29 
In these examples, which might be greatly multiplied, we get 
actual confirmation by the philologist of the postulate of the logician, 
inasmuch as the facts Dr, Abel records as occurring in various 
languages, Professor Bain in his “ Logic” .demonstrated ought to take 
place in the following quotation which elucidates this point. “The 
essential relativity of all knowledge, thought, or consciousness, cannot 
but show itself in language. If everything that we can know is viewed 
as atransition from something else, every experience must have two 
sides; and either every name must have a double meaning, or else for 
every meaning there must be two names. We cannot have the con- 
ception ‘light’ except as passing out of the dark. We are made 
conscious in a particular way by passing from light to dark and from 
dark to light. The name light has no meaning without what is 
implied in the name dark. We distinguish the two opposite transitions 
light to dark and dark to light, and this distinction is the only 
difference of meaning in the two terms ‘light is emergence from 
dark ;. dark is emergence from light.’ Now the doubleness of 
transition is likely to occasion double names being given all 
through the universe of things; languages should be made up not 
of individual names but of couples of names.” Such names are 
“heat, cold ;” “up, down ;” “motion, rest ;” “good, evil;” “sweet, 
bitter ;” “rising, falling ;” “something, nothing;” “full, empty ;” 
“strong, weak” (Bain’s logic, vol. i, p.54). This is a very happy 
instance of the co-operation of the sciences. Moreover, there comes 
such strong confirmation from the New World of this identical phase of 
defining notions by contrasts with their opposites as to suggest that it 
was universally characteristic of the earlier stages of the development 
of language. In a paper entitled “ The language of Paleolithic Man” 
recently delivered before the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, 
Dr. D. G. Brinton notes the occurrence of similar instances from the 
Nahuatl of Central Mexico, the Cree and the Tinné of North West 
America. From the Tinné, a member of the great Athapastan 
linguistic stock, he cites :—7Z'ezo sweet ; tezon bitter; ya immense ; 
ya very small. We can easily supply the grimace and gesture 
which differentiated these meanings. Sor meant good and sona 
bad. From both Cree and Tinné Dr. Brinton adduces proofs opposed 
to Max Miiller’s views that the vowels, “a., E, 1, 0, and v., and 
consonants like s and x standing alone are without significance.” 
Various philologists have noted the fact that in many tongues widely 
separated, both in structure and distribution, the sound “m” conveys 
the subjective relation, and N and kK were primitive demonstratives, 
In Tinné the significant radicals are the five primitive vowel sounds, 
The 63 consonants also have a material meaning, and are divided into 
nine classes, Each class conveys a series of related or associated ideas 
in the native mind. A similar division of ideas and objects into 
classes Bleek has demonstrated exists among the Swahli tribes of East 
Africa, Some anthropologists believe that the persistent efforts of the 
ancestral “ gesticulating ape,” or “grunting ejaculating man,” to attain 
the erect posture and walk uprightly nearly proved fatal to the race, 
The picture painted by the philogist of the modern savage struggling 
for existence, to arrange, define, and express his ideas, merits our 
