274 ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE 



the reader is, of course, well aware, called a " verb," as, 

 the parrot screams, or, he shot the parrot. Of course 

 nothing can act or be acted on, unless it exists, but there 

 is a special verb, called the substantive verb, which 

 expresses existence. It is the verb to be, and, in its 

 form " is," it asserts what has above been pointed out. 

 When it asserts a relation between one thing and another, 

 it is spoken of as the copula. Thus in the sentences, 

 " That man is a father," " The sky is blue," and " That 

 oak is falling," the term " is " merits that appellation. 



Terms which denote qualities or states of objects are 

 " adjectives," or verbs in that form which is called a 

 " participle " as in the last two sentences given as 

 examples, namely, " The sky is blue" and " That oak is 

 falling: 3 



Elementary as this work is intended to be, it is not 

 our object to teach in it such things as orthography or 

 grammar, we will therefore pass on to further point out 

 wherein the essentials of human language consist. 



The faculty of abstraction must, as before said, be 

 possessed by every one who speaks. But that faculty is 

 also possessed by men who do not speak. Various 

 kinds and degrees of dumbness may arise from different 

 forms of defective memory as to words, due to different 

 physical defects of brain- structure, such defects im- 

 pairing those powers of feeling and imagination, on the 

 integrity of which the exercise of our intellectual 

 faculties depends. The absence of words does not 

 necessarily imply the absence of ideas. Very wonderful 

 are the gestures of deaf-mutes* which make it un- 

 questionable that human beings may possess distinct 

 intellectual conceptions in the entire absence of spoken 



* See "The Origin of Human Reason," pp. 138-171. 



