170 



♦ KNO\VLEDGE * 



[Feb. 



1885. 



stock (wearing out of dynamo and accumulators, breakage 

 of lamps, &c.) and interest on capital outlay. Labour costs 

 but a tithe of that which is necessary for oil lamp3, all that 

 is required being occasional inspection and lubrication. 



It is earnestly to be hoped that the success of the enter- 

 prise will increase, and prove in every sense of the word 

 satisfactory ; and that the day may not be long in coming 

 when we shall regard oil lamps as another relic of the 

 " good old times." 



THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. 



By Ada S. Ballix. 



IV. 



IN my last article I quoted a few instances selected from a 

 very large amount of evidence, tendiug to prove that 

 there are a number of tribes now in existence whose 

 languages are incomplete, and have to be supplemented by 

 the use of gesture-signs, without which they cannot express 

 ideas even of ordinary import ; and that many other such 

 have been extinguished, as it were, by the whirlwind of 

 encroaching civilisation. 



While remarking, however, on the large array of evi- 

 dence on this subject which has been amassed by various 

 ti'avellcrs, Mr. Tylor, with characteristic justice, points out 

 that such incompleteness of language could only be proved 

 "by the evidence of an educated man so familiar with the 

 language in question as to be able to say from absolute 

 personal knowledge, not only what it can, but what it can- 

 not do,"* a degree of knowledge possessed by very few 

 indeed. Most travellers are rather fond of jumping at 

 conclusions, and throwing as much glamour as possible 

 about those conclusions in order to increase the interest 

 taken in their work. 



Another source of fallacy is to be found in the fact that 

 the natives, in speaking to strangers, would naturally ges- 

 ticulate more than among themselves, in order to make their 

 meaning better understood— just as the average English- 

 man whose knowledge of French is decidedly limited helps 

 himself out of linguistic difficulties when he is among French 

 people by means of strongly-marked facial expressions, not 

 to say grimaces, nods, and shakings of the head, and the 

 common language of man-.ial signs. 



But, even allowing for all sources of fallacy, there is such 

 a consensus of opinion on the part of travellers amongst 

 widely different tribes, that there is every reason to believe 

 that the lower the state of civilisation the greater is the 

 use of inarticulate expressions and of gestures, and that 

 these take the place which in the higher states are occupied 

 by words. 



"The matter is important, ethnologically," as Mr. 

 Tylor says, " for if it may be taken as proved that there 

 are really people whose language does not sultice to speak 

 of the common objects of everyday life without the aid of 

 gesture, the fact will either furnish about the strongest case 

 of degeneration known in the history of the human race, or 

 supply a telling argument in favour of the theory that the 

 gesture-language is part of the original utterance of man- 

 kind, which speech has more or less fully superseded among 

 different tribes."t 



The first alternative, which Mr. Tylor can hardly be 

 suspected of proposing seriously, is, of course, unacceptable 

 in the present state of science : for science has made it difficult 

 to believe that man came into existence a ])erfectly intel- 

 lectual and highly-civilised being, and, although it is proven 

 that degeneration does take place— as, for instance, in the 



' Early Histoiy of Mnn," p. 80. 



t /<;., p. 79. 



case of the modern Greeks — the tribe or nation must have 

 risen to a certain pinnacle of civilisation, before it could fall 

 from its high estate ; so that, while allowing that thsre is 

 such a thing as retrogression, we must still stand by the 

 main principles of evolution. The law of nature is progress, 

 but occasionally, owing to adverse circumstances, a tribe or 

 nation seems to retrace its own steps backward.s, and to 

 reach a point which it passed long before. 



Hence, we may say that if a people who once possessed 

 a fairly complete language have lost the more intellectual 

 part, and are content to eke out their imperfect speech by 

 gestures, it is merely a case of Atavism, a reversion to the 

 ancestral type of language — ^just as those children who are 

 occasionally born with rudimentary tails, or those people 

 who are able to voluntarily move their scalps and ears by 

 the contraction of a muscle, rare in human beings, but 

 general among the lower animals, may be regarded as 

 instances of reversion to an ancestral bodily type. 



Hence, I adopt Mr. Tylor's second alternative, and look 

 upon the prevalence of gesture-language all over the world 

 as a most powerful support to the theory that man did not 

 originally possess articulate speech. 



The word gesture has a very wide signification. It can 

 be, perhaps, best defined as muscular action which conveys 

 a meaning to the mind of the beholder. 



Thus gestures may be voluntary or involuntary, for 

 the onlooker can equally recognise the involuntary start 

 and stai-e of surprise and the voluntary frown and shaking 

 of the fist which he interprets as a menace. 



Gestures may be divided into three classes, correspond- 

 ing to the three divisions of mind — sensation, volition, and 

 thought These are : (1) those that express feelings, 

 which are chiefly involuntary; (2) those which express 

 desires or commands ; and (.3) those which convey know- 

 ledge from man to man — express thoughts. 



I adopt this order because it appears to be the natural 

 order of evolution. Sensation begat volition in the 

 struggle to avoid pain ; volition begat thought in order to 

 devise means of avoiding pain. 



Sensation has its root in that reflex action which, as soon 

 as there is a trace of a nervous system, takes place, in 

 order to preserve the individual, and through it the species; 

 it increases in definiteness because increase of sensitiveness 

 is an increase of preservative power, and the less well- 

 endowed perish while " the fittest survive." 



In the same way, volition grew out of sensation, and 

 thought from volition. 



It is not possible to fix a definite time when one of these 

 parts of mind existed and the other or others did not, for 

 in the course of successive generations the one merged itself 

 gradually into the other until all were complete, and, until 

 that was accomplished, it is impossible to say that mind 

 existed as such. In mind, as we know it, feeling, will, and 

 thought are so closely interwoven, that although we may 

 separate them logically, and so discuss them ajjart, we can 

 hardly conceive one as existing without the other. 



The language of sensation is the earliest language — it is 

 the objective side of reflex action : for sensation in its 

 rudimentary stage was accompanied by certain outward 

 manifestations which may be regarded as the germs from 

 which gesture-language was evolved. 



The onlooker interprets those m,anifestation3 which ac- 

 company sensations by the light of introspection attributing 

 to others feelings similar to those he would experience in 

 similar circumstances. Thus, if I were to put my finger 

 in proximity to a plant, and see the flower close and shrink 

 away, that reflex action would speak to me, and tell me, 

 " I am a sensitive plant, and shrink away, lest you should 

 hurt me." 



