306 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined 

 machinery of suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like." * 



For the sake of putting this point beyond the reach of 

 question, I will quote another and independent authority to 

 the same general effect. 



" It is a curious fact hitherto overlooked by grammarians 

 and logicians, that the definition of a noun applies strictly 

 only to the nominative case. The oblique cases are really 

 attribute-words, and the inflection is practically nothing but a 

 device for turning a noun into an adjective or adverb. This 

 is perfectly clear as regards the genitive, and, indeed there 

 is historical evidence to show that the genitive in Ar>'an 

 languages was originally identical with an adjective ending ; 

 'man's life 'and 'human life' being expressed in the same 

 way. It is also clear that ' noctem ' in ' flet noctem ' is a pure 

 adverb of time. It is not so easy to see that the accusative 

 in such sentences as ' He beats the boy ' is also a sort of 

 adverb, because the connection between verb and object is so 

 intimate as almost to form one simple idea, as in the case 

 . of noun-composition. But it is clear that if ' boy ' in the 

 compound ' boy-beating ' is an attribute-word, it can very well 

 be so also when ' beating ' is thrown into the verbal form 

 without any change of meaning." t 



Lastly, upon this point Professor Max Muller says, while 

 speaking of Aryan adjectives : — " These were not used for the 

 first time when people said ' The sun is bright,' but when they 

 predicated the quality of brightness, or the act of shooting out 

 light, and said, as it were, ' Brightness-here.' Adjectives, in 

 fact, were formed, at first, exactly like substantives, and 

 many of them could be used in both characters. There are 

 languages in which adjectives are not distinguished from 

 substantives. But though outwardly alike, they are conceived 

 as different from substantives the moment they are used in a 

 sentence for the purpose of predicating or of qualifying a 

 substantive." % 



* Sayce, Introduction, &=€., i. 416. 



t Sweet, Words, Logic, and Grammar, in Trans. Philo. Soc, 1S67, p. 493. 



:J: Science 0/ Thought, p. 442. 



