54 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



gence must have recognized, and many of which must 

 also be vaguely comprehended by animals. They 

 consist of such words as eating, singing, hiding, 

 stealing, and the like. These are ideas which, when 

 named as man names them, become concepts, but 

 some of which are certainly vaguely comprehended 

 by the more intelligent animals. An animal that 

 examines an object, and, after giving one smell, 

 decides that it is good to eat, or not good to eat, has 

 certainly a notion of the process of eating, ready 

 for a name if it had the power to give it a name. In 

 other words, many of the fundamental roots of the 

 oldest Sanskrit language are expressive of just such 

 ideas as are vaguely developed in the minds of 

 animals. They are names for exactly those ideas 

 which we should suppose man would first acquire, 

 upon the supposition that his mental powers, with his 

 language, were developed from the lower condition 

 represented among animals. Animals, of course, 

 never name these ideas, and at this point of naming 

 we come to the break between man and the lower 

 animals. As soon as man succeeded in naming these 

 crude ideas they became concepts, and thus became 

 instruments for communication of ideas from person 

 to person. While no animal but man has had the 

 power to give names, it is certainly suggestive to find 

 that the primitive words of the oldest language con- 

 tained most prominently words for just the simple 

 general ideas that animals seem to possess as well as 

 man, and which must have been the first thoughts to 

 crystallize into clear ideas in a being who was begin- 

 ning to rise into a plane of thinking. Of the higher 

 conceptional notions which mankind later possessed, 

 such as truth, beauty, sublimity, etc., there is abso- 



