Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech - M. Moncalm - Страница 4

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Thinkers of all times have asked themselves the question whence does this world come on which we live. Curious to know whether the universe was self-made, or was the work of a great primal ancestor, or personal Creator; philosophers who considered the matter in its entirety have left us two hypotheses.

“According to one, chaos reigned at the beginning, or in other words, the possibility of everything; and from the midst of this chaos certain realities were evolved,”[1] from an inherent aptitude for development; this aptitude has been named in many ways, such as “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest.” The Greek sages were already acquainted with the thought implied in these terms. Empedocles said that the fittest would always preponderate, since conservation is an integral part of their nature; whilst what is unfit, or not in accord with the surroundings, must disappear. But the partisans of this theory find themselves confronted by a serious difficulty: if a blind force has produced the universe, whence comes the order which reigns in nature? It is freely acknowledged, even by those with small powers of observation, that the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe are divided into animal and vegetable, which are again subdivided into distinct classes, separated by distinct lines of demarcation. If we admitted that the vegetable and animal kingdoms were not at first so entirely separated as they are at present, there would always remain a question awaiting reply: How is it to be accounted for, that two families issuing from the same source, become so separated, and have remained distinct ever since?

Amongst the propagators of the second hypothesis, some admit the existence of a primordial germ possessing the power of infinite production; others believe in a Personal Creator who formed all things, whether by the means of pre-existent material or from nothing. In accepting this theory of a reasonable Being we must at once lay aside that of pure chance, since to Him is attributed the permanence of the separation described above, this separation or division is of such a nature as to induce the impression that thus it is by premeditation and co-ordination. Certain philosophers putting aside the question of the origin of the organic world in its entirety, have restricted their field of investigation, and taken it in detail. Thus: What is the origin of man? How is it that man thinks and speaks? What is human thought and human speech? Is it man’s nature that compels him to speak, or has language been from the first a matter of convention? The Greeks whilst pursuing their researches amongst the lofty regions of metaphysics expressed some very subtle theories on this subject, coupled with vast systems which comprehended the whole of humanity. By these they weighed the words spoken, their derivation, the ideas which these words represented, and the primitive source of the various phenomena exhibited by man, for the ancients recognised man’s indivisibility.

Heraclitus considered that each object combines in itself a thought and its expression, emanating from the object, and that man is the recipient only; that he breathes a spiritual atmosphere; thus it is that every name necessarily designates the object it denotes.

Plato said that all the objects of the external world have in them something which constitutes their essence, and that this essence is capable of being transmitted from objects themselves into the human mind; that ideas constitute the essence of objects, and that words are therefore necessarily related to the constituent parts of the objects, and their impression on the human understanding.

Epicurus said that human language is the result of the pressure exercised by the external world on the sensitive essential matter in man, and that as soon as man sustains this pressure he emits words spontaneously; the most ancient words used seem to have been expressive sounds, and with the human race it was as natural for them to talk as to groan, to cough, or to sneeze.

Thus the Ancients did not distinguish speech from conception.

The problem of the origin of speech, treated in antiquity with as much depth as calmness, profoundly agitated the minds in the Middle Ages, and the theologians naturally introduced this variant in their exposition of the subject: Has language a divine or human origin? The Christian philosopher replies: “The intellect of God created the world, and the human soul, made in the likeness of the mind of God, has in itself the source of all knowledge: thought and language are of divine origin; left to himself, with only the help of his own powers, man would never have found a means of expressing his thoughts.” Such was the belief of the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages; and they accepted the fact of a primordial language which men must have received directly from the Creator; this opinion was perpetuated until the most recent times. But from the earliest Christian centuries there were certain philosophers such as Gregory of Nyssa, who, whilst acknowledging the existence of a primitive universal language, considered that it redounded more to the glory of the Almighty Creator to endow man simply with the power of speech, and they deny that this language with its grammar and orthography was divinely revealed.

The materials for the study of these questions are lacking. The only document in our possession on the origin of mankind—the Old Testament—was carefully consulted; there we read that God created man after His image, that He made him of the dust of the earth, that He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that man became a living creature. The Bible narrative is one of simple facts, and it was necessary to look upon them as so many facts, for any effort to pierce beneath the surface of these mysterious words was like groping in the dark. Another recital was also given in Genesis. God brought all the animals of the earth, and the birds of the air to Adam that he might name them, and whatsoever Adam called every living thing that was the name of it. This seemed difficult to interpret, and renewed the questions under other forms. Did man at the beginning resemble a newly born babe who cries but cannot speak? In this case how did he begin to express his thoughts? If man was created an adult, but did not receive a complete language from heaven, how did he acquire the faculty of speech, this faculty which we know to be the distinguishing mark of humanity, and which is missing in other creatures?

