Without for the moment pausing at this last point, let us under a more positive form, and strictly on the lines of experimental psychology, examine the nature of the lower forms of intermediate abstraction, determining it by examples. At the same time we shall fix the intellectual level that corresponds to the moment of transition between generic images (animal form), and the higher abstracts which have still to be studied in detail. The best method is to take as a type such human races as have remained in the savage or half-civilised state: these are more instructive than childhood, because they represent fixed and permanent conditions. We can draw on two principal sources: their languages, and their systems of numeration. Their religious beliefs might also be studied, with the same results, but this would take too long, and would moreover be less definite.[73] 1. _The languages_, considered under their most general characteristics, reveal a notable impotence for transcending the simplest resemblances, an incurable incapacity for extended generalisations; they hardly rise above the concrete. Words play a very indistinct part; they are the most incomplete substitute—hardly more than a mark, a sign, like gestures—differing from the latter only in the future they carry within them. The study of the ascending progress of generalisation is in effect the study of the successive phases of the emancipation of speech up to the time when it becomes preponderant and dominating. At the actual stage, which might be termed _concrete-abstract_, it is not yet emancipated; it is a minor, under tutelage. Let us take in turn substantives, adjectives, and verbs. The indigenes of Hawaii, says Max Müller (_Lectures on the Science of Language_, Second Series, II., p. 19), have but one word, “aloba,” to express love, friendship, esteem, gratitude, benevolence, etc.; on the other hand, words to express variations in the direction of the force of the wind are very numerous, proving once more how at its origin abstraction or dissociation is governed by practical causes. In savage languages there are terms to express not merely each species of dog, but their age, the color of their hair, good or bad qualities, etc. So, too, for the horse; there are special words to designate its varieties, and all its movements; to indicate if it is mounted, not mounted, frightened, running away, and the like. The North American Indians have special words for the black oak, the white oak, and the red oak, but none for the oak in general,—still less for tree in general. The indigenes of Brazil can point out the different parts of the body, but not the body as a whole (Lubbock). Among several tribes of Oceania, a special word is employed for the tail of a dog, another for the sheep’s tail, and so on, but they have no designation for tail in general. Again, there is no common term for the cow, but there are distinct words for red, white, or brown cows (Sayce).