GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY 



vagueness and lack of speciality, both in his 

 knowledge and in the actions which are guided 

 by it, the primeval man appears to stand nearer 

 to the highest brutes than to the civilized mod- 

 erns. 



Along with this increase in specialization, 

 entailing a greater definiteness of adjustment, 

 there goes on an increase in generalization, in- 

 volving an increased power of abstraction, of 

 which barely the germs are to be found either 

 in the lowest men or in other highly organized 

 mammals. The inability of savage races to 

 make generalizations involving any abstraction 

 is sufficiently proved by the absence or extreme 

 paucity of abstract expressions in their languages. 

 As Mr. Farrar observes, " The Society Island- 

 ers have words for dog's tail, bird's tail, and 

 sheep's tail, yet no word for tail ; the Mohicans 

 have verbs for every kind of cutting, and yet 

 no verb ' to cut.' The Australians have no 

 generic term for fish, bird, or tree. The Malays 

 have no term for tree or herb, yet they have 

 words for fibre, root, tree-crown, stalk, stock, 

 trunk, twig, and shoot. Some American tongues 

 have separate verbs for ' I wish to eat meat,* 

 and * I wish to eat soup,' but no verb for ' I 

 wish ; ' and separate words for a blow with a 

 sharp and a blow with a blunt instrument, but 

 no abstract word for blow." ^ Between the stage 

 * Chapters on Language y p. 199. 



VOL. IV O I 



