Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

40 страница из 72

It would be difficult to be more explicit, and it must be owned that this was a great concession on Darwin’s part; but afterwards, and perhaps with the object of weakening the force of this statement, he adds: “The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech, no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced.”[13] However, no effort of thought, in the present state of our knowledge, would cause us to understand how any number of thousands of centuries passed in roaring and barking could enable wolves and dogs to join a single definite idea to a single definite sound; and if we said that, by the help of specially favourable environments some unknown species of primitive animal had acquired the power of speech, and had succeeded in imparting the knowledge to its descendants, and in thus elevating them to the level of human beings, we should only be relating fantastic tales, which would have no connection with scientific research.

Darwin does not allow himself to be affected by this consideration. “In a series of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point where the term ‘man’ ought to be used.”[14] It is evident that if the gradations were imperceptible, there would be no possibility of marking the precise point where the animal ended and man began; “the admission of this insensible gradation would eliminate, not only the difference between ape and man, but likewise between black and white, hot and cold, a high and a low note in music; in fact, it would do away with the possibility of all exact and definite knowledge, by removing those wonderful lines and laws of nature which ... enable us to count, to tell, and to know.”[15]