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 PubltaliPb bg tl}t Mmurrattg of CUtnrinttatl 
 
 Series II. SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1908. Vol. IV. No. 3 
 
 The Authority of Law in 
 Language 
 
 By GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP, Ph. D., 
 
 Professor of English, 
 University of Cincinnati. 
 
 Issued Bi-Monthly. 
 
 University of Cincinnati Press, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 Entered February 24, 1905, at Cincinnati, Ohio, as second-class matter, under Act of 
 Congress of July 16, 1894.
 
 i-J^ -5 SANTA BAfiBAfU 
 
 <7 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF LAW IN LANGUAGE 
 
 The endeavor to determine the authority of law in language is 
 beset with not a few difficulties. Perhaps the first and greatest 
 of these difficulties lies in finding out exactly the nature of law in 
 language. That laws of language exist is, indeed, a general and 
 natural assumption. We are inclined to take it for granted, in 
 language as in everything else, that this is an orderly and well 
 regulated universe. But the existence of law of some kind being 
 thus assumed, the important matter is the determination of just 
 what meaning we shall give to this term law as it is applied to 
 language. The subject is one which from the beginnings of the 
 modern scientific study of language, and, for that matter, from 
 the days of Plato, has engaged the deepest interest of philosophers 
 and philologists. By the technical linguists of modern times it 
 has usually been approached from the most obviously physical 
 side of language, from the side of phonetics.^ Any general con- 
 ception of law in language, however, must apply not only to pho- 
 netics, but to all the manifestations of language, to forms, to syn- 
 tax, to everything which enters into the composition of language. 
 It may seem an ambitious project to attempt to discuss within the 
 brief compass of an essay the varied significance of the subject 
 of the authority of law in these different applications. We may 
 hope to find, however, that the ideas which will have to be con- 
 sidered are of wider bearing than might at first be supposed, and 
 that they are at least of sufficiently general value to justify an 
 examination of the subject from so comprehensive a point of view. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to bestow more than a passing glance 
 upon the old notion of the completely objective existence of lan- 
 guage, of its creation and regulation by some kind of law-giver, 
 and of its consequent possession of a native and inherent system 
 of law which may be dogmatically applied. This old belief often 
 took the form of statement that language is an organism as truly 
 
 1. See Wechssler's essay, 'Giebt es Lautgesetze,' Indogermanische 
 Forschungen, 1900. Wechssler gives a full bibliography of the subject. To 
 Wechssler's list may be added Professor Henry Cecil Wyld's inaugural 
 address, Law in Language, Liverpool, 1900. Professor Wyld also limits 
 his discussion to phonetic law. 
 
 3
 
 as any object of the physical world is an organism; it assumed 
 that language may be as completely dissociated from man as 
 stock or stone may be. The simple answer to all this is that 
 language, unlike the stock or stone, has no existence that we 
 are conscious of apart from the activities of the minds of 
 individual, living, human beings. The recorded historical forms 
 of language as we know them in literature, in dictionaries, 
 and in descriptive grammars are, of course, not language any 
 more than the mummy of an Egyptian Pharaoh is a man. The 
 language of literature may be re-created in the minds of liv- 
 ing beings, but then it is not the language of the printed page 
 which exists, but each reader's fresh interpretation of that lan- 
 guage which makes it vivid and significant to the mind occupied 
 by it. In no conceivable way can language be thought of as an 
 external organism; it must be regarded as a manifestation of 
 mind, and whatever structure or rule or law it may have must be 
 found in the processes of living minds. 
 
 It is interesting to observe how the comparatively old science 
 of philology has in this respect attained a solid footing, whereas 
 the relatively new science of sociology is still floundering in the 
 mire of the antiquated theory of the objective existence of or 
 counterpart to mental or psychological activities. In a recent sum- 
 mary of the present state of sociological inquiry Professor Gid- 
 dings^ has put side by side the two modern methods of sociological 
 study. On the one hand, he says, are those who insist that 'the 
 typical society, consisting of individuals both dwelling and work- 
 ing together, is as truly an organism as is the animal or vegetal 
 body composed of cells and differentiated into mutually dependent 
 tissues and organs.' The other point of view is assumed by those 
 who conceive society as a 'superorganic product,' and who regard 
 it 'as essentially a psychological phenomenon. They assume that 
 all social bonds, instead of being merely physical, like the cohesion 
 of material cells, may be resolved into some common activity or 
 interactivity of individual minds.' Applying the same general 
 principles to the study of language, there can hardly be any ques- 
 tion that the second view is right. Language, which is merely one 
 of the manifestations of social grouping, has its real existence in 
 the common activity or interactivity of individual minds. 
 
 1. Giddings, Sociology, New York, 1908, p. 30. 
 
 4
 
 It is possible to evade the more difficult problems that arise in 
 the consideration of law in language and still arrive at results 
 which must be dignified by the name of law. Thus by the simplest 
 process of observation similars may be grouped together. As a 
 child playing with pebbles may put all the white ones in this heap 
 and all the black ones in that, so the student of language may 
 group the phenomena of language according to the principle of 
 obvious similarity. He may thus put all of his pronouns follow- 
 ing verbs into one class and arrive at a statement of the law for 
 that class — that a pronoun after the verb takes the form of the 
 objective case. Such law is merely descriptive, and to the his- 
 torian or to the philosopher or the psychologist it has in itself 
 little interest. Its function is to lay out the materials in orderly 
 fashion with which the explaining student is to work. The method 
 followed is altogether external ; it groups phenomena together 
 which to the observation seem to be similar, but which for the 
 more curious inquirer have to be tested by some deeper principle 
 than that of outer similarity before they can be finally accepted as 
 a real grouping of similars. It is only to the practical student of 
 language that such a descriptive method has any value; for him 
 it is not necessary to go beyond these simple laws of observation 
 based upon apparent similarity, and in his practice the question of 
 the authority of these laws hardly arises. 
 
 The deeper principle which is to be added to the observation 
 of externals in the grouping of similars is the principle of causal 
 explanation, giving rise to causal laws. It should be quite clear 
 that a causal statement of a phenomenon or a group of phenomena 
 is not the same thing as a description of them. A description of 
 the sound t, for example, would be a statement of such and such 
 an effect upon the ear. But a causal explanation of the sound 
 must consider its origins, the position of the tongue against the 
 upper gums, the expulsion, checking, and sudden loosing of the 
 breath which actually forms the sound. A causal law is thus seen 
 to be a mechanical law in the sense that it shows by what processes 
 results are obtained ; it reveals the mechanism of an action. Still 
 further back of the mechanical causal law is, of course, that kind 
 of law which is designated as teleological, the law of final cause. 
 But teleological law carries us over into the region of metaphysics, 
 and so far we need not at present venture. It will be more to our
 
 present purpose to carry a little further the analysis of mechanical 
 causal and descriptive law. 
 
