Note 17 — Chapter III

The Hawaïans, for example, have only one term for love, friendship, esteem, gratitude, benevolence, etc.—aloha; while they have distinct words for different degrees in a single natural phenomenon. Thus aneane, gentle breeze; matani, wind; pahi, the act of breathing through the mouth; hano, breathing through the nose. See Hale's Polynesian Dictionary. All peoples have slowly attained to typical ideas, and many are even now in process of formation. Thus, the Finns, Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for river, although even the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word to express fingers in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger, etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for pine, birch, ash, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for thumb was afterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for the bay in which they lived came to be used for all bays. See Castren, Vorlesungen über Finnische Mythologie. This original confusion in the definition of scientific ideas, and the successive alternations by which they were re-cast, may be gathered from the analysis of language, and from facts which still occur among uncultured and ignorant people. When the inhabitants of Mallculo saw dogs for the first time, they called them brooàs, or pigs. The inhabitants of Tauna also call the dogs imported thither buga, or pigs. When the inhabitants of a small island in the Mediterranean saw oxen for the first time, they called them horned asses.