June 18, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



555 



of the paper was concluded with a description of 

 the kinds and methods of deception practised by 

 a medium named Haxby. 



Mrs. Sidgwick then went on to discuss the 

 various causes of error. She did not believe that 

 hallucination, i.e., perception without objective 

 counterpart, which Von Hartmann suggests as 

 the explanation of what is seen at seances of this 

 kind, had occurred in her own experience ; but 

 illusion, meaning the misinterpretation of what is 

 really perceived or the confusing of inference with 

 observation, was very common. It was believed 

 that this was often the case when friends and 

 relations are recognized in the ' materialized ' 

 forms. 



Moreover, in estimating evidence concerning 

 seances, a wide margin must be left for conjuring 

 of a more special kind, and also for mal-observa- 

 tion arising from other causes, such as the igno- 

 rance of the observer as to the precise phenomena 

 and conditions to be expected. Mrs. Sidgwick 

 said that two arguments against the reality of the 

 physical phenomena of spiritualism gained in 

 force every year : 1°, the absence of phenomena 

 about which there could be no question as to con- 

 juring raised ; and, 2°, the fact that almost every 

 medium who had been prominently before the 

 public had been detected in fraud. Nevertheless, 

 the writer felt that there was some evidence not 

 to be neglected, and which made it a duty to seek 

 for more ; but she considered it a waste of time to 

 seek it with professional mediums under the con- 

 ditions imposed at present. It is probable that 

 many of the conditions supposed to be necessary, 

 and which complicate the investigations and in- 

 crease their difficulty, are invented merely to 

 facilitate trickery. 



Mrs. Sidgwick's paper was candid and able, and 

 dealt with evidence, not theories. It is one more 

 example of the good work being done by the 

 Society for psychical research in determining just 

 what basis there is for the multitude of current 

 beliefs concerning certain classes of psychical and 

 semi-psychical phenomena. In this case the con- 

 clusions are negative — or, as was remarked in the 

 discussion of the paper, positive — as to imposture. 



THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 



The present advanced condition of our knowl- 

 edge of language reflects, as well perhaps as any 

 other study, the advantages of the modern method 

 of research. One marked feature of that method 

 is the taking of a broad general point of view, 

 from which almost any pertinent fact bears an 

 interest and a meaning : it does not narrowly and 

 pedantically say such and such is my domain ; 



what is outside does not concern me. The con- 

 dition of logic about one hundred years ago shows 

 what happens when the latter position is taken. 

 A second feature of modern methods of study is 

 the importance assigned to the evolution of things : 

 we want to know not only how things are, but 

 quite as well how they came to be so ; only then 

 do we say we understand them. 



Both these methods have been applied to lan- 

 guage. Language is considered from a broad 

 biological point of view as the means of commu- 

 nication between the same or different animal 

 species. Human speech is but the highest stage 

 of a special development of one form of such a 

 means of communication. We shall see below 

 how it is related to more lowly forms of making 

 one's self understood. Not only its evolution, but 

 its devolution, its loss and impairment in disease, 

 have been wrought out. This has led to the formu- 

 lation of an important law, which tells us that the 

 latest acquired and best organized is the first to 

 drop out. Moreover, it has sifted out the separate 

 moments in the acquisition of speech, by a com- 

 parison of cases in which one special function is 

 lost, while all others remain intact. Its anatomi- 

 cal seat in the brain is localized with as much ex- 

 actness as that of other less complex faculties. 

 The purely philological study of language is cer- 

 tainly flourishing, and is making its way back 

 into the remotest antiquity, when it seems almost 

 to touch hands with the prehistoric man of the 

 anthropologists. 



A recent writer in Kosmos (Dr. Carl Francke) 

 has presented a very readable account of the rela- 

 tion of human speech to that of other animals. 

 Any thing is regarded as a language which serves 

 as a means of communication : the system of 

 signals (probably by use of the antennae) by which 

 ants tell each other of a precious find is perhaps 

 the most rudimentary type of language. When 

 we ascend to mammals and birds, which have 

 lungs and use them as men do, we find that the 

 sounds thus uttered are variously affected by emo- 

 tional states, and soon serve to express the pres- 

 ence of such emotions. The dog barks with joy, 

 howls with pain, and pleads by whining. In this 

 tendency of psychic states to express themselves 

 by vocal utterances, we have the origin of speech ; 

 for they become real speech-sounds as soon as 

 other animals appreciate their meaning. The 

 next great step is taken when an animal utters a 

 cry for the purpose of calling its mate, not as a 

 half -reflex expression of its own condition. Young 

 birds probably have not reached this stage, but 

 dogs certainly have. A dog will bark before a 

 closed door till some one opens it. Some ani- 

 mals post sentinels, which give a definite cry of 



