THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 129 



— we find them abundant in both tongues. Each language, in fact, 

 has, like each Aryan tongue, a special termination to express these 

 abstractions. In the Iroquois this termination is sera or tsera ; in 

 the Ojibway branch of the Algonkin, it is win. Thus, from the Iro- 

 quois katehens, to be ashamed, (root, ateh) we have atehensera, shame- 

 fulness, ignominy ; from kennontonnions, to meditate, (root, ennonte) 

 we have ennontonniontsera, meditation ; from katerios, to fight, (root 

 erio), ateriosera, strife ; from kkwenies, to be able, ^root, kweni) 

 kakweniatsera, ability. The Ojibway himadis, to live, yields bima- 

 disiiuin, life ; sagia, to love, sagiiwevjin, afliection ; jigci, widow, jiga- 

 iviivin, widowhood, bekadis, mild, bekadisiivin, mildness ; binis, clear, 

 pure, binisiwm, clearness, purity. Bisan, quiet, yields two verbal 

 forms, bisanab, to be still, and bisanis, to be peaceful, and two abstract 

 nouns, bisanabhvin, stillness, silence, and bisanisivnn, peacefulness — 

 and so on, interminably, thi'ough the dictionary. 



But it is, perhaps, in the abstract terms of the first degree, the most 

 primitive and in a certain sense the profoundest of all, that thLs 

 original mental capacity is most strikingly shown. Professor Max 

 Miiller, in his '• Science of Thought," well observes that, when certain 

 ethnologists " tell us that there are savages who have not a single 

 abstract term in their language, they ought first of all to give us 

 the names of the savages to whose language they refer, and, 

 secondly, they ought to explain how these savages could possibly have 

 formed the simplest names, such as father, mother, brother, sister, 

 hand and foot, etc., without previously possessing abstract concepts 

 from which such names could be derived." To illustrate this pregnant 

 suggestion, let us take some instances drawn from the Indian Ian. 

 guages by writers of the best authority. The first word in Professor 

 Max Miiller's list is " father." The Hon.' J. H. Trumbull, than whom 

 no higliei' authority on the Algonkin tongues can be adduced, derives 

 this word, noosh, in the Massachusetts dialect, from the root ooch, 

 which means " from," " out of." " Noosh," he observes, " expresses, 

 primarily, not paternal but filial relation — ' I come from him ; ' 

 ooshoh (his father) ' he comes from him,' or with transposition of 

 subject and object, ' he froms him.' " In the Iroquois, according to 

 the distinguished Canadian philologist, the Rev. J. A. Cuoq, the 

 word has its origin in a conception perhaps even more subtle. 

 9 



