and agglutination. Now, the Soudan languages are characterized by the fact that they possess very few such fixed combinations in which the individual component parts have lost their independence. In this respect, accordingly, they resemble gesture-language. The latter also is unfamiliar with grammatical categories in so far as these apply to the words themselves; the very same signs denote objects, actions, and qualities--indeed, generally even that for which in our language we employ particles. This agreement with gesture-language is brought home to us most strikingly if we consider the words which the primitive spoken languages employ for newly formed ideas--such, for instance, as refer to previously unknown objects of culture. Here it appears that the speaker always forms the new conception by combining into a series those ideas with which he is more familiar. When schools were introduced into Togo, for example, and a word for 'slate-pencil' became necessary, the Togo negroes called it 'stone scratch something'--that is, a stone with which we scratch something. Similarly 'kitchen,' an arrangement unknown to these tribes, was referred to as 'place cook something'; 'nail,' as 'iron head broad.' The single word always stands for a sensibly perceptual object, and the new conception is formed, not, as epistemologists commonly suppose, by means of a comparison of various objects, but by arranging in sequence those perceptual ideas whose combined characteristics constitute the conception. The same is true with regard to the expressions for such thought relations as are variously indicated in our language by the inflections of substantive, adjective, and verb. The Soudan languages make no unambiguous distinction between noun and verb. Much less are the cases of the substantive, or the moods and tenses of the verb, distinguished; to express these distinctions, separate words are always used. Thus, 'the house of the king' is rendered as 'house belong king.' The conception of case is here represented by an independent perception that crowds in between the two ideas which it couples together. The other cases are, as a rule, not expressed at all, but are implied in the connection. Similarly, verbs possess no future tense to denote future time. Here also a separate word is introduced, one that may be rendered by 'come.' 'I go come' means 'I shall go'; or, to mention the preterit, 'I go earlier' means 'I went.' Past time, however, may also be expressed by the immediate repetition of the word, a sensibly perceptual sign, as it were, that the action is completed. When the Togo negro says 'I eat,' this means 'I am on the point of eating'; when he says 'I eat eat,' it means 'I have eaten.'