332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to form these general concepts ; it is impossible to think of tliem 

 in tlieir proper relations to one another, and thus there is at once 

 imperfect knowledge of the external world on the one hand, and 

 on the other, through lack of the bond of likenesses between 

 classes, that comparative slowness of mental processes which must 

 have been a character of all early thought. The more imperfect, 

 in fact, are the links of likeness which binds concepts together, the 

 more the mind tends to resemble the confusion of an unclassified 

 library, where the needed volume can be obtained only by great 

 expenditure of time and effort ; the more complete is mental seg- 

 regation, the more the mind may be said to resemble the same 

 library properly classified. Ascent, therefore, from the knowing 

 of things by their superficial characters to knowledge of them 

 also in their fundamental characters .enormously increases, not 

 only the ends reached by thought, but also the ease and rapidity 

 of mental operations. 



There is another economy to be noted in mental operations 

 the economy wrought by the increasing content and the growing 

 symbolism of the concept. The name first given to any object 

 simply expresses the most prominent out of a very small number 

 of qualities by which we know that object. In onomatopoetic 

 words, for example, the quality perceived and named is one of 

 sound, and the process gives rise to such terms as Jcolokol, the 

 Russian word for " bell " ; gunguma, the Gallas name for " drum " ; 

 hwdlalkwdlal, used for " bell " by the natives of Yakama (North 

 America) ; tumtum, also a Gallas word, meaning " workman," or, 

 more literally, " hammerer " ; krahra, the name of a Dahoman 

 watchman's rattle ; cJiaclia, the Aino word for " to saw " ; the 

 Peruvian ccaccaccahay , signifying " thunderstorm " ; the Austra- 

 lian hunghungween, used for "thunder"; liou-liou-liou-gitclia, the 

 Botocudo word for " to suck " ; kakakhaka, which in Dyak means 

 "to go on laughing loudly"; sliiriushiriukanni, used by the 

 Ainos in the sense of "a rasp" ; and the Quichua chiuiuiuiniclii, 

 indicating the noise made by the wind among trees. At first, 

 that is to say, the name means no more than the most prominent 

 character, and perhaps the only known character, of the object to 

 which it is applied, whether that character be one of sound, of 

 acting, or of appearance ; but, as men come to learn more of the 

 qualities and relations of such object, the name gradually loses its 

 descriptive value, and becomes a mere symbol or word counter 

 for the total content of the concept. Thus, " the Russian called 

 the duck utka because he saw it plunge its beak into the water ; 

 the Pole called it kaczka, because he noticed that it waddled in 

 walking ; the Bosnian gave it the name of plovka, because he saw 

 it swimming " ; yet in their survival none of these terms for the 

 duck retain or even suggest the character which originally gave 



