Among the various categories, that of Space is the earliest to become an object of consciousness to the human soul, both in the genetic development of the individual mind and in that of the human race. The attachment of a notion to space is the earliest developed; indeed the notion of a thing without the notion of space is impossible. Even beasts distinguish things by their space. Hence L. Geiger correctly said that Language, the origin of which also marks the first phase of the power of thought, ‘springs from’ the organ of the discrimination of space, ‘the Eye and Light.’ With the category of Time it is otherwise. The discrimination of things in time is unfolded relatively later; it postulates a more delicate degree of observation. The notion of Space emanates from that sense, the use of which man acquires the earliest and the most easily of all except that of touch—the sense of Sight; the excitement of which also gives the first impulse to the formation of language. But the notion of Time demands more than a mere sensuous perception. We need not therefore be surprised if the notion of Space, both in the individual and in history, is older than that of Time, nor that, as language teaches, all the finer distinctions of opposite terms emanate from the notion of Space,[108] and the very distinctions of Time itself were originally conceived from the point of view of Space. To verify this, we only need to observe the expressions still in daily use, which can be applied to time, such as, _before_, _after_, _thereafter_, _space of time_, _short_ or _long_ time. The Semitic is very instructive on this point. The Hebrew shâm, originally used of place (_there_) is found applied to time (_then_); in Arabic these two significations are divided between thumma ‘then’ and thamma ‘there.’ Hebrew words, such as liphenê ‘before’ and acharê ‘after,’ ḳedem, ḳadmôn, ‘old, olden time,’ bring before our eyes a very clear view of the transition from local to temporal distinctions, when we take into consideration their original significations. The Arabic beyna yedeyy, or beyna eydî, is also especially instructive. This phrase signifies ‘between the hands,’ and is used very commonly for ‘before,’ of space. But even in early classical texts (e.g. in the Ḳorân) it passes over into the ‘before’ of time. ‘Between the hands of the Prophet,’ thus means either _standing before him_ as to place, or _preceding him_ in time. Now that which we meet thus at every step in the Semitic and Aryan, is found also in the third great stock of languages. The time-particles of the Anaric languages often go back to relations of space; and what the German _Zeitraum_ ‘space of time,’ and the Arabic _muddâ_ (properly ‘extension,’ but generally in the sense of a ‘period of time’) exemplify to us, we see also e.g. in the Finnish _kausi_, which is used to express a _piece of time_. It properly signifies a _direction or way_, in a local sense; and the related Esthonian word _kaude_ is still used