138 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



recognized fitness and utility should be deemed good English or not. 

 No man, however competent a scholar he may be, has the right to 

 determine the growth and development of our language. Yet such a 

 practise means this in the last analysis. There are not a few words 

 and idioms in English that have neither logic nor reason to commend 

 them, but are the product of analogy, as it, its and you, instead 

 of the strictly correct hit, his and ye, to use a familiar example; 

 and yet these analogical formations, which at first were mere slang, 

 long ago drove our proper pronouns from the field. This change took 

 place in the last two or three centuries, and that, too, in the very face 

 of the vaunted authority of Shakespeare and the King James Version. 

 No doubt the pedants and purists opposed this change as utterly illog- 

 ical and contrary to the natural order of development and growth of 

 our English speech ; but they were gradually borne down. It is the vast 

 body of those who use the language, the people, not the lexicographers 

 and scholars solely or chiefly, who are the final arbiters in a matter of 

 this kind. It is the law of speech as registered in the usage of those who 

 employ the language that decides ultimately whether a given phrase 

 shall survive or perish; and this is done so unconsciously withal that 

 the people are not aware that they are sealing the destiny of some par- 

 ticular vocable. This silent, indefinable, resistless force we call the 

 genius of the language. 



It is hoped that the spirit of this paper will not be misunderstood. 

 The article, let it be distinctly and emphatically stated, is not intended 

 as a brief for slang — far from it. It is written simply to call attention 

 anew to the fact that slang is not to be absolutely condemned as the 

 main source of corruption of our speech, as some assert, but that, 

 contrariwise, it is an important factor in the growth of our vernacular 

 and serves — at least the best of it — a useful purpose in repairing the 

 resulting waste which necessarily occurs in English as in every spoken 

 language. 



