IF Evolution is the method of Creation, the
faculty of Speech was no sudden gift. Man's mind is not to be thought of
as the cylinder of a phonograph to which ready-made words were spoken and
stored up for future use. Before Homo sapiens was evolved he must
necessarily have been preceded for a longer or shorter period by Homo
alalus, the not-speaking man; and this man had to make his words, and
beginning with dumb signs and inarticulate cries to build up a body of
Language word by word as the body was built up cell by cell.
The alternative theory of the origin of Language
universally held until lately, and expressed in so many words even by the
eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that "our first
parents received it by immediate inspiration," has the same relation
to exact science as the view that the world was made in six days by direct
creative fiat. Both are poetically true. But to science, seeking for precise
methods of operation, neither is an adequate statement of now ascertained
facts. The same processes of research that made the poetic view of creation
untenable in the physical realm are now slowly beginning to displace the
older view of the origin of speech. That Language should be outside a law
whose universality is being established with every step of progress is
itself improbable; and now that the field is being exhaustively explored,
the proofs that it is no exception multiply on every side. The living interest
the mere suggestion gives to the study of Language is obvious. Evolution
enters no region--dull, neglected, or remote--of the temple of knowledge
without transforming it. Philology, since this wizard touched it, has become
one of the most entrancing of the sciences. And Language, from a study
which interested only a few specialists, is disclosed as one vast palimpsest,
every word and phrase luminous with the inner mind and soul of the past.
To penetrate far into this tempting region is beyond our province now.
The immediate object is to give a simple sketch of the possible conditions
which first led Man to speak; of the principles which apparently guided
the formation of his early vocabulary; and of the gradual refining of the
means of intercommunication between him and his fellow-men as time passed
on. Instead of beginning with words, therefore, we shall begin with Man.
For the first condition for understanding the Evolution of Speech is that
we take it up as a study from the life, that we place ourselves in the
primeval forest with early Man, in touch with the actual scenes in which
he lived, and note the real experiences and necessities of such a lot.
We may indeed discover in this research small trace of a miraculous inbreathing
of formal words. But to make Speech and fit it into a man, after all is
said, is less miraculous than to fit a man to make Speech.
One of the earliest devices hit upon in the
course of Evolution was the principle of co-operation. Long before men
had learned to form themselves into tribes and clans for mutual strength
and service, gregariousness was an established institution. The deer had
formed themselves into herds, and the monkeys into troops; the birds were
in flocks, and the wolves in packs; the bees in hives, and the ants in
colonies. And so abundant and dominant in every part of the world are these
social types to-day that we may be sure the gregarious state has exceptional
advantages in the upward struggle.
One of these advantages, obviously, is the
mere physical strength of numbers. But there is another and a much more
important one--the mental strength of a combination. Here is a herd of
deer, scattered, as they love to be, in a string, quarter of a mile long.
Every animal in the herd not only shares the physical strength of all the
rest, but their powers of observation. Its foresight in presence of possible
danger is the foresight of the herd. It has as many eyes as the herd, as
many ears, as many organs of smell, its nervous system extends throughout
the whole space covered by the line; its environment, in short, is not
only what it hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes, but what every single
member hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes. This means an enormous advantage
in the Struggle for Life. What deer have to arm themselves most against
is surprise. When it comes to an actual fight, comrades are of little use.
At that crisis the others run away and leave the victims to their fate.
But in helping one another to avert that crisis, the value of this mutual
aid is so great that gregarious animals, for the most part timid and defenceless
as individuals, have survived to occupy in untold multitudes the highest
places in Nature.
The success of the co-operative principle,
however, depends upon one condition: the members of the herd must be able
to communicate with one another. It matters not how acute the senses of
each animal may be, the strength of the column depends on the power to
transmit from one to another what impressions each may receive at any moment
from without. Without this power the sociality of the herd is stultified;
the army, having no signalling department, is powerless as an army. But
if any member of the herd is able by motion of head or foot or neck or
ear, by any sign or by any sound, to pass on the news that there is danger
near, each instantly enters into possession of the faculties of the whole.
Each has a hundred eyes, noses, ears. Each has quarter of a mile of nerves.
Thus numbers are strength only when strength is coupled with some power
of inter-communication by signs. If one herd develops this signalling system
and another does not, its chances of survival will be greater. The less
equipped herds will be slowly decimated and driven to the wall; and those
which survive to propagate their kind will be those whose signal-service
is most efficient and complete. Hence the Evolution of the signal-system.
Under the influence of Natural Selection its progress was inevitable. New
circumstances and relations would in time arise, calling for additions,
vocal, visible, audible, to the sign-vocabulary. And as time went on each
set of animals would acquire a definite signal-service of its own, elementary
to the last degree, yet covering the range of its ordinary experiences
and adequate to the expression of its limited mental states.
Now what interests us with regard to these
signs is that they are Language. The evolution we have been tracing
is nothing less than the first stage in the evolution of Speech. Any means
by which information is conveyed from one mind to another is Language.
And Language existed on the earth from the day that animals began to live
together. The mere fact that animals cling to one another, live together,
move about together, proves that they communicate. Among the ants, perhaps
the most social of the lower animals, this power is so perfect that they
are not merely endowed with a few general signs but seem able to convey
information upon matters of detail. Sweeping across country in great armies
they keep up communication throughout the whole line, and succeed in conveying
to one another information as to the easiest routes, the presence of enemies
or obstacles, the proximity of food supplies, and even of the numbers required
on emergencies to leave the main band for any special service. Everyone
has observed ants stop when they meet one another and exchange a rapid
greeting by means of their waving antennae, and it is possibly through
these perplexing organs that definite intercourse between one creature
and another first entered the world. The exact nature of the antenna-language
is not yet fathomed, but the perfection to which it is carried proves that
the idea of language generally has existed in nature from the earliest
time. Among higher animals various outward expressions of emotions are
made, and these become of service in time for the conveyance of information
to others. The howl of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the bleat of the
lamb, the stamp of the goat, and other signs are all readily understood
by other animals. One monkey utters at least six different sounds to express
its feelings; and Mr. Darwin has detected four or five modulations in the
bark of the dog: "the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of
anger as well as growling; the yelp or howl of despair when shut up; the
baying at night; the bark of joy when starting on a walk with his master;
and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for
a door or window to be opened.