 A descriptive law is usually easier to arrive at and, at the same 
 time, is of less certain value than a causal statement or law. 
 The latter tends to be self-convincing-, apodeictic. If its facts are 
 right and its methods are sound the results are felt to be neces- 
 sary. A descriptive generalization, on the other hand, is often 
 shown not to be a law by the application of causal principles. 
 Facts which to the observation seem similar may really be diverse, 
 and a descriptive law may cover the ground of several causal laws ; 
 in other words, by the application of causal explanations we often 
 give up old and accept new principles for the holding together of 
 similars. A familiar illustration of this may be cited from archi- 
 tecture. It is well known that the Gothic style, in the architect's 
 system of classification, consists not in the pointed arch, not even 
 in the flying buttress, for these may be and in fact often are 
 nothing more than external and ornamental in their application. 
 But the explaining principle of classification, the causal statement 
 of the quality of Gothic style, is to be found in a principle of con- 
 struction often concealed to the external observer, the principle 
 of push and thrust in the support of vaulting. In language the 
 causal or mechanical principle must be continually called into 
 service for the sake of correcting the errors of descriptive general- 
 ization. We know from their explanation and origin that the two 
 words, the verb hold and the noun the hold of a ship (originally 
 the hole of a ship), although they have somewhat similar or at 
 least conceivably related meanings, are not historically the same 
 word. So also must we explain by causal principles how one 
 form, for example, English lean, meaning 'slender' and the verbal 
 idea, 'to lean,' or strain, meaning 'stock, race,' and 'to strain,' can 
 have various meanings. In the same way we must explain how 
 one meaning may assume different forms, for example, regal, 
 royal, real, and in countless ways the mechanical explanation is 
 called in to supplement and correct external observation. 
 
 To the student of to-day the meaning which is given to the 
 conception of causal law is very much colored by the applications 
 of that law in the study of the natural sciences. Our first thought 
 at the mention of the term law is of the mechanical laws of physi- 
 cal matter. It will be well, therefore, to examine for a moment 
 
 6
 
 the conception of causal law from this point of view before we 
 attempt to test its value and authority as applied to language. 
 
 If we had a causal law for every phenomenon, the natural 
 scientists tell us, we should have a perfectly clear, intelligible, and 
 predictable universe. This assertion and belief obviously imply 
 that a causal law always operates in the same way and always has 
 the same result. Thus two parts of hydrogen added to one part 
 of oxygen always produces water, and if we can be sure of any- 
 thing, says the scientist, we can be sure that the combination 
 always will produce water. It is assumed that when a different 
 result enters, the law which has been supposed to explain the facts 
 is not a real law but that more than one law is present ; that is, 
 that the grouping which was made was only descriptive and needs 
 a further analysis into its real and varied causal principles. In the 
 form of a rule this theory may be stated thus : like causes produce 
 like effects and the same cause always produces the same effect. 
 This is not the place to enter into any discussion of the credibility 
 of the statements of this rule. They are plainly dogmas, that is, 
 probabilities raised to the position of general laws by our strong 
 belief in them. They are not susceptible of immediate proof, 
 since we cannot prove such unqualified universals. Disregarding, 
 therefore, the question of the ultimate truth of these principles, 
 we shall find it more profitable to consider in how far this concep- 
 tion of law applies to language. 
 
 First of all it should be observed that language as a concept 
 has none of the definiteness, of the necessity, and of the firmness 
 of a natural substance. Hydrogen is hydrogen and water is water 
 the world over. Language, to be sure, is expression ; but expres- 
 sion is not necessarily vocal — it may be gesture and make its 
 appeal to the eye instead of the ear. To define language with 
 clearly marked limits it is necessary first to settle more or less 
 arbitrarily on the definition. Just when does the babbling of a 
 child cease to be mere babbling and become language? Are the 
 vocal utterances of animals ever to be dignified with the name of 
 language? The truth is that language is not a positive power, a 
 faculty, a something by virtue of the possession of which man is 
 man. It is rather adventitious than necessary to human life, and 
 in its various manifestations it passes imperceptibly into and par- 
 takes of many different aspects of life. It is one of those human 
 activities which the definiteness of our terminology sometimes
 
 leads us to suppose we thoroughly understand, but which seem 
 the vaguer the more we try to make our ideas of them solid and 
 distinct. 
 
 If language is not to be thought of as a human activity, sharply 
 marked off from every other human activity, as a detachable unit 
 in the human composition, how is it when we come to consider the 
 processes of language? Are they simple and distinct, and do they 
 exhibit such necessary and uniform mechanical laws as are to be 
 observed in the natural world? To answer these questions it will 
 be necessary to examine some of the typical processes of lan- 
 guage. For this purpose we may take an illustration from phonetics 
 and another from syntax, the assimilation of consonants for the 
 one and the rules or concord for the other. Since sound is largely 
 physical, both on the side of its production and its reception, it 
 is in the sounds of language if anywhere that language laws might 
 be supposed to operate as they do with natural phenomena; and 
 in the assimilation of consonants we have one of the most obvi- 
 ously physical set of phonetic phenomena to consider that language 
 offers. The simplest statement of this rule, or law, of assimi- 
 lation is that when two consonants of unlike kind, that is, a voiced 
 and a voiceless consonant, come into juxtaposition, one is assimi- 
 lated to the other — the voiceless consonant either becomes voiced 
 or the voiced consonant becomes voiceless. The words race, 
 raced illustrate one process, thief, thieves the other. But excep- 
 tion must be made of the Unguals and nasals ; for the purposes 
 of this law, they must be regarded not as consonants, since pairs 
 like cold, colt; rend, rent; crammed, cramped (the p is merely ortho- 
 graphic and is no more present in sound than a 6 is in crammed) 
 show that they combine with equal ease with either voiced or 
 voiceless consonants. This is restriction number one. A second 
 limitation of the rule requires that the consonants shall be in the 
 same syllable. Words like south-down, or hot-bed, or foot-ball 
 consequently fall out of the rule, although with the consonants of 
 these words we may observe more or less tendency towards 
 assimilation. Another limitation must be recognized which arises 
 out of the fact that the division of consonants into voiced and 
 voiceless is not based on an absolute difference of kind. It is not 
 a difference of nature, but a difference of degree, as is the distinc- 
 tion between vowel and consonant. Vowels shade over into con- 
 sonants imperceptibly, and voiced consonants are distinguished 
 
 8
 
 from voiceless at. the dividing line only by minute degrees of 
 difference. Thus the final consonant following a gutteral k, in 
 the combination of kd in book'd, is more voiced, or at least is likely 
 to be more voiced, than the final consonant of drop'd. 
 