The eighteenth century decided that this way of treating a scientific question left much to be desired; it resulted in a cul de sac, and a fresh beginning had to be made. Some philosophers, thinking to simplify matters, affirmed that primitive man, tired of wandering through woods like other animals, decided to group themselves into companies; the members of this society, feeling the necessity of making themselves mutually understood, expressed themselves at first by the aid of signs and gestures, then by sounds peculiar to the things denoted, afterwards, in one way or another, actual words were pronounced. This reasoning was used in the eighteenth century, and not knowing where to find better, those who employed it felt satisfied with their perspicacity; language which was formerly considered as a gift direct from God, became a physiological endowment, a conventional art; this century had an intense horror of the supernatural, so that it readily accepted any system in which God did not appear.

The lack of reflection shown in the building up of these hypotheses concerning the commencement of humanity has been severely criticised, and that they were very superficial must be conceded. It is equally clear that all these tentative efforts had this in common, that they were the results of the influence on immature minds of the period, of the necessity of explaining the awakening of human reason in a rational manner.

The search was continued. At last the nineteenth century considered that a solution had been found. Certain ideas which had received attention during divers periods were now collected, sorted, re-examined more closely, and classified, and from these labours there arose the two theories of interjection and imitation. According to the first, language consists of sounds drawn involuntarily from man by his emotions and feelings; by degrees man became accustomed to reproduce similar exclamations when wishing to express the same feelings, and these exclamations would serve as the roots of words; this is the interjectional theory. The imitative or onomatopœic proceeds from another source; when man was confronted by all the objects of the exterior world he began to imitate the sounds emitted, such as the cries of various animals, the whistling of the wind, the fall of a stone; the many sounds which fill the air were reproduced by the human voice and formed the basis for future words. Objections to both of these theories are not lacking. If emotions such as joy, pain, anger, love, disgust—or if physical sensations such as result from the sting of a bee or from a blow of the fist, could furnish the roots of a language, and if it were the same with the imitation of noises produced by nature, the sounds of the words should retain a definite impress of these emotions and feelings, and should reproduce, if only approximately, these various noises. Even if we admit that a small number of primitive men set themselves to imitate the murmur of the stream, the rolling of the thunder, the barking of a dog, the groans of the wounded, the only result would have been infinite variations of clamour quite impossible to distinguish or to understand. Strictly speaking, the prolonged sound of “bée” and “mou” might awaken the conception of a goat and cow in the mind; but in order to convey the idea of a herd of oxen it would be necessary to avoid equally the sound of “bée” and “mou,” as belonging exclusively to the two special animals. The warbling notes of birds have always attracted attention, and essays have been made to reproduce them by imitative harmony, but the various peoples have given various interpretations,[2] and in the generality of cases there is no resemblance between the names of animals and their cries.[3] After examining the testimony of the name “cuckoo” (no doubt convincing taken by itself), which is the prominent argument brought forward by the advocates of the imitative theory called by Max Müller the bow-wow theory, we are not able to advance further in that direction. Darwin in his book, The Descent of Man, promulgates the idea that language may have originated from interjections and imitations, but elsewhere in the Expressions of the Emotions he hastens to add with his accustomed frankness: “But the whole subject of the differences of the sounds produced under different states of the mind is so obscure that I have succeeded in throwing hardly any light on it; and the remarks which I have made have but little significance.”[4]

Scholars and literary men have taxed the resources of all the treasures of their imagination in endeavouring to picture the beginnings of language; in the present day many efforts are made by learned men to discover, from nurses surrounded by their charges, how the first words were reproduced by primitive man. It would be as useful to study the nature of primitive rocks amongst a mass of bricks and mortar, since the chasm is wide between the thoughts which our little ones have when they first begin to speak and those which primitive man had in trying to name his surroundings. We who speak because we know point out father or mother to a little child, naming them at the same time—“this is mother,” “this is father;” by degrees attributes become connected in the child’s mind with these names; such as mother’s hair, or her dress; or father’s beard, his pin; and whilst naming them we again point them out; and when the child pronounces these words in its own fashion, that is incorrectly, is this defect in pronunciation to be a sign-post to us—pointing out the direction to be followed in judging of primitive language? At a later period the child distinguishes between the mother’s smile and the father’s voice; later still its mind comprehends all the moral and physical attributes covered by these two terms; and thus with all other objects—“here is the cow,” and “here is the piece of sugar,” which so soon become familiar to the child, with their cognate words, milk and sweetness. Our children thus learn to speak under very different conditions from those in which our first ancestors found themselves, when with no previous experience they tried to put forth their first words.

