The Silesian Horseherd. Questions of the Hour
After twelve weeks jealousy and anger;
After five months sympathy;
After eight months, pride, sentiment, love of ornament;
After fifteen months, shame, remorse, a sense of the ludicrous.45
We may generalise this scale as much as we please, and gradually permit the gradations to vanish, but I doubt if even two mothers could be found who would agree in such an interpretation of their children's looks. Add to this that this whole scale has very little to do with what, in the strict sense of the word, we call mind. From fear up to shame and penitence are all manifestations simply of the feelings, and not of the mind. We know that what we call fear is often a reflex action, as when a child closes its eyelids before a blow. What has been named jealousy in a child, is often nothing but hunger, while shame is instilled into one child, and in others is by no means of spontaneous growth.
The worst feature of such observations is that they are very quickly regarded as safe ground, and are reared higher and higher until in the end the entire scaffold collapses. In order to establish the truth of this psychologic scale in children still more firmly, and at the same time to make good its universal necessity, an effort has been made to prove that a similar scale is to be found in the animal kingdom, and of course what was sought has been found. Romanes asserts that the lowest order of animals, the annelids, only show traces of fear; a little higher in the scale, in insects, are found social instincts such as industry, combativeness, and curiosity; another step higher, fishes exhibit jealousy, and birds, sympathy; then in carnivorous animals follow cruelty, hate, and grief; and lastly, in the anthropoid apes, remorse, shame, and a sense of the ridiculous, as well as deceit. It needs but one step more to make this scale, which belongs much more to the sphere of feeling than the realm of thought, universally applicable to all psychology. How should we otherwise explain the parallelism between the mental development of infants and that of undeveloped animals? One need but take a firm hold of such observations, and they are transformed into airy visions. Who, for instance, would dare to distinguish the traces of fear in annelids from those of surprise in higher animals? Nevertheless fear occupies the first place, surprise the third. And what mark distinguished combativeness in insects from jealousy in fishes? In the same way I doubt if any two nurses would agree in the chronology of the phenomena of the infant disposition, and have therefore long since given up all hope of obtaining any hints either in embryological or physiological development, about the real historical unfolding of the human consciousness, either out of a nursery or out of a zoölogical garden.
As for ethnological museums, they certainly give us wonderful glimpses into the skilfulness of primitive man, especially in what relates to the struggle for life; but of the historic or prehistoric age of these wood, horn, and stone weapons, they tell us absolutely nothing. Whoever thinks that man descended from an ape, may no doubt say that flint implements for kindling fire belonged to a higher period, post hominem natum, although it has been thought that even apes could have imitated such weapons, though they could not have invented them. Romanes, in his book on Mental Evolution in Animals, has collected a large number of illustrations of animal skilfulness; the majority of them, however, are explained by mere mimicry; of a development of original ideas peculiar to animals in their wild state, apart from the contact and influence of human society, there is no trace. Even the most intelligent animal, the elephant, acquires reason only in its intercourse with men, and similarly the more or less trained apes, dogs, parrots, etc. All this is very interesting reading, and an English weekly, The Spectator, has from week to week given us similar anecdotes about wonderfully gifted animals from all parts of the earth, but these matters lie outside the narrow sphere of science.
What then remains to enable us to study the earliest phase of development of the human mind accessible to us? If we go to savages, whose language we only understand imperfectly, these observations are of course still more untrustworthy than in the case of our own children; at all events we must wait before we receive any really valuable evidence of the development of the human mind from that source. I repeat that the human mind itself, as far as it perceives, must simply be accepted as a fact, given to us and inexplicable, whether in civilised or uncivilised races; but only in its greatest simplicity, as mere self-conscious perception—a perception which in this simplicity can in no wise be denied to animals, although we can only with difficulty form a clear idea of the peculiarity of their sentient perceptions.
