him; and whatever historical reason there may be is also non-existent to his sense. He may sometimes ask

"what for?" about a word, as he does, in his childish curiosity, about everything else; but it makes no difference with the young etymologist (any more than with the older one) what answer he gets, or whether he gets an answer; to him, the sole and sufficient reason why he should use this particular sign is that it is used by those about him. In the true and proper meaning of the terms, then, every word handed down in every human language is an arbitrary and conventional sign: arbitrary, because any one of the thousand other words current among men, or of the tens of thousands which might be fabricated, could have been equally well learned and applied to this particular purpose; conventional, because the reason for the use of this rather than another lies solely in the fact that it is already used in the community to which the speaker belongs. The word exists Oéoe, 'by attribution,' and not púoe, 'by nature,' in the sense that there is, either in the nature of things in general, or in the nature of the individual speaker who uses it, any reason that prescribes and determines it.

There is obviously mental training and shaping, as well as mental equipment, in the process of learning to speak. The mental action of the individual is schooled into certain habits, consonant with those of his community; he acquires the current classifications and abstractions and ways of looking at things. To take an example: the quality of color is so conspicuous, and our apprehension of it so urged by the infinity of its manifested differences which are ever before our eyes, that the conception of color is only quickened and rendered more distinct by acquisition of the words which denote it. But in the classification of the shades of hue

the phraseology of the language acquired bears a determining part; they fall into order under and about the leading names, as white, black, red, blue, green; and each hue is tested in the mind by aid of these, and referred to the one or the other class. And different languages make different classifications: some of them so unlike ours, so much less elaborate and complete, that their acquisition gives the eye and mind a very inferior training in distinguishing colors. This is still more strikingly the case as regards number. There

are dialects which are in a state of infantile bewilderment before the problem of numeration; they have words for 'one,' 'two,' and 'three;' but all beyond is an undivided ‘many.' None of us, it is tolerably certain, would ever have gone farther than that by his own absolutely unassisted efforts; but by words—and only by words; for such is the abstractness of the relations of number that they, more than any others, are dependent for their realization and manageableness on expression-more and more intricate numerical relations have been mastered by us, until finally we are provided with a system which is extensible to every thing short of infinity-the decimal system, namely, or that which proceeds by constant additions of ten individuals of any given denomination to form the next higher. And what is the foundation of this system? Why, as every one knows, the simple fact that we have ten fingers (" digits ") on our two hands; and that fingers are the handiest substitutes for figures, the most ready and natural of aids to an unready reckoner. fact as external and physical as this, and seemingly so trivial, has shaped the whole science of mathematics, and, altogether without his being aware of it, gives form to all the numerical conceptions of each new

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learner. It is a suggestion of general human experience in the past, transmitted through language into a law for the government of thought in the future.

The same, in varying way and measure, is true of every part of language. All through the world of matter and of mind, our predecessors, with such wisdom as they had at command, have gone observing, deducing, and classifying; and we inherit in and through language the results of their wisdom. So with the distinctions of living and lifeless; of animal and vegetable and mineral; of fish and reptile and bird and insect; of tree and bush and herb; of rock and pebble and sand and dust. So with those of body, life, mind, spirit, soul, and their kindred. So with the qualities of objects, both physical and moral, and with their relations, through the whole round of the categories: position and succession, form and size, manner and degree: all, in their indefinite multitude, are divided and grouped, like the shades of color, and each group has its own sign, to guide the apprehension and help the discrimination of him who uses it. So, once more, with the apparatus of logical statement: the ability to put a subject and predicate closely together, and to test their correspondence by repeated comparison, comes only by language; and it is the fruitful means whereby old cognitions are corrected and new ones attained. So, in fine, with the auxiliary apparatus of inflections and form-words, wherein various tongues are most of all discordant, each making its own selection of what it will express and what it will leave for the mind to understand without expression.

Every single language has thus its own peculiar framework of established distinctions, its shapes and forms of thought, into which, for the human being who

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learns that language as his "mother-tongue," is cast the content and product of his mind, his store of impressions, however acquired, his experience and knowledge of the world. This is what is sometimes called the "inner form" of language-the shape and cast of thought, as fitted to a certain body of expression. But it comes as the result of external influence; it is an accompaniment of the process by which the individual acquires the body of expression itself; it is not a product of his internal forces, in their free and undirected workings; it is something imposed from without. It amounts simply to this: that the mind which was capable of doing otherwise has been led to view things in this particular way, to group them in a certain manner, to contemplate them consciously in these and those relations.

There is thus an element of constraint in languagelearning. But it is an element of which the learner is wholly unconscious. Whatever language he first acquires, this is to him the natural and necessary way of thinking and speaking; he conceives of no other as even possible. The case could not be otherwise. For even the poorest language in existence is so much better than any one's powers could have produced unaided, that its acquisition would imply a greatly accelerated drawing out and training of the powers of even the most gifted being; the advantage is so great that the disadvantage entirely disappears before it. We, to be sure, looking on from without, can sometimes find reason for regret, saying: "Here is a man of capacities far beyond the average of the degraded community of which he is a member; in justice to those capacities, he should have had his birth where a higher language would have developed them into what they were able

to become; only," we should have to add, "this barbarian tongue raises him far above what he could have become had he never learned to speak at all." Moreover, it is far oftener the case that the individual's linguistic lot is beyond his deserts; that he acquires a language above his level, and would have been better fitted by a lower dialect. 7

It is not easy to over-estimate the advantage won by the mind in the obtaining of a language. Its confused impressions are thus reduced to order, brought under the distinct review of consciousness and within reach of reflection; an apparatus is provided with which it can work, like the artisan with his tools. There is no other parallel so close, as regards both the kind and the degree of assistance afforded, as this between words, the instruments of thought, and those other instruments, the creation and the aids of man's manual dexterity. By as much as, supplied with these, man can traverse space, handle and shape materials, frame textures, penetrate distance, observe the minute, beyond what he could compass with his unequipped physical powers, by so much is the reach and grasp, the penetration and accuracy, of his thought increased by speech. This part of the value of speech is by no means easy to bring to full realization, because our minds are so used to working by and through words that they cannot even conceive of the plight they would be in if deprived of such helps. But we may think, for example, of what the mathematician would be without figures and symbols.

In respect to this general training and equipment of the mind for work, the first acquisition of a language does for the individual what can never be repeated later. When we first take hold of an additional