Illllll Illlll 'I'i'i'i'i'i ri l.r.l.l.l.l.ll-TTTlTITr ;w.^iHii!t'ii Please handle this volume with care. The University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs L BOOK 150. R66 c. 1 ROMANES # MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN lilllllllllll 3 T1S3 D00D3SflT 1 CCi 2 4 \924 i^ t«\ * /^y 46 46 4S 45 s Ay 45 45 44 ^ /y 44 44 4i 43 \t\ ^ 43 43 42 42 \>\ \\ /v 42 \^ \ \ /i / 41 4> 40 40 V \ \\ // 40 40 39 39 \=,\ ^ 39 39 38 38 ^ \'°\ /'>*/ 38 .38 -37 37 (\ \A /if /) 37 37 36 J 1 36 36 35 35 X*y \\ \ *" ' / A' 35 35 34 \\ \^ ( /^/ 34 .34 13 33 y.^y V\ \"* \ / V 33 3^ 32 f^? 0 \r>\ \ ~ \ / / 32 52 3> 3" \\ V \_\ \ \/ / 31 31 30 30 \ \ k \i\ \* \ / 30 30 29 29 \ \ \ \ ) %/ 29 29 28 Shame, Remoric, Ucceitrulnesi, Liulkroiu. 28 V \ / * / x-> 28 Indefinite morality. Arthropod Apes and Dog. 28 27 R...ng., R.g.. 27 \°\ "* V\/v /<7 27 Use of tools. r„icf. Hat., Cru.iiy, li.n.»okD«. 26 v,\ V / /^y 26 Understanding ofmecHanisms. .0 month.. 26 ZS 25 \./ /'/ 25 Recognition of Pictures, Understanding of words. Dreaming. Binls. B months. 25 24 Sympalhy. \ c \ V \ /v 24 Comn.unic.tion of ideas. Hymenoptera. 5 months. 23 2i \ \ \*\ /^v 23 Recognition of persons. Reptiles and C.phalopods, , nionthj. 23 22 Affection. \ \ '^ / 22 Reason. \ Higher Crustaca. >4 weelts. 22 2, Jealousy, Aiigo, Play. 21 -— —^-^ HI \ \/f/ 21 A-ssociation by similarity. 1. vreeks. 2, 20 Pat-eotal alTecIioti, Social feelings. Sexual jelec ion. Pugnacity, Industry, Curiosity. 20 \ ?/ -r^ 20 I,.ec,s.nd Spiders. towels. 20 10 Sexual entotionst^thou, sexual selection. 19 ^~-^-::il*'"^^f/^ - V ^^5^ ■ 9 Association by contiguity. ■9 Surprise. Fear. IS J l^,'^ iS Primary tnstincts, ^ Larva, of Insects. Anneltda IS ■7 ly ^ ^ . '^ 17 Memory. | Echinodeniiata. 1 week. 17 16 16 lit 16 Birth. |5 15 U - s ^ 15 s Culenlerata. 14 14 14 '3 13 13 12 12 «; i. 12 Unlcnoivn animals, 12 II ,, II probably Ccclenterata. II 10 10 *" VJ 10 perhaps extinct. Embryo. 10 9 ' ~ 1 9 9 8 /. A \ 8 8 7 AV \ ^-A 7 Non.ncrvous adjustments. 7 6 /,v/ \v-\ 6 5 y.-v/ \-v-\ 5 5 4 4 ^^,V/ \ '-Ov 4 4 ^ / 3 2 2 1 ^XC,TAB,L,TY C 2 2 ■ •I ( ^ ■ lp.rn,a.o». I MENTAL EVOLUTION 7 IN MAN ORIGIN OF HUMAN FACULTY BY GEORGE JOHN ROMANES M. A., LL. D., F. R.S. AUTHOR OF " ANIMAL INTELLIGENXE," " MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALT. NEW YORK D. AI'I'LETON AND COMPANY 1898 .^^ ^w^ Authorized Edition. PREFACE. In now carrying my study of mental evolution into the province of human psychology, it is desirable that I should say a few words to indicate the scope and intention of this the major portion of my work. For it is evident that " Mental Evolution in Man " is a subject comprehending so enormous a field that, unless some lines of limitation are drawn within which its discussion is to be confined, no one writer could presume to deal with it. The lines, then, which I have laid down for my own guidance are these. My object is to seek for the principles and causes of mental evolution in man, first as regards the origin of human faculty, and next as regards the several main branches into which faculties distinctively human after- wards ramified and developed. In order as far as possible to gain this object, it has appeared to me desirable to take large or general views, both of the main trunk itself, and also of its sundry branches. Therefore I have throughout avoided the temptation of following any of the branches into their smaller ramifications, or of going into the details of progressive development. These, I have felt, are matters to be dealt with by others who are severally better qualified for the task, whether their special studies have reference to language, archaeology, technicology, science, literature, art, politics, morals, or religion. But, in so far as I shall subsequently have to deal with these subjects, I will do so with the purpose of arriving at general principles bearing upon mental evolu- tion, rather than with that of collecting facts or opinions for Vi • PREFACE. the sake of their intrinsic interest from a purely historical point of view. Finding that the labour required for the investigation, even as thus limited, is much greater than I originally anticipated, it appears to me undesirable to delay publication until the whole shall have been completed. I have therefore decided to publish the treatise in successive instalments, of which the present constitutes the first. As indicated by the title, it is concerned exclusively with the Origin of Human Faculty. Future instalments will deal with the Intellect, Emotions, Volition, Morals, and Religion. It will, however, be several years before I shall be in a position to publish these succeeding instalments, notwithstanding that some of them are already far advanced. Touching the present instalment, it is only needful to remark that from a controversial point of view it is, perhaps, the most important. If once the genesis of conceptual thought from non-conceptual antecedents be rendered apparent, the great majority of competent readers at the present time would be prepared to allow that the psychological barrier between the brute and the man is shown to have been over- come. Consequently, I have allotted what might otherwise appear to be a disproportionate amount of space to my consideration of this the origin of human faculty — dis- proportionate, I mean, as compared with what has afterwards to be said touching the development of human faculty in its several branches already named. Moreover, in the present treatise I shall be concerned chiefly with the psychology of my subject — reserving for my next instalment a full con- sideration of the light which has been shed on the mental and social condition of early man by the study of his own remains on the one hand, and of existing savages on the other. Even as thus restricted, however, the subject-matter of the present treatise will be found more extensive than most persons would have been prepared to expect. For it does not appear to me that this subject-matter has hitherto received at the hands of psychologists any approach to the amount of PREFACE. vii analysis of which it is susceptible, and to which — in view of the general theory of evolution — it is unquestionably entitled. But I have eveiywhcre endeavoured to avoid undue prolixity, trusting that the intelligence of any one who is likely to read the book will be able to appreciate the significance of important points, without the need of expatiation on the part of the writer. The only places, therefore, where I feel that I may be fairly open to the charge of unnecessary reitera- tion, are those in which I am endeavouring to render fully intelligible the newer features of my analysis. But even here I do not anticipate that readers of any class will complain of the efforts which are thus made to assist their understanding of a somewhat complicated matter. As no one has previously gone into this matter, I have found myself obliged to coin a certain number of new terms, for the purpose at once of avoiding continuous circumlocution, and of rendering aid to the analytic inquiry. For my own part I regret this necessity, and therefore have not resorted to it save where I have found the force of circumstances imperative. In the result, I do not think that adverse criticism is likely to fasten upon any of these new terms as needless for the purposes of my inquiry. Every worker is free to choose his own instruments ; and when none are ready-made to suit his requirements, he has no alternative but to fashion those which may. To any one who already accepts the general theory of evolution as applied to the human mind, it may well appear that the present instalment of my work is needlessly elaborate. Now, I can quite sympathize with any evolutionist who may thus feel that I have brought steam-engines to break butterflies ; but I must ask such a man to remember two things. First, that plain and obvious as the truth may seem to him, It is nevertheless a truth that is very far from having received general recognition, even among more intelligent members of the community : seeing, therefore, of how much importance it is to establish this truth as an integral part of the doctrine of descent, I cannot think that cither time or viii PREFACE. energy is wasted in a serious endeavour to do so, even though to minds already persuaded it may seem unnecessary to have slain our opponents in a manner quite so mercilessly minute. Secondly, I must ask these friendly critics to take note that, although the discussion has everywhere been thrown into the form of an answer to objections, it really has a much wider scope : it aims not only at an overthrow of adversaries, but also, and even more, at an exposition of the principles which have probably been concerned in the " Origin of Human Faculty." The Diagram which is reproduced from my previous work on " Mental Evolution in Animals," and which serves to represent the leading features of psychogenesis throughout the animal kingdom, will re-appear also in succeeding instal- ments of the work, when it will be continued so as to represent the principal stages of " Mental Evolution in Man." i8, Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, July, 1888. CONTENTS. CBAPTKK PAGB I. Man and Brute ... ... ... ... i II. Ideas ... ... ... — ... 20 III. Logic of Recepts ... ... ... ... 40 IV. Logic of Concepts ... ... ... 70 V. Language ... ... ... ... •.. 85 VI. Tone and Gesture ... ... ... 104 VII. Articulation ... ... ... ... 121 VIII. Rel.\tion of Tone and Gesture to Words 145 IX. Speech ... ... ... ... ... 163 X. Self-Consciousness ... ... ... 194 XI. The Transition in the Individual ... ... 213 XII. Compar.\tive Philology ... ... ... 23S XIII. Roots of Language ... ... ... ... 264 XIV. The Witness of Philology ... ... 294 XV. Tni. Witness of Philology— confinued ... 326 XVI. The Transition in the Race ... ... 360 XVII. General Sum.mary and Conxluding Remarks 390 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. CHAPTER I. MAN AND BRUTE. Taking up the problems of psychogencsis where these were left in my previous work, I have in the present treatise to consider the whole scope of mental evolution in man. Clearly the topic thus presented is so large, that in one or other of its branches it might be taken to include the whole history of our species, together with our pre-historic development from lower forms of life, as already indicated in the Preface. How- ever, it is not my intention to write a history of civilization, still less to develop any elaborate hypothesis of anthropogeny. My object is merely to carry into an investigation of human psychology a continuation of the principles which I have already applied to the attempted elucidation of animal psycho- logy. I desire to show that in the one province, as in the other, the light which has been shed by the doctrine of evolu- tion is of a magnitude which we are now only beginning to appreciate ; and that by adopting the theory of continuous development from the one order of mind to the other, we are able scientifically to explain the whole mental constitution of man, even in those parts of it which, to former generations, have appeared inexplicable. In order to accomplish this purpose, it is not needful that I should seek to enter upon matters of detail in the applica- tion of those principles to the facts of history. On the contrary, 2 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. I think that any such endeavour — even were I qualified to make it — would tend only to obscure my exposition of those principles themselves. It is enough that I should trace the operation of such principles, as it were, in outline, and leave to the professed historian the task of applying them in special cases. The present work being thus a treatise on human psycho- logy in relation to the theory of descent, the first question which it must seek to attack is clearly that as to the evidence of the mind of man having been derived from mind as we meet with it in the lower animals. And here, I think, it is not too much to say that we approach a problem which is not merely the most interesting of those that have fallen within the scope of my own works ; but perhaps the most interesting that has ever been submitted to the contemplation of our race. If it is true that " the proper study of mankind is man," assuredly the study of nature has never before reached a territory of thought so important in all its aspects as that which in our own generation it is for the first time approach- ing. After centuries of intellectual conquest in all regions of the phenomenal universe, man has at last begun to find that he may apply in a new and most unexpected manner the adage of antiquity — Know thyself. For he has begun to per- ceive a strong probability, if not an actual certainty, that his own living nature is identical in kind with the nature of all other life, and that even the most amazing side of this his own nature — nay, the most amazing of all things within the reach of his knowledge — the human mind itself, is but the topmost inflorescence of one mighty growth, whose roots and stem and many branches are sunk in the abyss of planetary time. Therefore, with Professor Huxley we may say : — " The impor- tance of such an inquiry is indeed intuitively manifest. Brought face to face with these blurred copies of himself, the least thoughtful of men is conscious of a certain shock, due perhaps not so much to disgust at the aspect of what looks like an insulting caricature, as to the awaking of a sudden and profound mistrust of time-honoured theories and strongly MAY AXD BRUTE. 3 rooted prejudices regard in<; his own position in nature, and his relations to the wider world of life ; while that which remains a dim suspicion for the unthinking, becomes a vast argument, fraught with the deepest consequences, for all who are acquainted with the recent progress of anatomical and physiological sciences," * The problem, then, which in this generation has for the first time been presented to human thought, is the problem of how this thought itself has come to be. A question of the deepest importance to every system of philosophy has been raised by the study of biology ; and it is the question whether the mind of man is essentially the same as the mind of the lower animals, or, having had, either wholly or in part, some other mode of origin, is essentially distinct — differing not only in degree but in kind from all other types of psychical being. And forasmuch as upon his great and deeply interesting question opinions are still much divided — even among those most eminent in the walks of science who agree in accepting the principles of evolution as applied to explain the mental constitution of the lower animals, — it is evident that the question is neither a superficial nor an easy one. I shall however, endeavour to examine it with as little obscurity as possible, and also, I need hardly say, with all the impartiality of which I am capable, f It will be remembered that in the introductory chapter of my previous work I have already briefly sketched the manner in which I propose to treat this question. Here, therefore, it is sufficient to remark that I began by assuming the truth of the general theory of descent so far as the animal kingdom • Mans Place in A'ature, p. 59. t It is perhaps desirable to explain from the first that by the words " difTcrcnce of kind," as used in the above paragraph and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean difference of ori^n. This is the only real distinction that can be dr.i«n between the terms " difference of kind " and " difference of degree ; " and I should scarcely have dccmctl it worth while to give the definition, h.ad it not been for the confused manner in which the terms are used by some writers — e.^. Professor Sayce, who says, while speaking of the development of languages from a common source, " differences of degree l>ccomc in time differences of kind " (/ntroJuclion to (hi Science of Language, ii. 309). 4 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. is concerned, both with respect to bodily and to mental organization ; but in doing this I expressly excluded the mental organization of man, as being a department of com- parative psychology with reference to which I did not feel entitled to assume the principles of evolution. The reason why I made this special exception, I sufficiently explained ; and I shall therefore now proceed, without further introduction, to a full consideration of the problem that is before us. First, let us consider the question on purely a priori grounds. In accordance with our original hypothesis — upon which all naturalists of any standing are nowadays agreed — the process of organic and of mental evolution has been continuous throughout the whole region of life and of mind, with the one exception of the mind of man. On grounds of analogy, therefore, we should deem it antecedently improbable that the process of evolution, elsewhere so uniform and ubiquitous, should have been interrupted at its terminal phase. And looking to the very large extent of this analogy, the antecedent presumption which it raises is so considerable, that in my opinion it could o ily be counterbalanced by some very cogent and unmistakable facts, showing a difference between animal and human psychology so distinctive as to render it in the nature of the case virtually impossible that the one could ever have graduated into the other. This I posit as the first consideration. Next, still restricting ourselves to an a priori view, it is unquestionable that human psychology, in the case of every individual human being, presents to actual observation a process of gradual development, or evolution, extending from infancy to manhood ; and that in this process, which begins at a zero level of mental life and may culminate in genius, there is nowhere and never observable a sudden leap of progress, such as the passage from one order of psychical being to another might reasonably be expected to show. Therefore, it is a matter of observable fact that, whether or not human intelligence differs from animal in kind, it certainly does MAN AXD BRUTE. 5 admit of gradual development from a zero level. This I posit as the second consideration. Again, so long as it is passing through the lower phases of its development, the human mind assuredly ascends through a scale of mental faculties which are parallel with those that are permanently presented by the psychological species of the animal kingdom. A glance at the Diagram which I have placed at the beginning of my previous work will serve to show in how strikingly quantitative, as well as qualitative, a manner the development of an individual human mind follows the order of mental evolution in the animal kingdom. And when we remember that, at all events up to the level where this parallel ends, the diagram in question is not an expression of any psychological theory, but of well-observed and undeniable psychological fact, I think every reasonable man must allow that, whatever the explanation of this remarkable coincidence may be, it certainly must admit of some explanation — i.e. cannot be ascribed to mere chance. But, if so, the only explanation available is that which is furnished by the theory of descent. These facts, which I present as a third consideration, tend still further — and, I think, most strongly — to increase the force of antecedent presumption against any hypothesis which supposes that the process of evolution can have been discontinuous in the region of mind. Lastly, it is likewise a matter of observation, as I shall fully show in the next instalment of this work, that in the history of our race — as recorded in documents, traditions, antiquarian remains, and flint implements — the intelligence of the race has been subject to a steady process of gradual development. The force of this consideration lies in its proving, that if the process of mental evolution was suspended between the anthropoid apes and primitive man, it was again resumed with primitive man, and has since continued as un- interruptedly in the human species as it previously did in the animal species. Now, upon the face of these facts, or from a merely antecedent point of view, such appears to me, to say 6 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN the least, a highly improbable supposition. At all events, it certainly is not the kind of supposition which men of science are disposed to regard with favour elsewhere ; for a long and arduous experience has taught us that the most paying kind of supposition which we can bring with us into our study of nature, is that which recognizes in nature the principle of continuity. Taking, then, these sevetaX a priori considerations together, they must, in my opinion, be fairly held to make out a very strong primd facie case in favour of the view that there has been no interruption of the developmental process in the course of psychological history ; but that the mind of man, like the mind of animals — and, indeed, like everything else in the domain of living nature — has been evolved. For these considerations show, not only that on analogical grounds any such interruption must be held as in itself improbable ; but also that there is nothing in the constitution of the human mind incompatible with the supposition of its having been slowly evolved, seeing that not only in the case of every individual life, but also during the whole history of our species, the human mind actually does undergo, and has undergone, the process in question. In order to overturn so immense a presumption as is thus erected on a priori grounds, the psychologist must fairly be called upon to supply some very powerful considerations of an a posteriori kind, tending to show that there is something in the constitution of the human mind which renders it virtually impossible — or at all events exceedingly difficult to imagine — that it can have proceeded by way of genetic descent from mind of lower orders. I shall therefore proceed to consider, as carefully and as impartially as I can, the arguments which have been adduced in support of this thesis. In the introductory chapter of my previous work I observed, that the question whether or not human intelligence has been evolved from animal intelligence can only be dealt with scientifically by comparing the one with the other, in order to ascertain the points wherein they agree and the points MA.V AND BRUTE. 7 wherein they differ. I shall, therefore, here begin by briefly stating the points of agreement, and then proceed more care- fully to consider all the more important views which have hitherto been propounded concerning the points of difference. If we have regard to Emotions as these occur in the brute, we cannot fail to be struck by the broad fact that the area of psychology which they cover is so nearly co-extensive with that which is covered by the emotional faculties of man. In my previous works I have given what I consider unquestion- able evidence of all the following emotions, which I here name in the order of their appearance through the psychological scale, — fear, surprise, affection, pugnacity, curiosity, jealousy, anger, play, sympathy, emulation, pride, resentment, emotion of the beautiful, grief, hate, cruelty, benevolence, revenge, rage, shame, regret, deceitfulness, emotion of the ludicrous.* Now, this list exhausts all the human emotions, with the exception of those which refer to religion, moral sense, and perception of the sublime. Therefore I think we are fully entitled to conclude that, so far as emotions are concerned, it cannot be said that the facts of animal psychology raise any difficulties against the theory of descent. On the contrary, the emotional life of animals is so strikingly similar to the emotional life of man — and especially of young children — that I think the similarity ought fairly to be taken as direct evidence of a genetic continuity between them. And so it is with regard to Instinct. Understanding this term in the sense previously defined,! it is unquestionably true that in man — especially during the periods of infancy and youth — sundry well-marked instincts are presented, which have reference chiefly to nutrition, self-preservation, reproduction, and the rearing of progeny. No one has • See Mental Evolution in Animals, chapter on the Emotions. t Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159. "The term is a t;eneric one, com- prising all the faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowltdj^c of the relation between means employcil and ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and frequently recurring circumstances by all individuals of the tame species." 8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. ventured to dispute that all these instincts are identical with those which we observe in the lower animals ; nor, on the other hand, has any one ventured to suggest that there is any- instinct which can be said to be peculiar to man, unless the moral and religious sentiments are taken to be of the nature of instincts. And although it is true that instinct plays a larger part in the psychology of many animals than it does in the psychology of man, this fact is plainly of no importance in the present connection, where we are concerned only with identity of principle. If any one were childish enough to argue that the mind of a man differs in kind from that of a brute because it does not display any particular instinct — such, for example, as the spinning of webs, the building of nests, or the incubation of eggs, — the answer of course would be that, by parity of reasoning, the mind of a spider must be held to differ in kind from that of a bird. So far, then, as instincts and emotions are concerned, the parallel before us is much too close to admit of any argument on the opposite side. With regard to Volition more will be said in a future instalment of this work. Here, therefore, it is enough to say, in general terms, that no one has seriously questioned the identity of kind between the animal and the human will, up to the point at which so-called freedom is supposed by some dissentients to supervene and characterize the latter. Now, of course, if the human will differs from the animal will in any important feature or attribute such as this, the fact must be duly taken into account during the course of our subsequent analysis. At present, however, we are only engaged upon a preliminary sketch of the points of resemblance between animal and human psychology. So far, therefore, as we are now concerned with the will, we have only to note that up to the point where the volitions of a man begin to surpass those of a brute in respect of complexity, refinement, and foresight, no one disputes identity of kind. Lastly, the same remark applies to the faculties of Intellect* • Of course my opponents will not allow that this word can be properly applied to the psychology of any brute. But I am not now using it in a question- Af.l.V A.VD BRUTE. 9 Enormous as the difference undoubtedly is between these faculties in the two cases, the difference is conceded not to be one of kind ab initio. On the contrary, it is conceded that up to a certain point — namely, as far as the highest degree of intelligence to which an animal attains — there is not merely a similarity of kind, but an identity of correspondence. In other words, the parallel between animal and human intelligence which is presented in my Diagram, and to which allusion has already been made, is not disputed. The question, therefore, only arises with reference to those super- added faculties which are represented above the level marked 28, where the upward growth of animal intelligence ends, and the growth of distinctively human intelligence begins. But even at level 28 the human mind is already in possession of many of its most useful faculties, and these it does not after- wards shed, but carries them upwards with it in the course of its further development — as we well know by observing the psychogenesis of every child. Now, it belongs to the very essence of evolution, considered as a process, that when one order of existence passes on to higher grades of excellence, it does so upon the foundation already laid by the previous course of its progress ; so that when compared with any allied order of existence which has not been carried so far in this upward course, a more or less close parallel admits of being traced between the two, up to the point at which the one begins to distance the other, where all further comparison admittedly ends. Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of comparative psychology now before us are, to say the least, strongly suggestive of the superadded powers of the human intellect having been due to a process of evolution. Lest it should be thought that in this preliminary sketch of the resemblances between human and brute psychology I have been endeavouring to draw the lines with a biased hand, begping sense : I am using it only to avoid the otherwise necessary cxpeclient of coining a new term. Whatever view we may take as to the relniions between human anil animal psychology, we must in some way distinguish between the different ingredients of each, and so between the instinct, the emotion, and the intelligence of an animal. See Menial Evolution in Animals, p. 335, et seq. 10 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. I will here quote a short passage to show that I have not misrepresented the extent to which agreement prevails among adherents of otherwise opposite opinions. And for this purpose I select as spokesman a distinguished naturalist, who is also an able psychologist, and to whom, therefore, I shall afterwards have occasion frequently to refer, as on both these accounts the most competent as well as the most representative of my opponents. In his Presidential Address before the Biological Section of the British Association in 1879, Mr. Mivart is reported to have said :— "I have no wish to ignore the marvellous powers of animals, or the resemblance of their actions to those of man. No one can reasonably deny that many of them have feelings, emotions, and sense-perceptions similar to our own ; that they exercise voluntary motion, and perform actions grouped in complex ways for definite ends ; that they to a certain extent learn by experience, and combine perceptions and reminiscences so as to draw practical inferences, directly apprehending objects standing in different relations one to another, so that, in a sense, they may be said to apprehend relations. They will show hesitation, ending apparently, after a conflict of desires, with what looks like choice or volition ; and such animals as the dog will not only exhibit the most marvellous fidelity and affection, but will also manifest evident signs of shame, which may seem the outcome of incipient moral perceptions. It is no great wonder, then, that so many persons, little given to patient and careful introspection, should fail to perceive any radical distinction between a nature thus gifted and the intellectual nature of man." We may now turn to consider the points wherein human and brute psychology have been by various writers alleged to differ- The theory that brutes are non-sentient machines need not detain us, as no one at the present day is likely to defend it.* Again, the distinction between human and brute • If any one should be disposed to do so, I can only reply to him in the words of Professor Huxley, who puts the case tersely and well :— " What is the value of MAN AND BRUTE. 1 1 psychology that has always been taken more or less for granted — namely, that the one is rational and the other irrational — may likewise be passed over after what has been said in the chapter on Reason in my previous work. For it is there shown that if we use the term Reason in its true, as distinguished from its traditional sense, there is no fact in animal psychosis more patent than that this psychosis is capable in no small degree of ratiocination. The source of the very prevalent doctrine that animals have no germ of reason is, I think, to be found in the fact that reason attains a much higher level of development in man than in animals, while instinct attains a higher development in animals than in man : popular phraseology, therefore, disregarding the points of similarity while exaggerating the more conspicuous points of difference, designates all the mental faculties of the animal instinctive, in contradistinction to those of man, which are termed rational. But unless we commit ourselves to an obvious reasoning in a circle, we must avoid assuming that all actions of animals are instinctive, and then arguing that, because they are instinctive, therefore they differ in kind from those actions of man which are rational. The question really lies in what is here assumed, and can only be answered by examining in what essential respect instinct differs from reason. This I have endeavoured to do in my previous work with as much precision as the nature of the subject permits ; and I think I have made it evident, in the first place, that there is no such immense distinction between instinct and reason as is generally assumed — the former often being the evidence which leads one to believe that one's fellow-man feels ? The only evidence in this argument from analogy is the similarity of his structure and of his actions to one's own, and if that is good enough to prove that one's fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels," etc. {Critiques and Addresses, p. 2S2). To this statement of the case Mr. Mivart offers, indeed, a criticism, but it is one of a singularly feeble character. He says, "Surely it is not by similarity of structure or actions, but by language that men are placed in communication wilh one another." To this it seems sufficient to ask, in the first place, whether Language is not action ; and, in the next, whether, as ex- pressive of suffcrins^, articulate speech is regarded by us as more "eloquent" than inarticulclr; cries and gestures? 12 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. blended with the latter, and the latter as often becoming transmuted into the former, — and, in the next place, that all the higher animals manifest in various degrees the faculty of inferring. Now, this is the faculty of reason, properly so called; and although it is true that in no case does it attain in animal psychology to more than a rudimentary phase of development as contrasted with its prodigious growth in man, this is clearly quite another matter where the question before us is one concerning difference of kind.* Again, the theological distinction between men and animals may be passed over, because it rests on a dogma with which the science of psychology has no legitimate point of contact. Whether or not the conscious part of man differs from the conscious part of animals in being immortal, and whether or not the "spirit " of man differs from the " soul " of animals in other particulars of kind, dogma itself would main- tain that science has no voice in either affirming or denying. For, from the nature of the case, any information of a positive kind relating to these matters can only be expected to come by way of a Revelation ; and, therefore, however widely dogma and science may differ on other points, they are at least agreed upon this one — namely, if the conscious life of man differs thus from the conscious life of brutes, Christianity and Philosophy alike proclaim that only by a Gospel could its endowment of immortality have been brought to light.f Another distinction between the man and the brute which we often find asserted is, that the latter shows no signs of * Of course where the term Reason is intended to signify Introspective Thought, the above remarks do not apply, further than to indicate the misuse of the term. t I here neglect to consider the view of Bishop Butler, and others who have followed him, that animals may have an immortal principle as well as man ; for, if this view is maintained, it serves to identify, not to separate, human and brute psychology. The dictum of Aristotle and Buffon, that animals differ from man in having no power of mental apprehension, may also be disregarded ; for it appears to be sufficiently disposed of by the following remark of Bureau de la Malle, which I here quote as presenting some historical interest in relation to the theory of natural selection. He says : " Si les animaux n'etaient pas susceptibles d'apprendre les moyens de se conserver, les especes se seraient aneanties." MAN AND BRUTE. I3 mental progress in successive generations. On this alleged distinction I may remark, first of all, that it begs the whole question of mental evolution in animals, and, therefore, is directly opposed to the whole body of facts presented in my work upon this subject. In the next place, I may remark that the alleged distinction comes with an ill grace from opponents of evolution, seeing that it depends upon a recog- nition of the principles of evolution in the history of mankind But, leaving aside these considerations, I meet the alleged dis- tinction with a plain denial of both the statements of fact on which it rests. That is to say, I deny on the one hand that mental progress from generation to generation is an invariable peculiarity of human intelligence ; and, on the other hand, I deny that such progress is never found to occur in the case of animal intelligence. Taking these two points separately, I hold it to be a state- ment opposed to fact to say, or to imply, that all existing savages, when not brought into contact with civilized man, undergo intellectual development from generation to genera- tion. On the contrary, one of the most generally applicable statements we can make with reference to the psychology of uncivilized man is that it shows, in a remarkable degree, what we may term a vis inerticB as regards upward movement. Even so highly developed a type of mind as that of the Negro — submitted, too, as it has been in millions of individual cases to close contact with minds of the most progressive type, and enjoying as it has in many thousands of individual cases all the advantages of liberal education — has never, so far as I can ascertain, executed one single stroke of original work in any single department of intellectual activity. Again, if we look to the whole history of man upon this planet as recorded by his remains, the feature which to my mind stands out in most marked prominence is the almost incredible slowness of his intellectual advance, during all the earlier millenniums of his existence. Allowing full weight to the consideration that "the Pahtolithic age, referring as the phrase does to a stage of culture, and not to any chronological r4 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. period, is something which has come and gone at very different dates in different parts of the world ; " * and that the same remark may be taken, in perhaps a smaller measure, to apply to the Neolithic age ; still, when we remember what enormous lapses of time these ages may be roughly taken to represent, I think it is a most remarkable fact that, during the many thousands of years occupied by the former, the human mind should have practically made no advance upon its primitive methods of chipping flints ; or that during the time occupied by the latter, this same mind should have been so slow in arriving, for example, at even so simple an invention as that of substituting horns for flints in the manufacture of weapons. In my next volume, where I shall have to deal especially with the evidence of intellectual evolution, I shall have to give many instances, all tending to show its extra- ordinarily slow progress during these aaons of prehistoric time. Indeed, it was not until the great step had been made of sub- stituting metals for both stones and horns, that mental evolution began to proceed at anything like a measurable rate. Yet this was, as it were, but a matter of yesterday. So that, upon the whole, if we have regard to the human species generally — whether over the surface of the earth at the present time, or in the records of geological history, — we can no longer maintain that a tendency to improvement in successive generations is here a leading characteristic. On the contrary, any improvement of so rapid and continuous a kind as that which is really contemplated, is characteristic only of a small division of the human race during the last few hours, as it were, of its existence. On the other hand, as I have said, it is not true that animal species never display any traces of intellectual improve- ment from generation to generation. Were this the case, as already remarked, mental evolution could never have taken place in the brute creation, and so the phenomena of mind would have been wholly restricted to man : all animals would have required to present but a vegetative form of life. But, • John Fibke, Excursions of an Evolutionist , pp. 42, 43 {1884). MAN AND BRUTE. 1 5 apart from this general consideration, \vc meet with many particular instances of mental improvement in successive generations of animals, taking place even within the limited periods over which human observations can extend. In my previous work numerous cases will be found (especially in the chapters on the plasticity and blended origin of instincts), showing that it is quite a usual thing for birds and mammals to change even the most strongly inherited of their instinctive habits, in order to improve the conditions of their life in relation to some change which has taken place in their environments. And if it should be said that in such a case "the animal still does not rise above the level of birdhood or of beasthood," the answer, of course, is, that neither does a Shakespeare or a Newton rise above the level of manhood. On the whole, then, I cannot see that there is any valid distinction to be drawn between human and brute psychology with respect to improvement from generation to generation. Indeed, I should deem it almost more philosophical in any opponent of the theory of evolution, who happened to be acquainted with the facts bearing upon the subject, if he were to adopt the converse position, and argue that for the pur- poses of this theory there is not a sufficient distinction between human and brute psychology in this respect. For when we remember the great advance which, according to the theory of evolution, the mind of palaeolithic man must already have made upon that of the higher apes, and when we remember that all races of existing men have the immense advantage of some form of language whereby to transmit to progeny the results of individual experience, — when we remember these things, the difficulty appears to me to lie on the side of explaining why, with such a start and with such advantages, the human species, both when it first appears upon the page? of geological history, and as it now appears in the great majority of its constituent races, should so far resemble animal species in the prolonged stagnation of its intellectual life. I shall now pass on to consider the views of Mr. Wallace 1 6 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. and Mr. Mivart on the distinction between the mental endow- ments of man and of brute. Both these authors are skilled naturalists, and also professed evolutionists so far as the animal world is concerned : moreover, they further agree in maintaining that the principles of evolution cannot be held to apply to man. But it is curious that, so far as psychology is concerned, they base their arguments in support of their common conclusion on precisely opposite premisses. For while Mr. Mivart argues that human intelligence cannot be the same in kind as animal intelligence, because the mind of the lowest savage is incomparably superior to that of the highest ape ; Mr. Wallace argues for the same conclusion on the ground that the intelligence of savages is so little removed from that of the higher apes, that the fact of their brains being proportionately larger must be held to point prospectively towards the needs of civilized life. "A brain," he says, "slightly larger than that of the gorilla would, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the savage ; and we must therefore admit that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been developed solely by any of the laws of evolution." * * Natural Selection, p. 343. It will subsequently appear, as a general conse- quence of our investigation of savage psychology, that of these two opposite opinions the one advocated by Mr. Mivart is best supported by facts. But I may here adduce one or two considerations of a more special nature bearing upon this point. First, as to cerebral structure, the case is thus summed up by Professor Huxley : — " The difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest man is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. The latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say 12 ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by 32 : 20 relatively ; but, as the largest recorded human brain weighed between 65 and 66 ounces, the former difference is represented by more than 33 ounces absolutely, or by 65 : 32 relatively. Regarded systematically, the cerebral differences of man and apes are not of more than generic value — his family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelves, and his lower limbs " (Man's Place in Nature, p. 103). Next, concerning CQXQhx3.\fu7tction, Mr. Chauncey Wright well remarks : — "A psychological analysis of the faculty of language shows that even the smallest proficiency in it might require more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction " (North American Review, Oct. 1870, p. 295). After quoting this, Mr. Darwin observes of savage man, " He has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and other- MAN AND BRUTE. I7 Now, I have presented these two opinions side by side be- cause I deem it an interesting, if not a suggestive circumstance, that the two leading dissenters in this country from the general school of evolutionists, although both holding the doctrine that man ought to be separated from the rest of the animal kingdom on psychological grounds, are nevertheless led to their common doctrine by directly opposite reasons. The eminent French naturalist, Professor Quatrefages, also adopts the opinion that man should be separated from the rest of the animal kingdom as a being who, on psychological grounds, must be held to have had some different mode of origin. But he differs from both the English evolutionists in drawing his distinction somewhat more finely. For while Mivart and Wallace found their arguments upon the mind of man considered as a whole, Quatrefages expressly limits his ground to the faculties of conscience and religion. In other words, he allows — nay insists — that no valid distinction between man and brute can be drawn in respect of rationality or intellect. For instance, to take only one passage from his writings, he remarks : — " In the name of philosophy and psychology, I shall be accused of confounding certain intellectual attributes of the human reason with the exclusively sensitive faculties of animals. I shall presently endeavour to answer this criticism from the standpoint which should never be quitted by the naturalist, that, namely, of experiment and observation. I shall here confine myself to saying that, in my opinion, the animal is intelligent, and, although an (intellectually) rudimentary being, that its intelligence is nevertheless of the same nature as that of man." Later on he says : — " Psychologists attribute religion and morality to wise obt.iins food. He h.is made rafts or canoes for fishing, or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire. . . . These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so pre- eminent, are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason. I cannot, therefore, understand how it is that .Mr. Wallace maintains that 'natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape ' " (Descent oj Man, pp. 48, 49). 1 8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. the reason, and make the latter an attribute of man (to the exclusion of animals). But with the reason they connect the highest phenomena of the intelligence. In my opinion, in so doing they confound, and refer to a common origin, facts entirely different. Thus, since they are unable to recognize either morality or religion in animals, which in reality do not possess these two faculties, they are forced to refuse them intelligence also, although the same animals, in my opinion, give decisive proof of their possession of this faculty every moment."* Touching these views I have only two things to observe. In the first place, they differ toto ccelo from those both of Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart ; and thus we now find that the three principal authorities who still stand out for a distinction of kind between man and brute on grounds of psychology, far from being in agreement, are really in fundamental opposition, seeing that they base their common conclusion on premisses which are all mutually exclusive of one another. In the next place, even if we were fully to agree with the opinion of the French anthropologist, or hold that a distinction of kind has to be drawn only at religion and morality, we should still be obliged to allow — although this is a point which he does not himself appear to have perceived — that the superiority of human intelligence is a necessary condition to both these attributes of the human mind. In other words, whether or not Quatrefages is right in his view that religion and morality betoken a difference of kind in the only animal species which presents them, at least it is certain that neither of these faculties could have occurred in that species, had it not also been gifted with a greatly superior order of intelligence. For even the most elementary forms of religion and morality depend upon ideas of a much more abstract, or intellectual, nature than are to be met with in any brute. Obviously, therefore, the first distinction that falls to be considered is the intellectual distinction. If analysis should show that the school represented by Quatrefages is right in regarding this * Tlie Human Species^ English trans. , p. 22. MAy AND BRUTE. 19 distinction as one of degree — and, therefore, that the school represented by Mivart is wrong in regarding it as one of kind, — the time will then have arrived to consider, in the same con- nection, these special faculties of morality and religion. Such, therefore, is the method that I intend to adopt. The whole of the present volume will be devoted to a consideration of " the origin of human faculty " in the larger sense of this term, or in accordance with the view that distinctively human faculty begins with distinctively human ideation. When this matter has been thoroughly discussed, the ground will have been prepared for considering in subsequent volumes the more special faculties of Morality and Religion.* • Sundry other and still more special distinctions of a ps>'chological kind liave been alleged by various writers as obtaining between man and the lower animals — such as making fire, employing barter, wearing clothes, using tools, and so forth. But as all these distinctions are merely particular instances, or detailed illustrations, of the more intelligent order of ideation which belongs to mankind, it is needless to occupy space with their discussion. Here, also, I may remark that in this work I am not concerned with the popular objection to Darwinism on account of " missing-links," or the absence of fossil remains structurally intermediate between those of man and the anthropoid apes. This is a subject that belongs to palaeon- tology, and, therefore, its treatment would be out of place in these pages. Never- theless, I may here briefly remark that the supposed difficulty is not one of any magnitude. Although to the popular mind it seems almost self-evident that if there ever existed a long series of generations connecting the bodily structure of man with that of the higher apes, at least some few of their bones ought now to be forthcoming ; the geologist too well knows how little reliance can be placed on such merely negative testimony where the record of geology is in question. Countless other instances may now be quoted of connecting links having been but recently found between animal groups which are zoologically much more widely separated than are apes and men. Indeed, so destitute of force is this popular objection held to be by geologists, that it is not regarded by them as amounting to any objection at all. On the other hand, the close anatomical resemijlance that subsists between man and the higher apes — every bone, muscle, nerve, vessel, etc., in the enormously complex structure of the one coinciding, each to each, with the no less enormously complex structure of the other — speaks so voluminously in favour of an uninterrupted continuity of descent, that, as before remarked, no one who is at all entitled to speak upon the subject has venturetl to dispute this continuity so far as the corporeal structure is concerned. All the few naturalists who still withhold their assent from the theory of evolution in its reference to man, expressly base their opinion on those grounds of psychology which it i^ the object of the present treatise to investigate. 20 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. CHAPTER 11. IDEAS. * I NOW pass on to consider the only distinction which in my opinion can be properly drawn between human and brute psychology. This is the great distinction which furnishes a full psychological explanation of all the many and immense differences that unquestionably do obtain between the mind of the highest ape and the mind of the lowest savage. It is, moreover, the distinction which is now universally recognized by psychologists of every school, from the Romanist to the agnostic in Religion, and from the idealist to the materialist in Philosophy. The distinction has been clearly enunciated by many writers, from Aristotle downwards, but I may best render it in the words of Locke : — " If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree ; this I think I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them ; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain * In my previous work I devoted a chapter to " Imagination," in which I created of the psychology of ideation so far as animals are concerned. It is now needful to consider ideation with reference to man ; and, in order to do this, it is further needful to revert in some measure to the ideation of animals. I will, how- ever, try as far as possible to avoid repeating myself, and therefore in the three following chapters I will assume that the reader is already acquainted with my previous work. Indeed, the argument running through the three following chapters cannot be fully appreciated unless their perusal is preceded by that of chapters ix. and x. of Alental Evolution in Animals, IDEAS. 21 to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in thcni of making use of general signs for universal ideas ; from which we have reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs. "Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate sounds that they have no use or knowledge of general words ; since many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any such application ; and, on the other side, men, who through some defect in the organs want words, yet fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of general words ; a faculty which we see beasts come short in. And therefore I think we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from men ; and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance ; for if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason. It seems evident to me, that they do some of them in certain instances reason, as that they have sense ; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction." * • Human Understanditti;, bk. ii., chap, ii., lo, II. To this passage Berkeley objectetl that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of qviality as ajiart from any concrete idea of object ; e.g. an idea of motion distinct from that of any body moving. (See Priniiples of Human Kmnvledge, Introd. vii.-xix.). This is a point which I cannot fully treat without going into the philosophy of the great discussion on Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptuaiism — a matter which would take me beyond the strictly psychological limits within which I desire to confine my work. It will, therefore, be enough to point out that Berkeley's criticism here merely amounts to showing that Locke did not pursue sufficiently far his philosophy of Nominalism. What Locke did was to see, and to state, that a general or abstract idea eml)odies a perccptitm of likeness between individuals of a kind while disregarding the differences ; what he failed to do was to take the further step of showing that such an idea is not an idea in the sense of being a mental image ; it is merely an intellectual symbol of an actually imp<)ssil)Ie existence, namely, of quality apart from object. Intellectual symbolism of this 22 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Here, then, we have stated, with all the common-sense lucidity of this great writer, what we may term the initial or basal distinction of which we are in search : it is that " proper difference" which, narrow at first as the space included be- tween two lines of rails at their point of divergence, "at last widens to so vast a distance" as to end almost at the opposite poles of mind. For, by a continuous advance along the same line of development, the human mind is enabled to think about abstractions of its own making, which are more and more remote from the sensuous perception of concrete objects ; it can unite these abstractions into an endless variety of ideal combinations ; these, in turn, may become elaborated into ideal constructions of a more and more complex character ; and so on until we arrive at the full powers of introspective thought with which we arc each one of us directly cognisant. We now approach what is at once a matter of refined analysis, and a set of questions which are of fundamental importance to the whole superstructure of the present work. I mean the nature of abstraction, and the classification of ideas. No small amount of ambiguity still hangs about these important subjects, and in treating of them it is impossible to employ terms the meanings of which are agreed upon by all psychologists. But I will carefully define the meanings which I attach to these terms myself, and which I think are the meanings that they ought to bear. Moreover, I will end by adopting a classification which is to some extent novel, and by fully giving my reasons for so doing. Psychologists are agreed that what they call particular kind is performed mainly through the agency of verbal or other conventional signs (as we shall see later on), and it is owing to a clearer understanding of this process that Realism was gradually vanquished by Nominalism. The only difference, then, between Locke and Berkeley here is, that the nominalism of the former was not so complete or thorough as that of the latter. I may remark that if in the following discussion I appear to fail in distinctly setting forth the doctrine of nominalism, I do so only in order that my investigation may avoid needless collision with conceptualisni. For myself I am a nominalist, and agree with Mill that to say we think in concepts is only another way of saying that we think in class names. IDEAS. 