NATURE OP ROOTS AND WORDS. 527 



surely there is no general resemblance between a pig and a horse ; 

 the name was given, on the contrary, from the particular resem- 

 blance of four-footedness, to which was added the particular difference 

 " man-carrying." I have no access to any Polynesian vocabulary, but 

 I very much doubt whether these savages had a word to indicate the 

 abstract word "quadruped;" and it should be particularly observed 

 that they did not call the horse a man-carrying quadruped, but a "man- 

 carrying pig." The Oxford professor himself* quotes a similar story 

 of the naming of the dog by other savages in the same way from th(^ 

 pig. This, I suppose, he would attribute to a general resemblance ; 

 and he goes on to say : " It would, however, very soon be felt as an 

 inconvenience not to be able to distinguish between a dog and a pig. 

 . . , How could that be effected?" The answer is contained in the 

 instance given above, viz. : that a particular resemblance caused both 

 animals to be at first designated by the same name ; and when it was 

 desired to distinguish them from each other, a particular difference 

 was used to mark the distinction. 



Indeed, all the phenomena of savage languages go to prove the 

 incapacity of the savage to form absti-act ideas. As Professor Sayce 

 well says : t "In fact, the notion is absolutely contradicted by what 

 we observe among modern savages. Here the individual objects have 

 names enough, while general terms are very rare. The Mohicans have 

 words for cutting various objects, but none to signify cutting simply ; 

 and the Society Islanders can talk of a dog's tail, a sheep's tail, or a 

 man's tail, but not of tail itself. * The dialect of the Zulus is rich in 

 nouns denoting difierent objects of the same genus, according to some 

 variety of colour, redundancy or deficiency of members, or some other 

 pecu.liarity,' such as 'red cow,' 'white cow,' 'brown cow.'" 



Again, Professor Max Miiller says : | "All naming is classification, 

 bringing the individual under the general ; and whatever we know, 

 whether empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our 

 general ideas." 



To this I reply that we acquire our general ideas of objects by the 

 cumulative process of making the acquaintance of many different 

 individuals, and of the particular attributes common to all of them. 

 " It is the particular," says Geiger,§ " not the individual, that is the 



• Life of W. Ellis, p. 311. 



t Principles of Comparative Philology, p. 221. 



J Lectures on Science of Language, Second Series, p. 886. 



§ Op. eit.,-p. 107. 



