement would imply, either that concepts may exist without names, or that self-consciousness may exist without concepts. The truth of the matter is that philology has proved, in a singularly complete manner, the origin and gradual development in time, first of pre-conceptual communication, and next of the self-consciousness which supplied the basis of conceptual predication. No wonder, therefore, as Professor Max MÜller somewhat naively observes, “it may be said that the first step in the formation of names and concepts is very imperfect. So it is.” Truly “to name the act of carrying by a root formed from sounds which accompany the act of carrying a heavy load, is a far more primitive act than to fix an attribute by a name” conceptually applied. So primitive, indeed, is nomination of this kind, that I defy any one to show wherein it differs psychologically from what I have called the denotation of a young child, or even of a talking bird.

And, having reduced the matter to this issue so far as the results of philology are concerned, I may fitly conclude by briefly indicating the principal point which appears to divide my opinions from those of the eminent philologist just alluded to—if not also from those of the majority of my psychological opponents. Briefly, the point is that on the other side an unwarrantable assumption is made—to wit, that conceptual thought is an antecedent condition, sine qu non, to any and every act of bestowing a name; and, a fortiori, to any and every act of predication. This is the fundamental assumption, which, whether openly expressed or covertly implied, serves as the basis of the whole superstructure of my opponents’ argument. Now, I claim to have shown, by a complete inductive proof, that this assumption is not only unwarrantable in theory, but false in fact. There are names and names. Not every name that is bestowed betokens conceptual thought on the part of the namer. Alike from the case of the talking bird, of the young child, and of early man (so far as he has left any traces of his psychology in the structure of language), I have demonstrated that prior to the stage of denomination there are the stages of indication, denotation, and receptual connotation. These are the psychological stepping-stones across that “Rubicon of Mind,” which, owing to their neglect, has seemed to be impassable. The Concept (and, a fortiori, the Proposition) is not a structure of ideation which is presented to us without a developmental history. Although it has been uniformly assumed by all my opponents “that the simplest element of thought” can have had no such history, the assumption is, as I have said, directly contradicted by observable fact. Had the case been otherwise—had the concept really been without father and without mother, without beginning of days or end of life—then truly a case might have been shown for regarding it as an entity sui generis, destitute of kith or kin among all the other faculties of mind. But, as we have now so fully seen, no such unique exception to the otherwise uniform process of evolution can here be maintained: the phases of development which have gradually led up to conceptual thought admit of being as clearly traced as those which have led to any other product, whether of life or of mind.

Here, then, I bring to a close this brief and imperfect rendering of the “Witness of Philology.” But, brief and imperfect as the rendering is, I am honestly unable to see how it is conceivable that the witness itself could have been more uniform as to its testimony, or more multifarious as to its facts—more consistent, more complete, or more altogether overwhelming than we have found it to be. In almost every single respect it has corroborated the results of our psychological analysis. It has come forward like a living thing, which, in the very voice of Language itself, directly and circumstantially narrates to us the actual history of a process the constituent phases of which we had previously inferred. It has told us of a time when as yet mankind were altogether speechless, and able to communicate with one another only by means of gesticulation and grimace. It has described to us the first articulate sounds in the form of sentence-words, without significance apart from the pointings by which they were accompanied. It has revealed the gradual differentiation of such a protoplasmic form of language into “parts of speech;” and declared that these grammatical structures were originally the offspring of gesture-signs. More particularly, it has shown that in the earliest stages of articulate utterance pronominal elements, and even predicative words, were used in the impersonal manner which belongs to a hitherto undeveloped form of self-consciousness—primitive man, like a young child, having therefore spoken of his own personality in objective terminology. It has taught us to find in the body of every conceptual term a pre-conceptual core; so that, as the learned and thoughtful Garnett says, “nihil in oratione quod non prius in sensu may now be regarded as an incontrovertible axiom.”[298] It has minutely described the whole of that wonderful aftergrowth of articulate utterance through many lines of divergent evolution, in virtue of which all nations of the earth are now in possession, in one degree or another, of the god-like attributes of reason and of speech. Truly, as Archdeacon Farrar says, “to the flippant and the ignorant, how ridiculous is the apparent inadequacy of the origin to produce such a result.”[299] But here, as elsewhere, it is the method of evolution to bring to nought the things that are mighty by the things that are of no reputation; and when we feel disposed to boast ourselves in that we alone may claim the Logos, should we not do well to pause and remember in what it was that this our high prerogative arose? “So hat auch keine Sprache ein abstractum, zu dem sie nicht durch Ton und GefÜhl gelangt wÄre.”[300] To my mind it is simply inconceivable that any stronger proof of mental evolution could be furnished, than is furnished in this one great fact by the whole warp and woof of the thousand dialects of every pattern which are now spread over the surface of the globe. We cannot speak to each other in any tongue without declaring the pre-conceptual derivation of our speech; we cannot so much as discuss the “origin of human faculty” itself, without announcing, in the very medium of our discussion, what that origin has been. It is to Language that my opponents have appealed: by Language they are hopelessly condemned.