Where can we observe the first steps that rise above this simple perception? I say, as I have always said, In language and in language alone. Language is the oldest monument which we possess of man's mental power, older than stone weapons, than cuneiform inscriptions, than hieroglyphics. The development of language is continuous, for where this continuity is broken, language dies. After every Tasmanian had been killed or had died, the Tasmanian language ipso facto ceased; and even if any literary remains had survived, the language itself would have to be reckoned, like Latin and Greek, with dead languages. Thousands of them may have disappeared from the earth; in its development a language may have changed as much as Sanskrit to Bengali; but it suffers no break, it remains always the same, and in a certain sense we still speak in German the same tongue as was spoken by the Aryans before there was a Sanskrit, a Greek, or a Latin language. Consider what this signifies. Chronologically, we cannot get at this primitive Aryan speech. Let us assume that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were spoken as independent national tongues at least fifteen hundred years before our chronology—what an age had elapsed before these three, as well as the remaining Aryan tongues, could have diverged so much as Sanskrit diverges from Greek and Greek from Latin. The numerals are the same in these three languages, and yet katvāras sounds quite differently from τέσσαρες and quatuor and our four. The words for eight, octo in Latin, ὀκτώ in Greek, and ashtau in Sanskrit, are nearly identical; and it is even possible that the lesser deviations in the pronunciation of these words demanded no great interval of time. But now let us consider what lies behind these ten numerals. There is the elaboration of a decimal system from 1 to 10, no, to 100 (ἑκατόν), Sanskrit satám, centum. There is the formation and fixing of names for these numbers, which must have been originally more or less arbitrary, because numbers only subordinate themselves with difficulty to one of those general ideas which are expressed in the Aryan roots. Besides these words are, even in their oldest attainable forms, already so weather-beaten, that in most cases it is impossible even to guess their etymology and original meaning. We see that the names for two and eight are dual, while those for three and four clearly have plural endings. But why eight in the primitive Aryan was a dual, and what were the two tetrads, which, combined in asht-au, oct-o, ὀκτ-ώ, expressed the number eight, will probably never be discovered. It is possible that asht-i was a name for the four phases of the moon, or for the four fingers of the hand without the thumb. Analogies occur in other families of language, but certainty is beyond our reach. If we now consider what mental effort is necessary to work out a decimal system, and to secure general recognition and value for the name given to each number, we shall readily realise what remote periods in the development of the human mind open up before us here, and of how little use it would be to try to establish chronological limits. Old as the Vedas, old as the Homeric songs may be, what is their age compared with the periods that were required not only to work out the numerals but the entire treasury of Aryan words, and the wonderful network of grammar that surrounds this treasure, which also was complete before the separation of the Aryan languages began. The immeasurable cannot be measured, but this much stands immovable in the mind of every linguist, that there is nothing older in the entire Aryan world than the complete primitive Aryan language and grammar, in which nearly all the categories of thought, and consequently the whole scaffold of our thinking, have found their expression.
Of course it will be said that all this only applies to the Aryan race, and that they constitute only a small and perhaps the youngest portion of the human race. Well, it is difficult to prove that the Aryans constitute the least numerous subdivision. We know too little of their great masses to attempt a census. That they are the youngest branch of the human race is really of no consequence; we should then have to assume against all Darwinian principles, various, not contemporaneous, but successive monstrosities, slowly ascending to humanity, and this would only be pure invention. Nothing absolutely compels us to ascribe a shorter earthly life to those races which speak Chinese, Semitic, Bantu, American, Australian, or other languages, than to the Aryans. That all races have begun on a lower plane of culture, and especially of the knowledge of language, will no doubt be universally acknowledged. But even if we only place the first beginnings of the Aryan race at 10,000 B.C., there is time enough for it and other races to have risen, and also to have again declined. The difference would merely be that the Aryans, in spite of many drawbacks, on the whole constantly progressed, while the Australians, Negroes, and Patagonians, forced into unfavourable positions, remained stationary on a very low level. That their present plane can in any respect, and especially in regard to their language, supply a picture of the earliest condition of the human race, or even of certain branches of it, is again mere assumption, and as bare of all analogy as the attempt to see in the salons of London a picture of Aryan family life before the first separation. There are savages who are cannibals. Shall we conclude from this that the first men all devoured each other, or that only those who were least appetising remained over as survivals of the fittest? It is remarkable how many ideas are current in science which the healthy human mind, after short reflection, silently lays aside. Any one who has occupied himself with the polysynthetic tongues of the Redskins, or with the prefixes in the languages of the Bantus, knows how much time must have been needed to develop their grammar, and how much higher the makers of these languages must have stood than those who speak them now.