Now these signs are as much language as spoken
words. You have only to evolve this to get all the language the dictionary-maker
requires. Any method of communication, as already said, is Language, and
to understand Language we must fix in our minds- the idea that it has no
necessary connection with actual words. In the simple instances just given
there are illustrations of at least three kinds of Language. When a deer
throws up its head suddenly, all the other deer throw up their heads. That
is a sign. It means "listen." If the first deer sees the object,
which has called its attention, to be suspicious, it utters a low note.
That is a word. It means "caution." If next it sees the object
to be not only suspicious but dangerous it makes a further use of Language--intonation.
Instead of the low note "listen," it utters a sharp loud cry
that means "Run for your life." Hence these three kinds of Language--a
sign or gesture, a note or word, an intonation.
Down to this present hour these are still
the three great kinds of Language. The movement of foot or ear have been
evolved into the modern gesture or grimace; the note or cry into a word,
and the intonation into an emphasis or inflexion of the voice. These are
still, indeed, not only the main elements in Language but the only elements.
The eloquence which enthrals the legislators of St Stephen's, or the appeal
which melts the worshippers at St. Paul's, originated in the voices of
the forest and the activities of the ant-hill. To those who have not realized
the exceeding smallness of the beginnings of all new developments, the
suggestion of science as to the origin of Language, like many of its other
suggestions about early stages, will seem almost ludicrous. But a knowledge
of two things warns one not to look for surprises at the beginning of Evolution
but at the end. In the first place, it is all but a cardinal principle
that developments are brought about by minute, slow and insensible degrees.
The second fact is even more important. The theatre of change is the actual
world, and the exciting cause something really happening in every-day life.
Few departures are not made in the air. They arise in connection with some
commonplace event; and usually take the shape of some slightly new response.
In other connections, of course, the converse is also true, but when a
change occurs for the first time in the life of an organism the exciting
cause, whatever the internal adaptation, or want of it, is some change
in the environment. Among the events then, actually happening in the day's
round, we are to seek for the exciting cause of the earliest forms of speech.
The simplest Language open to Man was that
which we have already seen to mark the beginning of all Language, the Language
of gesture or sign. To the word gesture, however, it is necessary to attach
a larger meaning than the term ordinarily expresses to us. It is not to
be limited, for example, to visible movements of the limbs or facial muscles.
The ejaculations of the savage, the drumming of the gorilla, the screech
of the parrot, the crying, growling, purring, hissing, and spitting of
other animals are all forms of gesture. Nor is it possible to separate
the Language of gesture from the Language of intonation. These have grown
up side by side and can neither be distinguished psychologically nor as
to priority in the order of Evolution. Intonation, though it has grown
to be infinitely the more delicate instrument of the two and is still so
important a part of some Languages --the Chinese, for example--as to be
an integral part of them, has its roots in the same soil and must be looked
upon as, along with it, the earliest form of Language.
That this Gesture-Language marked, if not
the dawn, at least a very early stage of Language in the case of Man, there
is abundant evidence. Apart from analogy, there are at least three witnesses
who may be cited in proof not only of the fact, but of the high perfection
to which a Gesture-Language may be carried. The first of these witnesses
is the homo alalus, the not-speaking man, of to-day, the deaf-mute.
As an actual case of a human being reduced as regards the power of speech
to the level of early Man his evidence, even with all allowances for the
high development of his mental faculties, is of scientific value. The mere
fact that a deaf man is also a dumb man is almost a final answer to the
affirmation that the power of speech is an original and intuitive faculty
of Man. If it were so, there is no reason why a deaf man should not speak.
The vocal apparatus in his case is complete; all that is required to make
him utter a definite sound is to hear one. When he hears one, but not till
then, he can imitate it. Language, so far as the testimony of the deaf-mute
goes, is clearly a matter of imitation. Unable to attain the second stage
of Language--words--he has to content himself with the first--signs. And
this Language he has evolved to its last perfection. It shows how little
the mere utterance of words has to do with Language, that the deaf-mute
is able to converse on every-day subjects almost as perfectly as those
who can speak. The permutations and combinations that can be produced with
ten pliable fingers, or with the varying expressions of the muscles of
the face, are endless, and everything that he cares to know can be uttered
or translated to him by motion, gesture, and grimace. To give an idea how
far gestures can be made to do the work of spoken words, the signs may
be described in which a deaf-and-dumb man once told a child's story in
presence of Mr. Tylor. "He began by moving his hand, palm down, about
a yard from the ground, as we do to show the height of a child-- this meant
that it was a child he was thinking of. Then he tied an imaginary pair
of bonnet-strings under his chin (his usual sign for female), to make it
understood that the child was a little girl. The child's mother was then
brought on the scene in a similar way. She beckons to the child and gives
her twopence, these being indicated by pretending to drop two coins from
one hand into the other; if there had been any doubt as to whether they
were copper or silver coins, this would have been settled by pointing to
something brown or even by one's contemptuous way of handling coppers which
at once distinguishes them from silver. The mother also gives the child
a jar, shown by sketching its shape with the forefingers in the air, and
going through the act of handing it over. Then by imitating the unmistakable
kind of twist with which one turns a treacle-spoon, it is made known that
it is treacle the child has to buy. Next, a wave of the hand shows the
child being sent off on her errand, the usual sign of walking being added,
which is made by two fingers walking on the table. The turning of an imaginary
door-handle now takes us into the shop, when the counter is shown by passing
the flat hands as it were over it. Behind this counter a figure is pointed
out; he is shown to be a man by the usual sign of putting one's hand to
one's chin and drawing it down where the beard is or would be; then the
sign of tying an apron around one's waist adds the information that the
man is the shopman. To him the child gives her jar, dropping the money
into his hand, and moving her forefinger as if taking up treacle to show
what she wants. Then we see the jar put into an imaginary pair of scales
which go up and down; the great treacle-jar is brought from the shelf and
the little one filled, with the proper twist to take up the last trickling
thread; the grocer puts the two coins in the till, and the little girl
sets off with the jar. The deaf-and-dumb story-teller went on to show in
pantomime how the child, looking down at the jar, saw a drop of treacle
on the rim, wiped it off with her finger, and put the finger in her mouth,
how she was tempted to take more, how her mother found her out by the spot
of treacle on her pinafore, and so forth.
