290 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



manufacure a language suitable for the expression of 

 the ideas, and then mechanically fit the idea to the 

 language: but the brain centers, the idea, and the 

 means of expression are evolved, without our cogni- 

 zance of any orderly succession. This conception is 

 in harmony with the theory of monism in all evolution. 



One of the most interesting and significant phases of 

 evolution is that of language. By a comparison of the 

 early, with the later dictionary, for instance Noah 

 "Webster's with the Century, this fact will be very 

 striking. The larger number of words in the latter, 

 means the great evolution in the last fifty years of the 

 perceptions and conceptions of the users of language. 

 This is especially so in scientific terms. An American 

 Indian, whose conceptions are confined to his physical 

 needs, which are as simple, almost, as those of an ani- 

 mal, will carry on a conversation with another Indian, 

 without the use of an articulate word, by the sign 

 language alone. But he will use no abstractions, or 

 generalizations. His whole vocabulary is confined to 

 the concrete nominals and the simplest verbs. From 

 that language, to that of William James, in his lectures 

 on pragmatism is a wider .stretch, than from the wag- 

 ging of a tail, and the bark of an intelligent dog, to the 

 sign language of the Indian. Such an evolution in 

 language is significant of the mental evolution between 

 the gens of savagery, and the civilization of New 

 England. 



Untrained minds are incapable of understanding 

 the meaning of a profound treatise. Words alone can- 

 not convey the meaning, without the previous work in 

 the intellectual field. A trained mind is therefore in 

 correspondence with a more complex, and subtler en- 

 vironment, one that brings to such a mind a wealth of 



