Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

27
farther flint we call yon one. But to him
this, that, and yon flints are still the flint
here beside him, the flint there before him,
the flint farther away, which is beyond
him. The local relation is either the one
relation of his conceptions, or the one rela-
tion whose practical importance to him
deserves a name. And down to this day
the language he spoke, through all its
changes, makes no distinction between its
idea of the local proximity of objects and
the more complex idea of their relative
importance. In the illustrations just given,
I have purposely introduced the English
words before, beside, and beyond. These
words, we know, were themselves at one
time used in a sense exclusively local.
But before has now, in great measure, lost
its primitive signiflcation of locality, and is
mainly used to express relations of time ;
beside, in the altered form of besides, is
\ mostly used to express relations of coin-
\ parative excess, save in the ominous, but
1 significant, case of a man being beside him-
I self ; while beyond, like its Breton equiva-