But even if language is the oldest chronicle in which the human mind has traced its own development, we must by no means imagine that any known language, be it as old as the pyramids, or as the cuneiform inscriptions, can offer us a picture of the first beginning of the mental life of the race. Long before the pyramids, long before the oldest monuments in Babylon, Nineveh, and China, there was language, even writing; for on the oldest Egyptian inscriptions we find among the hieroglyphic signs writing materials and the stilus. Here perspectives open up to us, before which every chronological telescope gives way. There is a rigorous continuity in the development of a language, but this continuity in no wise excludes a transformation as marked as that of the butterfly from the caterpillar. Even when, as for instance in Sanskrit, we go back to a number of roots, to which Indian grammarians such as Pânini have systematically traced back the entire wealth of their abundant language, we must not suppose that these roots really constituted the original and complete material with which the primitive Aryan tongue began its historical career. This is not true even of the Indian branch of this primitive tongue, for in its development much may have been lost, and much so changed that we dare not think of restoring a perfect picture from these fragments of the earliest mental development of the Indians. These things are so simple that philologists accept them as axioms; but it is curious to observe, that in spite of the widespread interest that has been created in all civilised nations by the results of the science of language, philosophers who write about language and its relation to thought still trouble themselves over notions long since antiquated. I had, for instance, classified the principal ideas expressed in Sanskrit roots, and had reduced them to the small number of 121.46 With these 121 ideas, Indian philology pledges itself to explain all the simple and derivative meanings of words that fill the thick volumes of a Sanskrit lexicon. And what did ethnologists say to this? Instead of gratefully accepting this fact, they asserted that many of these 121 radical ideas, as for instance, weaving or cooking, could not possibly be primitive. Impossible is always a very convenient word. But who ever claimed that these 121 fundamental ideas all belonged to the primitive Aryan language. They are, in fact, the ideas that are indicated in the thousands of words in classical Sanskrit, but they have never made any claim to have constituted the mental capital of the primitive Aryans, whether acquired from heaven or from the domicile of apes. And if now a few of these ideas, such as to weave, to cook, to clean, appear modern, what of that compared with the simple fact that they are actually there?
These ethnologists, too, always make the old mistake of confounding the learning of a language, as is done by every child, with the first invention or formation of a language. The two things are as radically different as the labour of miners who bring forth to the light of day gold ore out of the depths of the earth, and the enjoyment which the heirs of a rich man have in squandering his cash. The two things are quite different, and yet there are books upon books which attempt to draw conclusions as to the creation of language from children learning to talk. We have at least now got so far as to admit that language facilitates thinking; but that language first made thought possible, that it was the first step in the development of the human mind, but few anthropologists have seen.47 They do not know what language in the true sense of the word means, and still think that it is only communication, and that it does not differ from the signals made by chamois, or the information imparted by the antennæ of ants. Henry Drummond goes so far as to say that “Any means by which information is conveyed from one mind to another, is language.”48 That is entirely erroneous. The entire chapter on sign language, interesting as it is, must be treated quite differently by the philologist, compared with the ethnologist. When the sign is such as was used in the old method of telegraphing, and meant a real word, or, as in modern electric telegraphy, even a letter, this is really speaking by signs; and so is the finger language of the deaf and dumb. But when I threaten my opponent with my fist, or strike him in the face, when I laugh, cry, sob, sigh, I certainly do not speak, although I do make a communication, the meaning of which cannot be doubted. Not every communication, therefore, is language, nor does every act of speaking aim at a communication. There are philologists who maintain that the first words were merely a clearing of the ideas, a sort of talking to oneself. This may have been so or not, at any rate it appears to me that in such primitive times, practical ends deserve the first consideration. No one can distinguish the difference in the stages of mental development, between wiping the perspiration from the brow after work, which signifies and communicates to every observer, “It is warm” or “I am tired,” and the man who can actually say, “It is warm,” “I am tired.” Thousands, millions of years may lie between these two steps. We do not know, and to attempt to fix periods of time where the means are lacking, is like pouring water into the Danaids' sieves.
