Nevertheless, they are of the utmost value and significance, in that they bring us down to a period of presumably restricted ideation, as compared with the enormous development since attained by various branches of this Indo-European stock—so far, at least, as the growth of language can be taken as a fair expression of such development. They are likewise of the highest importance as showing in how presumably short a period of time (comparatively speaking) so immense and divergent a growth may proceed from such a simple and germ-like condition of thought.[185] Lastly, they serve to show in a most striking manner that the ideas represented, although all of a general character, are nevertheless of the lowest degree of generality. Scarcely any of them present us with evidence of reflective thought, as distinguished from the naming of objects of sense-perception, or of the simplest forms of activity which are immediately cognizable as such.[186] In other words, few of these “original concepts” rise much higher in the scale of ideation than the level to which I have previously assigned what I have called “named recepts” or “pre-concepts.” A dumb animal, or an infant, presents a full receptual appreciation of the majority of actions which the catalogue includes; and, therefore, so that a society of human beings can speak at all (_i.e._ presents the power of naming their recepts), it is difficult to see how they could have avoided a denotation of the more important recepts which are here concerned.