276 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



further questions about savages, we are content to refer 

 our readers to what we have elsewhere * written on the 

 subject. 



Mr. Romanes seems to imagine f that a Tasmanian, 

 having had no word for " tree," could only have been 

 surprised at seeing a tree " standing inverted with 

 its roots in the air and its branches in the ground, 

 in just the same way a dog is surprised when it first 

 sees a man walking on his hands : the dog," he tells 

 us, "will bark at such an object because it conflicts 

 with the generic image which has been automatically 

 formed by numberless perceptions of individual men 

 walking on their feet But, in the absence of any 

 name for trees in general, there is nothing to show 

 that the savage has a concept answering to ' tree,' 

 any more than that the dog has a concept answering 

 to * man.' " This is, indeed, a surprising assertion, since 

 Mr. Romanes allows that even the Tasmanians must 

 have had many concepts since they had true language ; 

 but to no dog would he concede the possession of any 

 concept at all. Surely, then, a being whose mind was 

 stored with many concepts, must be allowed to have 

 been affected by a sight of an inverted tree,, in a very 

 different way from that in which a dog is affected by 

 the sight of an inverted man ! 



One of the most wonderful sentences in Mr. 

 Romanes's book, however, is that which comes next. 

 He says, % " Indeed, unless my opponents vacate the 

 basis of Nominalism [!] on which their opposition is 

 founded, they must acknowledge that in the absence of 



* See " On Truth," chap. xix. f P- 353- X Ibid, 



