Brinton, ] 220 [Oct. 5, 
tot’s remark that in Tinné a sound often means both a notion and 
its opposite ; that, for instance, the same word may express good and 
bad, and another both high and low. To use M. Petitot’s own 
words, ‘a certain number of consonants have the power of express- 
ing a given order of ideas or things, and also the contradictory of 
this order.”’? In Tinné, a great many words for opposite ideas are 
the same or nearly the same, derived from the same significant ele- 
ments. Thus, som good, sona bad; tezo, sweet, tezon bitter ; ya 
immense, ya very small; zw/a one time, zn/asin every time; and 
so on. 
This union of opposite significations reappears in the ultimate 
radicals of the Cree language. These, says Mr. Howse,* whose 
Grammar I again quote, express Being in its positive and negative 
modes; ‘* These opposite modes are expressed by modifications of 
the same element, furnishing two classes of terms widely different 
from each other in signification.’’ In Cree the leading substantive 
radical is e/h, which originally meant both Being and Not-Being. 
In the present language e// remains as the current positive, 2¢i as 
the current privative. /¢ means within, w¢ without ; and like par- 
_ allelisms run through many expressions, indicating that numerous 
series of opposite ideas are developments from the same original 
sounds. 
I have found a number of such examples in the Nahuatl of Mex- 
ico, and I am persuaded that they are very usual in American 
tongues. Dr. Carl Abel has pointed out many in the ancient Cop- 
tic, and I doubt not they were characteristic of all. primitive 
speech. 
To explain their presence we must reflect on the nature of the 
human mind, and the ascertained laws of thought. One of these 
fundamental and necessary laws of thought, that usually called the 
second, was expressed by the older logicians in the phrase Omais 
determinatio est negatio, and by their modern followers in the formula, 
‘« 4 is not not-A ;’’ in other words, a quality, an idea, and element 
of knowledge, can rise into cognition only by being limited by that 
which it isnot. That by which it is limited is known in logic as 
its privative. In a work published some years ago I pointed out 
that this privative is not an independent thought, as some have 
maintained, but that the positive and its privative are really two 
* See Howse, Grammar of the Cree Language, pp. 16, 134, 135, 169, ete. 
