In view of these considerations, my only wonder is that these 120 root-words do not present _better_ evidence of conceptual thought. I have already given my reasons for refusing to suppose that we have here to do with the “original” framers of spoken language; and looking to the comparatively high level of culture which the people in question must have reached, it seems remarkable that the root-words of their language should only in so few instances have risen above the level of pre-conceptual utterance.[194] This, however, only shows how comparatively small a part self-conscious reflection need play in the practical life of uncultured man: it does not show that the people in question were remarkably deficient in this distinctively human faculty. Archdeacon Farrar tells us that he has observed the whole conversational vocabulary of certain English labourers not to exceed a hundred words, and probably further observation would have shown that the great majority of these were employed without conceptual significance. Therefore, if these labourers had had to coin their own words, it is probable that, without exception, their language would have been destitute of any terms betokening more than a pre-conceptual order of ideation. Nevertheless, these men must have been capable, in however undeveloped a degree, of truly conceptual ideation: and this proves how unsafe it would be to argue from the absence of distinctively conceptual terms to the poverty of conceptual faculty among any people whose root-words may have come down to us—although, no doubt, in such a case we appear to be getting within a comparatively short distance of the origin of this faculty. The point, however, now is that really aboriginal, and therefore purely denotative names, must certainly have been “generic” as well as “particular”: they must have been the names of recepts as well as of percepts, of actions as well as of objects and qualities. Moreover, it is equally certain that among this aboriginal assemblage of denotative names as particular and generic, only those belonging to the latter class could have stood much chance of surviving as roots. In other words, no aboriginal name could have survived as a root until it had acquired some greater or less degree of receptual and, therefore, of connotative value. Hence the fact that the ultimate result of the philological analysis of any language is that of reducing the language to a certain small number of roots, and the fact that all these roots are expressive of general and generic ideas,—these facts in themselves yield no support whatever to the doctrine, either that these roots were themselves the aboriginal elements of language, or, _a fortiori_, that the aboriginal elements of language were expressive of general ideas.[195] * * * * *