This phenomenon of the activity with implements deriving its name from one more simple, ancient, and brute-like, is quite universal; and I do not know how otherwise to account for it but that the name is older than the activity with tools which it denotes at the present time; that, in fact, the word was already extant before men used any other organs but the native and natural ones. Whence does sculpture derive its name? Sculpo is a collateral form of scalpo, and at first implied only scratching with nails. The art of weaving or matting is of primeval date; it plays a part in the earliest religious myths. History records no stage of culture which was wholly without it. As the Greeks often describe Athena to be employed in weaving, so do the Veda hymns make the sun-god, the goddess Aramati, and, in a mystic sense, the priests, occupy themselves with that work. Of the sun-god, e.g., they say, with reference to the alternation of day and night, "Such is the divinity of Surya, such his greatness, that amid his work he draws in again the stretched-out web." The root here used for to stretch out at the same time supplies the word for the warp of the texture, while the weft in Sanskrit is denoted by the root ve, the simpler form of our word weben (to weave), similar to the English weft and woof. If, now, we compare with this root the various others closely related to it, and beginning with the same consonant (w), e.g., the Latin vieo, many of them afford a hint enabling us to say on which objects the art of weaving, or rather matting, may first have been employed. The

Latin vimen, for instance, which, properly speaking, implies a means for matting, is used of branches of trees and shrubs in their natural state and growth, and especially so far as they are worked up into all kinds of wickerwork, or serve as ropes for binding, of their artificial state. The Weide (willow) derived its name in the earliest times from the special fitness of its branches for such purposes, and so did many species of grass and reeds. That plant the fibres of which have pre-eminently continued among us to be made use of in the art of weaving, viz., Flachs (flax), has its name from flechten (plaiting), as Flechse (tendon), i.e., "band, sinew," clearly shows.

Simple mattings of fibres of plants and of flexible twigs are the first objects of art in this department; but language leads us still a step farther back. There are words in which the idea of the entanglement of the boughs of the bush or of trees with dense foliage is found so intimately allied with the plaiting of plants that it becomes probable this natural plaiting may have served the artistic activity of man as a model. The sight of closely entwined branches and of reeds growing in luxuriant entanglement, keeping pace with the transformation in the culture of man, gradually led to the first roughly plaited mat as a product of his art. Aye, the natural plaiting of the tree was, perhaps, the first object on which his art was practised. There are still extant transitions which render it extremely probable that a kind of nest-building in the branches of trees with dense foliage was natural to

man in the earliest times, and sufficed him for the preparation of his dwelling. From Africa, in so many respects a land of wonders as regards the history of man, the traveller Barth gives an account of the DingDing people, of whom he says they partly dwell in trees. In much the same low condition are the extremely barbarous inhabitants of the island of Annatom, who use the branches of certain groups of trees fit for the purpose as a kind of very primitive hut. Of the Puris, Prince Maximilian, in his description of his Brazilian tour, tells us something similar, only that they, in addition, have the hammock, which is peculiar to the South Americans, and seems to be a remnant of their former habit of sleeping between the branches of trees. The word Hängematte (hammock) has come to us, along with the thing itself, from those parts. It belongs to the language of Hayti, where Columbus found it in the form of amaca, and whence, in various languages of Europe, it was transformed into hamac, hammock, and (among the Dutch) into hangmack, until finally, by misconception, it became hangmat, Hangeor Hänge-matte (in German).

Another point, viz., the figure of man, seems to me to be a decided indication that the tree must have been his original habitation. His erect gait finds its most natural explanation in his former climbing mode of life, and from his habit of clasping the tree in his ascent we can best explain the transformation of the hand from a motory organ into a grasping one, so that we shall be found to owe to the lowest stage of our culture

that seems credible our distinguishing advantages—the free and commanding elevation of our head and the possession of that organ which Aristotle has called the tool of tools.

However mighty the transformation of human activity which the secrets hidden in words betray to us, yet we have no reason for seeing aught else in it but the sum of quite gradual processes, such as, in other instances, we still daily see going on. Since a comparatively few years we have denoted by the word nähen (to sew), no longer merely a manual work, but also one of the machine; by schiessen (to shoot) we understand something very different from that which was understood by it previously to the invention of gunpowder. How very differently is a ship now constructed from what it was at the time when it differed in nothing from a trough, a hollow wooden vessel, such as the name indicates ! How little resemblance is there between our locomotives and the first thing which was called waggon, and which, I have reason to believe, was nothing but a simple stump of a tree rolling downwards! The transformation of man's mode of life proceeds very gradually, and we have the right to assume, I think, that it has never done otherwise. We must guard against ascribing to reflection too large a share in the origin of tools. The first simplest tools were doubtless of incidental origin, like so many other great inventions of modern times. They were probably rather stumbled upon than invented. I have formed this view more particularly from having observed

that tools are never named from the process by which they were made, never genetically, but always from the work they are intended for. A pair of shears, a saw, a hoe, are things that shear, saw, or hoe. This linguistic law must appear the more surprising as the implements which are not tools are wont to be designated genetically, or passively, as it were, according to the material of which they are made or the work that produced them. Schlauch (hose), e.g., is everywhere thought of as the skin stripped off an animal. Beside the German word Schlauch stands the English slough; the Greek ȧokós signifies both hose and skin of an animal. Here, then, language quite plainly teaches us how and of what material the implement called hose was made. With tools such is not the case, and they may, therefore, as far as language is concerned, not have at first been made at all; the first knife may have been a sharp stone accidentally found, and, I might say, employed as if in play.

It might next be imagined that if tools have been named from the work for which they are intended, an idea of such work must have preceded the name; e.g., if a cutting tool is designated as something cutting, the idea of cutting seems thereby to be presupposed. But we know that all these words originally denoted activities which were carried on without any other than the natural tools. The word "shears" plainly shows this. It denotes at present a double knife, a two-armed cutting tool. I need hardly mention that this meaning was not the original one. Indeed the Hindoos and the