Just consider what effort was required to enable an Aryan man to say, “It is warm.” We shall say nothing of “it”; it may be a simple demonstrative stem, which needed little for its formation. But before this “i-t” or “id” could become an impersonal “it,” long-continued abstraction, or, if you prefer, long-continued polishing, was required. Take the word is. Whence comes such a verbal form, Sanskrit as-ti, Greek ἔστι, Latin est? Was the abstract “to be” onomatopoetically imitated? Often, of course, we cannot answer such questions at all. In this case, however, it is possible. The root as in asti, that we now translate as is, means as we see from as-u, breath, originally to breathe. Whoever likes may see in as, to breathe, an imitation of hissing breath. We neither gain or lose anything by this; for the critical step always remains to be taken from a single imitation of a single act, to the comprehension of many such acts, at various places, and at various times, as one and the same, which is called abstraction or the forming of a concept.
This may appear to be a very small step, just as the first slight deviation in a railroad track is scarcely a finger's breadth, but in time changes the course of the train to an entirely different part of the world. The formation of an idea, such as to be, or to become, or to take a still simpler one, such as four or eight, appears to us to be a very small matter, and yet it is this very small matter that distinguishes man from the animal, that pushed man forward and left the animal behind on his old track. Nay, more, this “concept” has caused much shaking of the head among philosophers of all times. That one and one are two, two and two, four, four and four, eight, eight and eight, sixteen, etc., appears to be so very easy, that we do not understand how such things can constitute an eternally intended distinction between man and animal. I have myself seen an ape so well trained that as the word “seven” was spoken, he picked up seven straws. But what is such child's play in comparison with the first formation of the idea of seven? Do you not see that the formation of such an abstract idea, isolating mere quantity apart from all qualities, requires a power of abstraction such as has never been displayed by an animal? If there were any languages now that actually had no word for seven, it would be a valuable confirmation of this view. I doubt only, whether the speakers of such languages could not call composition to their aid, and attain the idea of seven by two, two, two, plus one. We still know too little of these languages and of those who speak them. Of what takes place in animals we know absolutely nothing, and nowhere would a dose of agnosticism be more useful than here. Sense-impressions an animal certainly has; whether quite the same as man must remain uncertain. And sense-impressions enable an animal to accomplish much, especially in the realm of feeling; but language—never.
