OF LANGUAGES. 



37 



language is due to the use of concrete forms of speech 

 wherever emotions or affections are concerned. 



As abstractness is of later origin than concreteness, the 

 ability to define the peculiar substance of an object, or its 

 main concrete qualities, must have been obtained after a 

 careful consideration of its component parts. Abstractive 

 power presupposes therefore a certain degree of superior 

 mental activity. 



Wherever we find in a language a prevalence of concrete 

 expressions of relationship, such as " male child/ 3 " elder 

 brother/ 1 and also find that an abstract word for son or 

 brother, unless it has been introduced from or framed in 

 imitation of a foreign language, does not exist in it, that 

 dialect will be enrolled among the members of the concrete 

 class. The absence of such concrete and the presence of 

 abstract terms in a language does not, on the other hand, 

 necessarily prove that such a language is an abstract one. 

 For there are many instances of concrete languages adopting, 

 in consequence of their connection with abstract tongues, 

 abstract expressions, and of neglecting, and in the course of 

 time even forgetting, their own indigenous terms. This is, 

 e.g. j the case in Finnish, where the originally Teutonic words 

 T liter and Sisar replace the Finnish terms for daughter and 

 sister. But in most of these cases the primitive, though 

 hidden, tendency towards concreteness will be eventually 

 detected, when a comparison is instituted between these 

 dialects, and others which are kindred to them, and which 

 have retained their own phraseology. 



It may appear astonishing, but it is not the less true, that 

 a language unless it undergoes a radical change by which 

 its nature is totally altered and a new dialect created, 35 does 



(35) As, e.g., the Gaudlian languages, when they were metamorphosed 

 into abstract Prakrits. 