23 ideas, or ideas of particular objects, are of the nature of mental images, or memories of such objects — as when the sound of a friend's voice brings before my mind the idea of that particu- lar man. l\s)'chologists are further agreed that what they term general ideas arise out of an assemblage of particular ideas, as when from my repeated observation of numerous individual men I form the idea of Man, or of an abstract being who comprises the resemblances between all these individual men, without regard to their individual differences. Hence, particular ideas answer to percepts, while general ideas answer to concepts : an individual perception (or its repetition) gives rise to its mnemonic equivalent as a particular idea ; while a group of similar, though not altogether similar perceptions, gives rise to its mnemonic equivalent as a conception, which, therefore, is but another name for a general idea, thus ge/ie- ratcdhy an assemblage of particular ideas. Just as Mr. Galton's method of superimposing on the same sensitive plate a number of individual images gives rise to a blended photo- graph, wherein each of the individual constituents is partially and proportionally represented ; so in the sensitive tablet of memory, numerous images of previous perceptions are fused together into a single conception, which then stands as a composite picture, or class-representation, of these its con- stituent images. Moreover, in the case of a sensitive plate it is only those particular images which present more or less numerous points of resemblance that admit of being thus blended into a distinct photograph ; and so in the case of the mind, it is only those particular ideas which admit of being run together in a class that can go to constitute a clear concept.* So much, then, for ideas as particular and general. Ne.xt, the term abstract has been used by different psychologists in different senses. For my own part, I will adhere to the usage of Locke in the passage above quoted, which is the usage adopted by the majority of modern writers upon these subjects. According to this usage, the term "abstract •This simile has been previously used by Mr. Gallon himself, and also by Mr. Huxley in his work on Humr. 24 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. idea" is practically synonymous with the term "general idea." For the process of abstraction consists in mentally analysing the complex which is presented by any given object of perception, and ideally extracting those features or qualities upon which the attention is for the time being directed. Even the most individual of objects cannot fail to present an assemblage of qualities, and although it is true that such an object could not be divided into all its constituent qualities actually, it does admit of being so divided ideally. The individual man whom I know as John Smith could not be disintegrated into so much heat, flesh, bone, blood, colour, &c., without ceasing to be a man at all ; but this does not hinder that I may ideally abstract his heat (by thinking of him as a corpse), his flesh, bones, and blood (by thinking of him as a dissected " subject "), his white colour of skin, his black colour of hair, and so forth. Now, it is evident that in the last resort our power of forming general ideas, or concepts, is dependent on this power of abstraction, or the power of ideally separating one or more of the qualities presented by percepts, i.e. by objects of particular ideas. My general idea of heat has only been rendered possible on account of my having ideally abstracted the quality of heat from sundry heated bodies, in most of which it has co-existed with numberless different associations of other qualities. But this does not hinder that, wherever I meet with that one quality, I recognize it as the same ; and hence I arrive at a general or abstract idea of heat, apart from any other quality with which in particular cases it may happen to be associated,* This faculty of ideal abstraction furnishes the conditio sine * Hence, the only valid distinction that can be drawn between abstraction and generalization is that which has been drawn by Hamilton, as follows : " Abstrac- tion consists in concentration of attention upon a particular object, or particular quality of an object, and diversion of it from everything else. The notion of the figure of the desk before me is an abstract idea — an idea that makes part of the total notion of that body, and on which I have concentrated my attention, in order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract, but it is at the same time individual : it represents the figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any other body." Generalization, on the other hand, consists in an ideal IDEAS. 25 quA non to all grades in the development of thought ; for by- it alone can we compare idea with idea, and thus reach ever onwards to higher and higher levels, as well as to more and more complex structures of ideation. As to the history of this development we shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile I desire only to remark two things in connection with it. The first is that throughout this history the develop- ment is a development: the faculty of abstraction is every- where the same in kind. And the next thing is that this development is everywhere dependent on the faculty of language. A great deal will require to be said on both these points in subsequent chapters ; but it is needful to state the facts thus early — and they are facts which psychologists of all schools now accept, — in order to render intelligible the next step which I am about to make in my classification of ideas. This step is to distinguish between the faculty of abstraction where it is not dependent upon language, and where it is so dependent. I have just said that the faculty of abstraction is evcryzvhere the same in kind ; but, as I immediately proceeded to affirm that the development of abstraction is dependent upon language, I have thus far left the question open whether or not there can be any rudimentary abstraction without language. It is to this question, therefore, that we must next address ourselves. compounding of abstractions, " when, comparing a number of objects, we seize on their resemblances ; when we concentrate our attention on these points of similarity. . . . The general notion is thus one which makes us know a quality, property, power, notion, relation, in short, any point of view under which we recognize a plurality of objects as a unity." Thus, there may be abstraction without generalization ; but inasmuch as abstraction h.is then to do only with particulars, this phase of it is disregarded liy most writers on psychology, who therefore employ abstraction and gone alization as convertible terms. Mill says, " By abstract I shall alw.-iys, in I^gic proper, mean thcoi)posite of concrete ; by an abstract name the name of an attrlute; by a concrete name, the name of an object " {L(\!rtc, i. § 4). Such limitaiiDn, however, is arbitrary -it being the same kind of mental act to "concentrate attention upon a particular object" as it is to do so upon any " particular tjiiaHty of an object" Of course in this usage Mill is following the schoolmen, and he expressly objects to the change first intro. is conceptual). 38 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. One further remark remains to be added before our nomenclature of ideas can be regarded as complete. It will have been noticed that the term "general idea" is equally appropriate to ideas of class or kind, whether or not such ideas are named. The ideas Good-for-eating and Not-good- for-eating are as general to an animal as they are to a man, and have in each case been formed in the same way — namely, by an accumulation of particular experiences spontaneously assorted in consciousness. General ideas of this kind, however, have not been contemplated by previous writers while dealing with the psychology of generalization : hence the term "general," like the term "abstract," has by usage become restricted to those higher products of ideation which depend on the faculty of language. And the only words that I can find to have been used by any previous writers to designate the ideas concerned in that lower kind of generali- zation which does not depend on language, are the words above given — namely, Complex, Compound, and Mixed. Now, none of these words are so good as the word General, because none of them express the notion of genus or class ; and the great distinction between the idea which an animal or an infant has, say of an individual man and of men in general, is not that the one idea is simple, and the other complex, compound, or mixed ; but that the one idea is particular and the other general Therefore consistency would dictate that the term " general " should be applied to all ideas of class or kind, as distinguished from ideas of particulars or individuals — irrespective of the degree of generality, and irrespective, therefore, of the accident whether or not, qua general, such ideas are dependent on language. Nevertheless, as the term has been through previous usage restricted to ideas of the higher order of generality, I will not introduce confusion by extending its use to the lower order, or by speaking of an animal as capable of generalizing. A parallel term, however, is needed ; and, therefore, I will speak of the general or class ideas which are formed without the aid of language 2& generic. This word has the double advantage of IDEAS. 39 retaining a verbal as well as a substantial analogy with the allied term genera/. It also serves to indicate that generic ideas, or recepts, are not only ideas of class or kind, but have been generated from the intermixture of individual ideas — i.e. from the blended memories of particular percepts. My nomenclature of ideas, therefore, may be presented in a tabular form thus : — I General, Abstract, or Notional = Concepts. Complex, Compound, or Mixed = Recepts, or Generic Ideas. Simple, Particular, or Concrete = Memories of Percepts.* * The more elaborate analysis of German psychologists has yielded five orders instead of three ; namely, Wahrnehmung, Anschauung, Vorsteliungm, Erfahrungsbegriff, and Verstandesbegriff. But for the purposes of this Ueatise it is needless to go into these finer distinctions. 40 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. CHAPTER III. LOGIC OF RECEPTS. We have seen that the great border-land, or terra media, lying between particular ideas and general ideas has been strangely neglected by psychologists, and we may now be prepared to find that a careful exploration of this border-land is a matter of the highest importance for the purposes of our inquiry. I will, therefore, devote the present chapter to a full consider- ation of what I have termed generic ideas, or recepts. It has already been remarked that, in order to form any of these generic ideas, the mind does not require to combine intentionally the particular ideas which go to construct it : a recept differs from a concept in that it is received, not conceived. The percepts out of which a recept is composed are of so comparatively simple a character, are so frequently repeated in observation, and present among themselves resemblances or analogies so obvious, that the mental images of them run together, as it were, spontaneously, or in accordance with the primary laws of merely sensuous association, without requir- ing any conscious act of comparison. This is a truth which has been noticed by several previous writers. For instance, I have in this connection already quoted a passage from M. Taine, and, if necessary, could quote another, wherein he very aptly likens what I have called recepts to the unelaborated ore out of which the metal of a concept is afterwards smelted. And still more to the purpose is the following passage, which I take from Mr. Sully : — " The more concrete concepts, or gefieric images, are formed to a large extent by a passive process of assimilation. The likeness among dogs, for ex- LOGIC OF R EC EFTS. 4T ample, is so great and striking that when a child, already familiar with one of these animals, sees a second, he recognizes it as identical with the first in certain obvious respects. The representation of the first combines with the representation of the second, bringing into distinct relief the common dog features, more particularly the canine form. In this way the images of different dogs come to overlap, so to speak, giving rise to a typical image of dog. Here there is very little of active direction of the mind from one thing to another in order to discover where the resemblance lies : the rescviblaiice forces itself upon the inind. When, however, the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract concepts, a distinct operation of active comparison is involved." * Similarly, M. Perez remarks, " the necessity which children arcunder of seeing in a detached and scrappy manner in order to see well, makes them continually practise that kind of abstraction by which we separate qualities from objects. From those objects which the child has already distinguished as individual, there come to him at different moments particu- larly vivid impressions. . . . Dominant sensations of this kind, by their energy or frequency, tend to efface the idea of the objects from which they proceed, to separate or abstract them- selves. . . . The flame of a candle is not always equally bright or flickering ; tactile, sapid, olfactory, and auditive impres- sions do not always strike the child's sensorium with the same intensity, nor during the same length of time. This is why the recollections of individual forms, although strongly graven on their intelligence, lose by degrees their first pre- cision, so that the idea of a tree, for instance, furnished by direct and perfectly distinct memories, comes back to the mind in a vague and indistinct form, which might be taken for a general idea." f Again, in the opinion of John Stuart Mill, " It is the doctrine of one of the most fertile thinkers of modern times, • Outlines of Fsycholof^y, p. 342. The italics are mine. It will be observed hat Mr. Sully here uses the term "generic " in exactly the sense wliich I propose, t First Three Years 0/ Childhood, English trans,, pp. lSo-li>2. 42 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Auguste Comte, that besides the logic of signs, there is a logic of images, and a logic of feelings. In many of the familiar processes of thought, and especially in uncultured minds, a visual image serves instead of a word. Our visual sensations, perhaps only because they are almost always present along with the impressions of our other senses, have a facility of becoming associated with them. Hence, the charac- teristic visual appearance of an object easily gathers round it, by association, the ideas of all other peculiarities which have, in frequent experience, co-existed with that appearance ; and, summoning up these with a strength and certainty far sur- passing that of merely casual associations which it may also raise, it concentrates the attention on them. This is an image serving for a sign — the logic of images. The same function may be fulfilled by a feeling. Any strong and highly interest- ing feeling, connected with one attribute of a group, spontane- ously classifies all objects according as they possess, or do not possess, that attribute. We may be tolerably certain that the things capable of satisfying hunger form a perfectly distinct class in the mind of any of the more intelligent animals ; quite as much as if they were able to use or understand the word food. We here see in a strong light the important truth that hardly anything universal can be affirmed in psychology except the laws of association." * Furthermore, Mansel tersely conveys the truth which I am endeavouring to present, thus : — " The mind recognizes the impression which a tree makes on the retina of the eye : this is presentative consciousness. It then depicts it. From many such pictures it forms a general notion, and to that notion it at last appropriates a name." f Almost in identical language * Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 403. t To this, Max Miiller objects on account of its veiled conceptualism — seeing that it represents the " notion " as chronologically prior to the " name " {Science of Thought, p. 268). With this criticism, however, I am not concerned. Whether " the many pictures" which the mind thus forms, and blends together into what Locke terms a "compound idea," deserve, when so blended, to be called "a general notion " or a " concept " — this is a question of terminology of which I steer clear, by assigning to such compound ideas the term recepts, and reserving the terra notions, or concepts, for compound ideas after they have been named. LOGIC OF RECEPTS. 43 the same distinction is conveyed by Noird thus : — " All trees hitherto seen by me may leave in my imagination a mixed image, a kind of ideal representation of trees. Quite different from this is the concept, which is never an image." * And, not to overburden the argument with quotations, I will furnish but one more, which serves if possible with still greater clearness to convey exactly what it is that I mean by a recept. Professor Huxley writes : — " An anatomist who occu- pies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and structure, that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream." f Although the use of the word " conception " here is unfortu- nate in one way, I regard it as fortunate in another : it shows how desperate is the need for the word which I have coined. The above quotations, then, may be held sufficient to show that the distinction which I have drawn has not been devised merely to suit my own purposes. All that I have endeavoured so far to do is to bring this distinction into greater clearness, by assigning to each of its parts a separate name. And in doing this I have not assumed that the two orders of generaliza- tion comprised under recepts and concepts are the same in kind. So far I have left the question open as to whether a mind which can only attain to recepts differs in degree or in kind from the intellect which is able to go on to the formation of concepts. Had I said, with Sully, " When the resemblance is less striking, as in the case of more abstract • Loqos, p. 175, quoted by Max Miiller, who adds : — "The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the fadeil images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do ; and under its silent sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, mifiht seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, thoufjh they may become very vague, remain percepts ; they are not concepts " (Hcifttce of Thous^ht, p. 453). Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are not percepts : they are the result of \\\c fusion of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. Seeing, then, th.it they arc neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly important elements in ideation, I coin tor them the distinctive name of recepts. t Lift of I/ume, p. 96. 44 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. concepts, a distinct operation of active comparison is involved," I should have been assuming that there is only a difference of degree between a rccept and a concept : designating both by the same term, and therefore implying that they differ only in their level of abstraction, I should have assumed that what he calls the " passive process of assimilation," whereby an infant or an animal recognizes an individual man as belonging to a class, is really the same kind of psychological process as that which is involved " in the case of more abstract concepts," where the individual man is designated by a proper name, while the class to which he belongs is designated by a common name. Similarly, if I had said, with Thomas Brown, that in the process of generalization there is, " in the first place, the perception of two or more objects [percept] ; in the second place, the feeling of their resemblance [rccept] ; and, lastly, the expres- sion of this common relative feeling by a name, afterwards used as a general name [concept] ; " — if I had spoken thus, I should have virtually begged the question as to the universal continuity of ideation, both in brutes and men. Of course this is the conclusion towards which I am working ; but my endeavour in doing so is to proceed in the proof step by step, without anywhere prejudging my case. These passages, therefore, I have quoted merely because they recognize more clearly than others which I have happened to meet with what I conceive to be the true psychological classification of ideas ; and although, with the exception of that quoted from Mill, no one of the passages shows that its writer had before his mind the case of animal intelligence — or perceived the immense importance of his statements in relation to the question which we have to consider, — this only renders of more value their independent testimony to the soundness of my classification.* • Steinthal and Lazarus, however, in dealing with the problem touching the origin of speech, present in an adumbrated fashion this doctrine of receptual ideation with special reference to animals. For instance, Lazarus says, " Es gibt in der gewohnlichen Erfahrung kein so einfaches Ding von einfacher Beschaffen- heit, dass wir es durch dru Sinnesempfindung wahrnehmen konnten ; erst aus der Sammlung seiner Eigenschaften, d. h. erst aus der Verbindung der mehreren LOGIC Oh RECErrs. 45 The question, then, which we have to consider is whether there is a difference of kind, or only a difference of degree. between a reccpt and a concept. This is really the question with which the whole of the present volume will be concerned, and as its adequate treatment will necessitate somewhat Empfindungen ergibt sich die Wahymhmung eitus Dinges: erst indem wir die weisse Farbe sehcn, die Harte fuhleii und den sussen Geschmack empfinden, erkennen wir ein Stlick Zucker" {Das Leben der .Stv/^ (1857), 8, ii. 66). This and other passages in the same work follow the teaching of Steinthal ; e.g. "Die Anschauung von einem Dinge ist der Complex der sammtlichen Empfindungser- kenntnisse, die wir von einem Dinge haben ... die Anschauung ist cine Synthesis, aber eine unmittelbare, die durch die Einheit der Seele gegeben ist." Ami, following both these writers, Friedrich Miiller says, *' Diese Sammlung und Einigung der verschiedenen Empfindungen gemass der in den Dingen verbun- denen Eigenschaften heisst Anschauung " ( Gnindriss der Sprach-Missmschaft, i. 26). On the other hand, their brother philologist, Geiger, strongly objects to this use of the term Anschauung, under which, he says, " wird theils etwas von der Sinneswahrnehmung gar nicht Unterschicdenes verstanden, theils auch ein dunkles Etwas, welches, ohne dass die Hedingungen und Ursachen zu erkennen sind, die Einheit der Wahrnehmungen zu kleineren und grossern Complexcn bewirken soil. ... So dass ich eine solche ' Synthesis ' nicht auch bei deni Thiere ganz ebenso wie bei dem Menschen voraussetze : ich glaube im Gcgentheile, dass es sich mit der Sprache erst entwickelt " (Urspnoig der Sprache, 177, 17S). Now, I have quoted these various passages because they serve to render, in a brief and instructive form, the different views which may be taken on a comparatively simple matter owing to the want of well-defined terms. No doubt the use of the term Anschauung by the above writers is unfortunate ; but by it they appear to me clearly to indicate a nascent idea of what I mean by a recept. They all three fail to bring out this idea in its fulness, ina'^much as they restrict the powers of non-conceptual "synthesis" to a grouping of simjjle perceptions furnisheil by different sense-organs, instead of extending it to a synthesis of syntheses of perceptions, whether furnished by the same or also by different senses. But these three philologists are all on the right psychological track, and their critic Geiger is quite wrong in saying that there can be no synthesis of (non-conceptual) ideas without the aid of speech. As a matter of fact the dunkles Etwas which he complains of his predecessors as importing into the ideation of animals, is an Etwas which, when brought out into clearer light, is fraught with the highest importance. For, as we shall subsequently see, it is nothing less than the needful psychological condition to the subsequent development both of speech and thought. The term Apperception as used by some German psychologists is also inclusive of what I mean by receptual ideation. IJut as it is also inclusive of conceptual, nothing would here be gained by its ado|>tion. Indeed F. Midler expressly restricts its meaning to conceptual ideation, for he says, " Alle psychischen I'rocesse bis einschliesslich zur Perception lassen sich ohne Sprache ausfuhren und voll- kommcn bcgreifen, die Apperception dagegen lasst sich nur an tier Ilaiul '11 Sprache dcnkcn " (loc. cit. L, 29). 46 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. laborious inquiries in several directions, I will endeavour to keep the various issues distinct by fully working out each branch of the subject before entering upon the next. First of all I will show, by means of illustrations, the highest levels of ideation that are attained within the domain of recepts ; and, in order to do this, I will adduce my evidence from animals alone, seeing that here there can be no suspicion — as there might be in the case of infants — that the logic of recepts is assisted by any nascent growth of concepts. But, before proceeding to state this evidence, it seems desirable to say a few words on what I mean by the term just used, namely, Logic of Recepts. As argued in my previous work, all mental processes of an adaptive kind are, in their last resort, processes of classifi- cation : they consist in discriminating between differences and resemblances. An act of simple perception is an act of noticing resemblances and dififcrences between the objects of such perception ; and, similarly, an act of conception is the taking together — or the intentional putting together — of ideas which are recognized as analogous. Hence abstraction has to do with the abstracting of analogous qualities ; reason is ratiocination, or the comparison of ratios ; and thus the highest operations of thought, like the simplest acts of perception, are concerned with the grouping or co-ordination of resemblances, previously distinguished from differences.* Consequently, the middle ground of ideation, or the territory occupied by recepts, is concerned with this same process on a plane higher than that which is occupied by percepts, though lower than that which is occupied by concepts. In short, the object or use, and therefore the method or logic, of all ideation is the same. It is, indeed, customary to restrict the latter term to the higher plane of ideation, or to that which has to do with concepts. But, as Comte has shown, there is no reason why, for purposes of special exposition, this term should not be extended so as to embrace all operations of the mind, in so * As stated in a previous foot-note, this truth is well exhibited by M, Binet, loc. at. LOGIC OF RECEPTS. \J far as these are operations of an orderly kind. For in so far as they are orderly or adaptive — and not merely sentient or indifferent — such operations all consist, as we have just seen, in processes of ideal grouping, or binding together* And therefore I see no impropriety in using the word Logic for the special purpose of emphasizing the fundamental identity of all ideation — so far, that is, as its method is concerned. I object, however, to the terms " Logic of Feelings " and " Logic of Signs." For, on the one hand, " Feelings," have to do primarily with the sentient and emotional side of mental life, as dis- tinguished from the intellectual or ideational. And, on the other hand, " Signs " are the expressions of ideas ; not the ideas themselves. Hence, whatever method, or meaning, they may present is but a reflection of the order, or grouping, amon^ the ideas which they are used to express. The logic, there- fore, is neither in the feelings nor in the signs ; but in the ideas. On this account I have substituted for the above terms what I take to be more accurate designations — namely, the Logic of Recepts, and the Logic of Concepts.f In the present chapter we have only to consider the logic of recepts, and, in order to do so efficiently, we may first of all briefly note that even within the region of percepts we meet with a process of spontaneous grouping of like with like, which, in turn, leads us downwards to the purely unconscious or mechanical grouping of stimuli in the lower nerve-centres. So that, as fully argued out in my previous work, on its objective face the method has everywhere been the same : • The word Logic is derived from x6yoi, which in turn is derived from \tyu, to arrange, to lay in order, to pick up, to bind together. t The terms Logic of Feelings and Logic of .Signs were first introduced and extensively employed by Comte. Afterwards they were adopted, and still more extensively employed by I^-wcs, who, however, seems to have thouf^ht that he so employed them in some dilTcrcnt sense. To me it appears that in this Lewes was mistaken. Save that Comte is here, as elsewhere, intoxicated with theology, I think that the ideas he intended to set forth under these terms are the same as those which are advocated by Lewes — ahhough his incoherency justifies the remark of his follower ;— " Heing unai)le to under-tand this, I do not criticize it " (/'rods, of Life and Mina, iii., p. 239). The terms in question are also sanctioned by Mill, as shown by the above (juotation (p. 42). 