The first thing we have to notice about this sentence, and any other sentence almost that we could anywhere find, is that the words which compose it fall into two distinct classes, the classes of what I will call _meaning_ and _meaningless_, or significant and _in_-significant words. In the first class fall the words _we_, _looked_, _man_, _fashioning_, _implements_, _weapons_, _houses_, _made_. These I call ‘meaning’ or ‘significant’ words, because, if we isolate each one and utter it alone, it will call up some image to the mind--_we_, _weapons_, _fashioning_, _houses_, _made_, and so forth: the image may be pretty clear or it may be (in the case of the verbs it is) somewhat hazy. But in every case some image or some idea does rise before the mind when any of these words is pronounced. _Have_ and _were_ I exclude for the moment from either class. The words of the second class, then, from the sentence chosen are--_upon_, _the_, _and_, _ever_. Of the first three, at any rate, there can be no difficulty as to why they are classed as the meaningless or insignificant words of the sentence. Isolated from the words of the first class, _upon_, _the_, or _and_ can by no means possibly call up any image or suggest any idea to the mind. Now, if you take any implement whose manufacture the world has ever seen, unless it be of the most primitive description imaginable, you will find it really devisable into two parts, upon much the same principle that we have here resolved our typical sentence into two primary divisions; it will consist of the _essential_ part, the part which _by itself_ would be useful, and the unessential adjunct which is designed to assist the usefulness of the other portion, but which is useless by itself--or if not useless by itself, it is useless for the purposes for which the implement we are concerned with is made. All handles meant to assist in the use of an implement, be it a stone axe or a most elaborate modern weapon, form such an adjunct to the essential part. Such useful and by comparison useless parts are the blade and the handle of a knife, the barrel and the stock of a gun, the carrying portion of the wheelbarrow and the wheel, the _share_--the shearing or cutting portion of a plough--and the wooden framework; and so forth. There is no need to multiply examples. Nor, I think, is there any need to insist further how strictly analogous the two classes of words here distinguished are to the two parts of any other implement invented by man. It goes almost of course that the essential portion of any implement is the portion which was invented first, that knife-blades were invented before knife-handles, barrows before barrow-wheels, etc. Wherefore it seems to follow of course that, of the two classes of words whereof language consists--whereof all languages consist--the meaning and the meaningless words, the first were the earliest invented or discovered. This is the same as saying that language once consisted