1. Just as the psychical development of the child is the resultant of his interaction with his environment, so matured consciousness stands continually in relation to the mental community in which it has a receptive and an active part. Among most animals such a community is entirely wanting. [p.
297] In animal marriage, animal states, and flocks, we have only incomplete forerunners of mental communities, and they are generally limited to the accomplishment of certain single ends. The more lasting forms, animal marriage and the falsely named animal states (p. 279), are really sexual cornmunities. the more transient forms or flocks, as, for example, flocks of migratory birds, are communities for protection. In all these cases it is certain instincts that have grown more and more fixed through transmission, which hold the individuals together. The community, therefore, shows the same constancy as instinct in general, and is very little modified by the influences of individuals.
While animal communities are, thus, mere enlargements of the individual existence, aiming at certain physical vital ends, human development seeks from the first so to unite the individual with his mental environment that the whole is capable of development, serving at once the satisfaction of the physical needs of life and the pursuit of the most various mental ends, while permitting also great variations in these ends. As a result the forms of human society are exceedingly variable. The more fully developed forms, however, enter into a continuous train of historical development which extends the mental ties that connect individuals almost unlimitedly beyond the bounds of immediate spacial and temporal proximity. The final result of this development is the formation of the notion of humanity as a great general mental community which is divided up according to the special conditions of life into single concrete communities, peoples, states, civilized societies of various kinds, races, and families. The mental community to which the individual belongs is, therefore, not one, but a changing plurality of mental unions which are interlaced in the most manifold ways and become more and more numerous as development progresses. [p. 298]
2. The problem of tracing these developments in their concrete forms or even in their general interconnection. belongs to the history of civilization and to general history, not to psychology. Still, we must give some account here of the general psychical conditions and the psychical processes arising from these conditions that distinguish social from individual life.
The condition which is prime necessity of every mental community at its beginning, and a continually operative factor in its further development, is the function of speech. This is what makes the development of mental communities from individual existences psychologically possible.
In its origin it comes from the expressive movements of the individual, but as a result of its development it becomes the indispensable form for all the common mental contents. These common contents, or the mental processes which belong to the whole community, may be divided into two classes, which are merely interrelated components of social life, not distinct processes any more than are the processes of ideation and volition in individual experience. The first of these classes is that of the mythological ideas, where we find especially the accepted conclusions on the question of the content and significance of the world -- these are the mythological ideas. The second class consists of the common motives of volition, which correspond to the common ideas and their attending feelings and emotions -- these are the laws of custom. A. SPEECH.
3. We obtain no information in regard to the general development of speech from the individual development of the child, because here the larger part of the process depends on those about him rather than on himself (p. 292 sq.) Still, the fact that the child learns to speak at all, shows that he [p. 299] has psychical and physical traits favorable to the reception of language when it is communicated. In fact, it may be assumed that these traits would, even if there were no communications from without, lead to the development of some kind of expressive movements accompanied by sounds, which would form an incomplete language. This supposition is justified 'by observations on the deaf and dumb, especially deaf and dumb children who have grown up without any systematic education. In spite of this lack of education, an energetic mental intercourse may take place between them. In such a case, however, since the deaf and dumb can perceive only visual signs, the intercourse must depend on the development of a natural gesture-language made up of a combination of significant expressive movements. Feelings are in general expressed by mimetic movements, ideas by pantomimetic, either by pointing at the object with the finger or by drawing some kind of picture of the idea in the air, that is, by means of indicative or depicting gestures (p. 173). There may even be a combination of such signs corresponding to a series of successive ideas, and thus a kind of sentence may be formed, by means of which things are described and occurrences narrated. This natural gesture-language can never go any further, however, than the communication of concrete sensible ideas and their interconnection. Signs for abstract concepts are entirely wanting.
4. The primitive development of articulate language can hardly be thought of except after the analogy of the rise of this natural gesture-language.