I have now briefly stated all the main facts and considerations which appear to me worth stating, both for and against the theory of onomatopœia. And, having done this, I wish in conclusion to make it clear that the matter is not one which seriously affects the theory of evolution. To the philologist, no doubt, the question as to how far the element of onomatopœia entered into the formation of aboriginal speech is a really important question, so that, as Geiger says, “Diess ist die gemeinsame Frage, und die antwort wird auf der einen Seite von einem inneren Zusammenhang zwischen je einem Laut und dem entsprechenden Begriffe, auf der andern aus Willkür und Uebereinkunft hergeleitet.”[217] But the question is one which the evolutionist may view with indifference. Whether words were all originally dependent on an inherent connection between every sound they made and the idea thereby expressed, or whether they were all due to arbitrary invention, in either case the evolutionist may see that they can equally well have come into existence as the natural products of a natural psychogenesis. And, _a fortiori_, as an evolutionist, he need not greatly concern himself with any further question as to the relative degrees in which imitation and invention may have entered into the composition of primitive speech. CHAPTER XIV. THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY. We are now in a position to consider certain matters which are of high importance in relation to the subject of the present work. In earlier chapters I have had occasion to show that the whole stress of the psychological distinction between man and brute must be laid—and, in point of fact, has been laid by all competent writers who are against me—on the distinctively human faculty of judgment. Moreover, I have shown that, by universal consent, this faculty is identical with that of predication. Any mind that is able, in the strict psychological signification of the term, to judge, is also able to predicate, and _vice versâ_. I claim, indeed, to have conclusively shown that certain writers have been curiously mistaken in their analysis of predication. These mistakes on their part, however, do not relieve me of the burden of explaining the rise of predication; and I have sought to discharge the burden by showing how the faculty must have been given in germ so soon as the denotative stage of sign-making passed into the connotative, and thus furnished the condition to bringing into contact, or _apposition_, the names of objects and the names of qualities or actions. The discussion of this important matter, however, has so far proceeded on grounds of psychological analysis alone. The point has now arrived when we may turn upon the subject the independent light of philological analysis. Whereas we have hitherto considered, on grounds of mental science only, what _must have been_ the genesis of predication—supposing predication to have had a genesis,—we have