 It would not be difficult to find a physiological explanation why 
 this should be so, but at present we are merely concerned with the 
 fact that voiced and voiceless consonants should not be thought of 
 as absolute and definitely different in their values, like two phys- 
 ical elements, but merely as stages in an unbroken sequence. 
 Finally, not to delay too long over our list of restrictions, which 
 indeed might be increased almost indefinitely, the law of assimi- 
 lation can operate only when there is no positive intention on the 
 part of the speaker to prevent it. Thus if the speaker wills to do 
 so, for any reason whatsoever, he may pronounce the final d of 
 drop'd as a voiced sound, and so with any other consonant in any 
 possible combination. There is nothing essentially impossible in 
 the combination of a voiced and voiceless consonant, and any 
 speaker may at any moment produce such a combination. Eng- 
 lish poetry is full of illustrations, of which one from Richard III, 
 V, III, 119, will suffice: 
 
 "Think, how thou stabb'dst me in my prime of youth." 
 Manifestly all these restrictions suppose a kind of activity very 
 different from the way in which the phenomena of the natural 
 world act. The two parts of hydrogen and the one of oxygen 
 which unite to form water are, in the first place, quite separate 
 and distinct from each other; they are not supposed to be joined 
 by gradual connecting links, but each exists for and by itself. 
 Moreover, when they are combined they not only show a tend- 
 ency of development, but they show a certain and positive devel-- 
 opment. There is nothing inherent in them separately or in their 
 result when combined which is able to change or prevent their 
 action. On the other hand, in every phonetic development there 
 is something inherent in the processes of language which enters 
 to assist, to retard, or even prevent a probable phonetic develop- 
 ment. From the very nature of language it is consequently im- 
 possible to speak of phonetic laws with the same meaning that we 
 give to natural physical law. In phonetics we have always a 
 tendency of development or change, conditioned by a multitude of 
 helping or restraining tendencies which bring about an infinity of 
 degrees in the phonetic process ; in the physical world when a 
 
 9
 
 change takes place it is definitely ponderable, measurable, limit- 
 able in some way, its results are clear and certain, and the whole 
 is capable of reduction to the form of an exact law, not merely the 
 statement of a probable tendency. 
 
 If we find that phonetic processes, which of all the activities 
 of language afford the closest parallel to natural, physical activi- 
 ties, cannot be explained by the same kind of law that the physicist 
 uses to explain natural phenomena, still less should we expect the 
 other and more psychological activities of language to be explain- 
 able by that kind of law. The forms of syntax, the colors and 
 developments in meaning of words, the cadences and tunes of 
 speech, all these are language processes which are subject to some 
 kind of law or cause, but plainly not to a fixed and necessary causal 
 law like that we have been discussing. For illustration we may 
 take the syntactical law that a verb agrees with its subject in per- 
 son and number. First of all this law can have application only 
 to an inflectional language, like the members of the Indo-Germanic 
 family of languages. In an isolative language like Chinese, where 
 there is no formal concord, the law could have no meaning. In 
 an inflectional language, however, it supposes that when a subject 
 is plural number or singular number, first, second, or third person, 
 the verb will have a distinctive form and feeling corresponding 
 respectively to these different categories of the subject. When we 
 come to apply the law to any language, or any period of a lan- 
 guage, we find that practically the law is again nothing more than 
 the statement of a general tendency, that this general tendency is 
 interrupted at various points often to such an extent as to destroy 
 the general value of the law. In modern English, for example, 
 the feeling for personal concord between verb and subject is almost 
 . completely lost. In the past tense of all verbs it is altogether 
 lacking, and in the modal auxiliaries also for the present. A 
 singular verb may be used with plural subject, as in the sentence. 
 More than one man has crossed Brooklyn Bridge, where the logical 
 force of the subject is certainly plural, and a singular subject may 
 be used with plural verb, as in You were not the man, where the 
 logical force of the subject is certainly singular. To call these ex- 
 ceptions to the law, or to explain them by subtle logical distinctions 
 not present in the normal linguistic consciousness is, of course, beg- 
 ging the question. The real fact seems to be that, although often 
 we do have a feeling for concord in number between subject and 
 verb, at times this feeling is in abeyance. The general tendency 
 
 10
 
 or law is temporarily suspended and the test or requirement or 
 convention, whatever you wish to call it, of concord is not applied. 
 Every grammatical category will be found on analysis to fray off 
 at its edges into such ambiguities and uncertainties of classifica- 
 tion. What we call law or rule is merely a convenient but strictly 
 unjustifiable descriptive generalization covering only a part of 
 the facts. To give it any other than this inexact meaning is to 
 proceed from a priori theory, and not from the ground of actual 
 practice. 
 
 We must add something, therefore, to our conception of the 
 causal mechanical laws of language. The great difference be- 
 tween language and the natural world which makes the principle 
 of causal explanation of differing value as applied to the two, is 
 the necessary presence of something in the former which is never 
 present in the latter. In language the elements of mind and voli- 
 tion always enter; in the natural world, so far as we can see at 
 present, they never enter. Perhaps mutation as it is at present stu- 
 died in plant life is to be explained on the basis of the presence of 
 some kind of mind or will in matter. Perhaps an exceptionally 
 endowed plant may be able to determine for itself that it will not 
 be like its fellows, but will be something different. Perhaps also 
 a very exceptionally endowed atom of oxygen may, conceivably 
 in the future if it never has done so in the past, decide that it will 
 combine with two elements of hydrogen, not to produce water, 
 but something new and unknown to gods or men. Whether this 
 is probable or not in the physical world, we know it is true in the 
 mental. Volition is constantly bringing about mutation in lan- 
 guage. Not every process produces something new and striking, 
 for the will may act merely as repetition in the formation of habit, 
 and of speech habits more will be said later. But the im- 
 portant thing to remember is that at any moment the volitional 
 process may produce something new. At any moment we may 
 have a language "sport", a language creation, which may run 
 counter to all other volitional acts in its group. It is for this 
 reason that we cannot speak of causal law as applied to language 
 in the same way as we speak of causal law as applied to the natural 
 world. All normal language processes are volitional processes, 
 and the question of uniformity, or regularity, in language is con- 
 sequently not a question of necessary results from similar causes, 
 but a question why volitional acts should be repeated in individuals 
 
 11
 
 and in groups of individuals. The extent of the voHtional charac- 
 ter of languas^e may be seen from the possibility of complete in- 
 hibition. This is not conceivable in the physical world. Gold must 
 glitter and the diamond must shine. But in language a cause may 
 be without an effect. There may be no expression even in the pre- 
 sence of the strongest incentive to expression. The will may 
 annihilate what it can create, but the natural world has no choice 
 but to obey the conditions of its existence. 
 