A second witness is savage Man. Some of the
more primitive races, far as they have evolved past the alalus stage,
still cling to the gesture-language which bulked so largely in the intercourse
of their ancestors. No one who has witnessed a conversation--one says "witnessed,"
for it is more seeing than hearing--between two different tribes of Indians
can have any doubt of the working efficiency of this method of speech.
After ten minutes of almost pure pantomime each will have told the other
everything that it is needful to say. Indians of different tribes, indeed,
are able to communicate most perfectly on all ordinary subjects with no
more use of the voice than that required for the emission of a few different
kinds of grunts. The fact that stranger tribes make so large a use of gesture
in expressing themselves to one another does not, of course, imply that
each has not a word-language of its own. But few of the Languages of primitive
peoples are complete without the additions which gesture offers. There
are gaps in the vocabulary of almost all savage tribes due to the fact
that in actual speech the lacunae are bridged by signs, and many
of their words belong more to the category of signs than to that of words.
The final witness is the first attempt at
Language of a little child. Universally an infant opens communication with
the mental world around it in the primitive language of gesture and tone.
Long before it has learned to speak, without the use of a single word it
conveys information as to fundamental wants, and expresses all its varying
moods and wishes with a vehemence and point which are almost the envy of
riper years. The interesting thing about this is that it is spontaneous.
In later childhood it has to be taught to speak--because speech
is a fine art--but to utter the hereditary and primitive Language of mankind
requires no prompting. Words are conventional, movements and sounds are
natural. The Language of the nursery is the native Language of the forest,
the inarticulate cry of the animal, the intonation of the savage. To quote
from Mallery:--"The wishes and emotions of very young children are
conveyed in a small number of sounds, but in a great variety of gestures
and facial expressions. A child's gestures are intelligent long in advance
of speech; although very early and persistent attempts are made to give
it instruction in the latter but none in the former, from the time when
it begins risu cognoscere matrem. It learns words only as they are
taught, and learns them through the medium of signs which are not expressly
taught. Long after familiarity with speech it consults the gestures and
facial expressions of its parents and nurses, as if seeking them to translate
or explain their words. These facts are important in reference to the biologic
law that the order of development of the individual is the same as that
of the species. . . . The insane understand and obey gestures when they
have no knowledge whatever of words. It is also found that semi-idiotic
children who cannot be taught more than the merest rudiment of speech can
receive a considerable amount of information through signs, and can express
themselves by them. Sufferers from aphasia continue to use appropriate
gestures. A stammerer, too, works his arms and features as if determined
to get his thoughts out, in a manner not only suggestive of the physical
struggle, but of the use of gesture as a hereditary expedient.
The survival both of gesture and intonation
in modern adult speech, and especially the unconsciousness of their use,
illustrate how indelibly these primitive forms of Language are embedded
in the human race. There are doubtless exceptions, but it is probably the
rule that gestures are mainly called in to supplement expression when the
subject-matter of discourse does not belong to the highest ranges of thought,
or the speaker to the loftiest type of oratory. The higher levels of thought
were reached when the purer forms of spoken Language had become the vehicle
of expression; and, as has often been noticed, when a speaker soars into
a very lofty region, or allows his mind to grapple intensely and absorbingly
with an exalted theme, he becomes more and more motionless, and only resumes
the gesture-language when he descends to commoner levels. It is not only
that a fine speaker has a greater command of words and is able to dispense
with auxiliaries --as a master of style can dispense with the use of italics--but
that, at all events, in the case of abstract thought, it is untranslatable
into gesture-speech. Gestures are suggestions and reminders of things seen
and heard. They are nearly all attached to objects or to moods, and rival
words only when used of every-day things. "No sign talker," Mr.
Romanes reminds us, "with any amount of time at his disposal, could
translate into the language of gesture a page of Kant.
The next stage in the Evolution of Language
must have been reached as naturally as the Language of gesture and tone.
