344 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



own day, Is full of examples of the reduction of physical 

 terms and phrases to the expression of non-physical con- 

 ceptions and relations ; we can hardly write a line without 

 giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth. So 

 pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read 

 the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have 

 traced it back to its physical origin." * 



Now, I hold that this receptual nucleus of all our con- 

 ceptual terms furnishes the strongest possible evidence, not 

 only of the historical priority of the former, but also of what 

 Professor Max Miillcr calls their "dire necessity" to the growth 

 of the latter.f In other words, the facts appear conclusively to 

 show that conceptual connotation (denomination) has always 

 had — and can only have had — a receptual core (denotation) 

 around which to develop. Psychological analysis has already 

 shown us the psychological priority of the recept ; and 

 now philological research most strikingly corroborates this 

 analysis by actually finding the recept in the body of every 

 concept. 



How this large and general fact is to be met by my 

 antagonists I know not. It certainly does not satisfy the case 

 to say, with Professor Max Miiller, | Noire, § and those who 



• Whitney, Encyclo. Brit.,'p.'j'jo. Set a\sol>i oditr, A^otiotts de Linguistiqiie, p. 39; 

 Gamett, Essays, p. 89 ; Grimm, Gesch. d. d. Sprcuhe, s. 56 et seq. ; Pott, Metaphern 

 vom Lebcn, ^c, Zeitschr. fur Vergl. Sprachf. Jahrg., ii., heft 2 ; Heyse, System, 

 d^'CfS. 97 ; and Farrar, Origin of Language, 130; Chapters on Language, pp. 67, 

 133, 204-246. He refers to the above, and quotes the following passages from 

 Emerson and Carlyle : — " As the limestone of the Continent consists of infinite 

 masses of shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images and tropes, which 

 now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin " 

 (Essays on ike Poets). " Language is the flesh-garment of Thought. I said that 

 Imagination wore this flesh-garment ; and does she not ? Metaphors are her stuff. 

 Examine Language. What, if you except a few primitive elements of natural 

 sound, what is it all but metaphors recognized as such, or no longer recognized ; 

 still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless ? If those same primitive 

 elements are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment of Language— then are 

 metaphors its muscles, its tissues, and living integuments. An unmetaphorical 

 style you shall in vain seek for : is not your very attention a stretching-to ? " {Sarior 

 Resartus, ch. x.). 



t Science of Thought, p. 329. 



% Science of Language, p. 123. 



§ Logos, p. 258, et seq. 