Conjectures increased and developed into systems, which, however, contained nothing beyond germs of fresh conjectures and fresh systems, of which none rested on a reasonable basis.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was quite natural that there should be uncertainty as to the path to be followed in seeking the beginning of human speech. Was it necessary to trace all the known languages to their source? Would not the same feeling of confusion arise when attacking all the dialects spoken on the surface of the earth as oppressed those who were at the base of the Tower of Babel? An idea which was universally adopted rather tended to check the progress of this study: it sprang from the theory that humanity had received the gift of speech from the Creator; and as the Jewish people alone were thought to be the recipients of a supernatural revelation, it followed that Hebrew must be the earliest language, and consequently that all existing languages were derived from the Hebrew. It is hardly possible to conceive the number of works put forth by the learned to remove any doubt with regard to this strange affiliation; the difficulty was to support or prove the supposition that Hebrew had given birth to Greek, Latin, and the rest; this Biblical language was tortured and twisted about in the endeavour to prove the descent of the others from it, but no satisfactory result was obtained. It was by the advice of Leibniz that as many facts as possible were collected concerning the modern languages then in use. He asked for the assistance of monarchs, European princes, ambassadors, missionaries, and travellers. It was during these investigations that the attention of certain philologists was directed to Sanscrit, a language which had been dead 300 years before the Christian era, and about which the learned in Europe had troubled themselves very little.

At the time of Plato and Aristotle a vague notion was current in Greece that India, as well as Egypt, was the birthplace of matchless learning, only it was not known in what this learning consisted, and even the name of the Vedas (the most ancient collection of sacred writings of the Hindoos) was unknown to the philosophers. The first Christian writers who mentioned the religions of India, and who knew up to a certain point how to distinguish Brahminism from Buddhism, never quoted the Vedas; this name is first used by some Chinese converts to Buddhism, at the beginning of the Christian era, who had undertaken a pilgrimage to India, considered by them as a holy land. In the sixteenth century Francis Xavier went there as a missionary, but without knowing Sanscrit; in the seventeenth century Roberto de Nobili, another missionary, acquired the language, and caused a compilation to be made of Hindoo and Christian doctrines. It was not well done; the French translation was sent to Voltaire, who praised it and spoke of it as the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East. The Père Calmette, who had heard of the importance of the Vedas, was the first European to obtain authentic fragments, but these attracted little attention in Europe. In the early part of the nineteenth century some members of the Asiatic Society residing in Calcutta discovered a collection of Sanscrit MSS., amongst them some portions of the laws of Manu, two epic poems, the Râmayana and the Mahâbhârata, some philosophical treatises, works on astronomy and medicine, plays and fables. These works possessed great interest for those scholars who were occupied with the study of humanity, such as Herder, Schlegel, Goethe, and Humboldt. For the most part the preconceived ideas with which these literary men received them tended to diminish the benefit to be derived from them to a great extent, as they endeavoured—consistently with the spirit of the time—to establish the identity of thought running through the sacred literature of the Hindoos and the Bible. They also sought to point out the supposed connection between the historical recitals of the Old Testament, the Indian legends, and the Greek and Latin mythologies. Certain MSS. containing passages from the sacred code of the Hindoos having been translated by Anquetil Duperron, Schopenhauer drew from it the foundations of his own philosophical belief; nothing less than the genius of this German scholar would have sufficed for the presentation of the sublime truths which the original contained, by means of this very defective translation. One of the first historiographers of Buddhism was the Abbé Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, but yet his labours have not served to raise the veil hiding the true meaning of the Brahman writings, for without the knowledge of the early Sanscrit, it was not possible to seize the inner meaning of a literature which the sages of India had required fifteen centuries to complete. Thus it was that Europe only knew the more accessible portions, and those better calculated to strike the imagination, but not necessarily the most important. “Much had been said and written about Buddhism, enough to show the Roman Catholic clergy that the Lamas of Thibet had anticipated them in the use of auricular confession, the rosary, and the tonsure; and to disconcert philosophers by showing them that they were outdone in positivism and nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries.”[5]

