Origin of Human Language. 333 or wrong. He ought long ago to have outgrown his clothing, but he has not the least sense of having gone too far for the nature of his race, or too rapidly grown in purity. The conscience of a poor negro is much more readily aroused than the conscience of a Chuan Yuan. The statement-"History is not wide enough, nor any recorded time sufficient, to take in the ages during which brute-man grew into human-man," surrenders the argument as to quick growth. There is truth in Schiller's words-" Es wachst der Mensch mit seinen grössern zwecken," man grows as grow his greater aims; but, going back to the utmost limit of geological eras, there is no absolutely satisfactory evidence that any inferior animal grew into a superior animal, or one creature into another creature, or that the nature of any surpassed that nature. During the historic thousands of years no creature regenerated itself, nor took one step thitherward; are we to believe, against all experience, in asserted transformations during times beyond our experience? Ancient seeds, found in Egypt and Switzerland; the frescoed likeness on ancient walls of olden animals; are of the same form and size as those now existing. Variations are narrowly limited, and if the laws of Nature are unchangeable, no time, however extended, would suffice to make plant become animal, or brute grow into man. We firmly retain and maintain the faith in which we were nurtured-"God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." ii. It is asserted that Human Language was developed from Animal Cries. The improbability is felt at once: nevertheless, a fact of great value may be gathered from the assertion. All the sounds produced by animals and birds, all notes evoked by the wind, the mysterious noises of the forest, the strains of musical instruments, have their representatives in the human voice. No wonder, therefore, that some resemblance to human language should be found in utterances of the beast; yet those utterances were no more the guiding principle in the formation of language, than the perpetually rolling ocean, in its motion rhythmically repeated, can be said to have taught the human artist, in the outflow of his own emotion-now gently gliding, now gracefully leaping, now violently stirredto pour forth a stream of sound which brings to our mind mysterious moods, and lifts up our soul to the regions of everlasting harmony and repose. William Humboldt said-" Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already According to my fullest conviction language must be regarded as naturally inherent in man, for it is altogether inexplicable as a work of his understanding in its simple consciousness. .. There could be no invention of language, unless its type already existed in the human understanding.” Co-ordination of many groups of muscles is necessary for speech, and the nervous arrangement of the brain is en rapport with the complexity of the function. Idiots never speak well, yet it is as natural for man to speak as for bears and birds to brum and twitter; whereas the large air-sacs of the gorilla, and most anthropoid apes, are incompatible with speech. There is no trace in man of these remarkable structures.1 It is impossible to trace up all words to imitative and exclamatory sounds; for we frequently come upon roots of fixed form and general meaning which are unexplainable in themselves; and, as to explaining the existence of these roots, science stands helpless. There is no record, nor reliaable tradition, that any race invented a language. Languages do not greatly enlarge their capital, they mingle and change as men themselves do; but their path, amongst all modern nations, is rather to directness and simplicity than to maintain, amplify, and complicate the old elaborate texture. It is certain that all modern speech, however varied and adapted, has been derived from ancient, the cognate roots strike into a depth of common structure. The educated man of to-day uses substantially the method of the savage-only expanded and improved in the working out of details. All languages represent mainly the same intellectual art, no new central principles are discovered, changes being wrought by addition and improvement in detail; even the American languages seem rather the work of philosophers than savages. 1 "Cassell's Natural History;" see Gorilla; P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S. Frontier Line between Man and Beast. 335 It is impossible to believe that the highly complicate and accurate ancient tongues, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, were the workmanship of creatures not far removed from the brute : nor is it credible, judging from experience as to the little or no progress made in language by the most cultured modern races, that any time, however vast, could have sufficed to enable unaided mute creatures to invent, develop, and perfect the languages now in existence. There seems to be language because there is reason, and but for language reason would speedily be degraded. It was asserted by travellers, when language was seen to be the frontier line between man and beast, that human beings existed without religious ideas and without language. We were told, again and again, that the Veddahs in Ceylon have no language. Sir Emerson Tennant wrote-" They mutually make themselves understood by signs, grimaces, and guttural sounds, which have little resemblance to definite words and