the first roots were formed, such as MAR, to grind, VÂ, to weave. It was by subtracting or abstracting that the meaning of these roots became more and more generalised, so that to grind could come to mean to stroke down, to smoothe, to please, and to weave could be used in the sense of composing a poem or a song. It was by combining that plurals were formed, and collective names, and abstract names, in the usual sense of the word; it was by subtracting that a general term was predicated of a less general one. The process is always the same. We combine and we retain what we have combined. We subtract and we retain what we have subtracted. The results of our combination and subtraction supply the materials for new combinations and new subtractions, and thus ad infinitum from the first root to the last word, from the first percept to the last concept. The very first word that was ever uttered was really a proposition, and the last poem of Browning is no more than a series of propositions. There is an uninterrupted continuity between the two, and however powerful the fancy of the poet, however subtle the reasoning of the philosopher, the materials which both have to use are the same, the words derived from roots and collected in the granary of our dictionaries. I do not say that an architect like Michel Angelo was no better than a stone-mason or a brickmaker, yet St. Peter's consists of nothing but stones and bricks, and possibly some cement which is again pulverised stone. Nor do I say that a play of Shakespeare is merely a dictionary well shaken together, but I do say that the materials with which it was built up were taken out of that treasury of words which has been accumulated during many thousands

of years, and which contains no metal, no gold nor silver, except what is found in the 1000 roots of the Aryan language, and in the 121 primitive concepts of Aryan thought.

Here then I might put down my pen, having performed the promise which I gave in the beginning of my book. If I add another chapter, it is in order to show that a philosophy based on the identity of language and thought will stand any test that may be applied to it. I shall therefore in the next Chapter treat very shortly of Propositions, the principal part of true Logic. Syllogisms, which are nothing but combinations of propositions, are of small interest in the natural growth of thought. They are useful as gymnastics, but on the real battle-field of thought they are unserviceable weapons.

CHAPTER IX.

PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS.

IN the first Chapter of this work I pointed out the uselessness of what I called Nursery Psychology. A study of that psychology learn words. may be useful, however, for at least one

How children

purpose, namely to bring out clearly the difference between the growth of language and thought in ourselves, as children of the nineteenth century, and the growth of language and thought in the beginning of all things. It will teach us that to transfer the observations which we make in our nursery to the earliest period in the growth of the human mind would be like looking for bricks and stucco in the lowest strata of granite. It may be that the materials out of which brick and stucco are made go back to the earliest geological periods in the formation of the earth, but even then clay, baked by geological heat, is very different from terra cotta.

If we watch the process by which children begin to speak and to think, we see that they begin at once with ready-made words, with what we may call the most finished terra cotta. Names with them are,' as Professor Bain says, and from his quite rightly, 'impressions of sense.'

point of view, One person is

One

pointed out to a child as 'Mother,' another as

'Father,' a third as Brother,' and 'Sister,' and these names remain in the memory as among the earliest

and most lasting impressions. Every one of these terms is, as we know, thousands of years old, and has passed through a long history of its own. But to a child Mother is a mere sign, almost a proper name. 'Mother has said so' implies at first no more than Mary has said so.' Gradually, however, with the growing experience of the child one attribute after another is slipt into the word, and thus what was at first a mere proper name becomes full of meaning, or, as logicians say, intension. It takes in one after another, both the visible attributes of a mother, referring to her dress, her eyes, her hair, and the invisible attributes, such as kindness, severity, and wisdom. Much later the more characteristic attributes of woman (mulier), wife (conjux), and mother (genitrix) are added, and only after all this congeries of attributes has been gathered under the name of mother does the work of definition and classification begin by which the few who think systematically assign to this and all other names their well-defined place in the universe of knowledge.

How names

were first framed.

Now let us consider once more the process by which such a name as Brother was first framed. We can quite imagine a state of society in which the concept and name of brother did not yet exist, and we can infer from the various names of brother that they were not framed after a clear concept of brother had been gained, but at a haphazard, from some attribute or other which seemed important at the time to the members of a primitive society. Suppose that bhrâtar meant originally no more than one who helps to carry (from BHAR, to bear), an

attribute, which to us seems extrinsic and nonessential, would then have supplied the first germ of this name. From the very first, however, this name which meant carriers and helpers might be said to have implied every other attribute that was inseparable from these carriers. A bhrâtar or frater would have implied the outward appearance of a man, as distinguished from a woman; it would probably at first have implied a certain age also at which boys began to be helpful. The larger the number of attributes thus consciously included (the intension), the smaller would become the number of individuals to which the name was applicable (the extension). Sometimes one of these implied attributes might supply a new name. In a polyandrous state of society, for instance, particularly when questions of inheritance arose, it would become of importance to distinguish brothers of the same mother, though of different fathers. A brother of the same mother might be called bhrâtâ sa-garbhah, i. e. frater co-uterinus, à-deλpós, and when pрáτnр drifted, as in Greek, into a more special social and political meaning, adeλpós would remain as the more useful name, though no longer confined either to children of the same mother, but of different fathers, or to children of different mothers, but of the same father..

Green, on

This process is well described by T. H. Green, though for a different purpose. 'If we say,' he writes1, 'that we know things first under the beginning a minimum of qualification and afterwards under more, we seem to contradict the fact

of know

ledge.

that knowledge begins with experience of real objects

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 193.