Lectures on The Science of Language Part 14

Secondly, the problem of the common origin of languages has no connection with the statements contained in the Old Testament regarding the creation of man, and the genealogies of the patriarchs. If our researches led us to the admission of different beginnings for the languages of mankind, there is nothing in the Old Testament opposed to this view. For although the Jews believed that for a time the whole earth was of one language and of one speech, it has long been pointed out by eminent divines, with particular reference to the dialects of America, that new languages might have arisen at later times. If, on the contrary, we arrive at the conviction that all languages can be traced back to one common source, we could never think of transferring the genealogies of the Old Testament to the genealogical cla.s.sification of language. The genealogies of the Old Testament refer to blood, not to language, and as we know that people, without changing their name, did frequently change their language, it is clearly impossible that the genealogies of the Old Testament should coincide with the genealogical cla.s.sification of languages. In order to avoid a confusion of ideas, it would be preferable to abstain altogether from using the same names to express relationship of language which in the Bible are used to express relationship of blood. It was usual formerly to speak of _j.a.phetic_, _Hamitic_ and _Semitic_ languages. The first name has now been replaced by _Aryan_, the second by _African_; and though the third is still retained, it has received a scientific definition quite different from the meaning which it would have in the Bible. It is well to bear this in mind, in order to prevent not only those who are forever attacking the Bible with arrows that cannot reach it, but likewise those who defend it with weapons they know not how to wield, from disturbing in any way the quiet progress of the science of language.

Let us now look dispa.s.sionately at our problem. The problem of the possibility of a common origin of all languages naturally divides itself into two parts, the _formal_ and the _material_. We are to-day concerned with the formal part only. We have examined all possible forms which language can a.s.sume, and we have now to ask, can we reconcile with these three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, and the inflectional, the admission of one common origin of human speech? I answer decidedly, Yes.

The chief argument that has been brought forward against the common origin of language is this, that no monosyllabic or radical language has ever entered into an agglutinative or terminational stage, and that no agglutinative or terminational language has ever risen to the inflectional stage. Chinese, it is said, is still what it has been from the beginning; it has never produced agglutinative or inflectional forms; nor has any Turanian language ever given up the distinctive feature of the terminational stage, namely, the integrity of its roots.

In answer to this it should be pointed out that though each language, as soon as it once becomes settled, retains that morphological character which it had when it first a.s.sumed its individual or national existence, it does not lose altogether the power of producing grammatical forms that belong to a higher stage. In Chinese, and particularly in Chinese dialects, we find rudimentary traces of agglutination. The _li_ which I mentioned before as the sign of the locative, has dwindled down to a mere postposition, and a modern Chinese is no more aware that _li_ meant originally interior, than the Turanian is of the origin of his case-terminations.(308) In the spoken dialects of Chinese, agglutinative forms are of more frequent occurrence. Thus, in the Shanghai dialect, _wo_ is to speak, as a verb; _woda_, a word. Of _woda_ a genitive is formed, _woda-ka_, a dative _pela woda_, an accusative _tang woda_.(309) In agglutinative languages again, we meet with rudimentary traces of inflection. Thus in Tamil the root _tungu_, to sleep, has not retained its full integrity in the derivative _tukkam_, sleep.

I mention these instances, which might be greatly multiplied, in order to show that there is nothing mysterious in the tenacity with which each language clings in general to that stage of grammar which it had attained at the time of its first settlement. If a family, or a tribe, or a nation, has once accustomed itself to express its ideas according to one system of grammar, that first mould remains and becomes stronger with each generation. But, while Chinese was arrested and became traditional in this very early stage the radical, other dialects pa.s.sed on through that stage, retaining their pliancy. They were not arrested, and did not become traditional or national, before those who spoke them had learnt to appreciate the advantage of agglutination. That advantage being once perceived, a few single forms in which agglutination first showed itself would soon, by that sense of a.n.a.logy which is inherent in language, extend their influence irresistibly. Languages arrested in that stage would cling with equal tenacity to the system of agglutination. A Chinese can hardly understand how language is possible, unless every syllable is significative; a Turanian despises every idiom in which each word does not display distinctly its radical and significative element; whereas, we who are accustomed to the use of inflectional languages, are proud of the very grammar which a Chinese and Turanian would treat with contempt.

