HISTOKICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 201 



When, for example, we now use the word (coltdlo), 

 coulter, the instrument indicated by this phonetic sign 

 immediately recurs to the mind and nothing else ; 

 the intelligence would see no impropriety in the use 

 of some other sign if it were generally intelligible. 

 But in the times of primitive speech, the inventors 

 of this rude instrument were conscious of the material 

 image which gave rise to it, and they were likewise 

 conscious of all the cognate images which diverged 

 from the same root, and in this way a brief but vivid 

 drama was presented to the imagination. 



If we examine this word with Pictet and others, 

 we shall find that the name of the plough conies from 

 the Sanscrit krt, knit, kart, to cleave or divide. 

 Hence krntatra, a plough or dividing instrument. 

 The root krt subsequently became kut or kutt, to 

 which we must refer kiita, kiituka, the body of the 

 plough. This root krt, kart, is found in many 

 European languages in the general sense of cutting 

 or breaking, as in the old Slav word kratiti, to cut 

 off. It is also applied to labour and its instruments : 

 kartoti, to plough over again, karta, a line or furrow, 

 and in the Vedic Sanscrit, karta, a ditch or hole. 

 Hence the Latin culter, a saw, cultellus, a coulter, 

 and the Sanscrit kartari, a coulter. The Slav 

 words for the mole which burrows in the earth are 

 connected with the root krt, or the Slav krat. In 

 very remote times, men not only understood the 

 object indicated in the word for a coulter, but they 



