LANGUAGE STUDY AND LANGUAGE PSYCHOLOGY 383 



The scientist is very apt to carry a chip on his shoulder when the 

 word evolution is mentioned. He seems to feel it treason to science if 

 evolution is not regarded as a universal principle, as absolute in its 

 operation as the law of gravitation. Because he believes in progressive 

 development and the survival of the fittest, he mechanically postulates 

 that whatever is is better than all that has passed away. Applied to the 

 institutions of men this principle is abundantly untrue. If it comforts 

 one to classify the differentiation of organ and function from diatom 

 up to man, and the general simplification of structure observable in the 

 historical development of languages as they grow older, under the one 

 label, evolution, he is welcome to do so, but he must meet the difficulties 

 and see the differences. If it is a simplification that the Eomance lan- 

 guages have replaced Latin synthetic cases by prepositional phrases, 

 why, after having acquired an analytical future, did they convert it 

 into a synthetic: why has Spanish developed hablareis "you will speak " 

 from liablar liabeis " you have to speak " ? Who will assure us that the 

 Latin case-endings did not similarly arise from some sort of attach- 

 ments of prepositions to their nouns? Why is -(i)bus too heavy for a 

 mere termination? [What is there about -bus that catches the ear of 

 persons who hear Latin? Shakespeare's Costard hits off some of the 

 catching elements of spoken Latin in his honorificabilitudinitatibus, 

 and I can testify to the prominence of -bus in the gibing attempts at 

 Latin word-formation I have heard from mockers.] Who can seri- 

 ously maintain that -" bus " attached to a Latin stem is inherently any 

 more ambiguous than " by " or " with " prefixed to an English noun ? 

 What -bus was to start with, philologists surmise, they do not know. 

 But they do know that Spanish migo is Lat. mecum synthetized and re- 

 analyzed again in con migo which is cum mecum. The psychology of 

 the doubling they understand, but they don't drop the -go from migo; 

 and they accept the fact for the fact, content with the unlettered an- 

 cestry of Spanish or Latin or English. Who then, I repeat, shall assure 

 us that the Latin case endings did not originate similarly from some 

 prepositional affix? It is absolutely certain that Latin amabat " he was 

 loving" has been synthetized from an independent word meaning, 

 either "loving" (ptc.) or "for-loving" (infin.) plus -bat "was." 



The truth is that all along the line language submits itself to syn- 

 thesis. We have an interesting exhibition of this in the colloquial Amer- 

 ican "kinder" and "sorter," for which our language has, I conceive, a 

 real need as a verb modifier. At least I can not express in formal lan- 

 guage the very pretty group of associations suggested to my mind by 

 the phrase " He sorter sidled up to her and whispered." Analytic and 

 synthetic are but relative terms and sometimes the synthetic form of 

 expression is the simpler. To me at least, in the French line quoted 

 above, de la Tyrannie, though analytic, presents to me in a blur, as 