 To cite even a small part of the many ways in which uniform- 
 ity of tendency, or regularity, or repetition, or law, in this sense, is 
 brought about in the volitional processes of language would be 
 manifestly impossible within the brief limits of this paper. Only 
 a few can be mentioned in order to illustrate the nature of law in 
 language and to furnish the basis for some reflections on the 
 proper attitude towards such law. First of all, however, it will 
 be necessary to discuss briefly the way in which volition first enters 
 into language and the way in which conscious volitional acts pass 
 over into unconscious habitual acts. 
 
 The psychologists are accustomed to make a distinction be- 
 tween what they call ideomotor activities and volitional activities. 
 By ideomotor activities they mean such as are produced without 
 choice or intention ; such activities are merely the unwilled expres- 
 sion of an image on the brain — for example, somebody yawns and 
 everybody else within seeing distance unconsciously does the 
 same. Image actions of this sort were probably very important 
 factors in the primitive development of language. The primitive 
 speaker heard a sound and, without meaning anything by it, he 
 unwittingly imitated that sound. It is in this way partly that a 
 child is still taught to speak. The parent repeats a word, say 
 Dada, some dozen or twenty or fifty times, until the image of that 
 word is definitely fixed in the child's mind, when by this tendency 
 to ideomotor activity the child utters the word. The proud parent 
 is immediately entranced because his child has spoken. But has he 
 spoken? Is the mere unwilled expression of a motor impulse 
 speech? No, for there must still be added something else on the 
 child's part ; there must be added choice, will, intention. The child 
 must design to convey a significance by means of his word, and 
 only when he does so are all the elements of a linguistic process 
 present. After that at any moment the volitional process may 
 
 12
 
 become expressive, may become something which is not merely 
 the reflection of a mental image. 
 
 Habit in language operates much as it does in other human 
 activities. The effects of habit in many actions are quite familiar 
 to us. The piano player through long years of practice is enabled 
 to perform feats of rapid action with his fingers which at 
 the beginning he could hardly imagine. As he grows in 
 skill he not only performs these feats with physical ease, but he 
 performs them without any effort of will. His fingers seem to 
 move, to play, of themselves. And so with many other activities. 
 Constant drill and practice does away with the necessity of giving 
 thought to the method of an activity. The skillful marksman does 
 not need to stop and take aim, he fires and hits the mark immedi- 
 ately, almost by instinct as we say. Now there is perhaps no 
 human activity in which we are so constantly and perfectly drilled 
 as in the activities of speech. Before the child begins to walk he 
 exercises his tongue and the other vocal muscles in the formation 
 of speech-sounds. And from the days of infancy to his last hours 
 the speaking being is engaged in drilling himself in the art of 
 speech. The result is that all speech activities tend to become highly 
 developed and stable habits. Most speakers are, of course, ex- 
 tremely conventional in the set of speech-habits which they acquire, 
 Our human race has lived so long, the usual and normal experien- 
 ces of life have occurred so frequently, that in the course of time 
 everybody acquires forms of speech expressive of those constantly 
 recurring experiences. Thus when I meet my neighbor coming 
 out of his gate in the morning, I say Hoiv do yon do? or Good- 
 morning. I do this without the slightest effort ; the words fall as 
 glibly and easily from my tongue as the notes do from the fingers 
 of the skillful pianist. A great part of our speech, more perhaps 
 than we suppose, is made up of just such habitual, colorless ex- 
 pression. Speech of this kind closely resembles those ideomotor 
 activities just mentioned. When I see my neighbor coming out of 
 his gate a part of the image in my mind is a greeting, and so the 
 greeting involuntarily slips out in order that the picture may be 
 complete. For most of the occasions of daily life we have just 
 such habitual, Ideomotor expressions, consecrated by long use, but 
 in themselves almost but never completely lacking in personal 
 color or intention on the part of the speaker. I need hardly call 
 attention to the fact that in the minds of most men there is a deep- 
 
 13
 
 rooted hostility towards any departure from these fixed habits. 
 That which is famihar seems good and right, and rational argu- 
 ments stand little show when they come in conflict with ancient 
 and established custom. But the important matter to note for pres- 
 ent purposes is that no habitual speech-activity could have been in 
 the beginning a habit. It must have become such by repetition, just 
 as the pianist's unconscious dexterity must have been acquired by 
 slow and painful individual acts of his will. The first person who 
 said Good-morning to his neighbor must have meant something by 
 it, and the second and the third, and all succeeding persons who 
 used the phrase before it became a mechanical conventional habit. 
 In their origins, therefore, all language expressions were intended 
 to convey meaning, and if they were intended to convey meaning, 
 then they were volitional activities. For us today, who are 
 enriched, or burdened, as you please, with a great inherited gift 
 of conventional expression, it is necessary to add to or depart 
 from, in some way to vary the stock of habitual expression, if we 
 wish to be positively expressive. In other words, positive expres- 
 sion is as much today a matter of intention, of free volition as it 
 ever was. We differ from the primitive speaker only in this, 
 that we have at our disposal a greater supply of negative weak- 
 ened habitual expressions which relieves us from the absolute 
 necessity of exerting our wills if we wish to be lazy, and that in 
 order to be positively expressive we must rise superior to the vast 
 network of habit which more and more tends to entangle, even to 
 strangle our own free, individual activity. 
 
 In its simplest forms the volitional choice of the material of 
 language is doubtless largely determined by physical facts. The 
 choice of the voice as the medium of expression rather than 
 gesture is due to the greater economy and effectiveness of vocal 
 expression as compared with all other kinds of expression. In 
 the same way the selection of the specific sounds which go to 
 make up a language is probably to some extent determined by con- 
 venience, or, in the old phrase, "ease of utterance." This is a 
 principle or law which is of undoubted validity in assisting in the 
 explanation of some developments, especially phonetic develop- 
 ments, like the assimilation of consonants, mutation or umlaut, 
 and a few others in which the physical side of language is promi- 
 nent. But mental suggestion is certainly an important factor in 
 these changes, and it would be easy to exaggerate the principle 
 
 14
 
 of physiological economy or ease in the explanation of language 
 changes. In umlaut, for example, the theory of physiological ease 
 is quite inadequate as an explanation of the change. Here, as 
 ever, we have to do with mental activities, and these may at any 
 moment rise superior to any of the so-called natural, physiological 
 necessities. 
 
