A Limit to Evolution 307 



is that emotional language whicli has been already adverted 

 to as being possessed by us men as one of our lower and 

 unintellectual powers ; and this power is fully possessed by 

 animals also. The man, however, may do what the brute 

 cannot do. He may emit the vocal sounds : ' That oak is 

 faUing.' 



What is the nature of these sounds ? The words are the 

 embodiment and expression, not of feelings of any kind, but 

 of three universal abstract ideas : — 



(1) The word oah is, of course, a conventional sign for the 

 idea ' oak,' and is a universal abstract term applicable, over 

 and above the particular oak which is falling, to every other 

 actual or possible oak. It denotes no single subsisting thing, 

 but a Idnd or Avhole class of things. 



(2) The word is denotes the most wonderful and impor- 

 tant of all abstract ideas — the idea of ' existence ' or ' being.' 

 It is an idea which we must have in order to perform any 

 intellectual act. It is an idea which, though not itself at 

 first adverted to, makes all other ideas intelligible to us, 

 as light, though itself unseen, renders everything else visible 

 to us. 



(3) The word falling is a term denoting another abstrac- 

 tion — an abstract 'quality' or 'state.' This idea is evidently 

 of very wide application — namely to everything, whatever it 

 may be, which may fall. Yet the idea itself is one single 

 idea. 



Thus aU human language (apart from mere emotional 

 manifestations) necessarily implies, and gives expression to, a 

 number of abstract ideas. It is impossible for any savage to 

 speak the simplest sentence without having first formed for 

 himself abstract ideas. Abstraction, then, is as universal as 

 language. AU our words, except proper nouns, pronouns, 

 and certain determinating adjectives and participles, express 

 abstract ideas. Universal abstract terms are made use of 