48 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. whether in the case of reflex action, of sensation, perception, reception, conception, or reflection, on the side of the nervous system, the method of evolution has been uniform : " it has everywhere consisted in a progressive development of the power of discriminating between stimuli, joined with the com- plementary power of adaptive response." * But although this is a most important truth to recognize (as it appears to have been implicitly recognized — or, rather, accidentally implied — by using a variant of the same term to designate the lowest and the highest members of the above-named series of faculties), for the purposes of psychological as distinguished from physiological inquiry, it is convenient to disregard the objective side of this continuous process, and therefore to take up our analysis at the place where it is attended by a subjective counterpart — that is, at Perception. So much has already been written on what is termed the " unconscious judgments" or " intuitive judgments " incidental to all our acts of perception, that I feel it is needless to occupy space by dwelling at any length upon this subject. The familiar illustration of looking straight into a polished bowl, and alternately perceiving it as a bowl and a sphere, is enough to show that here we do have a logic of feelings : without any act of ideation, but simply in virtue of an automatic grouping of former percepts, the miiv' spontaneously infers — or uncon- sciously judges — that an object, which nuist eithe}' be a bowl or a sphere, is now one and now the other.f From which we * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 62. t Special attention, however, may be drawn to the fact that the term *' unconscious judgment " is not metaphorical, but serves to convey in a technical sense what appears to be the precise psychology of the process. For the dis- tinguishing element of a judgment, in its technical sense, is that it involves an element of belief. Now, as Mill remarks, " when a stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sensations which I receive from it ; but if I say that these sensations come to me from an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external cause of those sensations exists" [Logie, i., p. 58). In cases, such as that mentioned in the text, where the "unconscious judgment" is wrong — i.e. the perception illusory — it may, of course, be over-ridden by judgment of a higher order, and thus we do not end by believing that the bowl is a sphere. Neverthe- less, so far as it is dependent on the testimony of our senses, the mind jud-^es LOGIC OF RECEPTS, 49 gather that all our visual perceptions are thus of the nature of automatic inferences, based upon previous correspondencies between them and perceptions of touch. From which, again, we gather that perceptions of every kind depend upon previous grouping, whether between those supplied by the same sense only, or also in combination with those supplied by other senses. Now, if this is so well known to be the case with percepts, obviously it must also be the case with recepts. If we thus find by experiment that all our perceptions are dependent on sub-conscious co-ordination wholly automatic, much more may we be prepared to find that the simplest of our ideas are dependent on spontaneous co-ordinations almost equally automatic. Accordingly, it requires but a slight analysis of our ordinary mental processes to prove that all our simpler ideas are group-arrangements, which have been formed as I say spontaneously, or without any of that intentionally comparing, sifting, and combining process which is required in the higher departments of ideational activity. The com- paring, sifting, and combining is here done, as it were, for the conscious agent ; not by him. Recepts are received: it is only concepts that require to be conceived. For a recept is that kind of idea the constituent parts of which — be they but the memories of percepts, or already more or less elaborated as recepts — unite spontaneously as soon as they arc brought together. It matters not whether this readiness to unite is due to obvious similarity, or to frequent repetition : the point is that there is so strong an affinity between the elementary constituents, that the compound is formed as a consequence erroneously in perceiving the bowl as a sphere. In his work on Illusions, Mr. Sully has shown that illusions of perception arise throui;h the mental " application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case." In other wonls, an erroneous judgment is made by the non-conceptual faculties of perception — tliis judgment being formed upon the analogies supplied by past experience. Of course, such an act of merely perceptual inference is not a judgment, strictly so callecr of other facts serving; to show to how h:'.;h a level of intelligent grouping— or of '* logic "' — leccpts may attain without the aiJ 62 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. To these numerous facts I will now add one other, which is sufficiently remarkable to deserve republication for its own sake. I quote the account from the journal Science, in which it appeared anonymously. But finding on inquiry thdt the observer was Mr. S. P. Langley, the well-known astrono- mer, and being personally assured by him that he is certain there is no mistake about the observation, I will now give the latter in his own words. "The interesting description by Mr. Larkin {^Science, No. 58) of the lifting by a spider of a large beetle to its nest, reminds me of quite another device by which I once saw a minute spider (hardly larger than the head of a pin) lift a house-fly, which must have been more than twenty times its weight, through a distance of over a foot. The fly dangled by a single strand from the cross-bar of a window-sash, and, when it first caught my attention, was being raised through successive small distances of something like a tenth of an inch each ; the lifts following each other so fast, that the ascent seemed almost continuous. It was evident that the weight must have been quite beyond the spider's power to stir by a ' dead lift ; ' but his motions were so quick, that at first it was difficult to see how this apparently impossible task was being accom- plished. I shall have to resort to an illustration to explain it ; for the complexity of the scheme seems to belong less to what we ordinarily call instinct than to intelligence, and that in a degree we cannot all boast ourselves. " The little spider proceeded as follows : — " a b \?, 2i portion of the window-bar, to which level the fly was to be lifted, from his original position at F vertically beneath a; the spider's first act was to descend halfway to the fly (to d), and there fasten one end of an almost invisible thread ; his second to ascend to the bar and run out to b, where he made fast the other end, and hauled on his guy of concepts. In the same connection I may refer to the chapter on " Imagination " in Mental Evolution in Animals, and also to the following pages in Animal /«- telligence :—i2?,-^o ; 181-97, 219-222, 233, 311-335. 337. 338, 340, 348-352, 377-385, 397-410, 413-425, 426-436, 445-470, 478-498. LOGIC OF RECEPTS. 63 with all his might. Evidently the previously straight line must yield somewhat in the middle, whatever the weight of the fly, who was, in fact, thereby brought into position F', to the right of the first one and a little higher. Beyond this point, it might seem, he could not be lifted ; but the guy being left fast at ^, the spider now went to an intermediate point c directly over his victim's new posi- tion, and thus spun a new vertical line from c, which was made fast at the bend at (C, after which a d was cast off, so that the fly now hung vertically below c, as before below a, but a little higher. " The same operation was repeated again and again, a new guy being occasionally spun, but the spider never descending more than about halfway down the cord, whose elasticity was in no way involved in the process. All was done with surprising rapidity. I watched it for some five minutes (during which the fly was lifted perhaps si.x inches), and then was called away." Without further burdening the argument with illustrative proof, it must now be evident that the " ore " out of which concepts are formed is highly metalliferous : it is not merely a dull earth which bears no resemblance to the shining sub- stance smelted from it in the furnace of Language ; it is already sparkling to such an extent that we may well feel there is no need of analysis to show it charged with that sub- stance in its pure form — that what we see in the ore is the same kind of material as we take from the melting-pot, and differs from it only in the degree of its agglomeration. Never- theless, I will not yet assume that such is the case. Before wo can be perfectly sure that two things which seem to the eye of common sense so similar are really the .same, we must submit them to a scientific analysis. Even though it be certain that the one is extracted from the other, there still 64 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. remains a possibility that in the melting-pot some further ingredient may have been added. Human intelligence is un- doubtedly derived from human experience, in the same way as animal intelligence is derived from animal experience ; but this docs not prove that the ideation which we have in common with brutes is not supplemented by ideation of some other order, or kind. Presently I shall consider the arguments which are adduced to prove that it has been, and then it will become apparent that the supplement, if any, must have been added in the smelting-fire of Language — a fact, be it observed, which is conceded by all modern writers who deny the genetic continuity of mind in animal and human intelligence. Thus far, then, I have attempted nothing more than a preliminary clearing of the ground — first by carefully defining my terms and impartially explaining the psychology of ideation ; next by indicating the nature of the question which has presently to be considered ; and, lastly, by showing the level to which intelligence attains under the logic of recepts, without any possibility of assistance from the logic of concepts. Only one other topic remains to be dealt with in the present chapter. We continually find it assumed, and con- fidently stated as if the statement did not admit of question, that the simplest or most primitive order of ideation is that which is concerned only with particulars, or with special objects of perception. The nascent ideas of an infant are supposed to crystallize around the nuclei furnished by individual percepts; the less intelligent animals — if not, indeed, animals in general — are supposed, as Locke says, to deal " only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from the senses." Now, I fully assent to this, if it is only meant (as I understand Locke to mean) that infants and animals are not able consciously, intentionally, or, as he says, " of themselves, to compound and make complex ideas." In order thus intentionally, or of themselves, to compound their ideas, they would require to tJiink about their ideas as ideas, or consciously to set one idea before another as two distinct objects of thought, and for the. LOGIC OF NEC EFTS. 65 kno'vti purpose of composition. To do tin's requires powers of introspective reflection ; therefore it is a kind of mental activity impossible to infants or animals, since it has to do with concepts as distinguished from recepts. But, as vvc have now so fully seen, it does not follow that because ideas cannot be thus compounded by infants or animals intentionally., there- fore they cannot be compounded at all. Locke is very clear in recognizing that animals do " take in and retain together several combinations of simple ideas to make up a complex idea : " he only denies that animals " do of themselves ever compound them and make complex ideas." Thus, Locke plainly teaches my doctrine of recepts as distinguished from concepts ; and I do not think that any modern psycho- logist— more especially in view of the foregoing evidence — will so far dispute this doctrine. But the point now is that, in my opinion, many psychologists have gone astray by assuming that the most primitive order of ideation is concerned only with particulars, or that in chronological order the memory of percepts precedes the occurrence of recepts. It appears to me that a very little thought on the one hand, and a very little observation on the other, is enough to make it certain that so soon as ideas of any kind begin to be formed at all, they are formed, not only as memories of particular percepts, but also as rudimentary recepts ; and that in the subsequent development of ideation the genesis of recepts everywhere proceeds pari passu with that of percepts. I say that a very little thought is enough to show that this must be so, while a very little observation is enough to show that it is so. For, a priori, the more unformed the powers of perception, the less able must they be to take cognizance of particulars. The development of these powers consists in the ever-increasing cfRcicncy of their analysis, or cognition of smaller and smaller differences of detail ; and, consequently, of their recognition of these differences in different combinations. Hence, the feebler the powers of perception, the more must they occupy themselves with the larger or class distinctions between objects of sensuous experience, and the less with the smaller 66 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. or more individual distinctions. Or, if we like, what after- wards become class distinctions, are at earlier stages of ideation the only distinctions ; and, therefore, all the same as what are afterwards individual distinctions. But what follows ? Surely that — be it in the individual or the race — when these originally individual distinctions begin to grow into class distinctions, they leave in the mind an indelible impress of their first nativity : they were the original receptsof memory ; and if they are afterwards slowly differentiated as they slowly become organized into many particular parts, this does not hinder that throughout the process they never lose their organic unity : the mind must always continue to recognize that the parts which it subsequently perceived as successively, unfolding from what at first was known only as a whole, are parts which belong to that whole — or, in other words, that the more newly observed particulars are members of what is now perceived as a class. Therefore, I say, on merely a priori grounds we might banish the gratuitous statement that the lower the order of ideation the more it is concerned with particular distinctions, or the less with class distinctions. The truth must be that the more primitive the recepts the larger are the class distinctions with which they are concerned — provided, of course, that this statement is not taken to apply beyond the region of sensuous perception. Accordingly we find, as a matter of fact, both in infants and in animals, that the lower the grade of intelligence, the more is that intelligence shut up to a perception of class distinctions. "We pronounce the word Papa before a child in its cradle, at the same time pointing to his father. After a little, he in turn lisps the word, and we imagine that he under- stands it in the same sense that we do, or that his father's presence only will recall the word. Not at all. When another person — that is, one similar in appearance, with a long coat, a beard, and loud voice — enters the room, he calls him also Papa. The name was individual ; he has made it general. In our case it is applicable to one person only ; in his, to a class. ... A little boy, a year old, had travelled a good deal LOGIC OF RECEPTS. 6j by railway. The engine, with its hissing sound and smoke, and the great noise of the train, struck his attention, and the first word he learned to pronounce was Fcfer (chemin de fer). Then afterwards, a steam-boat, a coffee-pot with spirit lamp — everything that hissed or smoked was a Fcfer* Now, I have quoted such familiar instances from this author because he adduces them as proof of the statement that "here there appears a delicacy of impression which is special to man." Without waiting to inquire whether this statement is justified by the evidence adduced, or even whether the infant has personally distinguished his father from among other men at the time when he first calls all men by the same name ; it is enough for my present purposes to observe the single fact, that when a child is first able to show us the nature of its ideation by means of speech, it furnishes us with ample evidence that this ideation is what I have termed generic. The dress, the beard, and the voice go to form a recept to which all men are perceived to correspond : the most striking peculiarities of a locomotive are vividly impressed upon the memory, so that when anything resembling them is met with elsewhere, it is receptually classified as be- longing to an object of analogous character. Only much later, when the analytic powers of perception have greatly developed, does the child begin to draw its distinctions with sufficient "refinement" to perceive that this classification is too crude — that the resemblances which most struck its infant imagina- tion were but accidental, and that they have to be disregarded in favour of less striking resemblances which were originally altogether unnoticed. But although the process of classifi- cation is thus perpetually undergoing improvement with advancing intelligence, from the very first it has been classi- fication— although, of course, thus far only within the region of sensuous perception. And similarly with regard to animals, it is sufficiently evident from such facts as those already instanced, that the imagery on which their adaptive action depends is in large measure generic. • Tainc, On Intdlii^eiut, pp. 1 6, 1 7. 68 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN Therefore, without in any way prejudging the question as to whether or not there is any radical distinction between a mind thus far gifted and the conceptual thought of man, I may take it for granted that the ideation of infants is from the first generic ; and hence that those psychologists are greatly mistaken who thoughtlessly assume that the forma- tion of class-ideas is a prerogative of more advanced intelli- gence. No doubt their view of the matter seems plausible at first sight, because within the region of conceptual thought we know that progress is marked by increasing powers of generalization — that it is the easiest steps which have to do with the cognition of particulars ; the more difficult which have to do with abstractions. But this is to confuse recepts with concepts, and so to overlook a distinction between the two orders of generalization which it is of the first importance to be clear about. A generic idea is generic because the particular ideas of which it is composed present such obvious points of resemblance that they spontaneously fuse together in consciousness ; but a general idea is general for precisely the opposite reason — namely, because the points of resemblance which it has seized are obscured from immediate perception, and therefore could never have fused together in consciousness but for the aid of intentional abstraction, or of the power of a mind knowingly to deal with its own ideas as ideas. In other words, the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the kind of classifica- tion with which all processes of so-called " intuitive inference " depend — such as mistaking a bowl for a sphere. But the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from this purely automatic grouping of perceptions. Classification there doubtless is in both cases ; but the one order is due to the closeness of resemblances in an act of perception, while in the other order it is an expression of their remoteness from merely perceptual associations. Or, to put the matter in yet another light, if we think it sounds less paradoxical to speak of the process of classifica- LOGIC OF RECEPTS. 69 tion as ever>'\vhcrc the same in kind, we must conclude that the groupings of rcccpts stand to those of concepts in much the same relation as the groupings of percepts do to those of rccepts. In each case it is the lower order of grouping which furnishes material for the higher: and the object of this chapter has been to show, first, that the unintentional grouping which is distinctive of rcccpts may be carried to a wonderful pitch of perfection without any aid from the intentional grouping which is distinctive of concepts ; and, second, that from the very beginning conscious ideation has been concerned with grouping. Not only, or not even chiefly, has it had to do with the registration in memory of particular percepts ; but much more has it had to do with the spontaneous sorting of such percepts, with the spontaneous arrangement of them in ideal (or imagery) systems, and, consequent!)', with the spontaneous reflection in consciousness of many among the less complex relations — or the less abstruse principles — which have been uniformly encountered by the mind in its converse with an orderly world. 70 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. CHAPTER IV. LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. The device of applying symbols to stand for ideas, and then using the symbols as ideas, operates to the formation of more highly abstract ideas in a manner that is easily seen. For instance, because we observe that a great many objects present a certain quality in common, such as redness, we find it convenient to give this quality a name ; and, having done so, we speak of redness in the abstract, or as standing apart from any particular object. Our word " redness " then serves as a sign or symbol of a quality, apart from any particular object of which it may happen to be a quality ; and having made this symbolic abstraction in the case of a simple quality, such as redness, we can afterwards compound it with other symbolic abstractions, and so on till we arrive at verbal symbols of more and more abstract or general qualities, as well as qualities further and further removed from immediate perception. Thus, seeing that many other objects agree in being yellow, others blue, and so on, we combine all these abstractions into a still more general concept of Colour, which, qua more abstract, is further removed from immediate perception — it being impossible that we can ever have a percept answering to the amalgamated concept of colour, although we have many percepts answering to the constituent concepts of colours. So in the analogous case of objects. The proper names Peter, Paul, John, &c., stand in my mind as marks of my individual concepts : the term Man serves to sum up all the LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 7 1 points of agreement between them — and also between all other individuals of their kind — without regard to their points of disagreement : the word Animal takes a still wider range, and so with nearly all words denoting objects. Like words connoting qualities, they may be arranged in rank above rank according to the range of their generality : and it is obvious that the wider this range the further is their meaning withdrawn from anything that can ever have been an object of immediate perception. We shall afterwards find it is of the highest importance to note that these remarks apply quite as much to actions and states as they do to objects and qualities. Verbs, like nouns and adjectives, may be merely the names of simple recepts, or they may be compounds of other concepts — in either case differing from nouns and adjectives only in that they have to do with actions and states. To sow, to dig, to spin, &c., are names of particular actions ; to labour is the name of a more general action ; to live is the symbol of a concept yet more general. And it is obvious that here, as previously, the more general concepts are built out of the more special. Later on I will adduce evidence to show that, whether we look to the growing infant or to the history of mankind as newly unearthed by the researches of the philologist, we alike find that no one of these divisions of simple concepts — namely, nouns, adjectives, and verbs — appears to present priority over the others. Or, if there is any evidence of such priority, it appears to incline in favour of nouns and verbs. But the point on which I desire to fasten attention at present is the enormous leverage which is furnished to the faculty of ideation by thus using words as the mental equivalents of ideas. For by the help of these symbols we climb into higher and higher regions of abstraction : by thinking in verbal signs we think, as it were, with the semblance of ideas : we dispense altogether with the necessity of actual images, whether of percepts or of recepts : we quit the sphere of sense, and rise to that of thought 72 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, Take, for example, another type of abstract ideation, and one which not only serves better than most to show the importance of signs as substitutes for ideas, but also best illustrates the extraordinary results to which such symbolism may lead when carried out persistently. I refer to mathematics. Of course, before the idea of number or of relation can arise at all, the faculty of conception must have made great advances ; but let us take this faculty at the point where the artifice of substituting signs for ideas has gone as far as to enable a mind to count by means of simple notation. It would clearly be impossible to conduct the least intricate trains of reasoning which invoke any ideas of number or proportion, were we deprived of the power of attaching particular signs to particular ideas of number. We could not even tell whether a clock had struck eleven or twelve, unless we were able to mark off each successive stroke with some distinctive sign ; so that when it is said, as it often is, that an animal cannot count, we must remember that neither could a senior wrangler count if deprived of his symbols. "Man begins by counting things, grouping them visibly \i.e. by the Logic of Recepts]. He then learns to count simply the numbers, in the absence of things, using his fingers and toes for symbols. He then substitutes abstract signs, and Arithmetic begins. From this he passes to Algebra, the signs of which are not merely abstract but general ; and now he calculates numerical relations, not numbers. From this he passes to the higher calculus of relations." And just as in mathematics the symbols that are employed contain in an easily manipulated form enormous bodies of meaning — possibly, indeed, the entire meaning of a long calculation, — so in all other kinds of abstract ideation, the symbols which we employ — whether in gesture, speech, or writing — contain more or less condensed masses of significa- tion. Or, to take another illustration, which, like the last example, I quote from Lewes, " It is the same with the developmxcnt of commerce. Men begin by exchanging things. LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 73 They pass to the exchange of values. First money, then notes or bills, is the symbol of value. Finally men simply debit and credit one another, so that immense transactions are effected by means of this equation of equations. The complicated processes of sowing, reaping, collecting, shipping, and delivering a quantity of wheat, are condensed into the entry of a few words in a ledger." Thus, without further treatment, it must be obvious that it is impossible for us to over-estimate the importance of Language as the handmaid of Thought. "A sign," as Sir William Hamilton says, "is necessary to give stability to our intellectual progress — to establish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for our advance to another beyond. . . . Words are the fortresses of thought. They enable us to make every intellectual conquest the basis of operations for others still beyond." Moreover, thought and language act and react upon one another ; so that, to adopt a happy metaphor from Professor Max Muller, the growth of thought and language is coral-like. Each shell is the product of life, but becomes in turn the support of new life. In the same manner each word is the product of thought, but becomes in turn a new support for the growth of thought. It seems needless to say more in order to show the immense importance of sign-making to the development of ideation — the fact being one of universal recognition by writers of every school. I will, therefore, now pass on to the theme of the present chapter, which is that of tracing in further detail the logic of this faculty, or the method of its development. From what I have already said, it may have been gathered that the simplest concepts are merely the names of reccpts ; while concepts of a higher order are the names of other concepts. Just as reccpts may be either memories of par- ticular percepts, or the results of many percepts {i.e. sundry other reccpts) grouped as a class ; so concepts may be cither names of particular recepts, or the results of many 74 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. named recepts {i.e. sundry other concepts) grouped as a class. The word " red," for example, is my name for a particular recept ; but the word " colour " is my name for a whole group of named recepts. And similarly with words signifying objects, states, and actions. Hence, we may broadly distinguish between concepts as of two orders — namely, those which have to do with recepts, and those which have to do with other concepts. For a concept is a concept even though it be nothing more than a named recept ; and it is still a concept, even though it stands for the highest generalization of thought. I will make this distinction yet more clear by means of better illustrations. Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting uporr land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting upon water ; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns and gannets) never do so upon land or upon ice. These facts prove that the animals have one recept answering to a solid substance, and another answering to a fluid. Similarly, a man will not dive from a height over hard ground or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same way as he jumps upon dry land. In other words, like the water-fowl, he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and the other to an unresisting fluid. But, unlike the water-fowl, he is able to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of locomotion are concerned, it is of course immaterial whether or not he thus raises his recepts into concepts ; but, as we have seen, for many other purposes it is of the highest importance that he is able to do this. Now, in order to do it, he must be able to set his recept before his own mind as an object of his own thought : before he can bestow upon these generic ideas the names of " solid " and " fluid," he must have cognized them as ideas. Prior to this act of cognition, these ideas differed in no respect from the recepts of a water-fowl ; neither for the ordinary requirements of his locomotion is it needful that they should : therefore, in so far as these requirements are LOGIC OF COXCEfTS. 75 concerned, the man makes no call upon his higher faculties of ideation. But, in virtue of this act of cognition, whereby he assigns a name to an idea known as such, he has created for himself — and for purposes other than locomotion — a priceless possession : he has formed a concept. Nevertheless, the concept which he has formed is an extremely simple one — amounting, in fact, to nothing more than the naming of one among the most habitual of his recepts. But it is of the nature of concepts that, when once formed, they admit of being intentionally compared ; and thus there arises a new possibility in the way of grouping ideas — namely, no longer by means of sensuous a.ssociations, but by means of symbolic representations. The names of recepts now serve as symbols of the recepts themselves, and so admit of being grouped without reference to the sensuous per- ceptions out of which they originally sprang. No longer restricted to time, place, circumstance, or occasion, ideas may now be called up and manipulated at pleasure ; for in this new method of ideation the mind has, as it were, acquired an algebra of recepts : it is no longer necessary that the actual recepts themselves should be present to sensuous perception, or even to representative imagination. And as concepts are thus symbols of recepts, they admit, as I have said, of being compared and combined without reference to the recepts which they serve to symbolize. Thus we become able, as it were, to calculate in concepts in a way and to an extent that would be quite impossible in the merely perceptual medium of recepts. Now, it is in this algebra of the imagination that all the higher work of ideation is accomplished ; and as the result of long and elaborate syntheses of concepts we turn out mental products of enormous intricacy — which, nevertheless, may be embodied in single words. Such words, for example, as Virtue, Government, Mechanical Equivalent, stand for immensely more elaborated concepts than the words Solid or Fluid — seeing that to the former there are no possible equivalents in the way of recepts. Hence I say we must begin by recognizing the great reach J 6 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. of intellectual territory which is covered by what are called concepts. At the lowest level they are nothing more than named recepts ; beyond that level they become the names of other concepts ; and eventually they become the named products of the highest and most complex co-ordinations of concepts which have been achieved by the human mind. By the term Lower Concepts, then, I will understand those which are nothing more than named recepts, while by the term Higher Concepts I will understand those which are compounded of other concepts. The next thing I wish to make clear is that concepts of the lower order of which I speak, notwithstanding that they are the simplest kind of concepts possible, are already some- thing more than the names of particular ideas : they are the names of what I have called generic ideas, or recepts. We may search through the whole dictionary of any language and not find a single word which stands as a name for a truly particular idea — i.e. for the memory of a particular percept. Proper names are those which most nearly approach this character ; but even proper names are really names of recepts (as distinguished from particular percepts), seeing that every object to which they are applied is a highly complex object, presenting many and diverse qualities, all of which require to be registered in memory as appertaining to that object if it is again to be recognized as the same. Names, then, are not concerned with particular ideas, strictly so called : concepts, even of the lowest order, have to do with generic ideas. Furthermore, the generic ideas with which they have to do are for the most part highly generic : even before a recept is old enough to be baptized — or sufficiently far developed to be admitted as a member of the body conceptual, — it is already a highly organized product of ideation. We have seen in the last chapter how wonderfully far the combining power of imagination is able to go without the aid of language ; and the consequence of this is, that before the advent of language mind is already stored with a LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 77 rich accumulation of orderly ideas, grouped together in many systems of logical coherency. When, therefore, the advent of language does take place, it is needless that this work of logical grouping should be recommenced ab initio. What language does is to take up the work of grouping where it has been left by generic ideation ; and if it is found expedient to name any generic ideas, it is the more generic as well as the less generic that are selected for the purpose. In short, immense as is the organizing power of the Logos, it does not come upon the scene of its creative power to find only that which is without form and void : rather does it find a fair structure of no mean order of system, shaped by prior influences, and, so far as thus shaped, a veritable cosmos. Again, all concepts in their last resort depend on rcccpts, just as in their turn recepts depend on percepts. This fact admits of being abundantly proved, not only by general con- siderations but also by the etymological derivation of abstract terms. The most highly abstract terms are derived from terms less abstract, and these from others still less abstract, until, by two or three such steps at the most, we are in all cases led directly back to their origin in a " lower concept " — i.e. in the name of a recept. As I will prove later on, there is no abstract word or general term in any language which, if its origin admits of being traced at all, is not found to have its root in the name of a recept. Concepts, therefore, are originally nothing more than named recepts ; and hence it is a priori impossible that any concept can be formed unless it does eventually rest upon the basis of recepts. Owing to the elaboration which it subsequently undergoes in the region of symbolism, it may, indeed, so far cease to bear any likeness to its parentage that it is only the philologist who can trace its lineage. When we speak of Virtue, we need no longer think about a man, nor need we make any conscious reference to the steering of a ship when we use the word Government. But it is none the less obvious that both these highly abstract words have originated in the naming of recepts (the one of an object, the other of an action) ; and that their subsequent elevation in the 78 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. scale of generality has been due to a progressive widening of conceptual significance at the hands of symbolical thought In other words, and to revert to my previous terminology, "higher concepts" can in no case originate de novo: they can only be born of " lower concepts," which, in turn, are the progeny of recepts. I must now recur to a point with which we were con- cerned at the close of the last chapter. I there showed that the kind of classification, or mental grouping of ideas, which goes to constitute the logic of recepts, differs from the mental grouping of ideas which constitutes the logic of concepts, in that while the former has to do with similarities which are most obvious to perception, and therefore with analogies which most obtrude themselves upon attention, the latter have to do with similarities which are least obvious to perception, and therefore with analogies which are least readily apparent to the senses. Classification there is in both cases ; but while in the one it depends on the closeness of the resemblances in an act of perception, m the other it is expressive of their remoteness. Now, from this it follows that the more con- ceptual the classification, the less obvious to immediate per- ception are the similarities between the things classified ; and, consequently, the higher a generalization the greater must be the distance by which it is removed from the merely auto- matic groupings of receptual ideation. For example, the earliest classification of the animal king- dom with which we are acquainted, grouped together, under the common designation of " creeping things," articulata, mollusca, reptiles, amphibia, and even certain mammals, such as weasels, &c. Here, it is evident, the classification reposed only on the very superficial resemblances which are exhibited by these various creatures in their modes of locomotion. As yet conceptual thought had not been directed to the anatomy of animals ; and, therefore, when it undertook a classification of animals, in the first instance it went no further than to note the most obvious differences as to external form and move- LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 79 mcnt. In other words, this earh'est conceptual classification was little more than the verbal statement of a receptual classification. But when the science of comparative anatomy was inaugurated by the Greeks, a much more conceptual classification of animals emerged — although the importance of anything like a systematic arrangement of the animal kingdom as a whole was so little appreciated that it does not appear to have been attempted, even by Aristotle. For, marvellous as is the advance of conceptual grouping here displayed by him, he confined himself to drawing anatomical comparisons between one group of animals and another ; he neither had any idea of group subordinate to group which afterwards constituted the leading principle of taxonomic research, nor does he anywhere give a tabular statement of his own results, such as he could scarcely have failed to give had he appreciated the importance of classifying the animal kingdom as a systematic whole. Lastly, since the time of Ray the best thought of the best naturalists has been bestowed upon this work, with the result that conceptual ideation has con- tinuously ascended through wider and wider generalizations, or generalizations more and more chastened by the intentional and combined accumulations of knowledge. How enormous, then, is the contrast between the first simple attempt at classification as made by the early Jews, and the elaborate body of abstract thought which is presented by the taxonomic science of to-day. Similar illustrations might be drawn from any of the other departments of conceptual evolution, because everywhere such evolution essentially consists in the achievement of ideal integrations further and further removed from simple per- ceptions. Or, as Sir W, Hamilton puts it, "by a first general- ization we have obtained a number of classes of resembling individuals. But these classes we can compare together, observe their similarities, abstract from their differences, and bestow on their common circumstance a common name. On the second classes we can again perform the same operation, and thus, ascending through the scale of general notions. So MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN throwing out of view always a greater number of differences, and seizing always on fewer similarities in the formation of our classes, we arrive at length at the limit of our ascent in the notion of being or existence." * Now, the point on which I wish to be perfectly clear about is, that this process of conceptual ideation, whereby ideas become general, must be carefully distinguished from the pro- cesses of receptual ideation, whereby ideas become generic. For these latter processes consist in particular ideas, which are given immediately in sense perception, becoming by association of similarity or contiguity automatically fused together ; so that out of a number of such associated percepts there is formed a recept, without the need of any intentional co-operation of the mind in the matter. On the other hand, a general idea, or concept, can only be formed by the mind itself intentionally classifying its recepts known as such — or, in the case of creating " higher concepts," performing the same process with its already acquired general ideas, for the purpose of constructing ideas still more general. A generic idea, then, is generalized in the sense that a naturalist speaks of a lowly organism as generalized — i.e. as not yet differentiated into the groups of higher and more specialized structures that subse- quently emanate therefrom. But a general idea is generalized in the sense of comprising a group of such higher and more specialized structures, already formed and named under a common designation with reference to their points of resem- blance. Classification there is in all cases ; but in the recep- tual order it is automatic, while in the conceptual order it is introspective. So far as my analysis has hitherto gone, I do not anticipate criticism or dissent from any psychologist, to what- ever school he may belong. But there is one matter of subordinate importance which I may here most conveniently dispose of, although my views with regard to it may not meet with universal assent. * Lectures, vol. ii., p. 290, LOGIC OF CONCEPTS, 8 1 It appears to me an obvious feature of our introspective life that we are able to carry on elaborate processes of ideation without the aid of words — or, to put it paradoxically, that we are able to conceive without concepts. I am, of course, aware that this apparently obvious power of being able to think without any mental rehearsal of verbal signs (the vcrbum mtutale of scholasticism) is denied by several writers of good standing — notably, for instance, by Professor Max Mliller, who seeks with much elaboration to prove that " not only to a considerable extent, but always and altogether, we think by means of names." * Now this statement appears to me either a truism or untrue : it is either tautological in expression, or erroneous in fact. If we restrict the term " thought " to the operation of naming, it is merely a truism to say that there can be no thought without language ; for this is merely to say that there can be no naming without names. But if the term "thought" is taken to cover all processes of ideation which we do not share with brutes, I hold that the statement is opposed to obvious fact ; and, therefore, I agree with the long array of logicians and philosophers whom Professor Max Mliller quotes as showing what he calls " hesitation " in accepting a doctrine which in his opinion is the inevitable conclusion of Nominalism. For to mc it appears evident that within the region of concepts, tlie frequent handling of those with which the mind is familiar enables the mind to deal with them in somewhat the same automatic manner as, on a lower plane of co- ordinated action, the pianist deals with his chords and phrases. Whereas at first it required intentional and laborious effort to perform these many varied and complex adjustments, by practice their performance passes more and more out of the range of conscious effort, until they come to be executed in a manner well-nigh mechatiical. So in the case of purely mental operations, even of the highest ordvT. At first every link in the chain of ideation requires to be separately fastened to attention by means of a word : every step in a process of • Science of Thought, p. 35. For his whole argument, sec pp. 30-64. 82 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. reasoning requires to be taken on the solid basis of a pro- position. But by frequent habit the thinking faculty ceases to be thus restricted : it passes, so to speak, from one end of the chain to the other without requiring to pause at every link : for its original stepping-stones it has substituted a bridge, over which it can pass almost at a bound. Or, again, to change the metaphor, there arises a method of short-hand thinking, wherein even the symbols of ideas (concepts) need no longer appear in consciousness: judgment follows judgment in logical sequence, yet without any articulate expression by the vcrbiim inentale. This, I say, is a matter of fact which it appears to me a very small amount of introspection is enough to verify. On reading a letter, for instance, we may instan- taneously decide upon our answer, and yet have to pause before we are able to frame the propositions needed to express that answer. Or, while writing an essay, how often does one feel, so to speak, that a certain truth stands to be stated, although it is a truth which we cannot immediately put into words. We know, in a general way, that a truth is there, but we cannot supply the vehicle which is to bring it here ; and it is not until we have tried many devices, each of which involve long trains of sequent propositions, that we begin to find the satisfaction of rendering explicit in language what was previously implicit in thought. Again, in playing a game of chess we require to take cognizance of many and complex relations, actual and contingent ; so that to play the game as it deserves to be played, we must make a heavy demand on our powers of abstract thinking. Yet in doing this we do not require to preach a silent monologue as to all that we might do, and all that may be done by our opponent. Lastly, to give only one other illustration, in some forms of aphasia the patient has lost every trace of verbal memory, and yet his faculties of thought for all the practical purposes of life are not materially impaired. On the whole, therefore, I conclude that, although language is a needful condition to the original construction of con- ceptional thought, when once the building has been completed, LOGIC OF CONCEPTS. 83 the scaffolding may be withdrawn, and yet leave the edifice as stable as before. In this way familiar concepts become, as it were, degraded into recepts, but rccepts of a degree of complexity and organization which would not have been possible but for their conceptional parentage. With Geiger we may say, " So ist denn ubcrall die Sprache primar, der Bcgriff cntstcht durch das Wort." * Yet this does not hinder that with Friedrich Mliller we should add, " Sprechen ist nicht Denken, sondern es ist nur Ausdruck des Denkens."t With the exception of the last paragraph, my analysis, as already observed, will probably not be impugned by any living psychologist, either of the evolutionary or non-evolu- tionary schools ; for, with the exception of this paragraph, I have purposely arranged my argument so as thus far to avoid debatable questions. And it will be observed that even this paragraph has really nothing to do with the issue which lies before us ; seeing that the question with which it deals is concerned only with intellectual processes exclusively human. But now, after having thus fully prepared the way by a somewhat lengthy clearing of preliminary ground, we have to proceed to the question whether it is conceivable that the faculty of speech, with all the elaborate structure of ideation to which it has led, can have arisen by way of a natural • Urs/>rung der Sprache, s. 91. t Grundriss der Sprachwissenshaft, i., s. 16. It will be observed that there is an obvious analogy between the process above described, whereby conceptual ideation becomes degraded into receptual, and that whereby, on a lower plane of mental evolution, intelligence becomes degraded into instinct. In my former work I devoted many pages to a consideration of this subject, and showed that the con- dition to intelligent adjustments thus becoming instinctive is invariably to be found in frequency of repetition. Instincts of this kind (" secondary instincts ") may be termed degraded recepts, just as the recepts spoken of in the text are degraded concepts ; neither could be what it now is, but for its higher parentage. Any one who is specially interested in the question whether there can be thought without words, may consult the correspondence between Prof. Max Miiller, Mr, Francis Gallon, myself, and others, in Nature, May and June, 1887 (since publi>hcd in a separate form); between the former and Mr. Mivart, in Nature, March, 1888. Also an article by Mr. Justice Stephen in the Nineteenth Century, April, 1888. Prof. Whitney has some excellent remarks on this subject in his Language and th4 Study 0/ Language, pp. 405-411. 84 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. genesis from the lower faculties of mind. As we have now seen, it is on all hands agreed that the one and only distinction between human and animal psychology consists in the former presenting this faculty which, otherwise stated, means, as we have likewise seen, the power of translating ideas into symbols, and using these symbols in the stead of ideas. This, I say, is the one distinction upon which all are agreed ; the only question is as to whether it is a distinction of kind or of degree. Since the time when the ancient Greeks applied the same word to denote the faculty of language and the faculty of thought, the philosophical propriety of the iden- tification has become more and more apparent. Obscured as the truth may have become for a time through the fogs of Realism, discussion of centuries has fully cleared the philo- sophical atmosphere so far as this matter is concerned. Hence, in these latter days, the only question here presented to the evolutionist is — Why has no mere brute ever learnt to communicate with its fellows } Why has man alone of ani- mals been gifted with the Logos t To answer this question we must undertake a somewhat laborious investigation of the philosophy of Language. CHAPTER V. LANGUAGE, EtvmologICALLY the word Language means sign-making by means of the tongue, i.e. articulate speech. But in a wider sense the word is habitually used to designate sign-making in general, as when we speak of the " finger-language " of the deaf-and-dumb, the " language of flowers," &c. Or, as Pro- fessor Broca says, " there are several kinds of language ; every system of signs which gives expression to ideas in a manner more or less intelligible, more or less perfect, or more or less rapid, is a language in the general sense of the word. Thus speech, gesture, dactylology, writing both hieroglyphic and phonetic, are all so many kinds of language. There is, then, a general faculty of language which presides over all these modes of expression, and which may be defined — the faculty of establishing a constant relation between an idea and a sign, be this a sound, a gesture, a figure, or a drawing of any kind." The best classification of the sundry exhibitions of sign- making faculty which I have met with, is one that is given by Mr. Mivart in his Lessons from Nature (p. 83). This classifi- cation, therefore, I will render in his own words. "We may altogether distinguish si.x different kinds of language : — " I. Sounds which arc neither articulate nor rational, such as cries of pain, or the murmur of a mother to her infant. *' 2. Sounds which are articulate but not rational, such as the talk of parrots, or of certain idiots, who will repeat, with- out comprehending, every phrase they hear. 86 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN " 3. Sounds which are rational but not articulate, ejacula- tions by which we sometimes express assent to, or dissent from, given propositions. "4. Sounds which are both rational and articulate, consti- tuting true speech. " 5. Gestures which do not answer to rational conceptions, but are merely the manifestations of emotions and feelings. "6. Gestures which do answer to rational conceptions, and are therefore 'external,' but not oral manifestations of the verbiim vioitale." To this list of the " Categories of Language " a seventh must be added, to contain all kinds of written signs ; but with such obvious addition I assent to the classification, as including all the species that can possibly be included under the genus Language, and therefore as excluding none. Now the first thing to be noticed is, that the signs made may be made either intentionally or unintentionally; and the next is, that the division of intentional signs may be conveniently subdivided into two classes — namely, inten- tional signs which are natural, and intentional signs which are conventional. The subdivision of conventional signs may further be split into those which are due to past associations, and those which are due to inferences from present experience. A dog which *' begs " for food, or a parrot which puts down its head to be scratched, may do so merely because past experience has taught the animal that by so doing it receives the gratification it desires ; here is no need for reason — i.e. inference — to come into play. But if the animal has had no such previous experience, and therefore could not know by special association that such a particular gesture, or sign, would lead to such a particular consequence, and if under such circumstances a dog should see another dog beg, and should imitate the gesture on observing the result to which it led ; or if under such analogous circumstances a parrot should spontaneously depress its head for the purpose of making an expressive gesture, — then the sign might strictly be termed a rational one. LANGUAGE. 87 But it is evident that rational signs admit of almost numberless degrees of complexity and elaboration ; so that reason itself docs not present a greater variety of manifesta- tions in this respect than does the symbolism whereby it is expressed : an algebraical formula is included in the same category of sign-making as the simplest gesture whereby we intentionally communicate the simplest idea. Rational signs, therefore, may be made by gesture, by tone, by articulation, or by writing — using each of these words in its largest sense.* The following schema may serve to show this classification in a diagrammatic form — i.e. the classification which I have myself arrived at, and which follows closely the one given by Mr. Mivart. Indeed, there is no difference at all between the two, save that I have endeavoured to express the distinction between signs as intentional, unintentional, natural, conven- tional, emotional, and intellectual. The subdivision of the latter into denotative, connotative, denominative, and pre- dicative, will be explained in Chapter VIII. • From this it will be seen that by u^ng such terms as " inference," "reason," " rational," &c., in alludinj; to mental processes of the lower animals, I am in no way prejudicing the question as to the distinction between man and brute. In the higher region of recepts both the man and the brute attain in no small degree to a perception of analogies or relations : this is inference or ratiocination in its most direct form, and differs from the process as it takes place in the sphere of conceptual thought only in that it is not itself an object of knowledge. But, considered as a process of inference or ratiocination, I do not see that it should make any difference in our terminology whether or not it happens to be itself an object of knowledge. Therefore I do not follow those numerous writers who restrict such terms to the higher exhibitions of the process, or to the ratiocination which is concerned only with introspective thought. It may be a matter of straw- splitting, but I think it is best to draw our distinctions where the distinctions occur ; and I cannot see that it modifies the process of inference, as inference, whether or not the mind, in virtue of a superadded faculty, is able to think about the process as a process — not any more, for instance, than the process of associa- tion is altered by its becoming itself an object of knowledge. Therefore, I hope I have made it clear that in maintaining the rationality of brutes I am not arguing for anything more than that they have the power, as Mr. Mivart himself allows, of drawing "practical inferences." Hitherto, then, my difference with Mr. Mivart — and, so far as I know, with all other modern writers who maintain the ixiatiooality of brutes — is only one of terminology. 