424 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



as I may say, upon the meaning or substance of a judgment, 

 as distinguished from its grammar or accidents. 



In other words, it may possibly still be argued that, 

 although the issue is now thrown back from the ** blank 

 form " of predication on which my opponents have hitherto 

 relied, to the hard fact of predication itself, this hard fact still 

 remains. Even though I have shown that in the absence of 

 any parts of speech predication requires to be conducted in a 

 most inefficient manner ; still, it may be said, predication is 

 conducted, and must be conducted — for assuredly it is only in 

 order to conduct it that speech can ever have existed at all. 



Now, I showed that if my opponents do not adopt this 

 change of position, their argument is at an end. For I proved 

 that, after all the foregoing evidence, there is no longer any 

 possibility of question touching the continuity of growth 

 between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the 

 fully evolved structure of a formal proposition. But, on the 

 other hand, I next showed that this change of position, even 

 if it were made, could be of no avail. For, if the term 

 "predication" be thus extended to a "sentence- word," it 

 thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon 

 which alone the whole argument of my adversaries is reared : 

 it is conceded that no distinction obtains between speaking 

 and pointing: the predicative phase of language has been 

 identified with the indicative : man and brute are acknow- 

 ledged to be " brothers." That is to say, if it be maintained 

 that the indicative signs of the infant child or the primitive 

 man are predicative, no shadow of a reason can be assigned 

 for withholding this designation from the indicative signs of 

 the lower animals. On the other hand, if this term be denied 

 to both, its application to the case of spoken language in its 

 fully evolved form must be understood to signify but a 

 difference of phase or degree, seeing that the one order of 

 sign-making has been now so completely proved to be but 

 the genetic and improved descendant of the other. In short, 

 the truth obviously is that we have a proved continuity of 

 development between all stages of tlie sign-7naking faculty ; and, 