The fact, therefore, that languages, if once settled, do not change their grammatical const.i.tution, is no argument against our theory, that every inflectional language was once agglutinative, and every agglutinative language was once monosyllabic. I call it a theory, but it is more than a theory, for it is the only possible way in which the realities of Sanskrit or any other inflectional language can be explained. As far as the formal part of language is concerned, we cannot resist the conclusion that what is now _inflectional_ was formerly _agglutinative_, and what is now _agglutinative_ was at first _radical_. The great stream of language rolled on in numberless dialects, and changed its grammatical coloring as it pa.s.sed from time to time through new deposits of thought. The different channels which left the main current and became stationary and stagnant, or, if you like, literary and traditional, retained forever that coloring which the main current displayed at the stage of their separation. If we call the radical stage _white_, the agglutinative _red_, and the inflectional _blue_, then we may well understand why the white channels should show hardly a drop of red or blue, or why the red channels should hardly betray a shadow of blue; and we shall be prepared to find what we do find, namely, white tints in the red, and white and red tints in the blue channels of speech.

You will have perceived that in what I have said I only argue for the possibility, not for the necessity, of a common origin of language.

I look upon the problem of the common origin of language, which I have shown to be quite independent of the problem of the common origin of mankind, as a question which ought to be kept open as long as possible. It is not, I believe, a problem quite as hopeless as that of the plurality of worlds, on which so much has been written of late, but it should be treated very much in the same manner. As it is impossible to demonstrate by the evidence of the senses that the planets are inhabited, the only way to prove that they are, is to prove that it is impossible that they should not be. Thus on the other hand, in order to prove that the planets are not inhabited, you must prove that it is impossible that they should be. As soon as the one or the other has been proved, the question will be set at rest: till then it must remain an open question, whatever our own predilections on the subject may be.

I do not take quite as desponding a view of the problem of the common origin of language, but I insist on this, that we ought not to allow this problem to be in any way prejudged. Now it has been the tendency of the most distinguished writers on comparative philology to take it almost for granted, that after the discovery of the two families of language, the Aryan and Semitic, and after the establishment of the close ties of relationship which unite the members of each, it would be impossible to admit any longer a common origin of language. It was natural, after the criteria by which the unity of the Aryan as well as the Semitic dialects can be proved had been so successfully defined, that the absence of similar coincidences between any Semitic and Aryan language, or between these and any other branch of speech, should have led to a belief that no connection was admissible between them. A Linnaean botanist, who has his definite marks by which to recognize an Anemone, would reject with equal confidence any connection between the species Anemone and other flowers which have since been cla.s.sed under the same head though deficient in the Linnaean marks of the Anemone.

But there are surely different degrees of affinity in languages as well as in all other productions of nature, and the different families of speech, though they cannot show the same signs of relationship by which their members are held together, need not of necessity have been perfect strangers to each other from the beginning.

Now I confess that when I found the argument used over and over again, that it is impossible any longer to speak of a common origin of language, because comparative philology had proved that there existed various families of language, I felt that this was not true, that at all events it was an exaggeration.

The problem, if properly viewed, bears the following aspect:-"_If you wish to a.s.sert that language had various beginnings, you must prove it impossible that language could have had a common origin._"

No such impossibility has ever been established with regard to a common origin of the Aryan and Semitic dialects; while on the contrary the a.n.a.lysis of the grammatical forms in either family has removed many difficulties, and made it at least intelligible how, with materials identical or very similar, two individuals, or two families, or two nations, could in the course of time have produced languages so different in form as Hebrew and Sanskrit.