 The widest degree of volitional uniformity is brought about 
 by the necessity of the symbolic value of language. Vocal sounds 
 in truly primitive conditions of human life were largely individu- 
 ally expressive. Whatever uniformity they may have had was the 
 result of uniform physical conditions, mainly the similarity of the 
 organs of voice and of the environment surrounding the speaking 
 animals. As such, vocal sound was not yet specifically language. 
 Language is a different species of vocal sound, to use the termi- 
 nology of the natural sciences, formed by the addition of a new 
 element — that is, the symbolic value of uttered sound. This im- 
 posing of symbolic value upon speech sounds is a volitional process 
 and at the same time a segregating and generalizing process. 
 From the vast number of possible sounds and combinations of 
 sounds some certain few are selected by a speech community for 
 its purposes of speech communication. The precise selection 
 which it makes is apparently not determined by any necessity but 
 seems to be free act of will. Speech communities closely related 
 geographically and ethnologically often choose different speech 
 elements. Each has the power of the speech elements of the other, 
 but through differing initial acts of choice, confirmed by the 
 repetition of the general community through imitation in the for- 
 mation of community speech habits, differing sets of symbols be- 
 come established. The conditions determining selection are there- 
 fore not single and simple, but various and complex. Within a 
 group the prime necessity for similar choice arises from the desire 
 of intelligibility. If an idea is to be expressed symbolically by 
 two or more persons they must first of all agree as to the value 
 of the symbols. The degree of such common understanding in 
 language is extraordinarily great. The majority of the speech 
 symbols of a language have an understood and fairly defined 
 value. There is, of course, no such thing as a completely homo- 
 geneous speech community; the common understanding of the 
 value of speech symbols is never more than approximate and prac- 
 tical. Yet the body of these understood speech symbols is so great 
 
 15
 
 and the feeling for them is so certain that we do not usually think 
 of them as the laws of the language, as they of course are. The 
 question of law usually arises when attention is called to an ac- 
 cepted symbolic value by a departure from it. It is from this 
 latter point of view that the practical student is most concerned 
 with the question of law in language. The philosophic student 
 would, however, explain all laws. He would explain not only the 
 exceptions, the laws that account for smaller groups in the large 
 groups, but also the large groups themselves. He would explain 
 not only why the third singular ends in .? in Modern English, but 
 also why the Indo-Germanic languages are inflected and others 
 are not. He would explain not only how Old English cild be- 
 comes Modern English child, but also how and why all sound- 
 changes have taken place. He would explain how words have 
 acquired the functional values which we designate the parts of 
 speech, how they have acquired the complicated and subtle sig- 
 nificances which we give them, how they are united into the group- 
 ings and cadences of speech. The mere suggestion of some of 
 the vast problems called up by the thought of explaining all 
 the integrating volitional processes of past periods in language 
 shows the impossibility of doing so. We can pick out a little point 
 here and there and form more or less satisfactory theories about 
 it; but we can no more reconstruct the past life of a language 
 than we can reconstruct the past life of a people's general political 
 and social beliefs and customs, or the life of an individual. The 
 remoter the life one attempts to reconstruct the less certain the 
 results are bound to be. All attempts at such historical interpre- 
 tation must necessarily be hypothetical, theoretical, inferential. 
 They can never become certain because the conditions cannot be 
 repeated as in the case of physical experiment. If social acts, as 
 we have assumed, are dependent only on the volitional impulses 
 of individuals, allowance must necessarily always be made for 
 these individual impulses. But if there is one thing of which we 
 cannot speak with certainty, it is as to what is taking place or has 
 taken place behind the brow of our neighbor, especially of our 
 long dead neighbor, and this is a lack of certainty that must always 
 infect the interpretations of the so-called historical and social 
 sciences. 
 
 For the student of the processes of language a much more 
 practical and fruitful field of observation and speculation lies in 
 
 16
 
 present use, both individual and community. It would be an 
 interesting effort to describe down to the minutest detail the 
 actual speech conditions of an individual, or better, of a closely 
 related group, in order to show by just what acts each speaker 
 determines his characteristics. When it conies to the examination 
 of community habit, in spite of great similarity as the result of 
 imitation and that pressure towards conformity which the social 
 group always brings, it would certainly be found that complete 
 homogeneity did not exist in any community. Perfect homo- 
 geneity implies identity in the value of all speech symbols of 
 the persons in the community. In such a community misunder- 
 standing would not need to be guarded against because it could 
 never occur. Perfect similarity of intention would always be 
 followed by perfect similarity of result. But a community of this 
 kind exists only as an ideal abstraction. We cannot conceive of 
 a body of people detached and self-containing without differentia- 
 tion of group and group, or individual and individual. We may 
 imagine a small tribe shut up in a valley for a long period of time 
 and cut off from all communication with the outer world as com- 
 ing nearest to it. But actually such tribes are not known. There 
 is always differentiation. Even the most secluded mountain 
 valley, the loneliest island in the South Seas, has its pastor or 
 priest, its head-man, and its distinctions of caste of some sort. 
 Even the variety of its trades and occupations necessitates variety 
 in the characteristics of speech of its inhabitants. Homogeneity 
 is always only approximate. Since will is always present the law 
 of imitation, the tendency toward social congruity, can never 
 become absolute until individuality disappears. Complete homo- 
 geneity is therefore an assumption, an ideal and subjective cre- 
 ation, which in reality has only its suggestion in the tendency of 
 the facts. Heterogeneity, on the other hand, is necessary, and it is 
 possible for it to exist without injury to language by the rule of 
 negligible variation. No speech-community has ever demanded 
 perfect homogeniety, since it is not necessary for the purposes of 
 satisfactory, intelligible communication. Communication is 
 largely through the imagination. All that is absolutely required 
 is some indication of the intention of the communicating person, 
 and then the recipient willingly fills in the content of the communi- 
 cation. Assuming, therefore, that homogeneity tending towards 
 the formation of community habits is the trend or tendency of 
 
 17
 
 development in speech, conditioned by its symbolic value, although 
 in its completeness it can never be realized, it may be of interest 
 to point out a few of the ways in which homogeneity is prevented 
 in the practical use of language : 
 
