“It requires but the feeblest power of abstraction—a power even possessed by idiots—to use a name as the sign of a conception, _e.g._ to say ‘sun’;[283]—to say ‘sheen,’ as the description of a phenomenon common to all shining objects, is a higher effort, and to say ‘to shine’ as expressive of the state or act is higher still. Now, familiar as such efforts may be to us, there is ample proof that they could not have been so to the inventors of language, because they are not so, even now, to some nations of mankind after all their long millenniums of existence. Instances of this fact have been repeatedly adduced.”[284] Thus, for example, the Society Islanders have separate words for dog’s-tail, bird’s-tail, sheep’s-tail, &c., but no word for tail itself—_i.e._ tail in general.[285] The Mohicans have words to signify different kinds of cutting, but no verb “to cut;” and forms for “I love him,” “I love you,” &c., but no verb “to love;” while the Choctanis have names for different species of oak, but no word for the genus oak.[286] Again, the Australians have no word for tree, or even for bird, fish, &c.;[287] and the Eskimo, although he has verbs which signify to fish-seal, to fish-whale, &c., has not any verb “to fish.” “Ces langues,” Du Ponceau remarks, “généralisent rarement;” and he shows that they have not even any verb to imply “I will,” or “I wish,” although they have separate verbal forms for “I wish to eat meat,” “I wish to eat soup;” neither have they any general noun-substantive which means “a blow,” although they have a variety which severally mean blows with as many different kinds of instruments.[288] Similarly, Mr. Crawford tells us, “the Malay is very deficient in abstract words; and the usual train of ideas of the people who speak it does not lead them to make a frequent use even of the few they possess. With this poverty of the abstract is united a redundancy of the concrete,”—and he gives many instances of the same kind as those above rendered from other languages.[289] So, likewise, we are told, “the dialect of the Zulus is rich in nouns denoting different objects of the same genus, according to some variety of colour, or deficiency of members, or some other peculiarity,” such as “white-cow,” “red-cow,” “brown-cow;”[290] and the Sechuâna has no fewer than ten words all meaning “horned cattle.”[291] Cheroki presents thirteen different verbs to signify different kinds of washing, without any to indicate “washing” itself;[292] and Milligan says that the aborigines of Tasmania had “no words representing abstract ideas; for each variety of gum-tree, wattle-tree, &c., they had a name, but they had no equivalent for the expression of ‘a tree;’ neither could they express abstract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round.”[293]