hat mankind employs for
the purpose of putting its experience into words. Happily the careful
attention devoted by American philologists to the aboriginal languages
of their continent has resulted in the discovery of certain principles
which the rest of our evidence, so far as it goes, would seem to stamp
as of world-wide application. The reader is advised to study the most
stimulating, if perhaps somewhat speculative, pages on language in
the second volume of E.J. Payne's _History of the New World called
America_; or, if he can wrestle with the French tongue, to compare
the conclusions here reached with those to which Professor Levy-Bruhl
is led, largely by the consideration of this same American group of
languages, in his recent work, _Les Fonctions Mentales dans les
Societes Inferieures_ ("Mental Functions in the Lower Societies").

If the average man who had not looked into the matter at all were asked
to say what sort of language he imagined a savage to have, he would
be pretty sure to reply that in the first place the vocabulary would
be very small, and in the second place that it would consist of very
short, comprehensive terms--roots, in fact--such as "man," "bear,"
"eat," "kill," and so on. Nothing of the sort is actually the case.
Take the inhabitants of that cheerless spot, Tierra del Fuego, whose
culture is as rude as that of any people on earth. A scholar who tried
to put together a dictionary of their language found that he had got
to reckon with more than thirty thousand words, even after suppressing
a large number of forms of lesser importance. And no wonder that the
tally mounted up. For the Fuegians had more than twenty words, some
containing four syllables, to express what for us would be either "he"
or "she"; then they had two names for the sun, two for the moon, and
two more for the full moon, each of the last-named containing four
syllables and having no element in common. Sounds, in fact, are with
them as copious as ideas are rare. Impressions, on the other hand,
are, of course, infinite in number. By means of more or less significant
sounds, then, Fuegian society compounds impressions, and that somewhat
imperfectly, rather than exchanges ideas, which alone are the currency
of true thought.

For instance, I-cut-bear's-leg-at-the-joint-with-a-flint-now
corresponds fairly well with the total impression produced by the
particular act; though, even so, I have doubtless selectively reduced
the notion