From the gesture-language to mixtures of signs and sounds, and finally
to the specialization of sound into words, is a necessary transition. Apart
from the fact that gestures and tones have limits, circumstances must often
have arisen in the life of early Man when gesture was impossible. A sign
Language is of no use when one savage is at one end of a wood and his wife
at the other. He must now roar; and to make his roar explicit, he must
have a vocabulary of roars, and of all shades of roars. In the darkness
of night also, his signs are useless, and he must now whisper and have
a vocabulary of whispers. Nor is it difficult to conceive where he got
his first brief list of words. Instead of drawing things in the air with
his finger, he would now try to imitate their sounds. Everything around
him that conveyed any impression of sound would have associated with it
some self-expressive word, which all familiar with the original sound could
instantly recognize. Imagine, for instance, a herd of buffalo browsing
in a glade of the African forest. The vanguard, some little distance from
its neighbours, hears the low growl of a lion. That growl, of course, is
Language, and the buffalo understands it as well as we do when the word
"lion" is pronounced. Between the word "lion" spoken,
and the object lion growled, there is no difference in the effect. Suppose,
next, the buffalo wished to convey to its comrades the knowledge that a
lion was near, a lion and not some other animal, it might imitate this
growl. It is not likely that it would do so; some other sign expressing
alarm in general would probably be used, for the discrimination of the
different sources of danger is probably an achievement beyond this animal's
power. But if Primitive Man was placed under the same circumstances, granting
that he had begun in a feeble way to exercise mind, he would almost certainly
come in time to denote a lion by an imitated growl, a wolf by an imitated
whine, and so on. The sighing of the wind, the flowing of the stream, the
beat of the surf, the note of the bird, the chirp of the grasshopper, the
hiss of the snake, would each be used to express these things. And gradually
a Language would be built up which included all the things in the environment
with which sound was either directly, indirectly, or accidentally associated.
That this method of word-making is natural
is seen in the facility with which it is still used by children; and from
the early age at which they begin to employ it, the sound Language is clearly
one of the very first forms of speech. All a child's words are of course
gathered through the sense of hearing, but if it can itself pick up a word
direct from the object, it will use it long before it elects to repeat
the conventional name taught it by its nurse. The child who says moo
for cow, or bow-wow for dog, or tick-tick for watch, or puff-puff
for train, is an authority on the origin of human speech. Its father, when
he talks of the hum of machinery or the boom of the cannon,
when he calls champagne fizz or a less aristocratic beverage pop,
is following in the wake of the inventors of Language. Among savage peoples,
and especially those encountering the first rush of new things and thoughts
brought them by the advancing wave of civilization, word-making is still
going on; and wherever possible the favourite principle seems to be that
of sound.
How full all Languages are of these sound-words
is known to the philologist, though multitudes of words in every Language
have had their pedigree effaced or obscured by time. "An Englishman
would hardly guess from the present pronunciation and meaning of the word
pipe what its origin was; yet when he compares it with the Low Latin pipa,
French pipe, pronounced more like our word peep, to chirp, and meaning
such a reed-pipe as shepherds played on, he then sees how cleverly the
very sound of the musical pipe has been made into a word for all kinds
of tubes, such as tobacco-pipes and water-pipes. Words like this travel
like Indians on the war-path, wiping out their footmarks as they go. For
all we know multitudes of our ordinary words may have thus been made from
real sounds, but have now lost beyond recovery the traces of their first
expressiveness. In the Chinuk language of the West Coast of America, to
cite a few more of Tylor's instances, a tavern is called a "heehee-house,"
that is a laughter house, or an amusement house, the word for amusement
being taken by an obvious association from the laughter which it excites.
How indirect a derivation may be is illustrated by the word which the Basutos
of South Africa use for courtier. The buzz of a certain fly resembles
the sound ntsi-ntsi, and they apply this word to those who buzz
round the chief as a fly buzzes round a piece of meat. As everyone knows
"papa" for father, is evolved into papa the pope, and "abba"
the Hebrew for father into abbot. For plurals, a doubling of the word is
often used, but no doubt at first quantity was expressed by gestures or
by numbering on the fingers. "Orang" is the Malay for Man, "Orang-orang"
for men, while "Orangutan" is wild man. Verbs are formed on the
same principle as nouns. In the Tecuna language of Brazil the verb to sneeze
is haitschu, while the Welsh for a sneeze is tis. Other verbs
which came to have large and comprehensive meanings arose out of the simple
activities and occupations of primitive life. Thus the first verb in the
Bible, the Hebrew "bara" now meaning create, was originally used
for cutting or hewing, the first step in making things. In the Borneo language
of Africa, the verb "to make" comes from the word tando,
to weave. In English, "to suffer" meant to bear as a burden,
and to "apprehend an idea" was originally to "catch hold"
of some "sight." Even Max Muller, who opposes the onomatopoetic
theory with regard to the origin of most words, agrees that the sounds
of the occupation of men, and especially of men working together, and making
special sounds at their task--such as builders, soldiers, and sailors--are
widely represented in modern speech.
Though mimicry, sometimes exact, but probably
more often a mere echo or suggestion of the sound to be recalled, is responsible
for some of the material of Language, multitudes of words appear to have
no such origin. There are infinitely more words than sounds in the world;
and even things which have very distinct sounds have been named without
any regard to them. The inventors of the word watch, for instance, did
not call it tick-tick but watch, the idea being taken from
the watchman who walked about at night and kept the time; and when
the steam-engine appeared, instead of taking the obvious sound-name puff-puff,
it was called engine (Lat. ingenium), to signify that it was a work
of genius. These modern words, however, are the coinages of an intellectual
age, and it was to be expected that the inventors should look deeper below
the surface. How those words which have no apparent association with sound
were formed in early times remains a mystery. With some the original sound-association
has probably been lost; in the case of others, the association may have
been so indirect as to be now untraceable. The sounds available in savage
life for word-making could never have been so numerous as the things requiring
names, and as civilization advanced the old words would be used in new
connections, while wholly new terms must have been coined from time to
time. Both these methods--the habit of generalizing unconsciously from
single terms, and the trick of coining new words in a wholly conventional
way--are still continually employed by savages as well as by children.
Thus, to take an example of the first, Mr. John Moir, one of the earliest
white men to settle in East Central Africa, was at once named by the natives
Mandala, which means "a reflection in still water," because
he wore on his eyes what looked to them a still water (spectacles).
