OCTOBEK 25, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



645 



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," sa_ys 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 himself 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 im- 

 perfect in its beginnings, it has gradually 

 been elaborated by the successive genera- 

 tions that have practiced 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 condi- 

 tions of mind both by vocal sounds and by 

 bodily gestures. These vocal sounds are of 

 the inter jectional 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 different tones, each indicative of a 

 special mental condition and each fully 

 understood by its companions. The com- 

 mon barn-door fowl has also been credited 

 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 ani- 

 mals may in certain cases be facial, as ex- 

 pressed by the grimaces of a monkey, or 

 changes in bodily attitude, as we see con- 

 tinually in the dog. 



I think that it may not be unreasonably 

 inferred that in the distant past the remote 

 progenitors of man 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 

 expressions and bodily gestures is capable 

 of much elaboration ; and, further, it is 

 possible, as some hold, that it may have at- 

 tained a considerable degree of perfection 

 before articulate speech began to take form 

 and gradually replace it. Much of it in- 

 deed remains with us to the present day. 

 A shrug of the shoulders may be more elo- 

 quent 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 thej^ can hardly carry on a con- 

 versation 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 favor 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 

 favor of the theory that gesture-language 

 is the original utterance of mankind out of 

 which speech has developed itself more or 

 less fully among different 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. 



Many of the words employed in early 

 speech were undoubtedly formed, in the 

 first instance, through the tendency of man 

 to imitate the natural sounds he heard 

 around him. To these sounds, with various 

 modifications, was assigned a special con- 

 ventional value, and they were then added 

 to the growing vocabulary. By this means 

 a very decided forward step was taken, and 



