286 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



There is another circumstance, namely, that man has no- 

 where been found in an actual primitive state. Everywhere we 

 find him in possession of some artificial instruments, generally 

 of war, a minimum of clothing, etc. But in all these things, as 

 well as in their mode of life, savage tribes have been found so 

 stationary, that they have been considered incapable of pro- 

 gress, and yet the progress they have actually made from a 

 primitive state is already considerable ; for it is just these pri- 

 mary inventions, seemingly nowhere absent, which are the 

 most difficult, and require a long time before they are accom- 

 plished. To those especially, who assume that mankind spread 

 gradually from a certain spot over the whole globe, the period 

 requisite for such a purpose must appear a very long one 

 indeed ; for we never see nations voluntarily leave their dwel- 

 ling places, unless pressed upon by natural phenomena or 

 enemies. Almost all migrations proceed very slowly; and 

 hence in all parts of the earth, the peoples who had occupied 

 the land from time immemorial, looked upon themselves as 

 natives of the soil they inhabit. Among the oldest civilized 

 nations known to us, the Egyptians for instance, their in- 

 ventions date from a period for which history furnishes us 

 with no chronological standard. More than inventions and 

 migrations, languages, and the physical peculiarities of the 

 various races, indicate the great antiquity of mankind. It is 

 exceedingly improbable that a language of a complicated struc- 

 ture should have issued from the mouth of man when he first 

 appeared ; it approaches to a psychological impossibility. The 

 slowness with which a child learns to speak is a proof of it, and 

 yet the child has nothing to invent, but only to appropriate. 

 Children learn the grammatical forms very gradually; these 

 forms cannot have been produced at once, for that which is 

 expressed by them, the relations of individual conceptions, 

 cannot have at once been present to man. From the uncon- 

 scious or involuntary basis upon which language no doubt 

 rests, we must conclude that it was not constructed in a short 

 time or sprung into life at once. We should further take into 

 consideration the great lapse of time which the branching off 

 and substantive development of individual languages derived 



