THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY, 357 



assumption, which, whether openly expressed or covertly 

 implied, serves as the basis of the whole superstructure of my 

 opponents' argument. Now, I claim to have shown, by a 

 complete inductive proof, that this assumption is not only 

 unwarrantable in theory, but false in fact. There are names 

 and names. Not every name that is bestowed betokens con- 

 ceptual thought on the part of the namer. Alike from the 

 case of the talking bird, of the young child, and of early man 

 (so far as he has left any traces of his psychology in the 

 structure of language), I have demonstrated that prior to the 

 stage of denomination there are the stages of indication, 

 denotation, and receptual connotation. These are the psycho- 

 logical stepping-stones across that " Rubicon of Mind," which, 

 owing to their neglect, has seemed to be impassable. The 

 Concept (and, a fortiori, the Proposition) is not a structure 

 of ideation which is presented to us without a developmental 

 history. Although it has been uniformly assumed by all my 

 opponents " that the simplest element of thought " can have 

 had no such history, the assumption is, as I have said, 

 directly contradicted by observable fact. Had the case been 

 otherwise — had the concept really been without father and 

 without mother, without beginning of days or end of life — 

 then truly a case might have been shown for regarding it as 

 an Q.\\\A\.ysui generis, destitute of kith or kin among all the 

 other faculties of mind. But, as we have now so fully seen, 

 no such unique exception to the otherwise uniform process of 

 evolution can here be maintained : the phases of development 

 which have gradually led up to conceptual thought admit of 

 being as clearly traced as those which have led to any other 

 product, whether of life or of mind. 



Here, then, I bring to a close this brief and imperfect 

 rendering of the " Witness of Philology." But, brief and 

 imperfect as the rendering is, I am honestly unable to see 

 how it is conceivable that the witness itself could have been 

 more uniform as to its testimony, or more multifarious as to 

 its facts — more consistent, more complete, or more altogether 

 overwhelmingr than we have found it to be. In almost every 



