342 



SCIENCE. 



paratus, microscopes, minerals and zoological specimens 

 have already notified the Special Committee of their in- j 

 tention to exhibit. The goods here displayed are to be 

 kept over for the Ninth Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, 

 opening September 7, the Managers of which have offered 

 special premiums for this class of exhibits. 



The local executive committee comprises the following 

 names : A. T. Goshorn, Chairman ; F. W. Clarke, Ormond 

 Stone, Secretaries; Julius Dexter, Treasurer; J. D. Cox, i 

 William McAlpin, Herbert Jenney, George W. Jones, 

 Archer Brown, C. W. Wendte, Robert Brown, Jr. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO COMPARATIVE PSY- 

 CHOLOGY. 



By S. V. Clevenger, M. D. 

 II. LANGUAGE. 



Excepting in Kussmaul's (1) elaborate essay, speech 

 has had but little consideration anatomically and physio- 

 logically. The philologists and ethnologists have been 

 trying to interpret phenomena while ignoring the mechan- 

 ism directly concerned therein. As readily might the op- 

 erations of a locomotive be explained by a person who had 

 never seen one. Herbert Spencer, on the origin of lan- 

 guage, is discursive and inconclusive. Darwin passes 

 hastily over the subject in his " Descent of Man," but 

 later (2) lays the foundation for a proper study. Bastian 

 may be taken as the representative of the majority express- 

 ing opinions on language (3). He says: "Language was 

 started by some hidden and unknown process of natural 

 development or as a still more occult God-sent gift to 

 man." If inquiries are to terminate in such assumptions, 

 why not extend our conceptions of occult God-sent gifts, 

 to the explanation of the Universe? Bastian's words | 

 mean, " I cannot fathom it, therefore, no one should try 

 to do so." 



Mivart (4) adopts the usually accepted divisions of 

 language : 



I. Sounds which are neither articulate nor rational, 

 such as cries of pain, or the murmur of a mother to her 

 infant. 



II. Sounds which are articulate, but not rational, such 

 as the talk of parrots, or of certain idiots, who will re- 

 peat, without comprehending, every phrase they hear. 



III. Sounds which are rational, but not articulate, such 

 as the inarticulate ejaculations by which we sometimes 

 express assent or dissent from given propositions. 



IV. Sounds which are both rational and articulate, 

 constituting true speech. 



V. Gestures which do not answer to rational concep- 

 tions, but are merely the manifestations of emotions and 

 feelings. 



VI. Gestures which do answer to rational conceptions j 

 and are, therefore, external, but not oral manifestations I 

 of the mental word. Such are many of the gestures of 

 deaf mutes, who, being incapable of articulating words, 

 have invented or acquired a language of gesture. 



Analyzing these divisions, we find therein the prevailing 

 idea to be that : 



I. Language consists of speech and gesture (This essay 

 will be directed toward proving that speech is also ges- 

 ture ; hence Language is gesture accompanied, or not 

 accompanied with sounds).* 



* No attempt at a perfect definition is made here. In fact the impossi- 

 bility of absolute definiteness, in a world where everything is relative, 

 seems, in this instance, not to have occurred to the metaphysicians, 

 language, owing to its blending of voluntary and involuntary, and con- 

 sisting of gestures, used thoughtlessly, as well as those for expressing 

 thought, is inseparable from other animal activities. One definition of 

 Life is that it consists of Motion, but everything moves, hence everything 

 lives, and there is no such thing as Death. Even the mathematical defin- 

 ition of a point is absurd and unthinkable. Who can define Health or 

 Disease satisfactorily? 



II. Language is voluntary or involuntary. 



An impassable gulf exists between the voluntary and 

 the involuntary in the minds of those who are disposed 

 to reverence authority more than logic. The history of 

 human thought proves Agnosticism to be a far better 

 friend to man than Vaticanism or its disguises. Huxley 

 (5) concludes that " We are conscious automata endowed 

 with free will in the only intelligible sense of that much- 

 abused term — inasmuch as in many respects we are able 

 to do as we like — but none the less parts of the great 

 series of causes aud effects, which in unbroken continuity, 

 composes that which is, and has been, and shall be — the 

 sum of existence. As to the logical consequences of 

 this conviction of mine. I may be permitted to remark 

 that logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools, and 

 the beacons of wise men. The only question which any 

 wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will 

 ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false ? " 

 Kussmaul (6) feels justified in claiming that " each act 

 of the will is always also the realization of a movement 

 image previously sketched out in the recollection, or an 

 entire chain of such movement images." * * * 

 " What we call the will is not only a motor, but always a 

 sensory process." That which is involuntary in our ac- 

 tions appears, neurologieally speaking, to be most evi- 

 dently reflex, and those who know most about the mech- 

 anism of the will, know also that it is none the less reflex 

 for being complex, or for having evaded the analysis of 

 dualists and those ecclesiastically biased. It is from this 

 automatical basis that I seek an explanation for the hith- 

 erto inexplicable. Brown-Sequard insists that speech is 

 a reflex phenomenon (21). We find certain muscles, 

 tendons, bones and cartilages concerned in mastication, 

 and deglutition of food common to many vertebrates. Many 

 of these same parts, separately or conjointly, prove useful 

 to these animals in noise production : A woodpecker (7) 

 finds by drumming rapidly upon a sonorous piece of 

 wood, that he excites the admiration of his kind, and at- 

 tracts attention to himself. When he repeats the opera- 

 tion for the distinct purpose of exciting admiration and 

 attracting attention, he uses as much and precisely the 

 same kind of reason, as the serenader, who pours out his 

 rhyme to the jingle of a guitar. Wilder (8) speaks of the 

 inharmonious feline nocturnes, and Lieder ohne Worte, 

 but cats to whom that sort of music is addressed, find it 

 quite as rational and expressive as the seranaded biped, 

 and the greater part of both sorts of caterwauling, may 

 be interpreted to mean the same thing, inharmonious only 

 to those not interested. 



Thus the brays, snorts, shrieks, grunts, etc., of the myriad 

 kinds of animals are only methods for expressing their 

 satisfaction or displeasure. Many such sounds being 

 made use of after their accidental origination. The 

 North American Indian uses the hoggish grunt in affirm- 

 ation, and a perusal of Darwin's " Expression of the 

 Emotions in Man and Animals " would be profitable to 

 philologists who are not too strongly permeated by a 

 metaphysical bias. At the outset any animal having ob- 

 served that its noises, of whatever origin, attract atten- 

 tion of other animals would be led to the use of such 

 noises as are serviceable. All that follows is simply an 

 improvement upon these conceptions, and the animal 

 that uses one noise or gesture, or a thousand, to bring it- 

 self into'relation with other animals, expresses, in so do- 

 ing, an idea, conveys a thought and hence speaks. 



But this matter of reason and language possessed by 

 animals has been ably worked out by observers and 

 thinkers (9). 



When water in an engine boiler is low and the alarm 

 whistles through a simple float device; or when portions 

 of machinery jar and scrape, the necessity for more water 

 or oil is conveyed to the engineer's mind, and by a means 

 comparable to the mechanism of crying. Just so the 

 colony of beavers dive out of sight when they hear the 

 warning slap of the sentinel's tail. 