The strangeness of this religion attracted public attention, which was especially directed towards certain blemishes, which had crept into it during a decadent period, and tarnished its original purity, and although learned men continued to devote themselves to a study more and more deeply penetrated with the Sanscrit language, they were yet so unprepared for the results which must inevitably follow this study, that certain German universities became the scenes of veritable scandals, when some of the learned declared that they had found a community of origin between the people of Athens, of Rome, and of India, and the stupefaction of the philologists knew no bounds when, in 1833, Bopp’s work appeared, The Comparative Grammar of the Greek, Latin, Gothic, Sanscrit, Zend, Lithuanian, Slavonic, and German Languages, whilst the effect on the younger students was quite bewildering.

But that which created the greatest furore in all Europe was the promulgation of the scientific discoveries of Eugène Burnouf, Professor of Oriental Languages in the Collège de France. Long centuries had passed during which no original Sanscrit document had come to light, and now in the short space of ten years three complete collections of Oriental literature were known, the sacred books of the Brahmans, of the Buddhists, and of the Magians. “The critical examination and restitution of the Zend texts, the outlines of a Zend grammar, the translation and philological anatomy of considerable portions of the Zoroastrian writings were the work of the learned young French scholar.”[6]

A few proper names and certain titles were up to this time all that could be deciphered of the cuneiform inscriptions on the walls of Persian palaces. Classical or oriental scholars had hitherto only seen in them a quaint conglomeration of nails, wedges, or arrows; but when at last the meaning was disentangled, it suddenly flashed upon the discoverers that there was a close relationship between languages hitherto held to be quite distinct. Facts, at first only suspected, now received full confirmation; those previously unknown were discovered and claimed, if only provisionally, in the name of Science. Historians and philologists pressed eagerly into this new path. In looking back they could see that the human family was divided into three distinct groups, the Semetic family, the Aryan family—sometimes called the Indo-Germanic—and the Turanian class, the northern division of which has the name Ural-Altaic given to it occasionally. I use the word class advisedly, as the characteristic traits hardly merit the rank of family. They also discovered that human speech had equally marked divisions, making three groups or families, corresponding to the three great human races. The Semetic family produced the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient language graven on the monuments of Phœnicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria; the Greek and Latin, Persian and Sanscrit, the Germanic languages, Celtic and Slavonic, all belong to the Aryan family; from the Ural-Altaic group come the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic and Finnic; there still remains the Chinese language, which is monosyllabic and stands by itself, the only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech.

These discoveries caused a complete change in the methods adopted by philologists; at the present time the ancient systems of the classification of tongues are entirely abandoned. The comparative philologist ignores altogether geographical locality, the varying ages of languages, and their classical or illiterate character. Languages are now classified genealogically, according to their real relationship; and Hebrew, coming down from its pedestal, took its natural place amongst the languages of the Semetic family.[7]

I revert here for a moment to the past in order to quote a page from Plato, which shows us the small esteem in which the purely speculative method, in the treatment of philosophy, was held by one of the profoundest minds of antiquity:—

“Dost thou see that very tall plane-tree?” said Phædros to Socrates.

“Certainly, I do.”

“Tell me, Socrates, is it not from the foot of this plane-tree that they say Boreas carried away Oreithyia from the Ilissos?”

“So they say.”

“But tell me, O Socrates, dost thou believe this mythe to be true?”

