332 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



as we have also seen, he only could do by such associations 

 of sounds and gestures as in the first instance must have 

 conveyed meanings of a pre-conceptually predicative kind. 

 In the absence of any sounds already given — and therefore 

 already agreed upon — as denotative names, there could be no 

 possibility of primitive man arbitrarily assigning such names ; 

 and thus there could have been no parallel to a young 

 child who receptually acquires them. In order that he 

 should assign names, primitive man must first have had 

 occasion to make his pre-conceptual statements about the 

 objects, qualities, &c., the names of which afterwards grew 

 out of these statements, or sentence-words. Adam, indeed, 

 gave names to animals ; but Adam was already in possession 

 of conceptual thought, and therefore in a psychological 

 position to appreciate the importance of what he was about. 

 But the " pre- Adamite man " who is now before us could 

 not possibly have invented names for their own sakes, 

 unless he were already capable of thinking about names 

 as names, and, therefore, already in possession of that very 

 conceptual thought which, as we have now so often seen, 

 depends upon names for its origin. Even with all our 

 own fully developed powers of conceptual thought, we 

 cannot name an object when in the society of men with 

 whose language we are totally unacquainted, without predi- 

 cating something about that object by means of gestures or 

 other signs. Therefore, without further discussion, it must 

 be obvious — not only, as already shown, that there is here 

 no exact parallel between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, 

 and that we have thus a full explanation why sentence- 

 words were of so much more importance to the infant 

 man than they are to the infant child, but further and 

 consequently — that the question whether sentence-words are 

 more primitive than denotative words is not a question 

 that is properly stated, unless it be also stated whether 

 the question applies to the individual or to the race. As 

 regards the individual of to-day, it cannot be said that 

 there is any priority, historical or psychological, of sentence- 



