f such names as cave, town,
or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take
the Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called _antrum_,
_cavea_, _spelunca_. Now _antrum_ means really the same as
_internum_. Antar, in Sanskrit means _between_ or _within_.
_Antrum_, therefore, meant originally what is within or inside the
earth or anything else. It is clear, therefore, that such a name
could not have been given to any individual cave, unless the
general idea of being within, or inwardness, had been present in
the mind. This general idea once formed, and once expressed by the
pronominal root _an_ or _antar_, the process of naming is clear and
intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from rain
and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
rock, he would call his _within_, his _antrum_; and afterward
similar places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be
designated by the same name ... Let us take another word for cave,
which is _cavea_ or _caverna_. Here again Adam Smith would be
perfectly right in maintaining that this name, when first given,
was applied to one particular cave, and was afterward extended to
other caves. But Leibnitz would be equally right in maintaining
that in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was
necessary that the general idea of hollow should have been formed
in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression _cav_
...

_'The first thing really known is the general. It is through it
that we know and name afterward individual objects of which any
general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage
that these individual objects, thus known and named, become again
the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
names are raised into appellatives.'_

The italics in the last paragraph are my own.

But the name of a thing, runs the argument, meant originally that by
which we know a thing. And how do we know things? Knowing is more than
perceiving by our senses, which convey to us information about single
things only. 'To _know_ is more than to feel, than to perceive, more
than to remember, more than to compare. We know a thing if we are able
to bring it, and [or?] any part of it, under more general ideas.' The
facts of nature are perceived by o