In this way the evolution of the special myth was transformed into poetry by the interweaving, collection, and fusion with other myths, and in the minds of a higher order it was resolved into an allegory or symbol of the forces of nature, into providential laws or a moral conception.
This law of progressive transformation also occurs in the successive modifications of the special meaning of words, so far as they indicate not only the thing itself, but the image which gave rise to the primitive roots. For a long while, those who heard the word were not only conscious of the object which it represented, but of its image, which thus became a source of æsthetic enjoyment to them. As time went on, this image was no longer reproduced, and the bare indication remained, until the word gradually lost all material representation, and became an algebraical sign, which merely recalled the object in question to the mind.
When, for example, we now use the word (_coltello_), _coulter_, the instrument indicated by this phonetic sign immediately recurs to the mind and nothing else; the intelligence would see no impropriety in the use of some other sign if it were generally intelligible. But in the times of primitive speech, the inventors of this rude instrument were conscious of the material image which gave rise to it, and they were likewise conscious of all the cognate images which diverged from the same root, and in this way a brief but vivid drama was presented to the imagination.
If we examine this word with Pictet and others, we shall find that the name of the plough comes from the Sanscrit _krt, krnt, kart_, to cleave or divide. Hence _krntatra_, a plough or dividing instrument. The root _krt_ subsequently became _kut_ or _kutt_, to which we must refer _kûta, kûtaka_, the body of the plough. This root _krt, kart_, is found in many European languages in the general sense of cutting or breaking, as in the old Slav word _kratiti_, to cut off. It is also applied to labour and its instruments: _kartóti_, to plough over again, _karta_, a line or furrow, and in the Vedic Sanscrit, _karta_, a ditch or hole. Hence the Latin _culter_ a saw, _cultellus_, a coulter, and the Sanscrit _kartari_, a coulter. The Slav words for the mole which burrows in the earth are connected with the root _krt_, or the Slav _krat_. In very remote times, men not only understood the object indicated in the word for a coulter, but they were sensible of the image of the primitive _krt_ and its affixes, which were likewise derived from the primitive images, and with these they included the cognate images of the several derivatives from the root. In these days the word coulter and the Sanscrit _kartari_ are simply signs or phonetic notations, insignificant in themselves, and everything else has disappeared. But in primitive times an image animated the word, which by the necessary faculty of perception so often described was transformed into a kind of subject which effected the action indicated by the root. As this personality gradually faded away, the actual representation of the image was lost, and even its remote echo finally vanished, while the phonetic notation remained, devoid of life and memory, and without the recurrence of cognate images which strengthened the original idea by association. All words undergo the like evolution, and this may be called the mythical evolution of speech.