language in general." In reply to this, Professor Max Müller1 states that more than half of the words used by the Veddahs are, like Singhalese itself, mere corruptions of Sanscrit; their very name is the Sanscrit word for "hunter," veddah, or as Mr. Childers supposes, vyâdha. If they now stand low in the scale of humanity they once stood higher; they may possibly prove, in language if not in blood, the distant cousins of Plato, Newton, Goethe. The dwarf Negrito race, an early if not primitive type of humanity, as we are assured by Professor Owen, like those of some prehistoric races in Europe, have "a quadrumanous unconsciousness of nakedness," yet possess a language. Language seems a necessity of our race, and the direct conse quences of intuition changing into idea; the capital act of language is the wish to speak. Low orders of men have poor languages, and little or no distinct sense of large numbers; some, as the natives of Kamchatka, possess numerals, say to 100, but can only count to twenty by means of fingers and toes. Will it be said of "Address." International Congress of Orientalists, 1874. "Discours de la Connaisance des Bêtes : " Father Pardies. these low orders-they are the latest evolutions from animals; their language is the most akin to brutal voice, an invention growing with the growth of their culture from low to high degree? We think not. What we actually find is—“ From the highest to the lowest, all men speak; all are able to interchange such thoughts as they have. Language, then, appears clearly 'natural' to man; such are his endowments, such his circumstances, such his history-one or all of these-that it is his invariable possession "-given to him for purpose of speech-as hands are bestowed for labour, a means of communicating and receiving thought. Language, far from uniting man and beast, places a vast and deep interval, incapable of being crossed by the lower animals, eternally separating their nature and power from our own. He is a coward who, fearing for his supremacy, or from want of faith in Scripture, would forbid scientific investigation. The essential capacities and tendencies of man led him universally and inevitably to speech, worked out a foreseen and intended result. He has not risen from a brute-condition by the product of speech; for he could never have produced language had he not been endued, at the outset, with those powers, both of body and mind, which constitute man. He was mainly what he is now when the first beginnings of speech came forth; as lion was lion when he began to roar. Wilhelm von Humboldt says language is an "organism," and "man does not so much form language, as discern with a kind of joyous wonder its developments coming forth of themselves." It accords with this, that philology refers the original forms of language to the primitive stage of the ancient human race. All men speak, their power of brain and capacity of thought are enlarged by speech, but no such differences are wrought as those which separate one animal species from another all men, however differently they speak, are of one species. "Linguistic principles are actually worked out with as much originality, and more extensively if not more profitably, among savages than among cultured men." Examples are found in the Algonquin system of compounding 1 "Life and Growth of Language," p. 2: Wm. Dwight Whitney. Language as a Contrivance. 337 words, and in the Esquimaux-a scheme of grammatical inflexion. Metaphor and syntax also belong to the infancy of human expression. Indeed, language, in many respects, is by a sort of rough-and-ready ingenuity, having more to do with the rule of thumb, Mr. Tylor says, than with "systematic arrangement and scientific classification." The "old barbaric engine" is better, more precise, comprehensive, beautiful, in many of the ancient tongues, than in any or all of the patched and tinkered modern speech. Professor Max Müller says"Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in those three branches ever since their first separation." This accords with the Divine account concerning the beginning of human existence; and whether it results from the psychical unity of the human race, or is a proof of the historical derivation of language from one root, is not so material as the fact of unity. We now, for variety of thought, treat language as the product of art, a contrivance, and regard human thought and conduct generally as organic and working under fixed laws. If language is the product of thought in union with capable organism, and used as an instrument for imparting and receiving thought, it is due to the power of intelligence adapting means to ends. This is a highly complicate and intricate capacity. The psychic energies underlying the faculty and exercise of speech, bringing it into conscious exercise themselves trained and developed by it-belong to those fundamental principles of religion, art, science, which make man what he is. Inner consciousness was externalised by language to be the revelation and interpretation of the acts of the soul. Common sounds were imitated, self-expressive or emotional tones were uttered with varying emphasis, force, and speed, gestures and motions of the features were used; this being possible by the possession of those various faculties and capacities which led inevitably to the production of speech. So far, therefore, we may say, no man is born a speaker, an artist, or an engineer; a lone man would not Ꮓ |