“Well, if I did not believe it, like the wise people, I should not be so very far wrong; and I might set up an ingenious theory and say that a gust of Boreas, the north wind, carried her down from the rocks in the neighbourhood, and that having died in this manner, she was reported to have been carried off by Boreas from thence. As for myself, Phædros, I think these explanations, on the whole, very pleasant; a man is, after all, not much to be envied, if it were only for this, that when he has set right this one fable, he is bound to do the same for a second, then a third, and thus much time is lost. I, at least, have no leisure to spare for these things, and the reason, my friend, is this, that I cannot yet, according to the Delphic line, know myself; and it seems to me ridiculous that a man who does not yet know this, should trouble himself about what does not concern him. Therefore I leave these things alone, and, believing what other people believe about them, I meditate, as I said just now, not on them, but on myself—whether I be a monster more complicated and more savage than Typhon, or a tamer and simpler creature, enjoying by nature a blessed and modest lot.”[8]

“Thus, to the mind of Socrates, man was pre-eminently the individual ... he is ever seeking to solve the mystery of human nature by brooding over his own mind, by watching the secret workings of the soul, by analysing the organs of knowledge, and by trying to determine its proper limits; and thus the last result of his philosophy was that he knew but one thing, and this was, that he knew nothing.”[9]

More than 2300 years have elapsed since the intercourse between Socrates and his disciple took place. But the problems which we of the twentieth century have not yet succeeded in solving, have so entirely absorbed our attention, that it seldom occurs to us to measure the distance which separates us from the commencement of philosophical studies. Although the scientific equipment of our forefathers occupies a small portion of our thoughts in our leisure moments, we yet discover—in comparison with ourselves—how very indigent they were.

This earth was unintelligible to the Greeks, they looked upon it as a solitary being, without a peer in the whole universe; to us it is a planet; one of many, all governed by the same laws, all moving round the same centre. It is the same with man who also remained a riddle to the ancients. An intelligent study of the world’s history, which they knew but imperfectly, has enriched our language with a word which never passed the lips of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle—humanity. Where the Greeks saw barbarians, that is, human beings other than themselves—we see brethren; those whom they called heroes and demi-gods are our ancestors; those who appeared to them strangers, united by no ties, are to us one family in work and suffering, divided by language and severed by national enmity, but pressing forward step by step almost unconsciously towards the fulfilment of that inscrutable purpose for which the world was created. As we have ceased to see in nature the working of demons or the manifestation of an evil principle, so we deny in history an atomistic conglomerate of chances, or the despotic rule of a mute fate; we turn over the leaves of the past seeking for a hidden train of thought in the actions of the human race; we understand that every effect has its cause; that connecting links run through the moral world, as well as the physical world; that there is nothing irrational in either history or nature, and we believe that the human mind is called upon to discover in both the manifestations of a Divine Power, the source of our existence.[10]

This result, however, we could not have attained without first recognising the fact that man is no isolated being, complete in himself; that if he is to be effectively studied he cannot be disassociated from his family, all the members of which are governed by the same laws, all move round the same centre, and all receive their light from the same focal point. He is one of a class, of one genus or kind, whom it would be impossible to estimate correctly, if we set aside his relations to his fellows.

“To understand man,” an illustrious naturalist has said recently, “it is not sufficient not to separate him from those whom he resembles in every point; it is quite as necessary to study him in connection with those closely related to him, the inferior animals.”

Hitherto I have not mentioned a hypothesis which has been promulgated in our days on the origin of man, which would have been considered the most remarkable this century had seen, had it not appeared simultaneously with another treatment of a like subject equally noticeable for its profundity in another direction.

During a voyage which he made in South America, Darwin had been struck by the very close affinity which existed between the living and the fossil species of this continent; this link between the past and present appeared to him to throw considerable light on the obscurity which enveloped the question of the origin of species. The degree in which organs were capable of modification was especially to be taken into account; the study of the variation of animals and plants under domestication led Darwin to the path he followed; the uninterrupted reproduction of characteristics in the structure of organic beings, intensified rather than attenuated by a succession of modifications, caused him to see in all living creatures, not independent entities, the one apart from the other, but descendants from common ancestors now extinct.

Evolution, like many another theory, may be dangerous if not thoroughly grasped, and if it lead to a denial of the permanence of the well marked lines of demarcation in nature. Evolution, according to Darwin, starts from beginnings which are quite distinct; and leads on to well defined ends; thus Darwin does not acknowledge only one common progenitor for all the great natural races, but many, and nothing more clearly demonstrates his transparent sincerity in scientific matters than what his critics are pleased to call his inconsistencies.

At the end of many years of persistent labour, Darwin published his book on the Origin of Species.