88 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. LANGUAGE, OR SIGN-MAKING. \ 3 Unintentional. 4 Intentional. Without understanding. 1 f Natural, Conventional. 6 1 7 1 1 Emotional. Intellectual. A 1 B 1 1 Detonative. Connotative. C 1 D 1 1 Denomina'ive. Predicative. Or, neglecting the unintentional and merely imitative signs as not, properly speaking, signs at all, every kind of intentional sign may be represented diagrammatically as in the illustration opposite. Now, thus far we have been dealing with matters of fact concerning which I do not think there can be any question. That is to say, no one can deny any of the statements which this schema serves to express ; a difference of opinion can only arise when it is asked whether the sundry faculties (or cases) presented by the schema are developmentally continuous with one another. To this topic, therefore, we shall now address ourselves. First let it be observed that there can be no dispute about one point, namely, that all the faculties or cases presented by the schema, with the single exception of the last (No. 7), are common to animals and men. Therefore we may begin by taking as beyond the reach of question the important fact that animals do present, in an unmistakable manner, a germ of the sign-making faculty. But this fact is so important in its relation to our subject, that I shall here pause to consider the modes and degrees in which the faculty is exhibited by animals. Huber says that when one wasp finds a store of honey, LA A GU AGES. 89 Denom'nntiue .Connotatiue S i g n a 90 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. " it returns to the nest and brings off in a short time a hundred other wasps ; " and this statement is confirmed by Dujardin. Again, the very able observer, F, Miiller, writes, in one of his letters to Mr. Darwin, that he observed a queen bee depositing her eggs in a nest of 47 cells. In the process she overlooked four of the cells, and when she had filled the other 43, supposing her work to have been completed, prepared to retire. " But as she had overlooked the four cells of the new comb, the workers ran impatiently from this part to the queen, pushing her in an odd manner with their heads, as they did also the other workers they met with. In consequence, the queen began again to go round on the two older combs ; but, as she did not find any cell wanting an egg, she tried to descend, yet everywhere she was pushed back by the workers. This contest lasted rather a long while, till the queen escaped without having completed her work. Thus the workers knew how to advise the queen that some- thing was yet to be done ; but they knew not how to show her where it had to be done." According to De Fraviere, Landois, and some other observers, bees have a number of different notes, or tones, whereby they communicate information to one another ; * but there seems to be little doubt that the means chiefly employed are gestures made with the antennae. For example, Huber divided a hive into two chambers by means of a partition : great excitement prevailed in the half of the hive deprived of the queen, and the bees set to work to build royal cells for the creation of a new queen. Huber then divided a hive in exactly the same manner, with the difference only that the screen, or partition, was made of trellis work, through the openings of which the bees on either side could pass their antennae. Under these circumstances the bees in the queenless half of the hive exhibited no disturbance, nor did they construct any royal cells : the bees in the other, or separated, half of the hive were able to inform them that the queen was safe. • See Animal Intelligence, p. 158. LANGUAGE. 9 1 Turning now to ants, the extent to which the power of communicating by signs is here carried cannot fail to strike us as highly remarkable. In my work on Aui)nal Intelli- gence I have given many observations by different naturalists on this head, the general results of which I will here render. When we consider the high degree to which ants carry the principle of co-operation, it is evident that they must have some means of intercommunication. This is especially true of the Ecitons, which so strangely mimic the tactics of military organization. " The army marches in the form of a rather broad and regular column, hundreds of yards in length. The object of the march is the capture and plunder of other insects, &c., for food ; and as the well-organized host advances, its devastating legions set all other terrestrial life at defiance. From the main column there are sent out smaller lateral columns, the component individuals of which play the part of scouts, branching off in various directions, and searching about with the utmost activity for insects, grubs, &c., over every log, under every fallen leaf, and in every nook and cranny where there is any chance of finding prey. When their errand is completed, they return into the main column. If the prey found is suilficicntly small for the scouts themselves to manage, it is immediately seized, and carried back to the main column ; but if the amount is too large for the scouts to deal with alone, messengers are sent back to the main column, whence there is immediately despatched a detachment large enough to cope with the requirements. . . . On either side of the main column there are constantly running up and down a few individuals of smaller size and lighter colour than the other ants, which seem to play the part of officers ; for they never leave their stations, and while running up and down the outsides of the column, they every now and again stop to touch antennre with some member of the rank and file, as if to give instructions. When the scouts discover a wasps'-nest in a tree, a strong force is sent out from the main army, the nest is pulled to pieces, and all the larva; carried to the rear of thj army, while the wasps fly around defenceless against the 92 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. invading multitude. Or, if the nest of any other species of ant is found, a similarly strong force — or perhaps the whole army — is deflected towards it, and with the utmost energy the innumerable insects set to work to sink shafts and dig mines till the whole nest is rifled of its contents. In these mining operations the ants work with an extraordinary display of organized co-operation ; for those low down in the shafts do not lose time by carrying up the earth which they excavate, but pass the pellets to those above ; and the ants on the sur- face, when they receive the pellets, carry them — with an appearance of forethought which quite staggered Mr. Bates — only just far enough to insure that they shall not roll back again into the shaft, and, after depositing them, immediately hurry back for more. But there is not a rigid (or merely mechanical) division of labour : the work seems to be performed by intelligent co-operation amongst a host of eager little creatures ; for some of them act at one time as carriers of pellets, and at another as miners, while all shortly afterwards assume the ofiice of conveyers of the spoil." * Mr. Belt writes : — " The Ecitons and most other ants follow each other by scent, and I believe they can communi- cate the presence of danger, of booty, or other intelligence to a distance by the different intensity or qualities of the odours given off. I one day saw a column running along the foot of a nearly perpendicular tramway cutting, the side of which was about six feet high. At one point I noticed a sort of assembly of about a dozen individuals that appeared in consultation. Suddenly one ant left the conclave, and ran with great speed up the perpendicular face of the cutting without stopping. . . . On gaining the top of the cutting, the ants entered some brushwood suitable for hunting. In a very short time the information was communicated to the ants below, and a dense column rushed up in search of prey." Again, Mr. Bates writes : — " When I interfered with the column, or abstracted an individual from it, news of the disturbance was quickly communicated to a distance of several • Animal Inteliigefice, pp. I14-116. LANGUAGE. 93 yards to the rear, and the column at that point commenced retreating." On arriving at a stream of water, the marching column first endeavours to find some natural bridge whereby to cross it. Should no such bridge be found, " they travel along the bank of the river until they arrive at a flat sandy shore. Each ant now seizes a bit of dry wood, pulls it into the water and mounts thereon. The hinder rows push the front ones farther out, holding on to the wood with their feet and to their comrades with their jaws. In a short time the water is covered with ants, and when the raft has grown too large to be held together by the small creatures' strength, a part breaks itself off, and begins the journey across, while the ants left on the bank pull the bits of wood into the water, and work at enlarging the ferr>'-boat until it breaks again. This is repeated as long as an ant remains on shore." * So much, then, to give a general idea of the extent to which co-operation is exhibited by Ecitons — a fact which must be taken to depend upon some system of signs. Turning next to still more definite evidence of communication, Mr. Hague, the geologist, writing to Mr. Darwin from South America, says that on the mantel-shelf of his sitting-room there were three vases habitually filled with fresh flowers. A nest of red ants discovered these flowers, and formed a line to them, constantly passing upwards and downwards between the mantel-shelf and the floor, and also between the mantel-shelf and the ceiling. For several days in succession Mr. Hague frequently brushed the ants in great numbers from the wall to the floor, but, as they were not killed, the line again reformed. One day, however, he killed with his finger some of the ants upon the mantel-shelf "The eff'ect of this was immediate and unexpected. As soon as those ants which were approaching arrived near to where their fellows lay dead and suffering, they turned and fled with all possible haste. In half an hour the wall above the mantel-shelf was cleared of ants. During the space of an hour or two the colony from below continued • Kreplin, quoted by Biichner. 94 MENTAL EVOLUTION .N MAN. to ascend until reaching the lower bevelled edge of the shelf, at which point the more timid individuals, although unable to see the vase, somehow became aware of the trouble, and turned without further investigation ; while the more daring advanced hesitatingly just to the upper edge of the shelf, when, extending their antennae and stretching their necks, they seemed to peep cautiously over the edge until they beheld their suffering companions, when they too turned and followed the others, expressing by their behaviour great excitement and terror. An hour or two later the path or trail leading from the lower colony to the vase was entirely free from ants. ... A curious and invariable feature of their behaviour was that when an ant, returning in fright, met another approach- ing, the two would always communicate ; but each would pursue its own way, the second ant continuing its journey to the spot where the first ant had turned about, and then following that example. For some days after this there were no ants visible on the wall, either above or below the shelf Then a few ants from the lower colony began to reappear ; but instead of visiting the vase, which had been the scene of the disaster, they avoided it altogether, and, following the lower front edge of the shelf to the tumbler standing near the middle, made their attack upon that with precisely the same result." Lastly, Sir John Lubbock made some experiments with the express purpose of testing the power of communication by ants. He found that if an ant discovered a deposit of larvae outside the nest, she would return to the nest, and, even though she might have no larvae to show, was able to communicate her need of assistance — a number of friends proceeding to follow her as a guide to the heap of larvae which she had found. In one very instructive experiment Sir John arranged three parallel pieces of tape, each about two and a half feet long : one end of each piece of tape was attached to the nest, and the other dipped into a glass vessel. In the glass at the end of one of the tapes he placed a considerable number of larvae (300 to 600) : in the glass at the end of another of the LANGUAGE. 0$ pieces he put only two or three larva;, while the third c^Uss he left empty. The object of the empty glass was to see whether any of the ants would come to the glass under such circumstances by mere accident. He then took two ants, one of which he placed in the glass with the many larvse, and the other in the glass with the few. Each ant took a larva, car- ried it to the nest, then returned for more, and so on. After each journey he put another larva in the glass with the few larvre, in order to replace the one which had been removed. The result of the experiment was that during 47^ hours the ants which had gone to the glass containing numerous larvae brought 257 friends to their assistance, while during 53 hours those which had gone to the glass containing only two or three larvae brought only 82 friends ; and no single ant came to the glass which contained no larva. Now, as all the glasses were exposed to similar conditions, and as the roads to the first two must, in the first instance at all events, have been equally scented by the passage of ants over them, these results appear very conclusive as proving some power of definite communication, not only that larwne are to be found, but even where the largest store is to be met with. As to the means of communication, or method of sign- making, there can be no doubt that this in ants, as in bees, is mainly gestures made by the antennae ; but that gestures of other kinds are also employed is sufficiently well proved by the following observation of the Rev. Dr. M'Cook. " I have seen an ant kneel down before another and thrust forward the head, drooping quite under in fact, and lie there motion- less, thus expressing as plainly as sign-language could, her desire to be cleansed. I at once understood the gesture, and so did the supplicated ant, for she at once went to work." So much, then, for the power of sign-making displajed by the Hymenoptera. As I have not much evidence of sign- making in any of the other Invcrtebrata,* I shall pass on at once to the Vertebrata. • The best insf.nnces of s'pn-making among Invertcbr.iti other th.in the Hymenoptera which I have met with is one that I have myself observed and g6 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Ray observed the different tones used by the common hen, and found them uniformly significant of different ideas, or emotional states ; therefore we may properly regard this as a system of language, though of a very rudimentary form. He distinguishes altogether nine or ten distinct tones, which are severally significant of as many distinct emotions and ideas — namely, brooding, leading forth the brood, finding food, alarm, seeking shelter, anger, pain, fear, joy or pride in having laid an egg. Houzeau, who independently observed this matter, says that the hen utters at least twelve significant sounds.* Many other cases could be given among Birds, and a still greater number among Mammals, of vocal tones being used as intentionally significant of states of feeling and of definite ideas ; but to save space I will only render a few facts in a condensed form. "In Paraquay, the Cebus azarce when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which excite in other monkeys similar emotions (Rengger). ... It is a more remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, has learned to bark in at least four or five distinct tones : . . . 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." f I may next briefly add allusions to those instances of the already recorded in Mental Evolution in Animals (p. 343, note). The animal is the processional caterpillar. These larvoe migrate in the form of a long line, crawling Indian file, with the head of the one touching the tail of the next in the series. If one member of the series be removed, the next member in advance immediately stops and begins to wag its head in a peculiar manner from side to side. This serves as a signal for the next member also to stop and wag his head, and so on till all the members in front of the interruption are at a standstill, all wagging their heads. But as soon as the interval is closed up by the advance of the rear of the column, the front again begins to move forward, when the head- wagging ceases. • Fac. Ment. des Animaux, tom. ii., p. 348. t Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 84, 85. LAXGUAGE. 97 use of signs bj- mammals which arc fully detailed in A)uinal Intelligence. Mr. S. Goodbehcre tells me of a pony which used to push back the inside bolt of a gate in its paddock, and neigh for an ass which was loose in the yard beyond ; the ass would then come and push up the outside latch, thus opening the gate and releasing the pony (p. 333). With respect to gestures, Mrs. K. Addison wrote me of her jackdaw — which lived in a garden, and which she usually supplied with a bath — reminding her that she had forgotten to place the bath, by coming before her and going through the movements of ablution upon the ground (p. 316). Youatt gives the case of a pig which was trained to point game with great precision (pp. 339,340), and this, as in the case of the dog, implies a high development of the sign-making faculty. Every sportsman must know how well a setter understands its own pointing, and also the pointing of other dogs, as gesture-signs. As regards its own pointing, if at any distance from the sportsman, the animal will look back to see if the " point " has been noticed ; and, if it has, the point will be much more " steady " and prolonged than if the animal sees that it has not been observed. As regards the pointing of other dogs, the "backing" of one by another means that as soon as one dog sees another dog point he also stands and points, whether or not he is in a position to scent the game. In my previous work, while treating of artificial instincts, I have shown (as Mr. Darwin had previously remarked) that in well-bred sporting dogs a tendency to " back," more or less pronounced, is intuitive. But I have also observed among my own setters that even in cases where a young dog does not show any innate disposition to " back," by working him with other dogs for a short time he soon acquires the habit, without any other instruction than that which is supplied by his own observation. I have also noticed that all sporting dogs are liable to be deceived by the attitude which their companions strike when defalcating ; but this is probably due to their line of sight being so much lower than that of a 93 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. man, that slight differences of attitude are not so perceptible to them as to ourselves. Major Skinner writes of a large wild elephant which he saw on a moonlight night coming out of a wood that skirted some water. Cautiously advancing across the open ground to with- in a hundred yards of the water, the animal stood perfectly motionless — the rest of the herd, still concealed in the wood, being all the while so quiet and motionless that not the least sound proceeded from them. Gradually, after three successive advances, halting some minutes after each, he moved up to the water's edge, in which however he did not think proper to quench his thirst, but remained for several minutes listening in perfect stillness. He then returned cautiously and slowly to the point at which he had issued from the wood, whence he came back with five other elephants, with which he proceeded, somewhat less slowly than before, to witiiin a few yards of the tank, where he posted them as patrols. He then re-entered the wood and collected the whole herd, which must have amounted to between eighty and a hundred, and led them across the open ground, with the most extraordinary composure and quiet, till they came up to the five sentinels, when he left them for a moment and again made a reconnaissance at the edge of the tank. At last, being apparently satisfied that all was safe, he turned back, and obviously gave the order to advance ; " for in a moment," sa\s Major Skinner, " the whole herd* rushed to the water, with a degree of unreserved confidence so opposite to the caution and timidity which had marked their previous movements, that nothing will ever persuade me that there was not rational and preconcerted co-operation throughout the whole part}^ " — and so, of course, some definite communi- cation by signs (p. 40 1). With regard to the use of gesture-signs by cats, I have given such cases as those of their imitating the begging of a terrier on observing that the terrier received food in answer to this gesture (p. 414) ; making a peculiar noise on desiring to have a door opened, which, if not attended to, was followed LANGUAGE. 99 up by "pulling one's dress with its claws, and then, having succeeded in attracting the desired attention, it would walk to the street door and stop there, making the same cry until let out" (p. 414) ; also of a cat which, on seeing her friend the parrot " flapping its wings and struggling violently up to its knees in dough," ran upstairs after the cook to inform her of the catastrophe — " mewing and making what signs she could for her to go down," till at last " she jumped up, seized her apron, and tried to drag her down," so that the cook did go down in time to save the bird from being smothered. This gesture-sign of pulling at clothing, in order to induce one to visit a scene of catastrophe, is of frequent occurrence both in cats and dogs. Several instances are likewise given of cats jumping on chairs and looking at bells when they want milk (this being intended as a sign that they desire the bell pulled to call the servant who brings the milk), placing their paws upon the bell as a still more emphatic sign, or even themselves ringing the bell (p. 416). Concerning gesture-signs made by dogs- (other than point- ing), I may allude to a terrier which I had, and which when thirsty used to signify his desire for water by begging before a wash-stand, or any other object where he knew that water was habitually kept. And Sir John Lefroy, F.R.S., gave me a similar, though still more striking, case of his terrier, which it was the duty of a maid-servant to supply with milk. One morning this servant was engaged on some needlework, and did not supply the milk. "The dog en- deavoured in every possible way to attract her attention and draw her forth, and at last pushed aside the curtain of a closet, and, although never having been taught to fetch or carry, took between his teeth the cup she habitually used, and brought it to her feet " (p. 466). Another case somewhat simi- lar is given on the same page. Again, Mr. A. H. Browning wrote me: — "My attention was called to my dog appearing in a great state of excitement, not barking (he scklom barks) but whining, and performing all sorts of antics (in a human subject I should have said 100 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. gesticulating). The herdmen and myself returned to the sty ; we caught but one pig, and put him back ; no sooner had we done so, than the dog ran after each pig in succession, brought him back to the sty by the ear, and then went after another, until the whole number were again housed " (p. 450). Further, I give an observation of my own (p. 445) on one terrier making a gesture-sign to another. Terrier A being asleep in my house, and terrier B lying on a wall outside, a strange dog, C, ran along below the wall on the public road following a dog-cart. Immediately on seeing C, B jumped off the wall, ran upstairs to where A was asleep, woke him up by poking him with his nose in a determined and suggestive manner, which A at once understood as a sign : he jumped over the wall and pursued the dog C, although C was by that time far out of sight, round a bend in the road. On page 447 I give, on the authority of Dr. Beattie, the case of a dog which saved his master's life (who had fallen through the ice, and was supporting himself with a gun placed across the -opening), by running into a neighbouring village, and pulling a man by the coat in so significant a manner that he followed the animal and rescued the gentle- man. Many cases more or less similar to this one are recorded in the anecdote books. Concerning the use of gesture-signs by monkeys, I give on page 472 the remarkable case recorded by James Forbes, F.R.S., of a male monkey begging the body of a female which had just been shot. " The animal," says Forbes, " came to the door of the tent, and, finding threats of no avail, began a lamentable moaning, and by the most expressive gestures seemed to beg for the dead body. It was given him ; he took it sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions. They who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race." Again, Captain Johnson writes of a monkey which he shot upon a tree, and which then, as he says, " instantly ran down to the lowest branch of a tree, as if he were going to fly at me stopped suddenly, and coolly put his paw to the part wounded LA\^GUAGE. lOI covered with blood, and held it out for me to see. I was so much hurt at the time that it has left an impression never to be effaced, and I have never since fired a gun at any of the tribe. Almost immediately on my return to the party, before I had fully described what had passed, a Syer came to inform us that the monkey was dead. We ordered the Syer to bring it to us ; but by the time he returned the other monke)'s had carried the dead one off, and none of them could anywhere be seen " (p. 475). And Sir William Hoste records a closely similar case. One of his officers, coming home after a long day's shooting, saw a female monkey running along the rocks, with her young one in her arms. He immediately fired, and the animal fell. On his coming up, she grasped her little one close to her breast, and with her other hand pointed to the wound which the ball had made, and which had entered above her breast. Dipping her finger in the blood and holding it up, she seemed to reproach him with having been the cause of her pain, and also of that of the young one, to which she frequently pointed. " I never," says Sir William, " felt so much as when I heard the story, and I determined never to shoot one of these animals as long as I lived " (p. 476). Lastly, as proof that the more intelligent of the lower animals admit of being taught the use of signs of the most con- ventional character (or most remote from any natural ex- pression of their feelings and ideas), I may allude to the recent experiments by Sir John Lubbock on " teaching ani- mals to converse." These experiments consisted in writing on separate and similar cards such words as "bone," " water," "out," "pet me," &c., and teaching a dog to bring a card bearing the word expressive of his want at the time of bring- ing it. In this way an association of ideas was established between the appearance of a certain number and form of written signs, and the meaning which they severally betokened. Sir John Lubbock found that his dog learnt the correct use of those signs.* Of course in these experiments marks of • Nature, Ajiril lO, 1SS4, pp. 54>, 5j5i. I02 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. any other kind would have served as well as written words ; for it clearly would be absurd to suppose that the dog could read the letters, so as mentally to construct them into the equivalent of a spoken word, in any such way as a child would spell b-o-n-e, bone. But, all the same, these experiments are of great interest as showing that it falls within the mental capacity of the more intelligent animals to appreciate the use of signs so conventional as those which constitute a stage of writing above the drawing of pictures, and below the employment of an alphabet. Enough has now been said to prove incontestably that animals present what I have called the germ of the sign- making faculty. As the main object of these chapters is to estimate the probability of human language having arisen by way of a continuous development from this germ, we may next turn to take a general survey of human language in its largest sense, or as comprising all the manifestations of the sign-making faculty. Referring again to the schema (page 88), it is needless to consider cases i and 2, for evidently these are on a psycho- logical level in man and animals. Case 3, also, especially in the direction of its branch 4, is to a large extent psychologically equivalent in men and animals: so far as there is any difference it depends on the higher psychical nature of man being much more rich in ideas which find their natural expression in gestures or tones, and which, therefore, are impossible in brutes. But it will be conceded that here there is nothing to explain. The fact that man has a mind more richly endowed with ideas carries with it, as a matter of course, the fact that their natural expression is riiore multiplex. The case, however, is different when we arrive at con- ventional signs ; for these attain so enormous a development in man as compared with animals, that the question whether they do not really depend on some additional mental faculty, distinct in kind, becomes fully admissible. The first thing, then, we have to notice with regard to con- LAXGUAGE. 