 (1) We may have, first of all, partial survivals of earlier 
 habitual uses. The general tendency in a community may have 
 changed, but former uses of the same community may persist here 
 and there. Instances of this are very numerous in the history of 
 language. The present popular pronunciation of recognise as 
 rekonise, without the g, was formerly general, but it is now giving 
 away or, perhaps we should say, has given away, under the influ- 
 ence of orthography, to a new general tendency. In the condition 
 contrary to fact, e. g., If I zvere you, the old general habit, 
 persists pretty strongly, but beside it a new one is arising, // / 
 contrary to fact, c. g., If I were you, the old general habit 
 There is an old fashioned pronunciation of the word deaf with 
 same quality of vowel as have the words sheaf, sheep, leap, etc. 
 Historically the vowels of deaf and leap are of the same origin. 
 and formerly the pronunciation of deaf like sheaf was not only 
 historically correct but was also customary good use. 
 
 (2) We may have mixed speech due to the combination of 
 members of differing geographical or social speech communities, 
 and consequently of different speech habits, into one community. 
 The new members for some time will not be completely assimi- 
 lated. The degree of difference varies in extent from the speech 
 of the recognized foreigner who speaks the language with an 
 accent, as we say, and who uses unidiomatic syntax, to the speech 
 of a person whose outer origin can be inferred only from an occa- 
 sional dialectal word or pronunciation, as for example, an Ameri- 
 canized Englishman who should continue to speak of luggage, 
 the New Englander who should speak of his shoes as his boots, 
 or the cultivated speaker who should retain popular pronunciations 
 such as futher for further, idear for idea, etc. 
 
 (3) Differences of tendency may arise also from a number of 
 causes much more personal and individual in character. In pro- 
 nunciation, for example, we have within a group widely varying 
 degrees of energy in enunciation. The physical organisms of 
 some speakers are keenly sensitive to the auditory side of speech 
 and their minds act in accordance. They hear and feel sounds 
 sharply and distinctly and consequently exert themselves to pro- 
 
 18
 
 duce them sharply and distinctly. Others, on the contrary, hear 
 vaguely and indistinctly ; their speech tunes are always a little 
 sharp or flat or a little blurred. This difference of energy in 
 enunciation is not necessarily appreciated as a mark of different 
 speech grouping. It is characteristic of speakers who, in the 
 common social understanding, belong to the same group. The 
 speech of any given community is energetic in varying degrees. 
 Thus a word like very has many different pronunciations, clearly 
 distinguishable to the ear but difficult of representation in spelling. 
 They range all the way from a tense, energetic pronunciation 
 almost the same as vary to a vague and loose vurry. The differ- 
 ence is largely dependent on personality — at least on that side of 
 personality which has to do with response to auditory impressions. 
 The speaker of dull auditory sensibility tends towards such pro- 
 nunciations as Satday, Hosophy, errs (errors), etc., where the 
 speaker of keen auditory sense tends toward a clear-cut and pre- 
 cise manner of enunciation. 
 
 (4) Still more personal is the variety of ideal impulse which 
 may color language. This is a matter of quite conscious intent 
 and striving. Conscious ideals in language are a mark of sophis- 
 ticated rather than natural use, but the degree of conscious reflec- 
 tion in language is surprisingly great. It is a mistake to suppose 
 that only the so-called educated and cultivated speakers indulge 
 in conscious theorizing in speech; the popular mind is just as 
 sophisticated, as full of ideas and notions about language as the 
 educated mind is of opinions and facts. The origin of these con- 
 scious reflections is various. They may arise from the sense of 
 respect for the authority of another person or of another group, 
 the social activities of which as a whole are admired — for example, 
 the supposedly elegant pronunciation of either, tieither, rhyming 
 with blither; or the broad a in tornatoes, branches, dance, 
 etc. Or the authority of conventional spelling may be raised to 
 the position of conscious authority — e. g. good deal instead of 
 good eal, Magdalen instead of Maudlin. The pronunciation cited 
 above, rekonize, had to give way to a conscious spelling pronun- 
 ciation in recognize; in recognisance the theory has not yet 
 operated. In poignant for poinant the same principle is illus- 
 trated. Or again, the authority of history or of supposed history 
 or of literary use may be called in as a guide to conscious use. 
 The American defends the use of guess by the authority of 
 
 19
 
 Chaucer, satisfying thus the craving for the ideal. In Hke manner 
 an appeal is made to the authority of etymolog>' to justify diver- 
 gences from the common custom. The etymological theorist will 
 not say sympathy for, because the word sympathy has for its first 
 element a preposition which demands, in his eyes, the English pre- 
 position zi'ith. On the basis of etymology he refuses also to fol- 
 low the general custom in the use of words like aggravate, in the 
 sense of annoy, or oblivious, in the sense of unobservant ; or to 
 use a past participle like soddened. 
 
 (5) Variety of associative grouping in different minds also 
 begets variety in the habits of language. A perfect and a com- 
 pletely diffused understanding of language on the side of its 
 symbolic value would prevent difference of associative grouping. 
 As it is, however, we do not find such rigidity of system in lan- 
 guage. We do find, on the other hand, inconsequent and imperfect 
 association groups with more or less fluctuation between the 
 groups. Thus the speaker who says God (the vowel like that of 
 father) may not use the same vowel in dog, but the broad vowel 
 of pshaw; on the other hand, one who pronounces dog with the 
 vowel of father is quite likely to use the vowel of pshaw in God. 
 The same speaker may use the pronunciation hoof with the vowel 
 of good, roof with the vowel of school, or may reverse them and 
 pronounce roof like good, and hoof like school. Stock examples 
 in syntax are the use of shall and will. The logical intent of all 
 persons in the expression of thought by the means of these aux- 
 iliaries is the same. The difference in use arises from the differ- 
 ence in the associations which have gathered around the words. 
 So also in the use of like as conjunction and than as preposition. 
 
 (6) When this difference of associational grouping becomes 
 a little more positive it constitutes a difference of logical appeal. 
 Certain variations due to the variety of logical appeal are freely 
 accepted into community use, as are many of those due to differ- 
 ing associational grouping. Thus collective nouns may take a 
 singular or a plural verb; or a subject like The king with all his 
 men may be followed by a singular or a plural verb ; or kind may 
 be preceded by a plural or a singular demonstrative adjective. 
 
