Turning next to the case of verbs, or the class of words upon which more especially devolves the office of predication, it is the opinion of some philologists that these arose through the apposition of substantives with the genitives of pronouns.[242] And there can be no doubt that in many actually existing languages the functions of predication are still discharged in this way, without the existence of any verbs at all, as we shall see later on. But, on the other hand, it is shown that a great many Aryan substantives were formed by joining pronominal elements to previously existing verbal roots, in a manner so strongly suggestive of pointing-gestures, that it is difficult to doubt the highly primitive source of the construction. For example “digging-he” = labourer, “digging-it” = spade, “digging-here” = labour, “digging-there” = hole,[243] &c. Or again, “‘The hole is dark’ would have been expressed originally (in Aryan) by ‘digging-it,’ ‘hiding here,’ or, ‘hiding-somewhere.’ ‘Hiding-here’ might afterwards be used in the sense of a hiding-place. But when it was used as a mere qualifying predicate in a sentence in which there was but one subject, it assumed at once the character of an adjective.”[244] To me it appears evident that there is truth in both these views, which, therefore, are in no way contradictory to one another. We have evidence that many substantives were of later origin than many verbs, and _vice versâ_; but this does not show which of these two parts of speech preceded the other as a whole. Nor does it appear that we are likely to obtain any definite evidence upon the point. On psychological grounds, and from the analogy furnished by children, we might be prepared to think it most probable that substantives preceded verbs; and this view is no doubt corroborated by the remarkable paucity of verbs in certain savage languages of low development. But as a matter of pure philology “we cannot derive either the verb from the noun, or the noun from the verb.”[245] This writer goes on to say, “they are co-existent creations, belonging to the same epoch and impulse of speech.” But whether or not this inference represents the truth is a matter of no importance for us. With or without verbs, primitive man would have been able to predicate—in the one case after the manner of children who have just begun to learn the use of them, and in the other case after the manner of those savages recently mentioned, who throw upon their nouns, in conjunction with pronouns, the office of verbs.