103 ventional signs as used by man is, that no line of strict demarcation can be drawn between them and natural signs ; the latter shade off into the former by gradations, which it becomes impossible to detect over large numbers of individual cases. With respect to tones, for example, it cannot be said, in many instances, whether this and that modulation, which is now recognized as expressive of a certain state of feeling, has always been thus expressive, or has only become so by con- ventional habit ; although, if we consider the different tones by which different races of mankind express some of their similar feelings, we may be sure that in these cases one or other of the differences must be due to conventional habit — just as in the converse cases, in which all mankind use the same tones to express the same feelings, we may be sure that this mode of expression is natural. And so with gestures. Many which at first sight we should, judging from our own feelings alone, suppose to be natural — such, for instance, as kissing — are shown by observation of primitive races to be conventional ; while others which we should probably regard as conventional — such, for instance, as shrugging the shoulders — are shown by the same means to be natural* But for our present purposes it is clearly a matter of no consequence that we should be able to classify all signs as natural or conventional. For it is certain that animals employ both; and hence no distinction between the brute and the man can be raised on the question of the kind of signs which they severally employ as natural or conventional. This distinction, therefore, may in future be disregarded, and natural and conventional signs, if made intentionally as sig?is, I shall con- sider as identical. For the sake of method, however, I shall treat the sign-making faculty as exhibited by man in the order of its probable evolution ; and this means that I shall begin with the most natural, or least conventional, of the systems. This is the language of tone and gesture. • For information on all these points, sec Darwin, Expression of the Emotions. 8 104 MEATAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. CHAPTER VI. TONE AND GESTURE. Tone and Gesture, considered as means of communication, may be dealt with simultaneously. For while it cannot be said that either historically or psychologically one is prior to the other, no more can it be said that in the earliest phases of their development one is more expressive than the other. All the more intelligent of the lower animals employ both ; and the hissings, spittings, growlings, screamings, gruntings, coo- ings, &c., which in different species accompany as many different kinds of gesture, are assuredly not less expressive of the various kinds of feelings which are expressed. Again, in our own species, tone is quite as general, and, within certain limits, quite as expressive as gesture. Nay, even in fully developed speech, rational meaning is largely dependent for its conveyance upon slight differences of intonation. The five hundred words which go to constitute the Chinese language are raised to three times that number by the use of significant intonation ; and even in the most highly developed languages shades of meaning admit of being rendered in this way which could not be rendered in any other. Nevertheless, the language of tone, like the language of gesture, clearly lies nearer to, and is more immediately expressive of the logic of recepts, than is the language of articulation. This is easily proved by all the facts at our dis- posal. We know that an infant makes considerable advance in the language of tone and gesture before it begins to speak; and, according to Dr. Scott, who has had a large experience TONE AND GESTURE. I05 in the instruction of idiotic children, "those to whom there is no hope of teaching more than the merest rudiments of speech, are yet capable of receiving a considerable amount of know- ledge by means of signs, and of expressing themselves by them." * Lastly, among savages, it is notorious that tone, gesticulation, and grimace play a much larger part in con- versation than they do among ourselves. Indeed, we have some, though not undisputed, evidence to show that in the case of many savages gesticulation is so far a necessary aid to articulation, that the latter without the former is but very imperfectly intelligible. For example, "those who, like the Arapahos, possess a very scanty vocabulary, pronounced in a quasi-intelligible way, can hardly converse with one another in the dark." f And, as Mr. Tylor says, " the array of evidence in favour of the existence of tribes whose language is incomplete without the help of gesture-signs, even for things of ordinary import, is very remarkable." % A fact which, as he very properly adds, " constitutes a telling argument in favour of the theory that the gesture-language is the original utterance of mankind [as it is ontogcnctically in the individual man], out of which speech has developed itself more or less fully among different tribes." J In support of the same general conclusions I may here also quote the following excellent remarks from Colonel Mallery's laborious work on Gesture-language : — § " 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 in- telligent 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 matron. It learns words only as they are • Quotc- interesting records of such conversations, and aa Collectanea Etymologia, ch. ix. CHAPTER VII. ARTICULATION. It will be my aim in this chapter to take a broad view of Articulation as a special development of the general faculty of sign-making, reserving for subsequent chapters a consideration of the philosophy of Speech. On the threshold of articulate language, then, we have four several cases to distinguish : first, articulation by way of meaningless imitation ; second, meaningless articulation by way of a spontaneous or instinctive exercise of the organs of speech ; third, understanding of the signification of articulate sounds, or words ; and fourth, articulation with an intentional attribution of the meaning understood as attaching to the words. I shall consider each of these cases separately. The meaningless imitation of articulate sounds occurs in talking birds, young children, not unfrcquently in savages, in idiots, and in the mentally deranged. The faculty of such meaningless imitation, however, need not detain us ; for it is evident that the mere re-echoing of a verbal sound is of no further psychological significance than is the mimicking of any other sound. Meaningless articulation of a spontaneous or instinctive kind occurs in young chiklrcn, in uneducated deaf-mutes, and also in idiots.* Infants usually (though not invariably) begin • For meaningless articulation by iiiiots, see Scott's Ktmarks on Education of Idiots. The fact is alluded to by most writers on idiot psycholoj^'y, and I have fre- quently observed it myself. But the ca-sc of uncducatetl deaf mutes is here more 122 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. with such syllables as "alia," "tata," "mama," and "papa' (with or without the reduplication) before they understand the meaning of any word. One of my own children could say all these syllables very distinctly at the age of eight months and a half ; and I could detect no evidence at that time of his understanding words, or of his having learnt these syllabic utterances by imitation. Another child of mine, which was very long in beginning to speak, at fourteen and a half months old said once, and only once, but very distinctly " Ego." This was certainly not said in imitation of any one having uttered the word in her presence, and therefore I mention the incident to show that meaningless articulation in young children is spontaneous or instinctive, as well as intentionally imitative ; for at that age the only other syllables which this child had uttered were those having the long a, as above mentioned. Were it necessary, I could give many other instances of this fact ; but, as it is generally recognized by writers on infant psychology, I need not wait to do so. We now come to the third of our divisions, or the under- standing of articulate sounds. And this is an important matter for us, because it is evident that the faculty of appreciating the meaning of words betokens a considerable advance in the general faculty of language. As we have before seen, tone and gesture, being the natural expression of the logic of recepts — and so even in their most elaborated forms being intentionally pictorial, — are as little as possible conventional ; to the purpose, I will, therefore, furnish one quotation in evidence of the above statement. " It is a ver)' notable fact bearing upon the problem of the Origin of Language, that even born-mutes, who never heard a word spoken, do of their own accord and without any teaching make vocal sounds more or less articulate, to ■which they attach a definite meaning, and which, when once made, they go on using afterwards in the same unvarying sense. Though these sounds are often capable of being written down more or less accurately with our ordinary alphabets, this effect on those who make them can, of course, have nothing to do with the sense of hearing, but must consist only in particular ways of breathing, combined with particular positions of the vocal organs " (Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 72, where see for evidence). The instinctive articulations of Laura Bridg- man (who was blind as well as deaf) are in this connection even still more conclusive (see ibid., pp. 74, 75). ARTICULATION. 123 but words, being coined expressly for the subservience of concepts, are always less graphic, and usually arbitrary. Therefore, although it would of course be wrong to say that a higher faculty is required to learn the arbitrary association between a particular verbal sound and a particular act or phenomenon, than is required to depict an abstract idea in gesture ; this only shows that where higher faculties are present, they are able to display themselves in gesture as well as in speech. The consideration which I now wish to present is that understanding a word implies (other things equal, or supposing the gesture not to be so purely conventional as a word) a higher development of the sign-making faculty than does the understanding of a tone or gesture — so that, for instance, if an animal were to understand the word " Whip," it would show itself more intelligent in appreciating signs than it would by understanding the gesture of threatening as with a whip. Now, the higher animals unquestionably do understand the meanings of words ; idiots too low in the scale themselves to speak are in the same position ; and infants learn the signifi- cation of many articulate sounds long before they begin them- selves to utter them.* In all these cases it is of course im- portant to distinguish between the understanding of words and the understanding of tones ; for, as already observed, both in the animal kingdom and in the growing child it is evident that the former represents a much higher grade of mental evolution than does the latter — a fact so obvious to common observation that I need not wait to give illustrations. But although the fact is obvious, it is no easy matter to distinguish in particular cases whether the understanding is due to an appreciation of words, to that of tones, or to both combined. • Writers on infant psychology differ as to the time when words are first understowl by infants. Doubtless it varies in individual cases, and is always more or less difficult to determine with accuracy. But all observers agree — and every mother or nurse could corroborate — that the understanding of many words and sentences is unmistakable long before the child itself begins to speak. Mr. Dar- win's observations showed that in the case of his children the understanding of words and sentences was unmistakable between the tenth and twelfth months. 124 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. We may be sure, however, that words are never understood unless tones are likewise so, and that understanding of words may be assisted by understanding of the tones in which they are uttered. Therefore, the only method of ascertaining where words as such are first understood, is to find where they are first understood irrespective of the tones in which they are uttered. This criterion — so far, at least, as my evidence goes — excludes all cases of animals obeying commands, answering to their names, &c., with the exception of the higher mammalia. That is to say, while the understanding of certain tones of the human voice extends at least through the entire vertebrated series, * and occurs in infants only a few weeks old ; the understanding of words without the assist- ance of tones appears to occur only in a few of the higher mammalia, and first dawns in the growing child during the second year.f The fact that the more intelligent Mammalia are able to understand words irrespective of tones is, as I have said, important ; and therefore I shall devote a few sentences to prove it. My friend Professor Gerald Yco had a terrier, which was taught to keep a morsel of food on its snout till it received the verbal signal " Paid for ; " and it was of no consequence in what tones these words were uttered. For even if they were introduced in an ordinary stream of conversation, the dog distinguished them, and immediately tossed the food into his mouth. Seeing this, I thought it worth while to try whether the animal would be able to distinguish the words " Paid for " from others presenting a close similarity of sound ; * See Animal Intelligence : for Fish, p. 250 ; for Frogs and Toads, p. 225 ; for Snakes, p. 261 ; for Birds and Mammals in various parts of the chapters devoted to these animals. The case quoted on the authority of Bingley regarding the tame bees of Mr. Wildman, vi'hich he had taught to obey words of command (p. 189), would, if corroborated, carry the faculty in question into the invertebrated series. t Although the ages at which talking proper begins varies much in different children, it may be taken as a universal rule — as stated in the last foot-note — that words, and even sentences, are understood long before they are intelligently articulated ; although, as previously remarked, even before any words are under- f/^^^i/ meaningless syllables may be spontaneously or instinctively articulated. AR TIC U LA TION. 1 2 5 and, therefore, while he was expecting the signal, I said "Pinafore;" the dog gave a start, and very nearly threw the food off his nose ; but immediately arrested the move- ment, evidently perceiving his mistake. This experiment was repeated many times with these two closely similar verbal sounds, and always with the same result : the dog clearly distinguished between them. I have more recently repeated this experiment on another terrier, which had been taught the same trick, and obtained exactly the same results. The well-known anecdote told of the poet Hogg may be fitly alluded to in this connection. A Scotch collie was able to understand many things that his master said to him, and, as proof of his ability, his master, while in the shepherd's cottage, said in as calm and natural tone as possible, " I'm thinking the cow's in the potatoes." Immediately the dog, which had been lying half asleep on the floor, jumped up, ran into the potato-field, round the house, and up the roof to take a survey ; but finding no cow in the potatoes, returned and lay down again. Some little time afterwards his master said as quietly as before, " I'm sure the cow's in the potatoes," when the same scene was repeated. But on trying it a third time, the dog only wagged his tail. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott, among other anecdotes of his bull terrier, says : — "The servant at Ashestiel, when laying the cloth for dinner, would say to the dog as he lay on the mat by the fire, ' Camp, my good fellow, the sheriff's coming home by the ford,' or ' by the hill ; ' and the poor animal would immediately go forth to welcome his master, advancing as far and as fast as he was able in the direction indicated by the words addressed to him." And numberless other anecdotes of the same kind might be quoted.* But the most remarkable display of the facult}- in question on the part of a brute which has happened to fall under my own observation, is that which many other English naturalists must have noticed in the case of the chimpanzee now in the • See, for instance, Watson's Reasoning Pirujer in Anim.i!^, pp. Ij7-I49i ^nd Mcunicr's La Animaux PerJectibleSf ch. xii. 126 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Zoologica. Gardens. This ape has learnt from her keeper the meanings of so many words and phrases, that in this respect she resembles a child shortly before it begins to speak. More- over, it is not only particular words and particular phrases which she has thus learnt to understand ; she also understands, to a large extent, the combination of these words and phrases in sentences, so that the keeper is able to explain to the animal what it is that he requests her to do. For example, she will push a straw through any particular meshes in the network of her cage which he may choose successively to indicate by such phrases as — " The one nearest your foot ; now the one next the key-hole ; now the one above the bar," &c., &c. Of course there is no pointing to the places thus verbally desig- nated, nor is any order observed in the designation. The animal understands what is meant by the words alone, and this even when a particular mesh is named by the keeper re- marking to her the accident of its having a piece of straw already hanging through it. In connection with the subject of the present treatise it appears to me difficult to overrate the significance of these facts. The more that my opponents maintain the fundamental nature of the connection between speech and thought, the greater becomes the importance of the consideration that the higher animals are able in so surprising a degree to participate with ourselves in the understanding of words. From the ana- logy of the growing child we well know that the understand- ing of words precedes the utterance of them, and therefore that the condition to the attainment of conceptual ideation is given in this higher product of receptual ideation. Surely, then, the fact that not a few among the lower animals (especially elephants, dogs, and monkeys) demonstrably share with the human infant this higher excellence of receptual capacity, is a fact of the largest significance. For it proves at least that these animals share with an infant those qualities of mind, which in the latter are immediately destined to serve as the vehicle for elevating ideation from the receptual to the conceptual sphere : the faculty of understanding words in so AK TICULA TION. 1 27 considerable a degree brings us to the very borders of the faculty of using words with an intelligent appreciation of their meaning. Familiarity with the facts now before us is apt to blunt this their extraordinary significance ; and therefore I invite my opponents to reflect how differently my case would have stood, supposing that none of the lower animals had happened to have been sufficiently intelligent thus to understand the meanings of words. How much greater would then have been the argumentative advantage of any one who undertook to prove the distinctively human prerogative of the Logos. No mere brute, it might have been urged, has ever displayed so much as the first step in approaching to this faculty : from its commencement to its termination the faculty belongs exclusively to mankind. But, as matters actually stand, this cannot be urged : the lower animals share with us the order of ideation which is concerned in the understanding of words — and words, moreover, so definite and particular in meaning as is involved in explaining the particular mesh in a large piece of wire-netting through which it is required that a straw shall be protruded. While watching this most remark- able performance on the part of the chimpanzee, I felt more than ever disposed to agree with the great philologist Gciger, where he says " there is scarceJy a more wonderful relation- ship upon the earth than this accession \i.e. the understanding of words] by the intelligence of animals to that of man."* I take it then, as certainly proved, that the germ of the sign-making faculty which is present in the higher animals is so far developed as to enable these animals to understand not merely conventional gestures, but even articulate sounds, irrespective of the tones in which they are uttered. There- fore, in view of this fact, together with the fact previously established that these same animals frequently make use of conventional gesture-signs themselves, I think we are justified in concluding a priori, that if these animals were able to articulate, they would employ simple words to express simple • UnpruMg der Sprache, p. 1 23. 128 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. ideas. I do not say, nor do I think, that they would form propositions ; but it seems to me Httle less than certain that they v/ould use articulate sounds, as they now use natural or conventional tones and gestures, to express such ideas as they now express in either of these ways. For instance, it would involve the exercise of no higher psychical faculty to say the word " Come," than it does to pull at a dress or a coat to convey the same idea ; or to utter the word " Open," instead of mewing in a conventional manner before a closed door; or, yet again, to utter the word " Bone," than to select and carry a card with the word written upon it. If this is so, we must conclude that the only reason why the higher Mammalia do not employ simple words to convey simple ideas, is that which we may term an accidental reason, so far as their psychology is concerned ; it is an anatomical reason, depending merely on the structure of their vocal organs not admitting of articulation.* Of course at this point my attention will be called to the case of talking birds ; for it is evident that in them we have the anatomical conditions required for speech, though assuredly occurring at a most unlikely place in the animal series ; and therefore these animals may be properly • Some cases are on record of dogs having been taught to articulate. Thus the thoughtful Leibnitz vouches for the fact (which he communicated to the Acadetnie Royale at Paris, and which that body said they would have doubted had it not been observed by so eminent a man), that he had heard a peasant's dog distinctly articulate thirty words, which it had been taught to say by the peasant's son. The Dumfries Journal, January, 1829, mentions a dog as then living in that town, who uttered distinctly the word " William," which was the name of a person to whom he was attached. Again, Colonel Malleiy writes : — " Some recent experiments of Prof. A. Graham Bell, no less eminent from his work in artificial speech than in telephones, shows that animals are more physically capable of pronouncing articulate sounds than has been supposed. He informed the writer that he recently succeeded by manipulation in causing an English terrier to form a number of the sounds of our letters, and particularly brought out from it the words 'How are you, grandmama,' with distinctness." As I believe that the barrier to articulation in dogs is anatomical and not psychological, I regard it as merely a question of observation whether this barrier may not in some cases be partly overcome ; but, as far as the evidence goes, I think it is safer to conclude that the instances mentioned consisted in the animals so modulating the tones of their voices as to resemble the sounds of certain words. ARTICULATION. 1 29 adduced to test the validity of my a priori inference — namely, that if the more intelliijcnt brutes could articulate, they would make a proper use of simple verbal signs. Let it, however, be here remembered that birds arc lower in the psychological scale than dogs, or cats, or monkeys ; and, therefore, that the inference which I drew touching the latter need not necessarily be held as applying also to the former. Never- theless, it so happens that even in the case of these psycho- logically inferior animals the evidence, such as it is, is not opposed to my inference : on the contrary, there is no small body of facts which goes to support it in a very satisfactory manner, A consideration of this evidence will now serve to introduce us to the fourth and last case presented in the programme at the beginning of this chapter, or the case of articulation with attribution of the meaning understood as attaching to the words. Taking, first, the case of proper names, it is unquestionable that many parrots know perfectly well that certain names belong to certain persons, and that the way to call these persons is to call their appropriate names. I knew a parrot which used thus to call its mistress as intelligently as any other member of the household ; and if she went from home for a day, the bird became a positive nuisance from its incessant calling for her to come. And in a similar manner talking birds often learn correctly to assign the names of other pet animals kept in the same house, or even the names of inanimate objects. There can thus be no question as to the use by talking birds of proper names and noun-substantives. With respect to adjectives, Houzeau very properly remarks that the apposite manner in which some parrots habitually use certain words shows an aptitude correctly to perceive and to name qualities as well as objects. Nor is this any- thing more than we might expect, seeing, on the one hand, as already shown, that animals possess generic ideas of many qualities, and, on the other, that an obvious quality is as much a 130 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. matter of immediate observation — and so of sensuous associa- tion— as is the object of which it may happen to be a quality. Again, it is no less certain that many parrots will under- stand the meaning of active and passive verbs, whether as uttered by others or by themselves. The request to " Scratch Poll " or the anouncement " Poll is thirsty," when intentionally used as signs, show as true an appreciation of the meaning of verbs — or rather, let us say, of verbal signs indicative of actions and states — as is shown by the gesture-sign of a dog or a cat in pulling one's dress to indicate " come," or mewing before an open door to signify " open." But not only may talking birds attach appropriate signifi- cations to nouns, adjectives, and verbs ; they may even use short sentences in a way serving to show that they appreciate — not, indeed, their grammatical structure — but their applic- ability as a whole to particular circumstances.* But this again is not a matter to excite surprise. For all such * Mr. Darwin writes: — "It is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events. I have received several detailed accounts to this effect. Admiral Sir J. Sullivan, whom I know to be a careful observer, assures me that an African parrot, long kept in his father's house, invariably called certain persons of the household, as well as visitors, by their names. He said ' Good morning ' to every one at breakfast, and * Good night ' to each as they left the room at night, and never reversed these salutations. To Sir J. Sullivan's father he used to add to the ' good morning ' a short sentence, which was never repeated after his father's death. He scolded violently a strange dog which came into the room through an open window, and he scolded another parrot (saying, ' You naughty polly ! '), which had got out of its cage, and was eating apples on the kitchen table. Dr. A. Moschkan informs me that he knew a starling which never made a mistake in saying in German ' good morning ' to persons arriving, and ' good-bye, old fellow' to those departing. I could add several other cases " {^Descent of Man, p. 85). Similarly Houzeau gives some instances of nearly the same kind {Fac. Ment. des Anim., tom. ii., p. 309, et seq.) ; and Mrs. Lee, in her Anecdotes records several still more remarkable cases (which are quoted by Houzeau), as does also M. Meunier in his recently published work on Les Attimaux Per/ec tildes. In my own correspondence I have received numerous letters detailing similar facts, anc from these I gather that parrots often use comical phrases when they desire to excite laughter, pitiable phrases when they desire to excite compassion, and so on ; although it does not follow from this that the birds understand the meanings of these phrases, further than that they are as a whole appropriate to excite the feel- ings which it is desired to excite. I have myself kept selected parrots, and can fully corroborate all the above statements from my own observations. ARTICULATION/. 