I do not propose to give a summary of it. The author does not adopt the method of a learned writer expounding his system; his attitude is that of a naturalist who, during his excursions, examines nature in its innumerable and most minute details; when two facts, both of which he considers true, appear to contradict each other, he notes both equally, since he is too sincere to conceal that one from the public which apparently invalidates his theory. Moreover at each step he avows that this theory is not yet entirely free from the fog which invariably envelops each new idea at its birth. An explorer such as he is, who has succeeded in explaining so many mysteries, might very naturally become elated, but it is not so with him; his thoughts never seem directed towards himself; with all his genius, self does not appear to exist with him; the only things that are prominent—with a distinct existence—are the phenomena which he studies.

The notion that all organic beings have been such as we now see them from the beginning, was almost inevitable, as long as the theory was held that the formation of the world was of comparatively recent date; and those who, without further investigation, held the traditional belief of the independent and individual creation of each species, could only offer one explanation, if all animals—all plants—are as they are it is because it has pleased the Creator to make them so. Because the Darwinian theory has cast a doubt on the successive creation of living things, it has been said that Darwin’s views were inimical to religion. These impressions are transitory—as were those expressed by Leibniz when he reproached Newton with introducing “occult qualities and miracles into philosophy;”[11] and when he attacked his law of gravitation “as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed religion.”[11]

After explaining in what manner nature had produced all the variations of plants and inferior animals from a small number of germs, Darwin did not feel himself under the necessity of adding one more to the germs in order that what was afterwards termed humanity might appear on the scene; the principle of evolution as already applied to the organic world, would suffice to explain all difficulties; the natural forces all engaged in the same movement, would spread and branch out in various directions, until they reached the culminating point of incorporation with the human creature.

Darwin’s book, the Descent of Man, contains the genealogical table of this higher animal which the author so often compares with the lower animals. If both have so much in common, such as the chemical composition of their bodies—their germinal vesicles—their laws of growth and reproduction; it is—so he conceives—that both have come from the same ancestor; moreover, all helps to prove that man has received from his prototype amongst the mammifers, all the special characteristics of its own organs. Thus it is easy to understand that in the eyes of many naturalists the embryonic structure is of more importance for an accurate classification than that of an adult, since the embryo is that condition in which the animal has undergone the least modification, thus it better represents the original form of the primitive progenitor.

For a species of one of the inferior animals to have attained the level of man, it was necessary that, following an universal law, it must have undergone variations both corporally and mentally, during a long succession of generations; the primary causes of these variations is not clearly understood, but it has been proved that the conditions of life or environment to which the living beings submitted were potent agents in the renewal of phenomena. Like all other creatures man increased out of all proportion to his means of subsistence, and thus began the struggle for existence, when those who were best equipped for the fight survived in the greatest numbers, and left the greatest number of robust descendants. Man acquired the capability of expressing his wants by means of language, at first, perhaps, little different from that of the inferior animals, but the continued use of language reacting on the brain furnished a means for the further development of those mental faculties which of themselves constitute a real distinction between man and beast. This difference, however, does not become pronounced until a certain period of man’s existence, as during the earliest stages the intelligence of the newly created human beings does not differ from that of other mammifers. It begins to dawn a little later, then gradually increases, and at last becomes most strongly marked, even if a comparison be made between the intelligence of a highly developed monkey and that of the lowest savage, who has failed perhaps to find words with which to express the most elementary emotions. But men are not all on the same level; without speaking of the vast difference that exists between the faculties of a Papuan and those which we know to have been possessed by a Newton or a Kant, we notice a very sensible difference between the mental powers of two individuals of the same race; but we always find these extremes are connected by shades of difference which gradually melt imperceptibly the one into the other. Darwin arrives at the conclusion that the distinctions to be drawn between the intellect of man and the intelligence of animals is one of degree rather than of kind.

Darwin shares the opinion of those who consider the moral consciousness in man as that which distinguishes him specially from the inferior animals, and he conceives its origin to be found in the social instincts whose most important constituent parts are family ties and the emotions to which they give rise. This consciousness makes man capable of approving of certain acts and disapproving of others. After having been overcome by a temporary passion, he reflects and compares the already weakened motives causing him to act as he did, with the appeal made to him by his family and social instincts, and he resolves to act differently in the future; the opinion of his neighbours influences him, but it is not so much the opinion of the community in general as that of his own small circle to which he belongs.

Social instincts are found also amongst a large number of inferior animals, but with them, this mutual sympathy does not extend to all the species of their class, as with man it reaches only to the members of their own small community.

