The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer. Gerard John
as Bunsen declares:
The theories about the origin of language have followed those about the origin of thought, and have shared their fate. The materialists have never been able to show the possibility of the first step. They attempt to veil their inability by the easy but fruitless assumption of an infinite space of time, destined to explain the gradual development of animals into men; as if millions of years could supply the want of the agent necessary for the first movement, for the first step in the line of progress! No numbers can effect a logical impossibility. How indeed could reason spring out of a state which is destitute of reason? How can speech, the expression of thought, develop itself in a year or in millions of years, out of unarticulated sounds which express feelings of pleasure, pain, and appetite? The common-sense of mankind will always shrink from such theories.
Bunsen's words were echoed even more forcibly by professor Max Müller, speaking as President of the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Cardiff in 1889.
What [he asked] does Bunsen consider the real barrier between man and beast? It is language, which is unattainable, or at least unattained, by any animal except man.
You know [he continued] how for a time, and chiefly owing to Darwin's predominating influence, every conceivable effort was made to reduce the distance which language places between man and beast, and to treat language as a vanishing line in the mental evolution of animal and man. It required some courage at times to stand up against the authority of Darwin, but at present all serious thinkers agree, I believe, with Bunsen, that no animal has ever developed what we mean by rational language, as distinct from mere utterances of pleasure or pain, a subject lately treated with great fulness by Professor Romanes. Still, if all true science is based on facts, the fact remains that no animal has ever found what we mean by a language; and we are fully justified, therefore, in holding with Bunsen and Humboldt, as against Darwin and Romanes, that there is a specific difference between the human animal and all other animals, and that that difference consists in language as the outward manifestation of what the Greeks meant by Logos.
It is moreover evident that, far from speech having generated reason, as some have preposterously maintained, it is reason which generates speech, no less inevitably than sunlight produces the spectrum when it passes through a prism. The seeming paradox of Wilhelm von Humboldt is in fact a sober truth: "Man is man only through speech, but in order to invent it he must already be man." We have plain evidence that before means for the internal expression of it are found, the mental word (verbum mentale) is awaiting them, and that without this it would be as impossible for any sort of rational speech to be produced as for an apple to be grown without an apple-tree.
Evidence to this effect is furnished by recorded instances of persons who from early childhood, or even from birth, were deaf, dumb, and blind, and appeared to be cut off from all possibility of human converse, the "gates of Mansoul" being thus almost entirely closed. Such are the well-known cases of Laura Bridgman, Miss Keller, and Martha Obrecht, who had been thus afflicted since their earliest childhood, the two first named from the age of two, and the last from that of three years.114 Also the more recent instance of Marie Heurtin, who was so born, and consequently could not have even the faintest glimmer of any knowledge these senses could convey.115 Yet, by the exercise of ingenious and unwearied charity, a means of communication was elaborated through the sense of touch, and the souls which had seemingly been buried alive, shewed themselves responsive to such advances, – often astonishingly so, – and revealed their possession of faculties identical with those of their rescuers. We are told, for example, of Marie Heurtin that her intelligence proved to be quick, that she was even "unusually clever, evidently eager for knowledge, and, as sometimes happens, her faculties being prevented by her infirmity from wasting their powers on external objects, were all the more fresh and vigorous." Even more wonderful is the case of Miss Keller, who attained a degree of culture and accomplishment far beyond the common level of those possessing the use of all their senses.
Somewhat akin to such instances is that of the savages from Tierra del Fuego mentioned above by Mr. Darwin. In their case likewise, when they were brought into communication with people possessed of higher culture than their own degraded race, it was found that the corresponding faculties within them were not dead, or as yet non-existent, but only starved into lethargy; and, the opportunity being given, they speedily caused surprise by unmistakable proofs how closely they resemble ourselves.
Thus we find that in this branch of our enquiry there is one broad fact, which all must recognize and none can deny. No race of men has ever been known which could not speak, nor any race of animals which could, or which had made the first beginnings of intelligent language. Facts being the only groundwork of Science here is undoubtedly something whereon she may build an inference, and this inference will certainly not be that the faculties of men and animals are radically identical. And if we are told, as we constantly are, that it is more truly scientific to admit such identity, should there not be some other facts, still more significant and equally well established, to exhibit on the other side?
But of what character are the arguments actually adduced? It will be sufficient to quote a few which come with the highest authority.
We may start with the almost classical specimen contributed by Mr. Darwin himself.
It does not [he says]116 appear altogether incredible that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first step in the formation of a language.
Similarly Professor Whitney writes of some supposed "pithecoid"117 men:
There is no difficulty in supposing them to have possessed forms of speech, more rudimentary and imperfect than ours.118
And so again Professor Romanes:119
Let us try to imagine a community considerably more intelligent than the existing anthropoid apes, although still considerably below the intellectual level of existing savages. It is certain that in such a community natural signs of voice, gesture, and grimace would be in vogue to a greater or less extent. As their numbers increased … such signs would require to become more and more conventional, or acquire more and more the character of sentence-words.
Of course, as Mr. Mivart replies,120 there is no difficulty in supposing anything we choose, or in seeing animals in imagination performing feats which never yet have they been known to achieve in fact. But no amount of such suppositions or imaginations will furnish Science with the scantiest apology for a foothold, nor can the germs of language attributed to pithecoid communities or the sagest of their patriarchs, be considered as of any greater value than the speeches put into the mouths of the animals by Æsop or "Uncle Remus."
It is also to be noticed that in these accounts of the origin of language, the essential element of reason is always quietly smuggled in as a matter of course. Thus Mr. Darwin's wisest of the pithecoids was able to "think of" a device for the information of his fellows. There is not the smallest doubt that any creature which had got so far as that would find what he wanted. It is but the old case of the man who was sure he could have written Hamlet had he had a mind to do so. Like him, the ape might have made the invention, if he had a mind to make it; – only he had not got the mind. So too, Professor Romanes' missing links use tones and signs which acquire "more and more" the character of true speech: which could not be unless they contained some measure of that character already. But it is just the first step thus ignored which spans the gulf between man and brute.
There is another factor upon which, in conjunction with these suppositions, great stress is wont to be laid, namely that of time; it being apparently taken for granted that if only time enough be given anything whatever may come about. Thus Professor Romanes tells us121 that his imaginary Homo alalus, or speechless man, must probably have lived for an "inconceivably
See Mivart,
See Louis Arnould,
i. e. ape-like.
Quoted by Romanes,