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XV.THE OBIGIN OF WEIGHT.IN any attempt to trace from the beginning the employmentby man of a natural physical phenomenon,it isnecessary to keep before us the development of thehuman mind since the days of our ancestors of the StoneAge. There should be no need to insist upon theabsolute simplicity of the ideas and actions of early man.For their minds and intellects were not fully developed ;their doings and thinkings would be like those of ourchildren ;and the simpler we can show their methods tohave been, the more likely are our conclusions to betrue. We must, therefore, be careful not to attribute tothem our present idea of weight, defined as it is in theminds of most of us by the uses to which we put it.The first human conception of it would most certainlybe different, and we must attempt to realize how itwould arise.The amount that a man could carry would, one wouldthink, be the first realized amount of weight ;would be expressed in the number of such and such anland this0. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen^ Altertumskunde,1Strassburg (1901), p. 928, points out that the Greek ra.Xa.vrov is relatedto raActo-o-ot, rXriva.1, "to bear," rdXapos, "a basket for carrying," Latin" tollo, I lift," Sanskrit" tul, originally to lift," then " to weigh."" DieGrundbedeutung von To.Ka.vrov durfte daher ' Hebung ' (sc. der zuwiegenden Masse) sein."VOL. XII., SERIES IV. Z