With the progress of civilisation and in proportion as the smaller communities become larger, so man’s reason leads him to extend his sympathy to all the men of his nationality; arrived at this point, there remains a very impalpable barrier between that and the inclusion of men of all races in feelings of universal benevolence; but if these races are separated from his by strong dissimilarities in external appearance and in habits of life, it would take much time for him to learn and recognise in them the constituent parts of humanity similar to himself.

The moral consciousness which raises man to a level not attained by beasts, leads him to conceive and apprehend the precept, “Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.” The sympathy which extends beyond the limits of humanity, such as compassion for animals, seems the last quality to be developed. The moral sense in man has its counterpart in animals of the inferior order; under the influence of man the animal becomes more capable of improvement by the increased exercise of his intelligence, by habits, by instincts of heredity, so as to have transformed the prototype of the wolf and jackal to that of a dog.

There is nothing to lead us to suppose that primitive man had felt the existence of a principle higher than nature. There is much to indicate that what we mean by religious feeling was not known to him; but the aspect of the question undergoes a change if by religious sentiment we understand belief in invisible spirits, for this belief was universal. This is natural; as soon as certain faculties of the imagination awoke in man, such as astonishment, curiosity, he would seek to understand all that passed around him; his first idea would be that all the phenomena in nature would proceed from the presence inherent in them of a power compelling to action in the same way as man feels himself obliged to act. This belief in the course of age would easily tend towards fetishism, then to polytheism and finally to monotheism; it would simultaneously inculcate many strange superstitions, of which some produced terrible effects, such as the sacrifice of human lives to a powerful being eager for human blood, since savages readily attribute to these superior powers the desire for vengeance as well as all the other evil passions they themselves possess.

Amongst civilised peoples the conception of an all-knowing, an all-seeing God, exercises a powerful influence on morality; man learns little by little, no longer to regard the praise or blame of society as his sole guide; this external guidance is replaced by personal inward convictions which come from his reason and which is conscience. Religious devotion is a very complex human sentiment; it is composed of love, submission, gratitude, hope, and perhaps of other elements; no creature is in a position to experience so complicated an emotion whose intellectual faculties have not attained a level of medium development. Yet something approaching this may be seen in the depth of affection manifested by a dog for his master, which is a combination of complete submission, of fear, dependence, and perhaps also of other qualities.

Learned writers have for some time agreed in looking upon language as the barrier separating man from animals; all books on logic state the fact. But this special characteristic of the human race attracted Darwin’s attention in a very small degree. “Man, however, at first, uses, in common with the lower animals, inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the movements of the muscles of the face.”[12] “Certain animals,” he says, “do not lack the physical conditions necessary for articulate language, since there is not a letter in the alphabet that a parrot cannot pronounce.” Darwin goes even beyond this. “It is not the mere power of articulation that distinguishes man from other animals, but it is his large power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas.”[12]

It would be difficult to be more explicit, and it must be owned that this was a great concession on Darwin’s part; but afterwards, and perhaps with the object of weakening the force of this statement, he adds: “The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech, no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced.”[13] However, no effort of thought, in the present state of our knowledge, would cause us to understand how any number of thousands of centuries passed in roaring and barking could enable wolves and dogs to join a single definite idea to a single definite sound; and if we said that, by the help of specially favourable environments some unknown species of primitive animal had acquired the power of speech, and had succeeded in imparting the knowledge to its descendants, and in thus elevating them to the level of human beings, we should only be relating fantastic tales, which would have no connection with scientific research.

Darwin does not allow himself to be affected by this consideration. “In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term ‘man’ ought to be used.”[14] It is evident that if the gradations were imperceptible, there would be no possibility of marking the precise point where the animal ended and man began; “the admission of this insensible gradation would eliminate, not only the difference between ape and man, but likewise between black and white, hot and cold, a high and a low note in music; in fact, it would do away with the possibility of all exact and definite knowledge, by removing those wonderful lines and laws of nature which ... enable us to count, to tell, and to know.”[15]

I will now bring together some passages which are scattered in various parts of the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man which have especially attracted criticism.

