258 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



loma-qu = heart or will-of-me, = / wilir But why should 

 " will-of-me " be considered incapable of plainly making 

 known a voluntary assent ? In our English tongue an 

 emphatic assent may be given by an expression appa- 

 rently much less close to the idea of volition. An 

 English youth asking another whether he is willing to 

 take part in some project would be sufficiently assured 

 of the assent of the latter if he replied, " I believe you." 

 We do not doubt that the parts of speech of Euro- 

 pean grammarians are, "as far as external form is 

 concerned," inapplicable to the Polynesian languages. 

 But the fact, however interesting, is not of the slightest 

 importance to our contention. "I will eat the rice," 

 may require to be rendered, " The-eating-of-me-the- 

 rice = My eating will be of the rice." Such expressions 

 are as reasonable and logical as need be. 



Recurring to his opponents' challenge * to " produce 

 the brute which * can furnish the blank form of a judg- 

 ment' — the 'is' in A is B," he observes,! "Now, I 

 cannot, indeed, produce a brute that is able to supply 

 such a form ; but I have done what is very much more 

 to the purpose — I have produced many nations of still 

 existing men, in multitudes that cannot be numbered, 

 who are as incapable as any brute of supplying the 

 blank form that is required. Where is the ' is,' in * Age- 

 of-him Father-of-thee ' = * His-age-thy-father ' = * Thy- 

 father-is-old ' ? Or, in still more primitive stages of 

 human utterance, how shall we extract the blank form 

 of predication from a * sentence-word,' where there is 

 not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence 

 * See "Lessons from Nature," pp. 226, 227. f p. 312. 