But still greater light was thrown on the formative and metamorphic process of language by the study of other dialects unconnected with Sanskrit or Hebrew, and exhibiting before our eyes the growth of those grammatical forms (grammatical in the widest sense of the word) which in the Aryan and Semitic families we know only as formed, not as forming; as decaying, not as living; as traditional, not as understood and intentional: I mean the Turanian languages. The traces by which these languages attest their original relationship are much fainter than in the Semitic and Aryan families, but they are so of necessity. In the Aryan and Semitic families, the agglutinative process, by which alone grammatical forms can be obtained, has been arrested at some time, and this could only have been through religious or political influences. By the same power through which an advancing civilization absorbs the manifold dialects in which every spoken idiom naturally represents itself, the first political or religious centralization must necessarily have put a check on the exuberance of an agglutinative speech. Out of many possible forms one became popular, fixed, and technical for each word, for each grammatical category; and by means of poetry, law, and religion, a literary or political language was produced to which thenceforth nothing had to be added; which in a short time, after becoming unintelligible in its formal elements, was liable to phonetic corruption only, but incapable of internal resuscitation. It is necessary to admit a primitive concentration of this kind for the Aryan and Semitic families, for it is thus only that we can account for coincidences between Sanskrit and Greek terminations, which were formed neither from Greek nor from Sanskrit materials, but which are still identically the same in both. It is in this sense that I call these languages political or state languages, and it has been truly said that languages belonging to these families must be able to prove their relationship by sharing in common not only what is regular and intelligible, but what is anomalous, unintelligible, and dead.

If no such concentration takes place, languages, though formed of the same materials and originally identical, must necessarily diverge in what we may call dialects, but in a very different sense from the dialects such as we find in the later periods of political languages. The process of agglutination will continue in each clan, and forms becoming unintelligible will be easily replaced by new and more intelligible compounds. If the cases are formed by postpositions, new postpositions can be used as soon as the old ones become obsolete. If the conjugation is formed by p.r.o.nouns, new p.r.o.nouns can be used if the old ones are no longer sufficiently distinct.

Let us ask then, what coincidences we are likely to find in agglutinative dialects which have become separated, and which gradually approach to a more settled state? It seems to me that we can only expect to find in them such coincidences as Castren and Schott have succeeded in discovering in the Finnic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Samoyedic languages; and such as Hodgson, Caldwell, Logan, and myself have pointed out in the Tamulic, Gangetic, Lohitic, Tac, and Malac languages. They must refer chiefly to the radical materials of language, or to those parts of speech which it is most difficult to reproduce, I mean p.r.o.nouns, numerals, and prepositions.

These languages will hardly ever agree in what is anomalous or inorganic, because their organism repels continually what begins to be formal and unintelligible. It is astonishing rather, that any words of a conventional meaning should have been discovered as the common property of the Turanian languages, than that most of their words and forms should be peculiar to each. These coincidences must, however, be accounted for by those who deny the common origin of the Turanian languages; they must be accounted for, either as the result of accident, or of an imitative instinct which led the human mind everywhere to the same onomatopoetic formations. This has never been done, and it will require great efforts to achieve it.

To myself the study of the Turanian family was interesting particularly because it offered an opportunity of learning how far languages, supposed to be of a common origin, might diverge and become dissimilar by the unrestrained operation of dialectic regeneration.

