308 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



later origin than many verbs, and vice versd ; but this does 

 not show which of these two parts of speech preceded the 

 other as a whole. Nor does it appear that we are likely to 

 obtain any definite evidence upon the point. On psycho- 

 logical grounds, and from the analogy furnished by children, 

 we might be prepared to think it most probable that sub- 

 stantives preceded verbs ; and this view is no doubt corrobo- 

 rated by the remarkable paucity of verbs in certain savage 

 languages of low development. But as a matter of pure 

 philology " we cannot derive either the verb from the noun, or 

 the noun from the verb." * This writer goes on to say, " they 

 are co-existent creations, belonging to the same epoch and 

 impulse of speech." But whether or not this inference repre- 

 sents the truth is a matter of no importance for us. With or 

 without verbs, primitive man would have been able to pre- 

 dicate — in the one case after the manner of children who 

 have just begun to learn the use of them, and in the other 

 case after the manner of those savages recently mentioned, who 

 throw upon their nouns, in conjunction with pronouns, the 

 office of verbs. 



Seeing that my psychological opponents have laid so 

 much stress upon the substantive verb as this is used by the 

 Romance languages in formal predication, I will here devote 

 a paragraph to its special consideration from a philological 

 point of view. It will be remembered that I have already 

 pointed out the fallacy which these opponents have followed 

 in confounding the substantive verb, as thus used, with the 

 copula — it being a mere accident of the Romance languages 

 that the two are phonetically identified. Nevertheless, even 

 after this fallacy has been pointed out to them, my opponents 

 may seek to take refuge in the substantive verb itself: forced 

 to acknowledge that it has nothing especially to do with 

 predication, they may still endeavour to represent that 

 elsewhere, or in itself, it represents a high order of conceptual 

 thought. This, of course, I allow ; and if, as my opponents 

 assume, the substantive verb belonged to early, not to say 



* Sayce, Introduction^ <Sr»r. 



