350 



MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



In the present connection I shall have to treat of these lan- 

 guages only in so far as they throw light upon the quality 

 of ideation with which they are concerned, or so far as they 

 are related to the general principles with which we have 

 already been occupied. And, even as thus limited, I will 

 endeavour to make my exposition as brief as possible. 



I will begin by supplying a few quotations from the more 

 competent authorities who have written upon the subject from 

 a linguistic point of view. 



" It requires but the feeblest power of abstraction — a 

 power even possessed by idiots — to use a name as the 

 sign of a conception, e.g. to say 'sun';*— to say 'sheen/ 

 as the description of a phenomenon common to all shining 

 objects, is a higher effort, and to say * to shine * as expressive 

 of the state or act is higher still. Now, familiar as such 

 efforts may be to us, there is ample proof that they could 

 not have been so to the inventors of language, because 

 they are not so, even now, to some nations of mankind 

 after all their long millenniums of existence. Instances 

 of this fact have been repeatedly adduced." f Thus, for 

 example, the Society Islanders have separate words for 



But this opinion rests on a radically false estimate of the criteria of system and 

 philosophy in a language. For the criteria chosen are exuberance of synonyms, 

 intricacies or complications of forms, &c., which are really works of a low develop- 

 ment. The fallacy is now acknowledged to be such by all philologists. Even 

 Farrar, who at first himself fell into this error {Origin of Language, p. 28), in his 

 subsequent work writes :— " Further examination has entirely removed this belief. 

 For this apparent wealth of synonyms and grammatical forms is chiefly due to the 

 hopeless poverty of the power of abstraction. It would not only be no advantage, 

 but even an impossible encumbrance to a language required for literary purposes. 

 The transnormal character of these tongues only proves that they are the work 

 of minds incapable of all subtle analysis, and following in one single direction an 

 erroneous and partial Une of development. ... If language proves anything, it 

 proves that these savages must have lived continuously in a savage con- 

 dition " (Farrar, Chapters on Language, pp. 53, 54, who also refers to numerous 

 authorities). 



* The term "conception" here is, of course, equivalent to my term "pre- 

 conception." When my daughter uttered her first denotative word "star," she 

 was, indeed, bestowing a name ; but it was the name of a recept, not of a 

 concept. 



t Farrar, Chapters on Language, pp. 198, 199. 



