276 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



words that have been handed down to us as roots — has a still 

 more important bearing upon another of Professor Max Miiller's 

 generalizations. From the fact that all his 121 Sanskrit roots 

 are expressive of "general " ideas (by which term he of course 

 includes what I call generic ideas), he concludes that from its 

 very earliest origin speech must have been thus expressive of 

 general ideas ; or, in other words, that human language could 

 not have begun by the naming of particulars : from the first 

 it must have been concerned with the naming of " notions." 

 Now, of course, if any vestige of real evidence could be 

 adduced to show that this " must have been " the case, most 

 of the foregoing chapters of the present work would not have 

 been written. For the whole object of these chapters has 

 been to show, that on psychological grounds it is abundantly 

 intelligible how the conceptual stage of ideation may have 

 been gradually evolved from the receptual — the power of 

 forming general, or truly conceptual ideas, from the power of 

 forming particular and generic ideas. But if it could be 

 shown — or even rendered in any degree presumable — that 

 this distinctly human power of forming truly general ideas 

 arose de novo with the first birth of articulate speech, assuredly 

 my whole analysis would be destroyed : the human mind 

 would be shown to present a quality different in origin — and, 

 therefore, in kind — from all the lower orders of intelligence: the 

 law of continuity would be interrupted at the terminal phase : 

 an impassable gulf would be fixed between the brute and the 

 man. As a matter of fact, however, there is not only no vestige 

 of any such proof or even presumption ; but, as we shall see in 

 our two following chapters, there is uniform and overwhelm- 

 ing proof of precisely the opposite doctrine — proof, indeed, so 

 uniform and overwhelming that it has long' ago induced all 

 other philologists to accept this opposite doctrine as one of 

 the axioms of their science. Leaving, however, this proof to 

 be adduced in its proper place, I have now merely to point 

 out the futility of the evidence on which Professor Max 

 Miiller relies. 



This evidence consists merely in fact that the "121 original 