Afterwards they came to call not only Mr. Moir by that name, but spectacles,
and finally--when it entered the country--glass itself. Examples of generalization
among children abound in every nursery. A child is taken to the window
by his nurse to see the moon. The easy monosyllable is caught up at once,
and for some time the child applies it indiscriminately to anything bright
or shining--the gas, the candle, the firelight are each "the moon."
Mr. Romanes records a case where a child made a similar use of the word
star--the gas, the candle, the firelight were each "a star."
If the makers of Language proceeded on this principle, no wonder the philologist
has riddles to read. How often must the savage children of the world have
started off naming things from two such different points? Mr. Romanes mentions
a still more elaborate example which was furnished him by Mr. Darwin: "The
child, who was just beginning to speak, called a duck `quack,' and, by
special association, it also called water `quack.' By an appreciation of
the resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term `quack' to denote
all birds and insects on the one hand, and all fluid substances on the
other. Lastly, by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance, the
child eventually called all coins `quack,' because on the back of a French
sou it had once seen the representation of an eagle. Hence, to the child,
the sign `quack,' from having originally had a very specialized meaning,
became more and more extended in its significance, until it now seems to
designate such apparently-different objects as `fly,' `wine,' and `coin.'
The instructiveness of this, in showing the
reason why philology is often so helplessly at a loss in tracking far-strayed
words to their original sense, is plain. In the nature of the case, the
onomatopoetic theory can never be proved in more than a fraction of cases.
So cunning is the mind in associating ideas, so swift in making new departures,
that the clue to multitudes of words must be obliterated by time, even
if the first forms and spellings of the words themselves remain in their
original integrity --which rarely happens--to offer a feasible point to
start the search from.
But it is far from necessary to assume that
all words should have had a rational ancestry. On the contrary many words
are probably deliberate artificial inventions. When not only every human
being, but every savage and every child has the ability as well as the
right to call anything it likes by any name it chooses, it is vain in every
case to seek for any general principle underlying the often arbitrary conjunctions
of letters and sounds which we call words. Words cannot all at least be
treated with the same scientific regard as we would treat organic forms.
When dissected, in the nature of the case, they cannot be expected to reveal
specific structure such as one finds in a fern or a cray-fish. A fern or
a cray-fish is the expression of an infinitely subtle and intricate adaptation,
while a word may be a mere caprice. Perhaps, indeed, the greatest marvel
about philology is that there should be a philology at all--that Languages
should be so rich in association, so pregnant with the history and poetry
of the past. Into the problem, therefore, of how the infinite variety of
words in a Language was acquired it is unnecessary to enter at length.
Once the idea had dawned of expressing meaning by sounds, the formation
of words and even of Languages is a mere detail. We have probably all invented
words. Almost every family of children invents words of its own, and cases
are known where quite considerable Languages have been manufactured in
the nursery. When boys play at brigands and pirates they invent pass-words
and names, and from mere love of secrets and mysteries concoct vocabularies
which no one can understand but themselves.
This simple fact indeed has been used with
great plausibility to account for differences in dialect among different
tribes, and even for the partial origin of new Languages. Thus the structure
of the Indian languages has long puzzled philologists. Whitney informs
us that as regards the material of expression, there is "irreconcilable
diversity" among them. "There are a very considerable number
of groups between whose significant signs exist no more apparent correspondences
than between those of English, Hungarian, and Malay; none namely which
may not be merely fortuitous." To account for these dialects a suggestion,
as interesting as it is ingenious, has been advanced by Dr. Hale. Imagine
the case of a family of Red Indians, father, mother, and half a dozen children,
in the vicissitudes of war, cut off from their tribe. Suppose the father
to be scalped and the mother soon to die. The little ones left to themselves
in some lonely valley, living upon roots and herbs, would converse for
a time by using the few score words they had heard from their parents.
But as they grew up they would require new words and would therefore coin
them. As they became a tribe they would require more words, and so in time
a Language might arise, all the words expressive of the simpler relations--father,
mother, tent, fire--being common to other Indian Languages, but all the
later words purely arbitrary and necessarily a standing puzzle to philology.
The curious thing is that this theory is borne out by some most interesting
geographical facts. "If, under such circumstances, disease, or the
casualties of a hunter's life should carry off the parents, the survival
of the children would, it is evident, depend mainly upon the nature of
the climate and the ease with which food could be procured at all seasons
of the year. In ancient Europe, after the present climatal conditions were
established, it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years of
age could have lived through a single winter. We are not, therefore, surprised
to find that no more than four or five linguistic stocks are represented
in Europe. Of North America, east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the
tropics, the same may be said. The climate and the scarcity of food in
winter forbid us to suppose that a brood of orphan children could have
survived, except possibly, by a fortunate chance, in some favoured spot
on the shore of the Mexican Gulf, where shell-fish, berries, and edible
roots are abundant and easy of access. But there is one region where Nature
seems to offer herself as the willing nurse and bountiful stepmother of
the feeble and unprotected. Of all countries on the globe, there is probably
not one in which a little flock of very young children would find the means
of sustaining existence more readily than in California. Its wonderful
climate, mild and equable beyond example, is well known. Half the months
are rainless. Snow and ice are almost strangers. There are fully two hundred
cloudless days in every year. Roses bloom in the open air through all seasons.
Berries of many sorts are indigenous and abundant. Large fruits and edible
nuts on low and pendant boughs may be said in Milton's phrase to `hang
amiable.' Need we wonder that in such a mild and fruitful region, a great
number of separate tribes were found speaking languages which careful investigation
has classed in nineteen distinct linguistic stocks?" Even more striking
is the case of Oregon on the Californian border, which is also a favoured
and luxuriant land. "The number of linguistic stocks in this narrow
district is more than twice as large as in the whole of Europe.
