Language. 915 



upon by the environment. The social life of the Hawaians rendered 

 the distinction between love and friendship unnecessary, while the dif- 

 ference between a breeze and a wind, as navigators they could not ig- 

 nore. As rapidly, therefore, as the environment creates ideas in the 

 brain, will new words be coined, or old ones be newly adapted or trans- 

 ferred from another language. But since ideas are at first of objects 

 audible, visible or tangible, we may be sure that the first words were 

 nouns. There are many obvious qualities, relationships and actions of 

 things which appear to us simultaneously with the things themselves. 

 Thus, when a savage sees a wild horse he cannot help seeing that he 

 runs, and in seeing the moon he will also see that it is round and that 

 it is bright. If he undertakes the domestication of the horse, he will 

 need and soon invent a name for him, and that name will be, or soon 

 become, the name not only of the animal but his action, too. But he 

 will probably get along for some time without any name for the moon, 

 and still longer without a name for the abstract qualities of roundness 

 and brightness. Suppose * kar, or har, to be the word adopted by our sav- 

 age for the name of his horse. As running is the most characteristic 

 thing about a horse, as soon as attention is directed to similar action in 

 other objects, the same name will be applied to it. Of any animal that 

 runs, it will be said it does like the kar, it kars. In Latin this is cur 

 ( ciirro ). The word will thus be extended to apply where movement 

 renders it appropriate. A body of water in motion is now called a cur- 

 rent, and a wind is a current of air. After awhile money passing from 

 hand to hand is currency, or current money, and we finally rise to such 

 expressions as current opinions, current topics, the current of time, cur- 

 rent events. In the meantime a wheeled vehicle is invented, and as it 

 is intended to go like a horse, it is called currus, from which we get cur- 

 ricle and car, also curriculum, a race course, and later a course of study 

 in college. The word course itself is from the same root, and means 

 to run, to pursue ; and as a noun it has been applied to a great number 

 of things as a track or path ; the movement of anything, as a ship, 

 an animal, and the earth in its orbit. We say course of conduct, course 

 of descent, of an argument, of duty, of law, of medicine. We say 

 course of stone, course of brick, the courses of a dinner. Of anvthing 

 which should run after another, we say it will follow of course. From 

 the same root we get courier, one who runs to carry the news, &c. 

 Next, as men's ideas increased, they were expressed by new applications 

 of such words as they possessed as long as that process would answer. 

 Thus, we get concourse, a running together, hence a meeting, a crowd ; 

 discourse, a running about ( in speech ) ; discoursive, applied to reason- 

 ing ; and discursive, moving about. Then we have ex-current, excur- 

 1 This is an Aryan root, meaning to run. 



