THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY, 345 



think with them, that in no other way could the growth of 

 conceptual thought have been possible ; for this is merely to 

 reiterate on a priori grounds the conclusion which I have 

 reached a posteriori. And the more that this historical 

 priority of denotation can thus be shown an a priori necessity 

 to the subsequent genesis of denomination, the greater 

 becomes the cogency of our evidence a posteriori that, as 

 a matter of fact, such has been invariably the order of 

 historical succession. For, if conceptual ideation differs from 

 receptual in kind, why this necessity for the historical priority 

 of the latter? Why should denotation thus always require 

 to precede denomination — or receptual connotation thus 

 always require to precede conceptual predication — unless it 

 be that the one is a further and a continuous development of 

 the other ? Surely as well might the botanist institute a 

 specific distinction between the root and the flower of the 

 self-same plant, as the psychologist, with these results of 

 philological research before him, still persist in drawing a 

 distinction of kind between the receptual denotation of " radi- 

 cal elements," and the full efflorescence of conceptual thought. 



A single illustration may serve to convey the force of 

 this argument more fully than any abstract discussion of it. 

 But I will introduce the illustration with an analogous case. 

 The following well-established fact I quote from Geiger : — 



" Man had language before he had tools. ... On con- 

 sidering a word denoting an activity carried on with a tool, 

 we shall invariably find that this was not its original 

 meaning, but that it previously implied a similar activity 

 requiring only the natural organs. . . . This fact of the 

 activity with implements deriving its name from one more 

 simple, ancient, and brute-like, is quite universal, and I do 

 not know how otherwise to account for it but that the name 

 is older than the activity with tools which it denotes at the 

 present time — that, in fact, the word was already extant 

 before men used any other organs but the native and natural 



ones The vestiges of his earliest conceptions still 



preser\'cd in language proclaim it loudly and distinctly that 



