CHAPTER XIV.

THE THEORETICAL STAGE.

IN

The Problem of the Origin of Language.

N examining the history of mankind, as well as in examining the phenomena of the material world, when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to be able to show how it may have been produced by natural causes. Thus, although it is impossible to determine with certainty what the steps were by which any particular language was formed, yet, if we can show, from the known principles of human nature, how all its various parts might gradually have arisen, the mind is not only to a certain degree satisfied, but a check is given to that indolent philosophy which refers to a miracle whatever appearances, both in the natural and moral worlds, it is unable to explain.' 1

This quotation from an eminent Scotch philosopher contains the best advice that could be given to the student of the science of language, when he approaches the problem of the origin of language. Though we have stripped that problem of the perplexing and mysterious aspect which it presented to the philo1 Dugald Stewart, Works, vol. iii. p. 35.

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sophers of old, yet, even in its simplest form, it seems to be almost beyond the reach of the human understanding.

Herder has truly remarked that if we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and excite thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman, who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change colour into sound and sound into thought.1 Yet this is the riddle which we have now to solve.

It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of the origin of language historically, or of explaining it as a matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt, would be more interesting than to know from historical documents the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first words, and thus to be rid for ever of all the theories on the origin of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those primitive events in the history of the human mind. We are

1 Herder, as quoted by Steinthal, Ursprung der Sprache, s. 39.

2 In all these paths of research, when we travel far backwards, the aspect of the earlier portions becomes very different from that of the advanced part on which we now stand; but in all cases the path is lost in obscurity as it is traced backwards towards its starting-point :-it

told that the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. These are simple natural thoughts, and to be accepted as such. If we begin to reason on them, the edge of the human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child, and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could not understand his living for one day, without supernatural aid. If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created full-grown in body and mind, the conception of an effect without a cause would equally transcend our reasoning powers. Nor should we gain anything by imagining a number of intermediate stages between lower animals and man. We should only disguise the real difficulty, we should not solve it.

It is the same with the first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a divine origin drift into the most dangerous anthropomorphism when they enter into any details as to the manner in which they suppose the Deity to have compiled a dictionary and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb. And they do not see that, even if all their premisses were granted, they would have explained no more than how the first man might have learnt a language, if

becomes not only invisible, but unimaginable; it is not only an interruption, but an abyss, which interposes itself between us and any intelligible beginning of things.'-Whewell, Indications, p. 166.

there was a language ready-made for him. How that language was made, would remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary, who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that man could not by his own power have acquired the faculty of speech which, so far as our experience goes, is the distinctive character of man, 1 unattainable, or, at all events, unattained by the brute and mute creation. It shows a want of appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of articulate speech. We want no explanation how birds learn to fly, created as they are with organs adapted to that purpose. Nor do we wish to inquire here how children learn to use the various faculties with which the human body and soul are endowed. We want to gain, if possible, an insight into the original faculty of speech; and for that purpose I fear it is as useless to watch the first stammerings of children, as it would be to repeat the experiment of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who entrusted two new-born infants to a shepherd, with the injunction to let them suck goat's milk, to speak no word in their presence,

1 'Der Mensch ist nur Mensch durch Sprache; um aber die Sprache zu erfinden, müsste er schon Mensch sein.'-W. von Humboldt, Sämmtliche Werke, b. iii. s. 252. The same argument is ridden to death by Süssmilch, Versuch eines Beweises, dass die erste Sprache ihren Ursprung nicht vom Menschen, sondern allein vom Schöpfer erhalten habe, Berlin, 1766.

and to observe what word they would first utter.1 The same experiment is said to have been repeated by the Swabian emperor, Frederic II., by James IV. of Scotland, and by Akbar, the emperor of India.2 But, whether for the purpose of finding out which was the primitive language of mankind, or of discovering how far language was natural to man, the experiments have failed to throw any light on the problem before us. Children, in learning to speak, do not invent language. Language is there ready-made for them. It has been there for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would

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Farrar, Origin of Language, p. 10; Grimm, Ursprung der Sprache, s. 32. The word Bekós, which these children are reported to have uttered, and which, in the Phrygian language, meant bread-thus proving, it was supposed, that the Phrygian was the primitive language of mankind—is probably derived from the same Aryan root which exists in the English, to bake. How these unfortunate children came by the idea of baked bread, involving the ideas of corn, mill, oven, fire, &c., seems never to have struck the ancient sages of Egypt. Quintilian distinguishes very properly between the power of uttering a few words and the faculty of speaking: 'Propter quod infantes a mutis nutricibus jussu regum in solitudine educati, etiamsi verba quaedam emisisse traduntur, tamen loquendi facultate caruerunt.'—Instit. Orat. x. 1, 10.

2 Hervas, Origine degl' idiomi (1785), pp. 147 seq. Akbar told Jerome Xavier that he had thirty children shut up before they could speak, and put guards over them, so that the nurses might not teach them their language. His object was to see what language they would talk when they grew older, and he was resolved to follow the laws and customs of the country whose language was that spoken by the children. None of the children, however, came to speak distinctly, wherefore he allowed no law but his own. See H. Beveridge, in Journal of the Asiat. Soc. of Bengal, 1888, p. 38. Badaoni relates the same story, and states that the experiment was made in 1580. He says that after three or four years all the children who survived were found to be dumb.