78Q , REPORT— 1901. 



from the left side of tlie brain, and yet when the corresponding region ^ on tlie right 

 side is examined it is found to go through the same developmental steps. 



The stimulus which mu.^t hare been given to general cerebral growth in the 

 association areas by the gradual acquisition of sjieech can hardly he exaggerated. 



During the whole course of his evolution there is no possession which man 

 has contrived to acquire which has exercised a stronger influence on his higher 

 development than the power of articulate speech. This priceless gift, ' the most 

 human manifestation of humanity ' — (Huxley) — was not obtained through the exer- 

 tions of any one individual or group of individuals. It is the result of a slow 

 process of natural growth, and there is no race, no matter how low, savage, or 

 uncultured, which does not possess the power of communicating its ideas by means 

 of speech. ' If in the present state of the world,' says Charma, ' some philosopher 

 •were to wonder how man ever began to build those houses, palaces, and vessels 

 which we see around us, we should answer that these were not the things that 

 man began with. The savage who first tied the branches of shrubs to make him- 

 self a shelter was not an architect, and he who first floated on the trunk of a tree 

 was not the creator of navigation.' And so it is with speech. Rude and imperfect 

 in its beginnings, it has gradually been elaborated by the successive generations 

 that have practised it. 



The manner in which the faculty of speech originally assumed shape in the 

 early progenitors of man has been much discussed by Philologists and Psychologists, 

 and there is little agreement on the subject. It is obvious that all the more 

 intelligent animals share with man the power of giving expression to certain of 

 the simpler conditions of mind both by vocal sounds and by bodily gestures. 

 These vocal sounds are of the iuterjectioual order, and are expressive of emotions 

 or sensations. Thus the dog is said, as a result of its domestication, to have 

 acquired the power of emitting four or five dilierent tones, each indicative of a 

 special mental condition and each fully understood by its companions. The 

 common barn-door fowl has also been ci-edited with from nine to twelve distinct 

 vocal sounds, each of which is capable of a special interpretation by its fellows 

 or its chickens. The gestures employed by the lower animals may in certain 

 cases be facial, as expressed by the grimaces of a monkey, or clianges in bodily 

 attitude, as we see continually in the dog. 



I think that it may not be unreasonably inferred that in the distant past the 

 remote progenitors of niau relied upon equally lowly means of communicating 

 with their fellows, and that it was from such humble beginnings that speech has 

 been slowly evolved. 



There cannot be a doubt that this method of communicating by vocal sounds, 

 facial expression, and bodily gestures is capable of mucli elaboration ; and, further, 

 it is possible, as some hold, that it may have attained a considerable degree of per- 

 fection before articulate speech began to take form and gradually replace it. 

 Much of it indeed remains with us to the present day. A shrug of the shoulders 

 ■may be more eloquent than the most carefully prepared phrase ; an appropriate 

 expression of face, accompanied by a suitable ejaculation, may be more withering 

 than a flood of invective. Captain Burton tells us of a tribe "of North American 

 Indians whose vocabulary is so scanty that they can hardly carry on a conversa- 

 tion in the dark. This and other facts have led Mr. Tylor, to whom we owe so 

 much in connection with the early history of man, to remark: 'The array of 

 evidence in favour of the existence of tribes whose language is incomplete without 

 the help of gesture-signs, even for things of ordinary import, is very remarkable' : 

 and, further, ' that this constitutes a telling argument in fiivour of the theory that 

 gesture-language is the original utterance of mankind out of which speech has 

 disveloped itself more or less fully among diflerent tribes.' It is a significant fact 

 also, as the same author points out, that gesture-language is, to a large extent, the 

 same all the world over. 



' Eudinger and others have tried on very unsubstantial grounds to prove that 

 there is a dilferencein this region on the two sides of the brain. There is, of course, 

 as. a rule, marked asymmetry -, but I do not. thjnk that it can be said with truth that 

 the cortical development of the region is greater on the left side than on the right. _ 