 (7) A final source of heterogeneity in language is the variety 
 of connotative suggestion which the forms of speech may have. 
 This is^ of course, an extremely personal matter. All sorts of 
 antipathies and likings arise out of different personal experiences 
 
 20
 
 and associations. Another person's admirations and aversions 
 are difficult to understand, and indeed in most instances, not being 
 based upon reason, they are impossible to understand. Some 
 time ago a crusade of newspaper correspondents was directed 
 against the harmless phrase All right. Some of the participants 
 managed to work themselves into a frenzy of disgust, scorn, and 
 loathing for this locution. They called it common, vulgar, over- 
 worked, meaningless, and all the other hard names they could 
 think of. Their objections were none of them such as one not 
 bitten with the same madness could understand ; but for them- 
 selves they were sufficient and final. Since one must be personal 
 here, the writer may be pardoned for citing a few of his own pet 
 antipathies. The word trip, meaning vacation or journey, sug- 
 gests unpleasant things, such as the August crowd at Atlantic 
 City, and at the expense often of some effort the writer avoids 
 using it. Likewise viezv-point, in spite of the example of stand- 
 point, which is accepted, or of the similar compounds makeshift, 
 breakwater, turnkey, etc., for some reason or other suggests to 
 the writer everything that is linguistically cheap and tawdry. 
 They are natural and reasonable words, but the logical defense 
 carries no weight. Other similar antipathies are the words retire, 
 meaning to go to bed; presume, meaning to suppose; partial, 
 meaning fond of, as in / am quite partial to peas.. 
 
 In all questions of law a matter of prime practical interest and 
 importance is that of proper attitude toward law, of the kind of 
 authority which the law should have, and the kind of obedience it 
 may exact from those who are subject to it. First of all, it is plain 
 that law in language as we have found it, that is, a trend or tend- 
 ency of volitional development sometimes completing itself in the 
 formation of habits, can have no absolute or mandatory power. 
 As has already been pointed out, the power of the individual over 
 language may extend to the complete negation of language ; and 
 this side of that extreme there is no law of speech which is not in 
 one way or another conditioned by the willing acceptance of it on 
 the part of the speaker. 
 
 The only restraining or restrictive power in language is 
 that of damages. This is the only injunction that can be placed 
 upon the operation of the laws of language. I am free to do as I 
 will and you are free to do as you will. Nothing outside of lan- 
 guage and nothing within language can establish a fixed procedure 
 
 21
 
 which must be followed. Yet this freedom is never absolute. 
 Activity in language is incited, is spurred on, by the desire of 
 attaining an end, the desire of self-expression, of the persuasion 
 or conviction of the thought of others ; it is restrained, on the 
 other hand, by the fear of damages. All use of language implies 
 a combination of will-powers — my will power and yours, in the 
 present instance. The desire to gain you for my side compels me 
 to address you in as winning terms as I can command ; and the 
 fear of losing you prevents me from using any forms of language 
 which I might suppose to be unintelligible to you or which I 
 might suppose would arouse your hostility and antipathies. Be- 
 tween these two spurs of desire and fear I seek to find a middle 
 ground on which I can satisfy myself and at the same time not 
 offend others. Justice in language consists in this, in the right 
 perception of my privilege of free and self-determining action in 
 its relation to the actions of others about me. The damages re- 
 sulting from a lack of this perception may be twofold. On the one 
 side, I may suffer a loss of individuality by putting too great stress 
 upon the demands of my audience. I may strive so hard not to 
 offend that my use of language may be determined altogether by 
 what I think will fall in with the habits and predilections of 
 others. In that case I am likely to become insincere or so conven- 
 tional and colorless that I shall not have anything to say that my 
 audience would ever care to hear. On the other hand, there may 
 be an excess of individuality. One may cultivate mannerisms and 
 pecuHarities of speech, tricks of style, as have" extremists like 
 Browning, Whitman, Meredith, Henry James, and many another, 
 which may act to the damage of the speaker or writer. It is, of 
 course, every man's duty to himself to determine just how far his 
 individual peculiarities are acceptable to his fellow men. If they 
 are too extreme he can then decide whether he will amend them 
 and become more normal, more like his fellow men; or whether 
 he will persist in them and suffer the charge of originality, or 
 strangeness, or eccentricity, according to the degree of their nov- 
 elty. But in every instance the question is not one of attaining an 
 absolute standard, a fixed and legal right, but rather in taking 
 one's position in a tendency of development at such a point as his 
 powers of perception, his sense of the justice of the situation, lead 
 him to suppose to be for him and for his circumstances the 
 right point. 
 
 In biology it is customary to speak of any development of an 
 
 22
 
 organization which impairs the vitaHty and power of self-perpet- 
 uation of the organism as degeneration. By this analogy we 
 might speak of degeneration in language when it develops in such 
 a way as to make it less effective for the purposes for which 
 language exists. In this sense we may speak of right and wrong 
 in language. That which makes language better, makes it a more 
 effective organism, to continue the figure, is right ; that which 
 makes it less effective is wrong. It has already been pointed out 
 that effectiveness in language must take account of two sides, the 
 side of self-expression, of the individual, and the side of communi- 
 cation, of the recipient of the act of self-expression. On the side 
 of communication it is obvious that the first necessity of right 
 language is that the speaker or writer shall realize what the ex- 
 pressive value of his speech is to the public which he is addressing, 
 what the general social trend or tendency is. This is the chief 
 province of education in language. Such education begins, of 
 course, with the first spoken word of the child, with the first 
 realization of the symbolic value of language. And it continues 
 all through his later life; in his reading, in his speaking with 
 others, and in his writing, the child and man is continuously 
 strengthening his sense of the general social and community value 
 of language. He is continually adding to language on the sym- 
 bolic side. But at the same time, vigorous minds are also adding 
 to language on the self-expressive side. A speaker, if he wishes, 
 may voluntarily act contrary to the accepted symbolic value of 
 language, or he may act without the suggestion of any previous 
 symbolic value, in which instances he either establishes a new 
 symbolic value or remains unintelligible and therefore unpro- 
 ductive. 
 
