Thus, these reflections concerning the social relations of primitive man lead us to a further field of phenomena which likewise affords a glimpse into the mental characteristics of primitive peoples. For that which differentiates the horde from the herd is the _language_ of primitive man, together with the activity most closely bound up with language, namely, _thinking_.
Our knowledge of those peoples whom we, avoiding the errors of the past, may now regard as primitive, led to the conviction that the Asiatic and African tribes described above were actually primitive, in the above-mentioned relative sense of the word. Naturally the question concerning the language of these peoples then began to arouse considerable attention, on the part, not only of ethnologists, but also of those interested in philology. The question is of equal importance, to say the least, for the psychologist. For language is bound up with thought. From the phenomena of language, therefore, we may draw inferences concerning the most general characteristics of thought. Such fundamental differences of language as exist, for example, between the Chinese and the Indo-Germanic tongues do not, of course, allow the direct conclusion that there are quantitative differences in mental culture. They do imply, however, that there are divergent directions and forms of thought. In their ceaseless change, the latter react upon language, and this, in turn, again influences mental characteristics. We cannot suppose that, in the period of Old High German, much less in that of the original German, our ancestors employed the same forms of thought with which we of to-day are familiar. To a lesser degree, similar changes have undoubtedly transpired within much shorter spaces of time.
These considerations make the question concerning the language of primitive man of the utmost psychological importance. Linguistic investigations, however, so far as they, in their early attempts, had been able to survey the field, had brought to light a fact which discouraged all efforts to discover an original language. Indeed, it was inevitable that at first glance this discovered fact should have appeared exceedingly strange, particularly when viewed in connection with the life of primitive man. It appeared that, for the most part, the original languages of primitive tribes no longer exist. It is true that in the vocabularies of the Semangs and Senoi of Malacca, of the Veddahs of Ceylon, of the Negritos of the Philippines, and in other vocabularies that have been collected, single words may be found which do not occur in the languages of the neighbouring tribes; and it is noteworthy that the bow and arrow are the objects most frequently designated by such words, a proof of the fact that these are really relatively primitive inventions. On the whole, however, the Veddahs speak the language of the Singhalese and Tamils; the Semangs and Senoi, as well as the Negritos of the Philippines, that of their neighbours, the Malays; similarly, among the African tribes, the Pygmies of Central Africa have apparently appropriated the language of the Monbuttus and other negro races, and the Bushmen that of the Hottentots.