80 HORATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



direction.' He has inventer! and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, etc., with 

 which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has 

 made rafis or canoes for fishing or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has 

 discovered the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy roots can be rendered 

 digestible, and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous. This discovery of fire, probably the 

 greatest ever made by man, excepting language, dates from before the dawn of history. 

 These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so pre-eminent, 

 are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, 

 ima"-inatiou and reason. I cannot, therefore, understand how it is that Mr. Wallace main- 

 tains that ' natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little 

 superior to that of an ape.' " 



To the views so eloquently and convincingly expressed, only one qualification seems 

 to be required ; but that is one of the greatest importance. Articxrlate language is 

 spoken of as an acquired art, a " discovery of man." If the habit of walking upright 

 was a discovery of man, then in the same sense we may dovrbtless accept the use of speech 

 as his discoverJ^ But from what we know of the bodily structure of the human species, 

 we are sure that the first members of that species, however they may have come into 

 existence, must, after passing the period of infancy, have assumed the upright position. 

 And from our knowledge of the vocal organs and the brain of the human species, we 

 may be equally sure that the first human beings who had passed beyond the infantile 

 stage must have spoken to one another in articulate language. Furthermore, as we have 

 every reason to believe that the first human beings were as tall, as strong, and as active 

 as any of their descendants, so we have equally good reason to believe that the language 

 which they spoke was as well constructed and as expressive as any language that is now 

 spoken. 



This assertion may at first thought seem startling, but I believe that the more care- 

 fully it is considered and discussed, the more clearly its reasonableness will be apparent. 

 Fortunately, however, we are not reduced to mere analogical reasoning for evidences of 

 its truth. This can be abundantly shown by an analysis of the languages spoken by 

 those tribes of men who, in the opinion of all anthropologists, are now in the lowest 

 stao^es of culture. H it shall appear that some of these languages are as well organized 

 and as expressive as those of the most civilized nations, it will be evident that the capacity 

 for speech, like the capacity for walking erect, has nothing to do with culture, and that, 

 as I have elsewhere said, to talk of " barbarous languages " is as absurd as it would be to 

 talk of barbarous complexions, barbarous hair, or barbarous lungs. 



It is deserving of remark that for the materials of the study into which we are now 

 about to enter, we shall be indebted almost entirely to the labours of missionaries. There 

 can be little question that one reason why linguistic anthropology, which treats man as 

 an intellectual and moral being, has of late years been superseded by physical anthropo- 

 logy, which treats him as a dumb brute, is that the pursuit of the latter science — if 

 science it can be called — is so infinitely the easier. To measure human bodies and human 

 bones, — to compute the comparative numbers of blue eyes and black eyes in any com- 

 munity, — to determine whether the section of a human hair is circular, or oval, or 

 oblong, — to study and compare the habits of various tribes of man, as we would strrdy 

 and compare the habits of beavers and bees, — these are tasks which are comparatively 



