Now, if this were the case, what would the evolutionist expect to find in language as it now exists? Clearly, he would expect to find more or less well-marked traces, in the fundamental constitution of all languages, of what has been called “fundamental metaphor”—by which is meant an intellectual extension of terms that originally were of no more than sensuous signification. And this is precisely what we do find. “The whole history of language, down to our own day, is full of examples of the reduction of physical terms and phrases to the expression of non-physical conceptions and relations; we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth. So pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to its physical origin.”[275] Now, I hold that this receptual nucleus of all our conceptual terms furnishes the strongest possible evidence, not only of the historical priority of the former, but also of what Professor Max Müller calls their “dire necessity” to the growth of the latter.[276] In other words, the facts appear conclusively to show that conceptual connotation (denomination) has always had—_and can only have had_—a receptual core (denotation) around which to develop. Psychological analysis has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by _actually finding the recept in the body of every concept_. How this large and general fact is to be met by my antagonists I know not. It certainly does not satisfy the case to say, with Professor Max Müller,[277] Noiré,[278] and those who think with them, that in no other way could the growth of conceptual thought have been possible; for this is merely to reiterate on _a priori_ grounds the conclusion which I have reached _a posteriori_. And the more that this historical priority of denotation can thus be shown an _a priori_ necessity to the subsequent genesis of denomination, the greater becomes the cogency of our evidence _a posteriori_ that, as a matter of fact, such has been invariably the order of historical succession. For, if conceptual ideation differs from receptual in kind, why this necessity for the historical priority of the latter? Why should denotation thus always require to precede denomination—or receptual connotation thus always require to precede conceptual predication—unless it be that the one is a further and a continuous development of the other? Surely as well might the botanist institute a specific distinction between the root and the flower of the self-same plant, as the psychologist, with these results of philological research before him, still persist in drawing a distinction of kind between the receptual denotation of “radical elements,” and the full efflorescence of conceptual thought.