2i8 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



a mystery. With some the original sound-associa- 

 tion has probably been lost ; in the case of others, 

 the association may have been so indirect as to be 

 now untraceable. The sounds available in savage 

 life for word-making could never have been so 

 numerous as the things requiring names, and as 

 civilization advanced the old words would be used 

 in new connections, while wholly new terms must 

 have been coined from time to time. Both these 

 methods — the habit of generalizing unconsciously 

 from single terms, and the trick of coining new 

 words in a wholly conventional way — are still con- 

 tinually employed by savages as well as by children. 

 Thus, to take an example of the first, Mr. John 

 Moir, one of the earliest white men to settle in 

 East Central Africa, was at once named by the 

 natives Mandala^ which means " a reflection in still 

 water," because he wore on his eyes what looked 

 to them a still water (spectacles). Afterwards they 

 came to call not only Mr. Moir by that name, 

 but spectacles, and finally — when it entered the 

 country — glass itself Examples of generalization 

 among children abound in every nursery. A child 

 is taken to the window by his nurse to see the 

 moon. The easy monosyllable is caught up at once, 

 and for some time the child applies it indiscrimin- 

 ately to anything bright or shining — the gas, the 



