the minds of a higher order it was resolved into an allegory or
symbol of the forces of nature, into providential laws or a moral
conception.

This law of progressive transformation also occurs in the successive
modifications of the special meaning of words, so far as they indicate
not only the thing itself, but the image which gave rise to the
primitive roots. For a long while, those who heard the word were not
only conscious of the object which it represented, but of its image,
which thus became a source of aesthetic enjoyment to them. As time went
on, this image was no longer reproduced, and the bare indication
remained, until the word gradually lost all material representation, and
became an algebraical sign, which merely recalled the object in question
to the mind.

When, for example, we now use the word (_coltello_), _coulter_, the
instrument indicated by this phonetic sign immediately recurs to the
mind and nothing else; the intelligence would see no impropriety in the
use of some other sign if it were generally intelligible. But in the
times of primitive speech, the inventors of this rude instrument were
conscious of the material image which gave rise to it, and they were
likewise conscious of all the cognate images which diverged from the
same root, and in this way a brief but vivid drama was presented to the
imagination.

If we examine this word with Pictet and others, we shall find that the
name of the plough comes from the Sanscrit _krt, krnt, kart_, to cleave
or divide. Hence _krntatra_, a plough or dividing instrument. The root
_krt_ subsequently became _kut_ or _kutt_, to which we must refer _kuta,
kutaka_, the body of the plough. This root _krt, kart_, is found in many
European languages in the general sense of cutting or breaking, as in
the old Slav word _kratiti_, to cut off. It is also applied to labour
and its instruments: _kartoti_, to plough over again, _karta_, a line or
furrow, and in the Vedic Sanscrit, _karta_, a ditch or hole. Hence the
Latin _culter_ a saw, _cultellus_, a coulter, and the Sanscrit
_kartari_, a coulter. The Slav words for the mole which burrows in the
earth are connected with the root _krt_, or the Slav _krat_. In very
remote times, men not only understood the object indicated in the word
for a coulter, but they were sensible of the image of the primitive
_krt_ and its affixes, which were likewise derived from the primitive
images, and with these they included the cognate