After some further steps our contemporary philologists discovered the sources whence proceeded this Sanscrit _nâman_; it is formed of the root _nâ_, originally _gnâ_, to know, joined to a suffix which generally expresses an instrument, a means; _nâman_ is the representative of _gnâman_, which we recognise in the Latin _cognomen_, the consonant _g_ being dropped as in _natus_, son, which was formerly _gnatus_. This word _name_ had at first a much more extended meaning than that of a simple arbitrary sign applied “to what we call a thing.” The constructors of the word were aware of a fact of which consciousness was afterwards lost, and which the learned ignored during all the supervening centuries--viz., that all names, far from being mere conventional signs used to distinguish one thing from another, were meant to express what it was possible to know of a thing; and that a name thus places us in a position really to be cognisant of a thing. A natural insight taught the early framers of our language a truth only acquired by us after interminable researches, such as Hegel expresses when saying, “We think in words,” and which we find again in this somewhat tautological expression “nominibus noscimus” = “tel nom, telle notion.” The fact that names, which are signs not of things, but of particular concepts, are all derived from general ideas, is one of the most fruitful discoveries of the science of language; since it not only expresses the truth which has been stated below, that language and the capability of forming general ideas separate man from the animals, but also a second truth that these two phenomena are two sides of the same truth. This explains the reason why the science of language rejects equally the interjectional theory and the mimetic, but accepts the final elements of language, those roots which all contain concepts. The name man, which we all apply to ourselves, is a title of nobility to which none other can compare. It is the direct issue of _man_, which in its turn came from _mâ_, to measure, this gave _mâs_, moon, to the Sanscrit language. The word man contains in itself the kernel of subtle thought; if we connect the word with the celestial body that helps us to measure our time, we do not therefore necessarily invest the moon with a living and thinking personality; it is sufficient to consider that if our ancestors conceived of it as measuring the nights and days, they had in themselves the capabilities with which they invested the words they created.