“It is interesting to note that all that we are, all that we see, has been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”[16]

And again: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.”[16] “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future.”[17] “In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on newly laid down foundations; that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.”[18]

Again elsewhere: “The moral sense or conscience, as Mackintosh remarks, has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action. It is summed up in that short but imperious word ought,” and Darwin proceeds to quote Kant’s apostrophe as follows: “Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel. Duty! whence thy original?”[19]

Darwin continues: “This great question, ‘Whence thy origin?’ has been discussed by many writers of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for touching on it is ... that, as far as I know, no one has approached it exclusively from the side of natural history.”[20]

“But as the feelings of love and sympathy and the power of self-command become strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes clearer, so that man can appreciate the justice of the judgments of his fellow-men, he will feel himself impelled, independently of any pleasure or pain felt at the moment, to risk his life for his fellow-creature, or to sacrifice himself for any great cause. He may then say, I am the supreme judge of my own conduct, and, in the words of Kant, I will not in my own person violate the dignity of humanity.”[21]

The warmest admirers of Darwin wish that he had expressed himself more definitely. Some amongst them are astonished to find the word “Creator” in certain editions of the Origin of Species, and not in all; others have drawn attention to the fact that Darwin could say in all good faith, “I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.”[22] Darwin’s line of thought has perhaps not been perfectly grasped, and his commentators have been numerous. This, however, is certain. From the moment when the author of the Descent of Man considered that he had discovered in social instincts the first germ of the idea of duty, it becomes a matter for surprise that he yielded to the desire of referring to Kant and of quoting his apostrophe to Duty. But it is quite evident that Darwin did not see in the universe only the fortuitous result of a combination of matter; he admitted the existence of a law acting from the beginning and continuing to act. In order the better to grasp his thought, it is necessary to be in a position to define his terms. He speaks of natural selection, but in ordinary parlance selection presupposes the existence of distinction and judgment; and to distinguish and choose, intelligence is necessary; and if the essential nature is intelligent, what is this nature?

The endeavour to prove that man has descended from a creature not originally man has deeply stirred our generation, and the greater number amongst us only yielded to a natural repugnance in repulsing the idea with indignation. However, because this inward feeling tells us that a proposition is false, it does not necessarily follow that it is so; in looking at it more closely, we have to admit that many humiliating facts are accepted by us without demur. We are not scandalised at the notion of being composed of the same chemical elements as the inferior animals, nor do we revolt against the injustice of the circumstances and restraints imposed upon all by the facts of birth and death; but this unreasoning submission has no more rational basis than the revolt of our feelings, in presence of the assumption, that an animal only was our ancestor. The notion that animals so dissimilar as the monkey, the elephant, the bird, fish, and man could have proceeded from the same parentage seems too monstrous to be true; from the scientific point of view this feeling is of no value; in the face of all the assertions of our moral convictions science, as such, remains immovable; the only weapon admitted in a scientific encounter is fact opposed to fact, argument to argument. Moreover, any appeals which can be made to our pride, our dignity, our piety, would be equally wide of the mark, so long as proof is lacking that man possesses something which has no existence in lower animals either actually or potentially.

It is a matter for regret to have to acknowledge the fact that the union of a profound knowledge, combined with true sincerity in research, is insufficient to endow the world with a well established truth. The world is too hasty in accepting or rejecting a new system before giving itself the trouble to divide the system into two parts, one of which can be placed at once amongst evident truths, whilst the other must be subjected to minute investigation and close testing. Precisely after this manner does Darwin’s work lend itself to a division into two parts, the former is the history of the formation and gradual development of the organic world, represented by plants and animals, including man (The Origin of Species), but it is also the history of the formation and gradual development of man considered as a being composed of body and spirit (Descent of Man). In the author’s mind this portion of the subject is closely connected with the former.

At first sight it would appear that a tribunal, which was quick to distinguish truth from error in this teaching, had not been found. Certainly scientific materialism has no voice in the matter, since its mission is only to deal with material and actual facts; and when from the facts accumulated conclusions are deduced as applied to origins, this would be out of its sphere, and the conclusions reached can only be arbitrary; thus Darwin’s theory not being found free from the taint of idealism, it was condemned without trial. Religious dogmatism did not show itself any more capable of deciding the question, for this dogmatism, whose domain is faith, considered that due reference was not made to Divine intervention, and concluded that the theory was only judged by the light of science, and thus condemned it unheard. But all condemnation, which cannot prove itself to be just, has no scientific value, only one tribunal is competent of judging and solving the question, and that is the science of language, it alone possesses documentary evidence. The exact point at which the animal ceases and man begins can be determined with precision since it coincides with the beginning of the “Radical Period” of language, and language is reason.