In such ways as these we may conceive of
early Man building up the fabric of speech. In time his vocabulary would
enlarge and become, so far as objects in the immediate environment were
concerned, fairly complete. As Man gained more knowledge of the things
around him, as he came into larger relations with his fellows, as life
became more rich and complex, this accumulation of words would go on, each
art as it was introduced creating new terms, each science pouring in contributions
to the fund, until the materials of human speech became more and more complete.
This process was never finished. The evolution of Language is still going
on. No corroboration of the theory of the evolution of Language could be
more perfect than the simple fact that it has gone on steadily down to
the present hour and is going on now. Tens of thousands of words--no longer
now onomatopoetic--have been evolved since Johnson compiled his dictionary,
and every year sees additions not only to technical terms but to the Language
of the people. The English Language is now being grown on two or three
different kinds of soil, and the different fruits and flavours that result
are intercharged and mixed, to enrich, or adulterate, the common English
tongue. The mere fact that Language-making is a living art at the present
hour, if not an argument against the theory that Language is a special
gift, at least shows that Man has a special gift of making Language. If
Man could manufacture words in any quantity, there was little reason why
he should have been presented with them ready-made. The power to manufacture
them is gift enough, and none the less a gift that we know some of the
steps by which it was given, or at least through which it was exercised.
But if the very words were given him as they stand, it is more than singular
that so many of them should bear traces of another origin. Even Trench
at this point succumbs to the theory of development, and his testimony
is the more valuable that it is evidently so very much against the grain
to admit it. He begins by stating apparently the opposite:--"The truer
answer to the inquiry how language arose is this: God gave man language
just as He gave him reason, and just because He gave him reason; for what
is man's word but his reason coming forth that it may behold
itself? They are indeed so essentially one and the same that the Greek
language has one word for them both. He gave it to him, because he could
not be man, that is, a social being, without it." Yet he is too profound
a student of words to fail to qualify this, and had he failed to do so
every page in his well-known book had judged him. "Yet," he continues,
"this must not be taken to affirm that man started at the first furnished
with a full-formed vocabulary of words, and as it were with his first dictionary
and first grammar ready-made to his hands. He did not thus begin the world
with names, but with the power of naming: for man is not
a mere speaking machine; God did not teach him words, as one of us teaches
a parrot, from without; but gave him a capacity, and then evoked the capacity
which He gave.
If the theory just given as to the formation
of Language, or at least as to the possible formation of Language, be more
than a fairy tale, there is another quarter in which corroboration of an
important kind should lie. Hitherto we have examined, as witnesses, the
makers of words; it may be worth while for a moment to place in the witness-box
the words themselves. A chemist has two methods of determining the composition
of any body, analysis and synthesis. Having seen how words may be built
up, it remains for us to see whether on analysis they bear trace of having
been built up in the way, and from the elements, suggested. Comparative
Philology has now made an actual investigation into the words and structure
of all known Languages, and the information sought by the evolutionist
lies ready-made to his hand. So far as controversy might be expected to
arise here on the theory of development itself, there is none. For the
first fact to interest us in this new region is that every student of Language
seems to have been compelled to give in his adherence to the general theory
of Evolution. All agree with Renan that "Sans doute les langues, comme
tout ce qui est organise, sont sujettes a la loi du development graduel."
And even Max Muller, the least thorough-going from an evolutionary point
of view of all philologists, asserts that "no student of the science
of Language can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wherever he looks,
he sees nothing but evolution going on all around him."
The outstanding discovery of the dissector
of words is that, vast and complex as Languages appear, they are really
composed of few and simple elements. Take the word "evolutionary."
The termination "ary" is a late addition added to this and to
thousands of other words for a special purpose; the same applies to the
syllable "tion." The first letter e distinguishes evolution
from convolution, revolution, involution, and is also a later growth. None
of these extra syllables is of first importance; by themselves they have
almost no meaning. The part which will not disappear or melt away
into mere grammar, on which the stress of the sense hangs, is the syllable
"vol" or "volv," and, so far as the English language
is concerned, it is to be looked upon as the root. By running it to earth
in older languages its source is found in a still more radical word, and
therefore it must next be blotted out of the list of primitive words. By
patient comparison of all other words with all other words, of Languages
with Languages, and apparent roots with apparent roots, the supposed primitive
roots of Language have been found. Just as all the multifarious objects
in the material world--water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood, iron, paper,
cloth--are resolvable by the chemist into some sixty-eight elements, so
all the words in each of the three or four great groups of Language yield
on the last analysis only a few hundred original roots. That still further
analysis may break down some or many of these is not impossible. But the
facts as they stand are all significant. The further we go back into the
past the Languages become thinner and thinner, the words fewer and fewer,
the grammar poorer and poorer. Of the thousand known Languages it has been
found possible to reduce all to three or four--probably three --great families;
and each of these in turn is capable of almost unlimited philological pruning.
In analyzing the Sanskrit language, Professor Max Muller reduces its whole
vocabulary to 121 roots--the 121 "original concepts." "These
121 concepts constitute the stock-in-trade with which I maintain that every
thought that has ever passed through the mind of India, so far as known
to us in its literature, has been expressed. It would have been easy to
reduce that number still further, for there are several among them which
could be ranged together under more general concepts. But I leave this
further reduction to others, being satisfied as a first attempt with having
shown how small a number of seeds may produce, and has produced, the enormous
intellectual vegetation that has covered the soil of India from the most
distant antiquity to the present day.
That a "first attempt" should have
succeeded in reducing this vast family of Languages to 121 words is significant.
