sings" can be expressed "He is--singing" so that all verbs are fundamentally one, the

verb to be with its three tenses is, was, shall be combined with the adjective-notion

"writing", "singing", etc.

Mathematics and grammatical analysis may, at first appear to be far removed from the

sense impression received by an infant in its cradle, but they are after all but extensions

of the two notions of space and time that comprise an infant's early impressions. The

infant moreover enters into a complex world. Sense impressions do not come singly but

in battalions, and he soon discovers the necessity to express the relationship in which one

object stands to another. These relationships are expressed in terms of movement or of

rest--in, out, from, with, above, below, near, far, etc.--and are called prepositions.

Speech therefore is primarily divided into four parts. Nouns, names or substantives to

express substances;  adjectives to indicate attributes, like good, smooth, hot, cold;

prepositions to denote relations in, out, from; and the verb to indicate the relation of the

substance to time, or to assign various attributes.

Any one who has opened a book devoted to "Figures of Speech" will acknowledge the

complexity and diversity of the subject, yet, all figures of speech begin in the cradle.

Before I can appreciate the figure involved in the expressions "hardness of heart", "a

rough speech", "an upright nature", "a sweet disposition";  before the expressions

"inflamed by anger", "warmed by affection", "swollen with pride", or "melted with

grief" can be appreciated, hard and rough materials must have been handled, sweet and

sour things tasted. So, the prepositions originally expressed the circumstance of place

"the man was in the room" "The cat sat on the mat." This elementary significance of

place, is transferred by figure to apply to certain conditions and situations of an abstract

nature, and so "in" is employed to express more abstract circumstances, such as "in

health", "in doubt". Even the word we have just employed, "circumstance" is primarily a

word of place. Circum is the Latin for "around", stance for "stand". Circumstances are

things, or a state of things, that "stand around". Crabb says: "many circumstances

constitute a situation", and in this definition Crabb employs two other words that are

figures of place, which if expressed literally would read:

It will be seen therefore that we move from the concrete to the abstract, from things

seen to things not seen, and here again the two words "concrete" and "abstract" are

figures derived from the senses. Concrete meaning "to grow together". Abstract means

"to draw apart". The concrete "like" has the abstract "likeness"; the concrete "father and

son" have the abstract "paternity" and "filiation" (see Mill). In "Pilgrim's Progress" the

character called "Honest" said of himself "Not Honesty in the abstract, but Honest is my

name". Even the word "figure" in the term "figure of speech" is itself a "figure", for it is

derived from a word that means "shape". So also is the word "speech"