Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the psychical conditions of primitive men, at a time when the objects of perception and the apprehension of things were presented by an effort of memory to the mind as if they were actual and living things, yet such conditions are not hypothetical but really existed, as any one may ascertain for himself who is able to realize that primitive state of the mind, and we have said enough to show that such was its necessary condition.
The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and how at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and reply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absent persons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated. The images of these persons and things are as it were present and in agitation within him; and these images, in the fervour of emotion and under the stimulus of excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented to the inward psychical consciousness.
In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowly developed, the animation and personification effected by his mind and consciousness were threefold: first, of the objects themselves as they really existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in the memory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images. There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are no longer conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which is partly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words and of their roots in all languages. The meaning of these, which is now for the most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material and concrete fact, or some gesture. This is true of classic tongues, as is well known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of all savage and barbarous races.
_Ia rau_ is used to express _all_ in the Marquesas Isles. _Rau_ signifies _leaves_, so that the term implies something as numerous as the leaves of a tree. _Rau_ is also now used for _sound_, an expression which includes in itself the conception of _all_, but which originally signified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt as such in the ancient speech in which it was used in this sense. So again in Tahiti _huru, ten_, originally signified _hairs; rima, five_, was at first used for _hand; riri, anger_, literally means, _he shouts_. _Uku_ in the Marquesas Isles means, _to lower the head_, and is now used for _to enter a house_. _Rùku_, which had the same original meaning in New Zealand, now expresses the act of diving. The Polynesian word _toro_ at first indicated anything in the position of a hand with extended fingers, whence comes the Tahitian term for an ox, _puaátoro, stretching pig_, in allusion to the way in which an ox carries his head. _Toó_ (Marquesas), to put forward the hand, is now used for _to take_. _Tongo_ (Marquesas), to grope with extended arms, leads to _potongo tongo_, darkness. In New Zealand, _wairua_, in Tahiti _varua_, signifies soul or spirit, from _vai_, to remain in a recumbent position, and _rua_, two; that is, _to be in two places_, since they believed that in sickness or in dreams the soul left the body.[18] Throughout Polynesia _moe_ also signifies a recumbent position or to sleep, and in Tahiti _moe pipiti_ signifies a double sleep or dream, from _moe_, to sleep, and _piti_, two. In New Zealand, _moenaku_ means, to try to grasp something during sleep; from _naku_, to take in the fingers.