In a letter which I addressed to my friend, the late Baron Bunsen, and which was published by him in his "Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History"(310) (vol. i. pp. 263-521), it had been my object to trace, as far as I was able, the principles which guided the formation of agglutinative languages, and to show how far languages may become dissimilar in their grammar and dictionary, and yet allow us to treat them as cognate dialects. In answer to the a.s.sertion that it was impossible, I tried, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of that Essay, to show _how_ it was possible, that, starting from a common ground, languages as different as Mandshu and Finnish, Malay and Siamese, should have arrived at their present state, and might still be treated as cognate tongues. And as I look upon this process of agglutination as the only intelligible means by which language can acquire a grammatical organization, and clear the barrier which has arrested the growth of the Chinese idiom, I felt justified in applying the principles derived from the formation of the Turanian languages to the Aryan and Semitic families. They also must have pa.s.sed through an agglutinative stage, and it is during that period alone that we can account for the gradual divergence and individualization of what we afterwards call the Aryan and Semitic forms of speech. If we can account for the different appearance of Mandshu and Finnish, we can also account for the distance between Hebrew and Sanskrit. It is true that we do not know the Aryan speech during its agglutinative period, but we can infer what it was when we see languages like Finnish and Turkish approaching more and more to an Aryan type. Such has been the advance which Turkish has made towards inflectional forms, that Professor Ewald claims for it the t.i.tle of a synthetic language, a t.i.tle which he gives to the Aryan and Semitic dialects after they have left the agglutinative stage, and entered into a process of phonetic corruption and dissolution.

"Many of its component parts," he says, "though they were no doubt originally, as in every language, independent words, have been reduced to mere vowels, or have been lost altogether, so that we must infer their former presence by the changes which they have wrought in the body of the word. _Goz_ means eye, and _gor_, to see; _ish_, deed, and _ir_, to do; _itsh_, the interior, _gir_, to enter."(311) Nay, he goes so far as to admit some formal elements which Turkish shares in common with the Aryan family, and which therefore could only date from a period when both were still in their agglutinative infancy. For instance, _di_, as exponent of a past action; _ta_, as the sign of the past participle of the pa.s.sive; _lu_, as a suffix to form adjectives, &c.(312) This is more than I should venture to a.s.sert.

Taking this view of the gradual formation of language by agglutination, as opposed to intussusception, it is hardly necessary to say that, if I speak of a Turanian family of speech, I use the word family in a different sense from that which it has with regard to the Aryan and Semitic languages. In my Letter on the Turanian languages, which has been the subject of such fierce attacks from those who believe in different beginnings of language and mankind, I had explained this repeatedly, and I had preferred the term of _group_ for the Turanian languages, in order to express as clearly as possible that the relation between Turkish and Mandshu, between Tamil and Finnish, was a different one, not in degree only, but in kind, from that between Sanskrit and Greek. "These Turanian languages," I said (p. 216), "cannot be considered as standing to each other in the same relation as Hebrew and Arabic, Sanskrit and Greek." "They are radii diverging from a common centre, not children of a common parent." And still they are not so widely distant as Hebrew and Sanskrit, because none of them has entered into that new phase of growth or decay (p. 218) through which the Semitic and Aryan languages pa.s.sed after they had been settled, individualized, and nationalized.

The real object of my Essay was therefore a defensive one. It was to show how rash it was to speak of different independent beginnings in the history of human speech, before a single argument had been brought forward to establish the necessity of such an admission. The impossibility of a common origin of language has never been proved, but, in order to remove what were considered difficulties affecting the theory of a common origin, I felt it my duty to show practically, and by the very history of the Turanian languages, how such a theory was possible, or as I say in one instance only, probable. I endeavored to show how even the most distant members of the Turanian family, the one spoken in the north, the other in the south of Asia, the _Finnic_ and the _Tamulic_, have preserved in their grammatical organization traces of a former unity; and, if my opponents admit that I have proved the ante-Brahmanic or Tamulic inhabitants of India to belong to the Turanian family, they can hardly have been aware that if this, the most extreme point of my argument be conceded, everything else is involved, and must follow by necessity.

Yet I did not call the last chapter of my Essay, "On the Necessity of a common origin of Language," but "On the Possibility;" and, in answer to the opinions advanced by the opposite party, I summed up my defence in these two paragraphs:-

I.

"Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the _material_ elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech;-nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation."

II.

"Nothing necessitates the admission of different beginnings for the formal elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech;-and though it is impossible to derive the Aryan system of grammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic from the Aryan, we can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences, or by the wear and tear of speech in its own continuous working, the different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced."

