The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and how at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and reply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absent persons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated.  The images of these persons and things are as it were present and in agitation within him; and these images, in the fervour of emotion and under the stimulus of excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented to the inward psychical consciousness.

In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowly developed, the animation and personification effected by his mind and consciousness were threefold:  first, of the objects themselves as they really existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in the memory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images.  There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are no longer conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which is partly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words and of their roots in all languages.  The meaning of these, which is now for the most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material and concrete fact, or some gesture.  This is true of classic tongues, as is well known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of all savage and barbarous races.

Ia rau is used to express all in the Marquesas Isles. Rau signifies leaves, so that the term implies something as numerous as the leaves of a tree. Rau is also now used for sound, an expression which includes in itself the conception of all, but which originally signified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt as such in the ancient speech in which it was used in this sense.  So again in Tahiti huru, ten, originally signified hairs; rima, five, was at first used for hand; riri, anger, literally means, he shouts. Uku in the Marquesas Isles means, to lower the head, and is now used for to enter a house. Ruku, which had the same original meaning in New Zealand, now expresses the act of diving.  The Polynesian word toro at first indicated anything in the position of a hand with extended fingers, whence comes the Tahitian term for an ox, puaatoro, stretching pig, in allusion to the way in which an ox carries his head. Too (Marquesas), to put forward the hand, is now used for to take. Tongo (Marquesas), to grope with extended arms, leads to potongo tongo, darkness.  In New Zealand, wairua, in Tahiti varua, signifies soul or spirit, from vai, to remain in a recumbent position, and rua, two; that is, to be in two places, since they believed that in sickness or in dreams the soul left the body.[18] Throughout Polynesia moe also signifies a recumbent position or to sleep, and in Tahiti moe pipiti signifies a double sleep or dream, from moe, to sleep, and piti, two.  In New Zealand, moenaku means, to try to grasp something during sleep; from naku, to take in the fingers.