The exhumation by philology of this early cluster reminds one of the discovery
of the segmented ovum in embryology. Such clusters appear at an early stage
in the history of all developments. The processes which precede this stage
are of the utmost subtlety, but in embryology they have yielded to the
later analysis of the microscope. So it may be one day with the natural
history of Language. We may never, for obvious reasons, get back to the
actual beginning, but we may get nearer. When the embryologist reached
his cluster of cells in the segmented ovum, he did not believe he had found
the dawn of life. What further the philologist may find remains a mystery.
Where these 121 words came from may never be known. But the development
from that point sufficiently shows that words, like everything else, have
followed the universal law, and that Languages, starting from small beginnings,
have grown in volume, intricacy, and richness, as time rolled on. "All
philologists," says Romanes, "will now agree with Geiger--'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.'"
The history of progress for a long time henceforth
is the history of the progress of language and the increase in intelligence
which necessarily went along with it. From being able to say what he knew,
Man went on to write what he knew. The Evolution of writing went through
the same general stages as the Evolution of Speech. First there was the
onomatopoetic writing--as it were, the growl-writing--the ideograph, the
imitation of an actual object. This is the form we find fossil in the Egyptian
hieroglyphic. For a man a man was drawn, for a camel a camel, for a hut
a hut. Then intonation was added--accents, that is, for extra meaning or
extra emphasis. Then to save time the objects were drawn in shorthand--a
couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in the Chinese for man;
a square in the same language for a field; two strokes at an obtuse angle,
suggesting the roof, for a house. To express further qualities, these abbreviated
pictures were next compounded in ingenious ways. A man and a field together
conveyed the idea of wealth, and because a man with a field was rich, he
was supposed to be happy, and the same combination stood, and stands to
this day, for contentment. When a roof is drawn and a woman beneath it--or
the strokes which represent a roof and a woman--we have the idea of a woman
at home, a woman at peace, and hence the symbol comes to stand for quietness
and rest. Chinese writing is picture-writing with the pictures degenerated
into dashes--a lingual form of the modern impressionism.
When writing was fully evolved, this height
was only the starting-point for some new development. Every summit in Evolution
is the base of some grander peak. Speech, whether by writing or by spoken
word, is too crude and slow to keep pace with the needs of the now swiftly
ascending mind. Man's larger life demands a further specialization of this
power. He learned to speak at first because he could not convey his thoughts
to his wife at the other side of the wood. It was Space that made him speak.
He now learns to speak better because he cannot convey his thoughts to
the other end of the world. This new distance-language began again at the
beginning, just as all Language does, by employing signs. Man invented
the telegraph--a little needle which makes signs to some one at the other
side of the world. The telegraph is a gesture-language, and is therefore
only a primitive stage. Man found this out and from signs went on to sounds--he
invented the telephone. By all the traditions of Evolution this marvellous
instrument ought to be, and is even now on the verge of being, the vehicle
of the distance-language of the future.
Is this the end? It is by no means likely.
The mind is feeling about already for more perfect forms of human intercourse
than telegraphed or telephoned words. As there was a stage in the ascent
of Man at which the body was laid aside as a finished product, and made
to give way to Mind, there may be a stage in the Evolution of Mind when
its material achievements--its body --shall be laid aside and give place
to a higher form of Mind. Telepathy has already become a word, not a word
for thought-reading or muscle-reading, but a scientific word. It means
"the ability of one mind to impress, or to be impressed by another
mind otherwise than through the recognized channels of sense. By men of
science, adepts in mental analysis, aware of all sources of error, armed
against fraud, this subject is now being made the theme of exhaustive observation.
It is too soon to pronounce. Practically we are in the dark. But there
are those in this fascinating and mysterious region who tell us that the
possibilities of a more intimate fellowship of man with man, and soul with
soul, are not to be looked upon as settled by our present views of matter
or of mind. However little we know of it, however remote we are from it,
whether it ever be realized or not, telepathy is theoretically the next
stage in the Evolution of Language. As we have seen, the introduction of
speech into the world was delayed, not because the possibilities of it
were not in Nature, but because the instrument was not quite ready. Then
the instrument came, and Man spoke. The development of the organ and the
development of the function went on together, arrived together, were perfected
together. What delayed the gesture-language of the telegraph was not that
electricity was not in Nature, but the want of the instrument. When that
came, the gesture-language came, and both were perfected together. What
delayed the telephone was not that its principle was not in Nature, but
that the instrument was not ready. What now delays its absolute victory
of space is not that space cannot be bridged, but that it is not ready.
May it not be that that which delays the power to transport and drive one's
thought as thought to whatever spot one wills, is not the fact that the
possibility is withheld by Nature, but that the hour is not quite come--that
the instrument is not yet fully ripe? Are there no signs, is the feeling
after it no sign, are there not even now some facts, to warrant us in treating
it, after all that Evolution has given us, as a still possible gift to
the human race? What strikes one most in running the eye up this graduated
ascent is that the movement is in the direction of what one can only call
spirituality. From the growl of a lion we have passed to the whisper of
a soul; from the motive fear, to the motive sympathy; from the icy physical
barriers of space, to a nearness closer than breathing; from the torturing
slowness of time to time's obliteration. If Evolution reveals anything,
if science itself proves anything, it is that Man is a spiritual being
and that the direction of his long career is towards an ever larger, richer,
and more exalted life. On the final problem of Man's being the voice of
science is supposed to be dumb. But this gradual perfecting of instruments,
and, as each arrives, the further revelation of what lies behind in Nature,
this gradual refining of the mind, this increasing triumph over matter,
this deeper knowledge, this efflorescence of the soul, are facts which
even Science must reckon with. Perhaps, after all, Victor Hugo is right:
"I am the tadpole of an archangel."
Before closing this outline two of the many
omitted points may be briefly referred to. In thinking of Language as a
"discovery," it is not necessary to assume that that discovery
involved the pre-existence of very high mental powers. These were probably
developed pari passu with Speech, but did not necessarily ante-date
it to such a degree as to make the preceding argument a petitio principii.