13I instances of the apposite use of words or phrases by talking birds arc found on inquiry to be due, as antecedently we should expect that they must, to the principle of association. The bird hears a proper name applied to a person, and so, on learning to say the name, henceforth associates it with that person. And similarly with phrases. These with talking birds are mere vocal gestures, which in themselves present but little more psychological significance than muscular gestures. The verbal petition, " Scratch poor poll," does not in itself display any further psychological development than the significant gesture already alluded to of depressing the head against the bars of the cage ; and similarly with all cases of the appropriate use of longer phrases. Thus, supposing it to be due to association alone, a verbal sign of any kind is not much more remarkable, or indicative of intelligence, than is a gesture sign, or a vocal sign of any other kind. The only respect in which it differs from such other signs is in the fact that it is wholly arbitrary or conventional ; and although, as I have previously said, I do consider this an important point of difference, I am not at all surprised that even the intelligence of a bird admits of such special associations being formed, or that a wholly arbitrary sign of any kind should here be acquired by this means, and afterwards used as a sign. And that the verbal signs used by talking birds are due to association, and association only, all the evidence I have met with goes to prove. As showing how association acts in this case, I may quote the following remarks of Dr. Samuel Wilks, F.R.S., on his own parrot, which he carefully observed. He says that when alone this bird used to " utter a long catalogue of its sayings, more especially if it heard talking at a distance, as if wishing to join in the conversation, but at other times a particular word or phrase is only spoken when suggested by a person or object. Thus, certain friends who have addressed the bird frequently by some peculiar ex- pression, or the whistling of an air, will always be welcomed by the same words or tunc, and as regards myself, when I 132 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. enter the house — for my footstep is recognized — the bird will repeat one of my sayings. If the servants enter the room Poll will be ready with one of their expressions, and in their own tone of voice. It is clear that there is a close association in the bird's mind between certain phrases and certain persons or objects, for their presence or voice at once suggests some special word. For instance, my coachman, when coming for orders, has so often been told half-past two, that no sooner does he come to the door than Poll exclaims, ' Half-past two.' Again, having at night found her awake, and having said, 'Go to sleep,' if I have approached the cage after dark the same words have been repeated. Then, as regards objects, if certain words have been spoken in connection with them, these are ever afterwards associated together. For example, at dinner time the parrot, having been accustomed to have savory morsels given to her, I taught her to say, ' Give me a bit.' This she now constantly repeats, but only and appropriately at dinner-time. The bird associates the expression with something to eat, but, of course, knows no more than the infant the derivation of the words she is using. Again, being very fond of cheese, she easily picked up the word, and always asks for cheese towards the end of the dinner course, and at no other time. Whether the bird attaches the word to the true substance or not I cannot say, but the time of asking for it is always correct. She is also fond of nuts, and when these are on the table she utters a peculiar squeak ; this she has not been taught, but it is Poll's own name for nuts, for the sound is never heard until the fruit is in sight. Some noises which she utters have been obtained from the objects themselves, as that of a cork-screw at the sight of a bottle of wine, or the noise of water poured into a tumbler on seeing a bottle of water. The passage of the servant down the hall to open the front door suggests a noise of moving hinges, followed by a loud whistle for a cab."* Concerning the accuracy of these observations I have no doubt, and I could corroborate most of them were it necessary. * Journal of Mental Science, July, 1879. ARTlCVLAliON. 1 33 It appears, then, first, that talking birds may learn to associate certain words with certain objects and qualities, certain other words or phrases with the satisfaction of particular desires and the observation of particular actions ; words so used we may term vocal-gestures. Second, that they may invent sounds of their own contriving, to be used in the same way ; and that these sounds may be either imitative of the objects designated, as the sound of running fluid for " Water," or arbitrary, as the " particular squeak " that designated " Nuts." Third, but that in a much greater number of cases the sounds (verbal or otherwise) uttered by talking birds are imitative only, without the animals attaching to them any particular meaning. The third division, therefore, we may neglect as presenting no psychological import ; but the first and second divisions require closer consideration. In designating as "vocal gestures"* the correct use (acquired by direct association) of proper names, noun- substantives, adjectives, verbs, and short phrases. I do not mean to disparage the faculty which is displayed. On the contrary, I think this faculty is precisely the same as that whereby children first learn to talk ; for, like the parrot, the infant learns by direct association the meanings of certain words (or sounds) as denotative of certain objects, connotative of certain qualities, expressive of certain desires, actions, and so on. The only difference is that, in a few months after its first commencement in the child, this faculty develops into proportions far surpassing those which it presents in the bird, so that the vocabulary becomes much larger and more discriminative. But the important thing to attend to is that at first, and for several months after its commencement, the vocabulary of a child is always designative of particular objects, qualities, actions, or desires, and is acquired by direct association. The distinctive peculiarity of human speech, which elevates it above the region of animal gesticulation, is of later growth — the peculiarity, I mean, of using words, no • This term has been previously used by some philologists to signify ejacula- tion by man. It will be observed that I use it in a more extended sense. 134 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. longer as stereotyped in the framework of special and direct association, but as movable types to be arranged in any order that the meaning before the mind may dictate. When this stage is reached, we have the faculty of predication, or of the grammatical formation of sentences which are no longer of the nature of vocal gestures, dcsignative of particular . objects, qualities, actions, or states of mind : but vehicles for the conveyance of ever-changing thoughts. We shall presently sec that this distinction between the naming and the predicating phases of language is of the highest importance in relation to the subject of the present treatise ; but meanwhile all we have to note is that the naming phase of spoken language occurs — in a rudimentary form, indeed, but still unquestionably — in the animal kingdom ; and that the fact of its doing so is not surprising, if we remember that in this stage language is nothing more than vocal gesticulation. Psychologically considered, there is nothing more remarkable in the fact that a bird which is able to utter an articulate sound should learn by association to use that sound as a conventional sign, than there is that it should learn by association similarly to use a muscular action, as it does in the act of depressing its head as a sign to have it scratched. Therefore we may now, I think, take the position as established a posteriori as well as a priori, that it is, so to speak, a mere accident of anatomy that all the higher animals are not able thus far to talk ; and that, if dogs or monkeys were able to do so, we have no reason to doubt that their use of words and phrases would be even more extensive and striking than that which occurs in birds. Or as Professor Huxley observes, " a race of dumb men, deprived of all communication with those who could speak, would be little indeed removed from the brutes. The moral and intellectual differences between them and ourselves would be practically infinite, though the naturalist should not be able to find a single shadow even of specific structural difference.* • Man^s Place in Nature, p. 52. I may here appropriately allude to a paper which elicited a good deal of discussion some years ago. It was read before the ARTICULATION. 135 We must next briefly consider the remaining feature in the psychology of talking birds to which Dr. Wilks has drawn attention, namely, that of inventing sounds of their own contrivance to be used as designative of objects and qualities, Victoria Institute in March, 1872, by Dr. Frederick Batcman, under the title " Darwinism tested by Recent Researches in Language ; " and its object was to argue that the faculty of articulate speech constitutes a difference of kind between the psychology of man and that of the lower animals. This argument Dr. Bateman sought to cstabli.sh, first on the usual groumls that no animals are capable of using words with any degree of understanding, and, second, on grounds of a purely anatomical kind. In the text I fully deal with the first allegation : as a matter of fact, many of the lower animals understand the meanings of many words, while those of them which are alone capable of imitating our articulate sounds not un- frequently display a correct appreciation of their use as signs. But what I have here especially to consider is the anatomical branch of Dr. Bateman's argument. He says :—" As the remarkable similarity between the brainof man and that of the ape cannot be disputed, if the seat of human speech could be positively traced to any particular part of the brain, the Darwinian could say that, although the ape could not speak, he possessed the germ of that faculty, and that in subseiuent generations, by the process of evolution, the ' speech centre ' would become more developed, and the ape would then speak. ... If the scalpel of the anatomist has failed to discover a material locus habitandi for man's proud prerogative — the faculty of Articulate Language ; if science has failed to trace speech to a ' material centre,' has failed thus to connect matter with mind, I submit that speech is the barrier between men and animals, establishing between them a difference not only of degree but of kind ; the Darwinian analogy between the brain of man and that of his reputetl ancestor, the ape, loses all its force, whilst the common belief in the Mosaic account of the origin of man is strengthened." Now, I will not wait to present the evidence which has fully satisfied all living physiologists that " the faculty of Articulate Language " has " a material locus habitandi ;" for the point on which I desire to insist is that it cannot make one iota of difference to "the Darwinian analogy" whether this faculty is restricted to a particular "speech- centre," or has its anatomical "seat" distributed over any wider area of the cerebral cortex. Such a '* seat " there must be in either case, if it be allowed (as Dr. Batcman allows) that the cerebral cortex " is undoubtedly the instrument by which this attril)ute becomes externally manifested." The question whether " the material organ of speech " is large or small cannot possibly affect the question on which we are engaged. .Since Dr. Bateman wrote, a new era has arisen in the localization of cerebral functions ; so that, if there were any soundness in his argument, one would now be in a position immensely to strengiiien "the Dar- winian analogy ; " seeing that physiologists now habitually utilize the brains of monkeys for the purpose of analogically localizing the "motor centres " in the brain of man. In other words, "the Darwinian analogy" has been found to extend in physiological, as well as in anatomical detail, throughout the entire area of the cortex. But, as I have shown, there is no soundness in his argument ; and therefore I do not avail myself of these recent and most wondcrluUy suggestive results of physiological research. 10 136 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. or expressive of desires — sounds which may be either imitative of the things designated, or wholly arbitrary. And this, I think, is a most important feature ; for it serves still more closely to connect the faculty of vocal sign-making in animals with the faculty of speech in man. Thus, turning first to the case of a child beginning to speak, as Dr. Wilks points out — and nearly all writers on the philosophy of language have noticed — " baby talk " is to a large extent onomatopoetic. And although this is in part due to an inheritance of " nursery language," the very fact that nursery language has come to contain so large an element of onomatopoeia is additional proof, were any required, that this kind of word-invention appeals with ready ease to the infant understanding. But, on the other hand, no one can have attended to the early vocabulary of any child without having observed a fertile tendency to the invention of words wholly arbitrary. As this spontaneous invention of arbitrary words by young children will be found of importance in later stages of my exposition, I will conclude the present chapter by presenting evidence to show the extent to which, under favourable circumstances, it may proceed. Meanwhile, however, I desire to point out that all such cases of the invention of arbitrary vocal signs by young children differ from the analogous cases furnished by parrots only in that the former are usually articulate, while the latter are usually not so. But this difference is easily explained when we remember that hereditary tendency makes as strongly in the direction of inarticulate sounds in the case of the bird, as in the case of the infant it makes in the direction of articulate. There still remains one feature in the psychology of talk- ing birds to which I must now draw prominent attention. So far as I can ascertain it has not been mentioned by any previous writer, although I should think it is one that can scarcely have escaped the notice of any attentive observer of these animals. I allude to the aptitude which intelligent parrots display of extending their articulate signs from one object, quality, or action, to another which happens to be A A- TICULA TION. 1 3 7 strikingly similar in kind. For example, one of the parrots which I kept under observation in my own house learnt to imitate the barking of a terrier, which also lived in the house. After a time this barking was used by the parrot as a denotative sound, or proper name, for the terrier — i.e. when- ever the bird saw the dog it used to bark, whether or not the dog did so. Next, the parrot ceased to apply this denotative name to that particular dog, but invariably did so to any other, or unfamiliar, dog which visited the house. Now, the fact that the parrot ceased to bark when it saw my terrier after it had begun to bark when it saw other dogs, clearly showed that it distinguished between individual dogs, while receptually perceiving their class resemblance. In other words, the parrot's name for an individual dog became extended into a generic name for all dogs. Observations of this kind might no doubt have been largely multiplied, if observers had thought it worth while to record such apparently trivial facts. In this general survey of articulate language, then, we have reached these conclusions, all of which I take to be established by the evidence of direct and adequate observa- tion. There are four divisions of the faculty of articulate sign- making to be distinguished : — namely, meaningless imitation, instinctive articulation, understanding words irrespective of tones, and intentional use of words as signs. Cases falling under the first division do not require consideration. Cases belonging to the second, being due to hereditary influence, occur only in infants, uneducated deaf-mutes and idiots. Understanding of words is shown by animals and idiots as well as by infants, and implies, /t-r se, a higher development of the sign-making faculty than does the understanding of tones, or gestures — unless, of course, the latter happen to be of as purely conventional a character as words. And, lastly, concerning the intentional use of words as signs, we have noticed the following facts. 138 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Talking birds — which happen to be the only animals whose vocal organs admit of uttering articulate sounds — show them- selves capable of correctly using proper names, noun-sub- stantives, adjectives, verbs, and appropriate phrases, although they do so by association alone, or without appreciation of grammatical structure. Words are to them vocal gestures, as immediately expressive of the logic of recepts as any other signs would be. Nevertheless, it is important to observe that this faculty of vocal gesticulation is the first phase of articulate speech in a growing child, is the last to disappear in the descending scale of idiocy, and is exhibited by talking birds in so considerable a degree that the animals even invent names (whether by making distinctive sounds, as a particular squeak for " nuts," or by applying words to designate objects, as "half-past-two" for the name of the coachman) — such in- vention often clearly having an onomatopoetic origin, though likewise often wholly arbitrary. I will now conclude this chapter by detailing evidence to show the extent to which, under favourable circumstances, young children will thus likewise invent arbitrary signs, which, however, for reasons already mentioned, are here almost invariably of an articulate kind. It would be easy to draw this evidence from sundry writers on the psychogenesis of children ; but it will be sufficient to give a few quotations from an able writer who has already taken the trouble to collect the more remarkable instances which have been recorded of the fact in question. The writer to whom I allude is Mr. Horatio Hale, and the paper from which I quote is published in the Proceedings of tJie American Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. xxxv., 1886. "In the year i860 two children, twin boys, were born in a respectable family residing in a suburb of Boston, They were in part of German descent, their mother's father having come from Germany to America at the age of seventeen ; but the German language, we are told, was never spoken in the household. The children were so closely alike that their ARTICULA TION. I 39 grandmother, who often came to see them, could only distinguish them by some coloured string or ribbon tied around the arm. As often happens in such cases, an intense affection existed between them, and they were constantly together. The remainder of their interesting story will be best told in the words of the writer, to whose enlightened zeal for science we are indebted for our knowledge of the facts. " At the usual age these twins began to talk, but, strange to say, not their 'mother-tongue.' They had a language of their own, and no pains could induce them to speak anything else. It was in vain that a little sister, five years older than they, tried to make them speak their native language— as it would have been. They persistently refused to utter a syllabic of English. Not even the usual first words, 'papa,' ' mamma,' ' father,' ' mother,' it is said, did they ever speak ; and, said the lady who gave this information to the writer, — who was an aunt of the children, and whose home was with them, — they were never known during this interval to call their mother by that name. They had their own name for her, but never the English. In fact, though they had the usual affections, were rejoiced to see their father at his re- turning home each night, playing with him, &c., they would seem to have been otherwise completely taken up, absorbed with each other. . . . The children had not yet been to school ; for, not being able to speak their ' own English,' it seemed impossible to send them from home. They thus passed the days, playing and talking together in their own speech, with all the liveliness and volubility of common children. Their accent was German — as it seemed to the family. They had regular words, a few of which the family learned sometimes to distinguish ; as that, for example, for carriage, which, on hear- ing one pass in the street, they would exclaim out, and run to the window. This word for carriage, we are told in another place, was ' ni-si-boo-a,' of which, it is added, the syllables were sometimes so repeated that they made a much longer word." The next case is quoted by Mr. Ilalc from Dr. K. R. 140 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. Hun, who recorded it in the Monthly Journal of Psycho- logical Medicine, I ?>6^. " The subject of this observation is a girl aged four and a half years, sprightly, intelligent, and in good health. The mother observed, when she was two years old, that she was backward in speaking, and only used the words * papa ' and * mamma.' After that she began to use words of her own invention, and though she understood readily what she said, never employed the words used by others. Gradually she enlarged her vocabulary until it has reached the extent described below. She has a brother eighteen months younger than herself, who has learned her language, so that they can talk freely together. He, however, seems to have adopted it only because he has more intercourse with her than the others ; and in some instances he will use a proper word with his mother, and his sister's word with her. She, however, persists in using only her own words, though her parents, who are uneasy about her peculiarity of speech, make great efforts to induce her to use proper words. As to the possibility of her having learned these words from others, it is proper to state that her parents are persons of cultivation, who use only the English language. The mother has learned French, but never uses the language in conversation. The domestics, as well as the nurses, speak English without any peculiarities, and the child has heard even less than usual of what is called baby-talk. Some of the words and phrases have a resemblance to the French ; but it is certain that no person using that language has frequented the house, and it is doubtful whether the child has on any occasion heard it spoken. There seems to be no diffi- culty about the vocal organs. She uses her language readily and freely, and when she is with her brother they converse with great rapidity and fluency. "Dr. Hun then gives the vocabulary, which, he states, was such as he had ' been able at different times to compile from the child herself, and especially from the report of her mother. From this statement we may infer that the list probably did not include the whole number of words in this child-language. ARTICULATION. I4I It comprises, in fact, only twenty-one distinct words, though many of these were used in a great variety of acceptations, indicated by the order in which they were arranged, or by compounding them in various ways. . . . " Three or four of the words, as Dr. Hun remarks, bear an evident resemblance to t^e French, and others might, by a slight change, be traced to that language. He was unable, it will be seen, to say positively that the girl had never heard the language spoken ; and it seems not unlikely that, if not among the domestics, at least among the persons who visited them, there may have been one who amused herself, innocently enough, by teaching the child a few words of that tongue. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that the peculiar linguistic instinct may thus have been first aroused in the mind of the girl, when just beginning to speak. Among the words show- ing this resemblance are feu (pronounced, we are expressly told, like the French word), used to signify ' fire, light, cigar, sun ; * too (the French ' tout '), meaning ' all, everything ; * and ne pa (whether pronounced as in French, or otherwise, we are not told), signifying ' not.' Pctee-petee, the name given to the boy by his sister, is apparently the French ' petit,' little ; and ma, ' I,' may be from the French ' moi,' ' me.' If, however, the child was really able to catch and remember so readily these foreign sounds at such an early age, and to interweave them into a speech of her own, it would merely show how readily and strongly in her case the language-making faculty was developed. "Of words formed by imitation of sounds, the language shows barely a trace. The mewing of the cat evidently sug- gested the word mea, which signified both ' cat ' and ' furs.' For the other vocables which make up this speech, no origin can be conjectured. We can merely notice that in some of the words the liking which children and some races of men have for the repetition of sounds is apparent. Thus we have migno- migno, signifying ' water, wash, bath ; ' go-go, ' delicacies, as sugar, candy, or dessert,' and zcaia-xuaiar, ' black, darkness, or a negro.' There is, as will be seen from these examples, no 142 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. special tendency to the monosyllabic form. Gummigar, we are told, signifies ' all the substantial of the table, such as bread, meat, vegetables, &c. ; ' and the same word is used to designate the cook. The boy, it is added, does not use this word, but uses gna-migna, which the girl considers as a mis- take. From which we may gather that even at their tender age the form of their language had become with them an object of thought ; and we may infer, moreover, that the language was not invented solely by the girl, but that both the children contributed to frame it. "Of miscellaneous words may be mentioned ^(:?r, 'horse;' decr^ * money of any kind ; ' bee}\ ' literature, books, or school ; * peer, ' ball ; ' daii, ' soldier, music ; ' odo, ' to send for, to go out, to take away ; ' kek, ' to soil ; ' pa-ma, ' to go to sleep, pillow, bed.' The variety of acceptations which each word was capable of receiving is exemplified in many ways. Thus feu might become an adjective, as ne-pa-feu, ' not warm.' The verb odo had many meanings, according to its position or the words which accompanied it. Ma odo, ' I (want to) go out ; ' gar odo, ' send for the horse ; ' too odo, ' all gone.' Gaan signi- fied God ; and we are told — When it rains, the children often run to the window, and call out, Gaan odo migno-migno,feu odo, which means, ' God take away the rain, and send the sun ' — odo before the object meaning ' to take away,' and after the object, ' to send.' From this remark and example we learn, not merely that the language had — as all real languages must have — its rules of construction, but that these were sometimes different from the English rules. This also appears in the form vtea ivaia-ivaiazv, ' dark furs ' (literally, ' furs dark '), where the adjective follows its substantive. "The odd and unexpected associations which in all languages govern the meaning of words are apparent in this brief vocabulary. We can gather from it that the parents were Catholics, and punctual in church observances. The words papa and mamma were used separately in their ordinary sense ; but when linked together in the compound term papa-mamma, they signified (according to the connec- ARTICULATION. 143 tion, we may presume), 'church,' 'prayer-book,' 'cross," priest,* 'to say their prayers.' Ban was 'soldier;' but, we are told, from seeing the bishop in his mitre and vestments, thinking he was a soldier, they applied the word ban to him. Gar odo properly signified ' send for the horse ; ' but as the children frequently saw their father, when a carriage was wanted, write an order and send it to the stable, they came to use the same expression {^gar odd) for pencil and paper. " There is no appearance of inflection, properly speaking, in the language ; and this is only what might be expected. Very young children rarely use inflected forms in any language. The English child of three or four years says, 'Mary cup,' for 'Mary's cup;' and 'Dog bite Harry' will represent every tense and mood. It is by no means improb- able that, if the children had continued to use their own language for a few years longer, inflections would have been developed in it, as we see that peculiar forms of construction and novel compounds — which are the germs of inflection — had already made their appearance. "These two recorded instances of child-languages have led to further inquiries, which, though pursued only for a brief period, and in a limited field, have shown that cases of this sort are by no means uncommon." The author then proceeds to furnish other corroborative instances ; but the above quotations are, I think, sufficient for my purposes.* For they show (i) that the spontaneous and • I m.iy, however, add the following corroborative observations, as they have not been previously publishe