 The question of the relative value of these two intentions in 
 language — the symbolic, which tends to become the unconsciously 
 volitional, the habitual, and the self-expressive, which tends to 
 become the consciously volitional, the idiosyncratic — for the wel- 
 fare of language, is important but somewhat difficult to answer. 
 For the greater effectiveness of a language shall the more weight be 
 attached to symbolic value or to that power of creation in language 
 which is more positively expressive of individuality? In which 
 direction does progress lie, in which degeneration? In the first 
 place, it should be noted that any symbolic or general value which 
 a form of expression may now have, must have had originally, as 
 
 , 23
 
 was stated above, an individual value. The only way in which lan- 
 guage grows, the only way in which it could have grown in the past, 
 is by the creations of individuals, which afterwards were accept- 
 ed by other individuals, who thus established a trend or tendency 
 or law of the language. But it is inconceivable that anything like a 
 trend or tendency should spring full grown into being. Language 
 has at present its vast complicated powers of traditional and sym- 
 bolic expression only because it has been in all the details of its 
 vastness and complexness individually expressive. It follows, 
 therefore, unless we suppose that language has reached its ulti- 
 mate degree of expressiveness, that all future progress in language 
 depends upon individual initiative. The conception of society in 
 which there is no differentiation of individual from individual, but 
 an absolute regularity of impulse and achievement, a complacent 
 acquiescence in a codified and established system of human activ- 
 ity, whether possible as an actuality or not, cannot arouse much 
 enthusiasm as an ideal. In such a society, however, the laws of 
 language could be so formulated that they would not be disturbed 
 by the freakishness of linguistic malcontents. But if our concep- 
 tion of the ideal society is of one continually bursting its bonds, 
 of one which makes rules and laws only for the privilege of 
 breaking them in order to form better, then individual differences 
 must be permitted and encouraged. The interest and the profit of 
 social intercourse must rest not on the principle of likeness and 
 familiarity, but on the principle of diversity and originality. The 
 old motto must be the watchword — an open road for talent. The 
 justification for every innovation must be its success, and the 
 success of every creation would be determined by the standard of 
 its immediate present effectiveness. It would be the spirit of the 
 law, in such a society, to depart from the law when effectiveness 
 was served. Every new law would be right if it increased the 
 possibilities of expression ; every old law that in any way restrained 
 expressiveness would be wrong, a mark of degeneracy. Uniform- 
 ity would not in itself be a mark of excellence, but rather a danger 
 signal, an indication of a sleeping and slothful spirit. Convention- 
 ality, regularity, would not be virtues, but vices, if they tended in 
 the slightest to blur over individuality in order to produce a level 
 of mediocre social understanding. Divergences and irregularity, 
 provincialisms, localisms, and even vulgarisms, on the other hand, 
 would be virtues, if they were the expressions of real characteris- 
 
 24
 
 tics, the sincere expression of a people who Hved their lives in 
 such surroundings and conditions as nature had placed them in. 
 Perhaps it may be permitted to quote here a paragraph from a 
 recent and illuminating discussion of the dangers of an undiscrim- 
 inating uniformity in social traditions and customs. The author 
 is not speaking specifically of language, but of general social 
 habits and ideals of conduct. *I speak here,' says Professor 
 Royce,^ 'merely of tendencies. As you know, they are nowhere 
 unopposed tendencies. Nor do I for an instant pretend to call 
 even these levelling tendencies wholly or principally evil. But 
 for the moment I call attention to what are obviously questionable, 
 and in some degree are plainly evil, aspects of these modern tend- 
 encies. Imitation is a good thing. All civilization depends upon 
 it. But there may be a limit to the number of people who ought 
 to imitate precisely the same body of ideas and customs. For 
 imitation is not man's whole business. There ought to be some 
 room left for variety. Modern conditions have often increased 
 too much what one might call the purely mechanical carrying- 
 pozver of certain ruling social influences.'^ There are certain 
 metropolitan newspapers, for instance, which have far too many 
 readers for the good of the social order in which they circulate. 
 These newspapers need not always be very mischievous ones. 
 But when read by too vast multitudes, they tend to produce a 
 certain monotonously uniform triviality of mind in a large pro- 
 portion of our city and suburban population. It would be better 
 if the same readers were divided into smaller sections, which read 
 different newspapers, even if these papers were of no higher level. 
 For then there would at least be a greater variety in the sorts of 
 triviality which from day to day occupied their minds. And 
 variety is the beginning of individual independence of insight and 
 of conviction. As for the masses of people who are under the 
 domination of the great corporations that employ them, I am here 
 not in the least dwelling upon their economic difficulties. I am 
 pointing out that the lack of initiative in their lives tends to make 
 their spiritual range narrower. They are too little disposed to 
 
 1. Race Questions, Provincialisms and other American Problems, pp. 
 76-78. 
 
 2. The italics are my own, not Professor Royce's. An instance in 
 language is afforded by the 'purely mechanical carrying-power' of conven- 
 tional or standard expression. 
 
 25
 
 create their own world. Now every man who gets into a vital 
 relation to God's truth becomes, in his own way, a creator. And 
 if you deprive a man of all incentive to create, you in so far tend 
 to cut him off from God's truth. Or in common language, inde- 
 pendence of spirit flourishes only when a man at least believes that 
 he has a chance to change his fortunes if he persistently wills to 
 do so. But the servant of some modern forms of impersonal 
 social organization tends to lose this belief that he has a chance. 
 Hence he tends to lose his independence of spirit.' 
 
 These considerations, somewhat general and ideal though they 
 are, have nevertheless their practical lesson for the student of 
 language. Our vast schemes of uniform education throughout the 
 country, in elementary schools, in high schools, and in colleges ; 
 our literature of newspapers, magazines, and novels, so general in 
 its appeal that it sells from Maine to Texas and in the country 
 village as well as in the town and city ; these are the kind of in- 
 fluences which tend to make us forget that each community, each 
 individual, has the right to create its own world. The conven- 
 tions with which community and individual are surrounded often 
 prevent the discovery of this appropriate and peculiar world. 
 The best language is that, to return for a moment to the termi- 
 nology of the biologists, which functions to its environment. It is 
 only when language does this, that a true social understanding 
 can be attained. It is a shallow notion of education which sup- 
 poses that a uniform or standard English, merely by the fact of 
 its being uniform, can bring about a higher degree of social sym- 
 pathy and intelligence. In fact, social sympathy and intelligence 
 are as likely to be prevented or hindered by a conventional legal- 
 ized standard as they are to be helped. It is the tendency of the 
 standard to cover over distinctions, to eradicate those marks by 
 which one individual is appreciated as different from another. But 
 the blotting out of the signs of distinctions is not the way to an 
 increase of social intelligence and understanding. Since individ- 
 uality is infinitely diverse, the appearance of regularity is blinding, 
 is false and delusive. The true road towards community sym- 
 pathy, towards community efficiency, in language as in all other 
 social institutions, is through the recognition of the value, of the 
 right, even of the duty, of individual variation based on the prin- 
 ciple of truth to individual character and environment. 
 
 26
 
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