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MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



ways in which they could be developed so as to meet this 

 need would be, (i) conventional modulations of intensity, 

 (2) of pitch, and (3) of time-intervals. But clearly, neither 

 modulations of intensity nor of pitch could carry improve- 

 ment very far, seeing that the human voice does not admit of 

 any great range of either. Consequently, if any improve- 

 ment at all were to be effected — and it was bound to be 

 effected, if possible, by natural selection, — it could only be so 

 in the direction of modulating time-intervals between vocal 

 sounds. Now, such a modulation of time-intervals is the 

 beginning of articulation. 



That is to say, the first articulation probably consisted in 

 nothing further than a semiotic breaking of vocal tones, in a 

 manner resembling that which still occurs in the so-called 

 " chattering " of monkeys — the natural language for the 

 expression of their mental states. The great difference 

 would be that the semiotic value of such incipient articula- 

 tion must have been more largely intellectual, or less purely 

 emotional : it must have partaken less of the nature of cries, 

 and more of the nature of names. It seems probable that, 

 as all natural cries are given forth by the throat and larynx, 

 with little or no assistance from the tongue and lips, these 

 first efforts at articulation would have been mainly restricted 

 to vowel sounds, sparsely supplemented by guttural and 

 labial consonants. This state of matters might have lasted 

 for an enormous length of time, during which the liquid, and 

 lastly the lingual consonants would perhaps have begun to be 

 used. This is the order in which we might expect the 

 consonants to arise, in view of the consideration that the 

 gutturals and labials would probably have admitted of more 

 easy pronunciation than the liquids and linguals by an almost 

 speechless Homo* From this point onwards, the further 



364 : Homo alalns, though not yet a conceptual thinker, is nevertheless in 

 possession of a higher receptual life than has ever been attained by a brute, and 

 is correspondingly more capable of utilizing as signs interjectional or other sounds 

 which emanate from the " purely physiological grounds" of his own organization. 

 * See Preyer, loc. cit., for a detailed account of the order in which the con- 

 sonants are developed in the growing child. Also Professor Holden, on the 



