[59] Renan, Histoire générale des langues sémitiques, pp. 128 and 363.
[60] We can see how little the real order of evolution resembles the theoretical order of the XVIII. century, evolved from pure reasoning: “The complex notions of substances were the first known, since they came from the senses, and must therefore have been the first to have names” (Condillac). “With regard to adjectives, the notion must have developed with exceeding difficulty, since every adjective is an abstract term, and abstraction is a painful, or unnatural operation” (J. J. Rousseau).
[61] P. Regnaud, Origine et philosophie du langage, p. 317.
[62] On this point, consult especially Sayce, op. cit., II., § 9, and P. Regnaud, op. cit., pp. 296-299.
[63] “The word être is irreducible, indecomposable, primitive, and wholly intellectual. I know no language in which the French word être is expressed by a corresponding word representing a sensible idea. Hence it is not true that all the roots of the language are in last resort signs of sensory ideas.” (V. Cousin, Histoire de la phil. au XIII siècle, 1841, II., p. 274.)
[64] For the psychology of relation consult Herbert Spencer, Psychology, I., p. 65, II., pp., 360 et seq.; James, Psychology, I., pp., 203 et seq. The latter gives the history of the subject, which is very brief, and remarks that the idealogues form an honorable exception to the general abstention. Thus Destutt de Tracy established a distinction between feelings of sensation and feelings of relation.
[65] Regnaud, op. cit., pp. 304 et seq.
[66] It is superfluous to give examples of such a well-known fact. See Darmesteter, The Life of Words.
[67] Intelligence is taken here in its restricted sense, as the synonym of abstracting, generalising, judging, reasoning.
[68] De l’intelligence, Vol. I., Bk. IV., Chap. I., p. 254, first edition.