l82 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



and flashing lights, swinging and sounding bodies seem most suita- 

 ble for arousing attention ; by reason, since philosophy teaches us 

 that every affective state is but the result of impressions on the 

 senses from some moving body. We may thus suppose that in 

 primitive man the more marked forms of motion would be neces- 

 sary to impress the unplastic mind of such a state. 



SYMBOLS OF KNOWLEDGE. 



We saw in our consideration of the sufficient means of repre- 

 sentation, that the emotions are accompanied with ' waves of excite- 

 ment,' which spread over the organism, resulting, on the one hand 

 in certain impulsive gestures, and on the other in the utterance of 

 certain sounds. One or both of these would likely be employed. 

 But the first being so much less subject to conscious control, while 

 supplying a suitable symbol for the internal state, would naturally 

 give way to the second for purposes of arbitrary association. 



But it is evident that that these primitive sounds would be to 

 a high degree impulsive, and for that reason, and further because in 

 them the ' thought ' element would be as yet but faintly apprehended, 

 we may suppose that at this stage there would be an excess of the 

 'sound ' element. Again, because they were long and for the most 

 part imitative, they would possess the musical element as seen at 

 the close of such sounds. Summing up, we may affirm of our first 

 words : (i) They were impulsive and imitative. (2) They were 

 long or polysyllabic. (3) Equivalent to whole sentences. 



We now see that our first perceptions give but vague ideas of 

 objects possessing emotional interest, consisting of acting things ; 

 and that to denote these we would make use of certain long sounds 

 as symbols of both the object and its interest. These would con- 

 sequently form one primary class. Such a perception however 

 contains two elements, object and interest, and attention being 

 aroused would lead to their division in the mind. Thus our 

 primary class will give rise to two, viz : object class and interest 

 class. The attention, now passing from the object to its interest, or 

 activity, would lead to a further division of these activities into, 

 accidental or molar activity on the one hand, giving rise to the verb ; 

 and -essential or qualitative activity on the other, giving rise to the 

 adjective. The whip would equal the striking thing ; the sugar the 

 sweetening thing. This would have given rise to our three principal 