Obviously the discovery of Language could not in the first instance have
been responsible for the Evolution of Mind since Man must already have
had Mind enough to discover it. But this does not necessarily imply any
very high grade of intellect--very high, that is to say, as compared with
other contemporary animals--for it is possible that a comparatively slight
rise in intelligence might have led to the initial step from which all
the others might follow in rapid succession. An illustration, suggested
by a remark of Cope's, may help to make plain how a very slight cause may
initiate changes of an almost radical order and on the most gigantic scale.
In part of the Arctic regions at this moment
there is no such thing as liquid. Matter is only known there in the solid
form. The temperature may be thirty-one degrees below zero, or thirty-one
degrees above zero without making the slightest difference; there can be
nothing there but ice, glacier, and those crystals of ice which we call
snow. But suppose the temperature rose two degrees, the difference would
be indescribable. While no change for sixty degrees below that point made
the least difference, the almost inappreciable addition of two degrees
changes the country into a world of water. The glaciers, under the new
conditions, retreat into the mountains, the vesture of ice drops into the
sea, a garment of greenness clothes the land. So, in the animal world,
a very small rise beyond the animal maximum may open the door for a revolution.
With a brain of so many cubic inches, and so many pounds of brain matter,
we have animal intelligence. Everything below that limit is animal, and
the number of inches or pounds below it makes no difference. But pass to
a brain not a few but many pounds heavier, many cubic inches larger, and
very much more convoluted, and it is conceivable that in passing from the
lower to the higher figures some such change might occur as that which
differentiates solid from liquid in the case of water. What the chemist
calls a "critical point" might thus be passed, and from a condition
associated with certain properties--though in the brain we must speak of
accompaniments rather than properties--a condition associated with certain
other properties might be the result. Thus, as Cope says, "some Rubicon
has been crossed, some flood-gate has been opened, which marks one of Nature's
great transitions, such as have been called `expression-points' of progress."
A slight rise in intelligence might lead to the first acquisition of Speech,
and from this point the rise might be at once exceedingly swift and in
directions wholly new. The illustration is not to be taken for more than
it seeks to illustrate--which is not the method of transition as to qualitative
detail, but simply the fact that an apparently slight change may have startling
and indefinite results.
The last difficulty is this. If the connection
between Mind and Language is so vital, why do not Birds, many of which
apparently speak, emulate Man in mental power? If his speech is largely
responsible for his intelligence, why have not Birds --the parrot, for
instance--attained the same intelligence? Several answers might be suggested
to the question, and several kinds of answers-- biological, physiological,
philological, and psychological. But the real answer is the general one,
that to make animals human required a conspiracy of circumstances which
neither Birds nor any other animal fell heir to. It was one chance in a
million that the multitude of co-operating conditions which pushed Man
onward were fulfilled; and though it may never be known what these conditions
were, it was doubtless from the failure on the one hand to meet one or
more of them, and on the other from the success with which openings in
other directions were pursued by competing species, that Man was left alone
during the later aeons of his ascent.
The progenitors of Birds and the progenitors
of Man at a very remote period were probably one. But at a certain point
they parted company and diverged hopelessly and for ever. The Birds took
one road, the Mammals another; the Mammals for the most part kept to the
ground, the Birds took to the air. One consequence of this expedient in
the case of the Birds was disastrous. For observe the cost to them of the
aerial mode of life. The wing was made at the expense of the hand.
With this consummate organ buried in feathers, the use which the higher
Vertebrates made of it was denied them. Birds have the bones for a hand,
could have had a hand, but they waived their right to it. When it is considered
how much Man owes to the hand it may be conceived how much they have lost
by the want of it. Had Man not been a "tool-using animal," he
had probably never become a Man; the Bird, partly because it placed itself
out of the running here, has never been anything but a Bird. To one organism
only was it given to keep on the path of progress from the beginning to
the end, and so fulfil without deviation or relapse the final purpose of
Evolution.
Among the Coral Islands of the Pacific the savages everywhere speak of the white residents in New Caledonia as the Wee-wee men, or Wee-wees. Cannibals on a dozen different islands, speaking as many languages, have all this name in common. New Caledonia is a French Penal Settlement, containing thousands of French convicts, and one's first crude thought is that the Wee-wees are so named from their size. A moment's reflection, however, shows that it is taken from their sounds--that in fact we have here a very pretty example of modern onomatopoeia. These convicts, freed or escaped, find their way over the Pacific group; and the natives, seizing at once upon their characteristic sound, know them as Oui-oui's--a name which has now become general for all Frenchmen in the Southern Pacific.
The construction of the mouth and lips has of course had something to do with differences in Languages, and even with the possibility of language in the case of Man. You must have your trumpet before you can get the sound of a trumpet. One reason why many animals have no speech is simply that they have not the mechanism which by any possibility could produce it. They might have a Language, but nothing at all like human Language. It is one of the significant notes in Evolution that Man, almost alone among vertebrates, has a material body so far developed as to make it an available instrument for speech. There was almost certainly a time when this was to him a physical impossibility.
"The acquisition of articulate speech," says Prof. Macalister, "became possible to man only when the alveolar arch and palatine area became shortened and widened, and when his tongue, by its accommodation to the modified mouth, became shorter and more horizontally flattened, and the higher refinements of pronunciation depend for their production upon the more extensive modifications in the same direction." Even for differences in dialect, as the same writer points out, there is a physical basis. "With the macrodont alveolar arch and the corresponding modified tongue, sibilation is a difficult feat to accomplish, and hence the sibilant sounds are practically unknown in all the Australian dialects."--British Association: Anthropological Section. Edinb., 1891.