3l8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



"He-with-white with-jacket," or, as we might perhaps more 

 tersely translate it, " He jackety whitey." * 



Again, in Feejee language the functions of a verb may 

 be discharged by a noun in construction with an oblique pro- 

 nominal suffix, e.g., /oma-gu = hea.vt or will-of-me, = I will.f 



So likewise, "almost all philologists who have paid 

 attention to the Polynesian languages, concur in observing 

 that the divisions of parts of speech received by European 

 grammarians are, as far as external form is concerned, 

 inapplicable, or nearly so, to this particular class. The same 

 element is admitted to be indifferently substantive, adjective, 

 verb, or particle." J "I will eat the rice," would require to be 

 rendered, " The-eating-of-me-the-rice= M)'' eating will be of 

 the rice." " The supposed verb is, in fact, an abstract noun, 

 including in it the notion of futurity of time in construction 

 with an oblique pronominal suffix ; and the ostensible object 

 of the action is not a regimen in the accusative case, but an 

 apposition. It is scarcely necessary to say how irreconcilable 

 this is with the ordinary grammatical definition of a transitive 

 verb ; and that, too, in a construction where we should expect 

 that true verbs would be infallibly employed, if any existed 

 in the language." § And, not to overburden the argument 

 with illustrations, it will be enough to add with this writer, 

 " there can be no question that nouns in conjunction with 

 oblique cases of pronouns may be, and, in fact, are employed 

 as verbs. Some of the constructions above specified admit 

 of no other analysis ; and they are no accidental partial 

 phenomena, but capable of being produced by thousands." || 



It would be easy to multiply quotations from other 

 authorities to the same effect ; but these, I think, are enough 

 to show how completely the philology of predication destroys 

 the philosophy of predication, as this has been presented by 



* Steinthal, Charakteristik, dr'c., 165, 173. 

 t Gamett, Philological Essays, p. 310. 

 X Ibid., p. 311. 

 § Ibid., p. 312. 

 II Ibid., p 314. 