This fact, as a bare undeniable fact, should have startled the Darwinians, even as it startled the venerable Darwin, when I simply set the facts before him, and he immediately drew the necessary consequences. Of any danger there could be no fear. The facts are there and show us the right path. And it is not only simple facts, but the consequences of preëxisting conditions which render every so-called transition from animal to man absolutely unthinkable. Language—as ethnologists should have learned—has neither originated from artificial signs, nor from imitation of sounds. That we can communicate with signs without saying a word, that we even now use signs in our speech, is best learned in southern races, and in such pantomimes as L'enfant prodigue. We have long known that imitations of sound exist in greater or lesser numbers in every language, and how far they can reach has probably never been shown in such detail as by myself.49 But that our Aryan tongues, and also the Semitic, and all others that have been studied scientifically, originated from roots, is now generally known and recognised. That these roots may in remote times have contained an element of imitation, we may readily concede, for it is really self-evident; only we should not from the beginning bar our way by conceiving them as mere imitations of sound. If this were so, the problem of language would long since have been solved, and the first formation of ideas would require no further reflection. It must be conceded on the other side that the origin of roots still contains much that is obscure, and that even Noiré's clamor concomitans does not explain every case. Only it is firmly established that a scientific analysis of language leaves a certain number of roots which are not mere sound-imitations, such as “bow wow,” or “moo moo.” There are people who have taken much pains to discover whether the roots ever had an independent existence, or if they have merely been scientifically abstracted, or shelled out of the words in which they occur. These are vain questions, for we can never of course come at the matter historically, and the attempt to prove the necessity of the one or the other view is a useless undertaking. It appears to be the most reasonable plan to assume for the Aryan languages a period that approaches the Chinese, in which roots had the same sound and the same form as the corresponding noun, adjective, and verb. Even in Sanskrit roots appear at times still unchanged, although it is quite right that as soon as they take on grammatical functions, they should no longer be called roots. Much may be said in favour of both views, without arriving one step nearer our goal. If we now only remember that the whole Sanskrit language has been reduced to 121 primitive ideas, and that the roots denoting these (which are of course much more numerous) are not imitations of sound in the strict sense of the word, but sounds about whose origin we may say much but can prove little, we have at least a που στῶ for our researches. I myself, like my deceased friend Noiré, have looked upon roots as clamor concomitans, that is, not as sound-imitations, but as actual sounds, uttered by men in common occupations, and to be heard even now. Why, however, the Aryans used and retained ad for eat, tan for stretch, mar for rub, as for breathe, sta for stand, ga for go, no human thought can find out; we must be content with the fact that it was so, and that a certain number of such roots—of course much greater than the 121 ideas expressed by them—constitute the kernels from which has sprouted the entire flora of the Indian mind.
If we now return, to our is,—Sanskrit as-ti, Greek ἔστι, Latin est,—we see that it originally meant “to breathe out.” This blowing or breathing was then used for “life,” as in as-u, breath of life, and from life it lost its content until it could be applied to everything existing, and meant nothing more than the abstract “to be.” There are languages that possess no such pale word as “be” and could not form such a sentence as “It is warm.” The auxiliary verb “to have” is also lacking in many languages, especially the ancient, such as Sanskrit, Greek, and even classical Latin. If the words failed, the ideas failed as well, and such languages had to try and fulfil their requirements in other ways. If there was no such word as “be,” “stand” was employed; where there was no word for “have,” then “hold,” tenere, would render the same, or at least similar service. But this implied not only different speech, but different thought.
But here I should like to call attention to the long process through which a language must pass, before it could reduce “breathe” to “be” and form such a sentence as “It is warm.” Even an animal feels warmth, and can in various ways make known if it is overheated. But in all this it is only a question of feelings, not to ideas, and still less of language. Let us consider “warm.” Of course “warm” may represent a mere feeling, and then a simple panting would suffice to express it. That is communication, but not language. To think a word like warm, a root and an idea are necessary. Probably, and in spite of a few phonetic difficulties, the root was in this case ghar (in gharmá, θερμός), and this meant at first to be bright, to glitter, to shine, then to burn, to heat, to be warm; that is to say, the observing mind of man was able to abstract brightness from the sense-impressions produced by sun, fire, gold, and many other objects, and, letting everything else drop, to reach the idea of shining, then of being warm. These ideas, of course, do not exist on their own account anywhere in the world; they must be and have been constructed by man alone, never by an animal. Why? Because an animal does not possess what man possesses: the faculty of grasping the many as one, so as to form an idea and a word. Light or lighting, warmth or warming, exist nowhere in the world, and are nowhere given in sentient experience. Every object of sense exists individually, and is perceived as such individually, such as the sun, a torch, a stove; but heat in general, like everything general, is the product of our thought; its name is made by us, and is not given us.