It will be seen, from the very wording of these two paragraphs, that my object was to deny the necessity of independent beginnings, and to a.s.sert the possibility of a common origin of language. I have been accused of having been bia.s.sed in my researches by an implicit belief in the common origin of mankind. I do not deny that I hold this belief, and, if it wanted confirmation, that confirmation has been supplied by Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species."(313) But I defy my adversaries to point out one single pa.s.sage where I have mixed up scientific with theological arguments. Only if I am told that no "quiet observer would ever have conceived the idea of deriving all mankind from one pair, unless the Mosaic records had taught it," I must be allowed to say in reply, that this idea on the contrary is so natural, so consistent with all human laws of reasoning, that, as far as I know, there has been no nation on earth which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person. The author of the Mosaic records, therefore, though stripped, before the tribunal of Physical Science, of his claims as an inspired writer, may at least claim the modest t.i.tle of a quiet observer, and if his conception of the physical unity of the human race can be proved to be an error, it is an error which he shares in common with other quiet observers, such as Humboldt, Bunsen, Prichard, and Owen.(314)

The only question which remains to be answered is this, Was it one and the same volume of water which supplied all the lateral channels of speech?

or, to drop all metaphor, are the roots which were joined together according to the radical, the terminational, and inflectional systems, identically the same? The only way to answer, or at least to dispose of, this question is to consider the nature and origin of roots; and we shall then have reached the extreme limits to which inductive reasoning can carry us in our researches into the mysteries of human speech.

LECTURE IX. THE THEORETICAL STAGE, AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

"In 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."(315)

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 which we have to examine to-day, namely, the origin of language. Though we have stripped that problem of the perplexing and mysterious aspect which it presented to the philosophers of old, yet, even in its simplest form, it seems to be almost beyond the reach of the human understanding.

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 color into sound and sound into thought.(316) 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 doc.u.ments the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first words, and thus to be rid forever 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.(317) We are told that the first man was the son of G.o.d, that G.o.d 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 facts, 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 const.i.tuted 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, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would equally transcend our reasoning powers. 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 premises were granted, they would have explained no more than how the first man might have learnt a language, if 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 is the distinctive character of mankind,(318) unattained and unattainable by the 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 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 who intrusted two new-born infants to a shepherd, with the injunction to let them suck a goat's milk, and to speak no word in their presence, but to observe what word they would first utter.(319) The same experiment is said to have been repeated by the Swabian emperor, Frederic II., by James IV. of Scotland, and by one of the Mogul emperors of India. 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 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 invent a language.

It would be impossible, unnatural, and illegal to try the experiment, and, without repeated experiments, the a.s.sertions of those who believe and those who disbelieve the possibility of children inventing a language of their own, are equally valueless. All we know for certain is, that an English child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been invented.

If we want to gain an insight into the faculty of flying, which is a characteristic feature of birds, all we can do is, first, to compare the structure of birds with that of other animals which are devoid of that faculty, and secondly, to examine the conditions under which the act of flying becomes possible. It is the same with speech. Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and what is peculiar to him and to him alone. After we have discovered this, we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge, wonderful as they are, are yet far too weak to carry us into all the regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.

In comparing man with the other animals, we need not enter here into the physiological questions whether the difference between the body of an ape and the body of a man is one of degree or of kind. However that question is settled by physiologists we need not be afraid. If the structure of a mere worm is such as to fill the human mind with awe, if a single glimpse which we catch of the infinite wisdom displayed in the organs of the lowest creature gives us an intimation of the wisdom of its Divine Creator far transcending the powers of our conception, how are we to criticise and disparage the most highly organized creatures of His creation, creatures as wonderfully made as we ourselves? Are there not many creatures on many points more perfect even than man? Do we not envy the lion's strength, the eagle's eye, the wings of every bird? If there existed animals altogether as perfect as man in their physical structure, nay, even more perfect, no thoughtful man would ever be uneasy. His true superiority rests on different grounds. "I confess," Sydney Smith writes, "I feel myself so much at ease about the superiority of mankind-I have such a marked and decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have ever seen-I feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting, and music, that I see no reason whatever that justice may not be done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may really possess." The playfulness of Sydney Smith in handling serious and sacred subjects has of late been found fault with by many: but humor is a safer sign of strong convictions and perfect safety than guarded solemnity.

