l50 THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE. 



Bource of new words — is a suggesting of ideas that are liJce 

 the ideas to be conveyed in some respect or other ; and 

 how, in the copious use of simile, fable, and allegory among 

 uncivilized races, we see that complex conceptions, which 

 there is yet no direct language for, are rendered, by pre- 

 senting known conceptions more or less like them. 



This view is further confirmed, and the predominance 

 of this notion of likeness in primitive times further illus- 

 trated, by the fact that our system of presenting ideas to 

 the eye originated after the same fashion. Writing and 

 printing have descended from picture-language. The ear- 

 nest mode of permanently registering a fact was by depict- 

 ing it on a wall ; that is — by exhibiting something as like to 

 the thing to be remembered as it could be made. Grad- 

 ually as the practice grew habitual and extensive, the most 

 frequently repeated forms became fixed, and presently ab- 

 breviated ; and, passing through the hieroglyphic and ideo- 

 graphic phases, the symbols lost all apparent relations to 

 the things signified : just as the majority of our spoken 

 words have done. 



Observe again, that the same thing is true respecting 

 the genesis of reasoning. The likeness that is perceived to 

 exist between cases, is the essence of all early reasoning 

 and of much of our present reasoning. The savage, hav- 

 ing by experience discovered a relation between a certain 

 object and a certain act, infers that the like relation will be 

 found in future cases. And the expressions we constantly 

 use in our arguments — " analogy implies," " the cases are 

 not parallel^'' " by parity of reasoning," " there is no simi- 

 larity^'^ — show how constantly the idea of likeness under- 

 Hes our ratiocinative processes. 



Still more clearly will this be seen on recognising the 

 fact that there is a certain parallelism between reasoning 

 and classification ; that the two have a common root ; and 

 that neither can go on without the other. For on the one 



