Darwin's views on Language 521 



battle cries, the rescue of a ship running on shore (a situation not 

 likely to occur very early in the history of man), and others. Like 

 Max Miiller he holds that language is the utterance and the organ 

 of thought for mankind, the one characteristic which separates man 

 fi'om the brute. "In common action the word was first produced; 

 for long it was inseparably coiniected with action ; through long- 

 continued connexion it gradually became the firm, intelligible symbol 

 of action, and then in its development indicated also things of the 

 external Avorld in so far as the action affected them and finally the 

 sound began to enter into a connexion with them also\" In so far 

 as this theory recognises language as a social institution it is un- 

 doubtedly correct. Darwin some years before Noire had pointed 

 to the same social origin of language in the fourth chapter of his 

 work on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. 

 " Naturalists have remarked, I believe with truth, that social animals, 

 from habitually using their vocal organs as a means of intercommuni- 

 cation, use them on other occasions much more freely than other 

 animals.... The principle, also, of association, which is so widely 

 extended in its power, has likewise played its part. Hence it allows 

 that the voice, from having been employed as a serviceable aid under 

 certain conditions, inducing pleasure, pain, rage, etc., is commonly 

 used whenever the same sensations or emotions are excited, under 

 quite different conditions, or in a lesser degree^." 



Darwin's own views on language which are set forth most fully in 

 The Descent of Man^ are characterised by great modesty and caution. 

 He did not profess to be a philologist and the facts are naturally 

 taken from the best known works of the day (1871). In the notes 

 added to the second edition he remarks on Max Muller's denial of 

 thought without words, "what a strange definition must here be given 

 to the word thought* ! " He naturally finds the origin of language 

 in "the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the 

 voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries aided by signs 

 and gestures ^... As the voice was used more and more, the vocal 

 organs would have been strengthened and perfected through the 

 principle of the inherited efi'ects of use ; and tliis would have reacted 

 on the power of speech V On man's own instinctive cries, he has 

 more to say in The Expression of the Emotions''. These remarks 

 have been utilised by Prof. Jesi)ersen of Copenhagen in propounding 

 an ingenious theory of liis own to the eficct that speech develops out 

 of singing^ 



1 op. cit. p. 339. "^ The Erprrgsion of the Emotiom, p. 84 (Popular Edition, 1904). 



» p. i:n £f. (Popular Edition, 190G). * op. cit. p. 135, footnote 03. 



' op. cit. p. 132. " op. cit. p. 133. 



7 p. 93 (Popular Edition, 1904) and elsewhere. 

 * Progress in Language, p. 3G1, London, 1894. 



