Consequently, their language was limited. They made use of a limited
number of words, or produced articulate sound enough to express just
what they wanted, and no more. They may have had two or three hundred
different words or sounds in use. We have men to-day among us that have
not many more words at command, and their ideas generally correspond
in number and quality to their stock of words.
The stock of words and the stock of ideas always depend upon the
amount of experience and the amount of exercise the five senses have
had; together with the urgencies and difficulties they have had to
contend with. The power of observation is developed in accordance as
the opportunities arise.
Each particular special sense develops its own faculties, from the
practice, use, and experience of that sense, the role it is called
upon to play as necessities arise. And as each object is perceived
or observed by the special sense, it is recorded, a picture of
the same is retained in the great nervous storehouse for future
reference. The retention and recognition of the same goes to the
formation of memory. As the stock of objects increases, words or
sounds designating the same also increase in number, and the material
for the formation of ideas is also largely increased.
Ideas can be formed only about such things as we know, or rather
such things as any one special sense has been impressed with, has
perceived and recognized. Those things or beings by which any one
sense has not been impressed, the mind neither has perceived nor
is able to recognize. Everyone, whether barbarian or civilized,
is perfectly familiar with those things or beings that immediately
surround him--that is, all those things and beings which the senses
have already been impressed with, perceived and recognized. Sounds,
or words, have been invented to designate all such; and these are
known; the picture representing any one object is retained, stored
away in the great nervous storehouse, the brain--are remembered. The
oftener a thing is perceived, the more familiar it becomes and the
more easily recognized, the firmer it becomes fixed and the more
easily it is recollected.
Thus primitive man, with his few wants, and these wants amply supplied
by nature, had or invented names for all of them. These formed the
earliest collection of names of objects--their appearance, their
actions, their habits, etc. All these qualities were associated,
identified, and presented by words, in due time, without the presence
of the objects. That is to say, the simplest ideas were in this manner
formed, and the ideas so formed corresponded with the number of words,
and the number of words corresponded with the number of impressions
received by the senses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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