Take an instance from among the quotations previously given. It will be remembered that the challenge which my opponents have thrown down upon the grounds of logic and psychology, is to produce the brute which “can furnish the blank form of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B.’”[260] Now, I cannot indeed produce a brute that is able to supply such a form; but I have done what is very much more to the purpose: I have produced many nations of still existing men, in multitudes that cannot be numbered, who are as incapable as any brute of supplying the blank form that is required. Where is the “is,” in “Age-of-him Father-of-thee” = “His-age-thy-father” = “Thy-father-is-old”? Or, in still more primitive stages of human utterance, how shall we extract the blank form of predication from a “sentence-word,” where there is not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence of any differentiation between the subject and the predicate? The truth, in short, is, as now so repeatedly shown, that not only the brute, but likewise the young child—and not only the young child, but likewise early man—and not only early man, but likewise savage man—are all and equally unable to furnish the blank form of predication, as this has been slowly elaborated in the highest ramifications of the human mind. Of course all this futile (because erroneous) argument on the part of my opponents, rests upon the analysis of the proposition as this was given in the Aristotelian system of logic—an analysis which, in turn, depends on the grammar of the Greek language. Now, it goes without saying that the whole of this system is obsolete, so far as any question of the _origin_ either of thought or of speech is concerned. I do not doubt the value of this grammatical study, nor of the logic which is founded upon it, provided that inferences from both are kept within their legitimate sphere. But at this time of day to regard as primitive the mode of predication which obtained in so highly evolved a language as the Greek, or to represent the “categories” of Aristotle’s system as expressive of the simplest elements of human thought, appears to me so absurd that I can only wonder how intelligent men can have committed themselves to such a line of argument.[261]