334 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



So much, then, for the first class of considerations which 

 has been opened up by throwing upon the results of our 

 psychological analysis the independent light of philological 

 research. I will now pass on to a second class, which is even 

 of more importance. 



From the fact that sentence-words played so all-important 

 a part in the origin of speech, and that in order to do so they 

 essentially depended on the co-operation of gestures with 

 which they were accompanied, so that in the resulting 

 "complex of sound and gesture the sound had no meaning 

 apart from the gesture;" from these now well-established facts, 

 we may gain some additional light on a question previously 

 considered — namely, the extent to which primitive words were 

 "abstract" or "concrete," "particular" or "general," and, there- 

 fore, *' receptual " or " conceptual." According to Professor Max 

 Miiller, "the science of language has proved by irrefragable 

 evidence that human thought, in the true sense of that word — 

 that is, human language — did not proceed from the concrete 

 to the abstract, but from the abstract to the concrete. Roots, 

 the elements out of which all language has been constructed, 

 are abstract, never concrete ; and it is by predicating these 

 abstract concepts of this or that, by localizing them here or 

 there, in fact by applying the category of ovqia, or substance, 

 to the roots, that the first foundation of our language and our 

 thought were laid." * 



Here, to begin with, there is an inherent contradiction. 



and those of other philologists on the subject of sentence-words. Partly following 

 Schleicher — who maintains the doctrine still more unequivocally — he regards the 

 word as having been historically prior to the sentence. This, of course, is in con- 

 tradiction to the doctrine of the sentence having been historically prior to the 

 word, which, as we have seen, is the doctrine now held by philologists in general. 

 But, now, what the latter doctrine really amounts to is, that words were sentences 

 before they were names — predicative before they were nominative ; and, as I 

 understand it, Whitney's objection to this doctrine is really raised on grounds of 

 psychology. If so, the above considerations show that he is perfectly right. 

 Intellectually, primitive man was fully capable of acquiring the use of words as 

 names ; and, therefore, psychologically considered, it was only an accident of 

 social environment which prevented him from so doing. 

 ♦ Science of Thought, pp. 432, 433. 



