of the _primum cognitum_, and its
consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature
of the root, or the _primum appellatum_. Some philosophers, among
whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and,
with some qualification, Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms,
as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote
from Adam Smith. 'The assignation,' he says, 'of particular names
to denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns
substantive, would probably be one of the first steps toward the
formation of language.... The particular cave whose covering
sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit
relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed
their thirst, would first be denominated by the words _cave_,
_tree_, _fountain_, or by whatever other appellations they might
think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterward,
when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to
observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention
of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would
naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by
which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they
were first acquainted with.''

This view of the primitive formation of thought and language, is
diametrically opposed to the theory held by Leibnitz, who maintained
that 'general terms are necessary for the essential constitution of
languages.' 'Children,' he says, 'and those who know but little of the
language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which
they would employ it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_,
_animal_, instead of using proper names, of which they are destitute.
And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been
originally appellative or general.'

Notwithstanding the contradictory and seemingly antagonistic nature of
these positions, Professor Mueller shows that they are not
irreconcilable.

'Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says that the first
individual cave which is called cave, gave the name to all other
caves; ... and the history of almost every substantive might be
cited in support of his view. But Leibnitz is equally right when,
in looking beyond the first emergence o