OF LANGUAGES. 



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languages, one most peculiar feature will immediately become 

 apparent. The manner of naming is twofold. The one 

 shows a tendency to observe a certain most prominent quality 

 in a person or in an object, and to name its possessor 

 accordingly ; the other deals with the individual specimen 

 as a concrete body, distinguishable from a similar one by a 

 constitutional difference, such as sex, &c, which discrimi- 

 nating mark is separately added or peculiarly expressed. 

 This distinction, in order to be recognized as really existing, 

 must show itself throughout the system, at all events in the 

 nearest and more important degrees of affinity. The 

 character possessed by parents must, to some extent, reappear 

 in their children ; the same peculiarity which guides the mind 

 of parents when naming their children, must manifest itself 

 in their children when they address each other as brothers 

 and sisters. 



The languages in which parents call their children sons or 

 daughters, and in which those sons and daughters call each 

 other brothers and sisters, are different in thought — that is 

 in expression and construction — from those where the former 

 are known by the name of male children and female children, 

 and the latter by that of elder or younger brother and sister. 

 The difference between those two modes of expression is that 

 the one manifests a power of abstraction, which is wanting 

 in the other, as it adheres to the concrete substance. The 

 inclination towards abstractness and concreteness would not 

 be so significant and deserving of notice, if it did not show 

 itself in other forms again and again in various expressions 

 of a language, corroborating the tendency observed in the 

 denomination of relations. 



The custom which prevails among many tribes of using 

 terms of kinship instead of proper nouns as mode of address 

 among relatives enhances the importance of such words. 

 Strangers may have recourse to surnames or bye-names while 



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