With regard to our own problem, no one can doubt that certain animals possess all the physical requirements for articulate speech. There is no letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to p.r.o.nounce.(320) The fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must be explained by a difference between the _mental_, not between the _physical_, faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that we may hope to discover what const.i.tutes the indispensable qualification for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other creature on earth.

I say _mental faculties_, and I mean to claim a large share of what we call our mental faculties for the higher animals. These animals have _sensation_, _perception_, _memory_, _will_, and _intellect_, only we must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.

All these points can be proved by irrefragable evidence, and that evidence has never, I believe, been summed up with greater lucidity and power than in one of the last publications of M. P. Flourens, "De la Raison, du Genie, et de la Folie:" Paris, 1861. There are no doubt many people who are as much frightened at the idea that brutes have souls and are able to think, as by "the blue ape without a tail." But their fright is entirely of their own making. If people will use such words as soul or thought without making it clear to themselves and others what they mean by them, these words will slip away under their feet, and the result must be painful. If we once ask the question, Have brutes a soul? we shall never arrive at any conclusion; for _soul_ has been so many times defined by philosophers from Aristotle down to Hegel, that it means everything and nothing. Such has been the confusion caused by the promiscuous employment of the ill-defined terms of mental philosophy that we find Descartes representing brutes as living machines, whereas Leibniz claims for them not only souls, but immortal souls. "Next to the error of those who deny the existence of G.o.d," says Descartes, "there is none so apt to lead weak minds from the right path of virtue, as to think that the soul of brutes is of the same nature as our own; and, consequently, that we have nothing to fear or to hope after this life, any more than flies or ants; whereas, if we know how much they differ, we understand much better that _our_ soul is quite independent of the body, and consequently not subject to die with the body."

The spirit of these remarks is excellent, but the argument is extremely weak. It does not follow that brutes have no souls because they have no human souls. It does not follow that the souls of men are not immortal, because the souls of brutes are not immortal; nor has the _major premiss_ ever been proved by any philosopher, namely, that the souls of brutes must necessarily be destroyed and annihilated by death. Leibniz, who has defended the immortality of the human soul with stronger arguments than even Descartes, writes:-"I found at last how the souls of brutes and their sensations do not at all interfere with the immortality of human souls; on the contrary, nothing serves better to establish our natural immortality than to believe that all souls are imperishable."

Instead of entering into these perplexities, which are chiefly due to the loose employment of ill-defined terms, let us simply look at the facts.

Every unprejudiced observer will admit that-

1. Brutes see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; that is to say, they have five senses, just like ourselves, neither more nor less. They have both sensation and perception, a point which has been ill.u.s.trated by M.

Flourens by the most interesting experiments. If the roots of the optic nerve are removed, the retina in the eye of a bird ceases to be excitable, the iris is no longer movable; the animal is blind, because it has lost the organ of _sensation_. If, on the contrary, the cerebral lobes are removed, the eye remains pure and sound, the retina excitable, the iris movable. The eye is preserved, yet the animal cannot see, because it has lost the organs of _perception_.

2. Brutes have sensations of pleasure and pain. A dog that is beaten behaves exactly like a child that is chastised, and a dog that is fed and fondled exhibits the same signs of satisfaction as a boy under the same circ.u.mstances. We can only judge from signs, and if they are to be trusted in the case of children, they must be trusted likewise in the case of brutes.

3. Brutes do not forget, or as philosophers would say, brutes have memory.