494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scious and complete knowledge of them, they are found to be 

 likes and unlikes, and are associated and dissociated accordingly. 



The elements of coherent systems, whether of thought or 

 language, always have their relations facilitated by likeness and 

 impeded by unlikeness ; hence we find in such systems that it is 

 resemblance which is the bond of their union. Just as views in 

 science or philosophy, schools in literature or art, are related to 

 each other by varying degrees of likeness, the whole forming a 

 group through which each of the parts thereof is rendered intel- 

 ligible, so concepts and the words representing them are inter- 

 related by degrees of resemblance, and so every term we can use 

 is really intelligible to us only through its connection a connec- 

 tion of likeness more or less x>roximate, more or less remote 

 with all other terms whatsoever. This is true, moreover, not 

 only of all words as they exist at a particular moment, and are 

 in use for particular concepts, but also for all the forms through 

 which particular words have passed in their structural develop- 

 ment. We bring new words into existence by connecting them, 

 through likeness either of sound or of form, with words already 

 familiar to us; and such new words, when we meet with them, 

 become intelligible to us largely because of the likeness which 

 connects them with known and intelligible elements of speech. 

 When, moreover, a word is unfamiliar, the mental system rejects 

 it as long as it remains a stranger and an unlike ; but as soon as 

 the mind, insisting on assimilation, obtains the satisfaction it 

 seeks by change of form, the modified term, no longer meeting 

 with resistance, becomes one of the system of likes. It is the 

 same kind of assimilation as that seen in the use of Shofover for 

 Chateau Vert which leads races to spell any foreign word they 

 adopt in accordance with the analogy of their own tongue, and 

 children to construct such grotesque plural forms as "foots," 

 " mouses," " goodest," and " bringed." That in nearly all lan- 

 guages the vowels within a word tend to be assimilated to one 

 another is a phenomenon encountered very early in the study of 

 linguistics. The use of metaphor, again, which is largely the 

 mental assimilation of a thing more or less unknown to some- 

 thing much better known, is universal. 



Passing from the allied realms of cognition and speech to the 

 sphere of human relationships, we shall find that here also likes 

 tend to be associated and unlikes dissociated ; that the resistance 

 is greatest where the association is of unlikes, and least where the 

 association is of likes. At the outset we must understand that 

 likeness or unlikeness between human beings is a likeness or un- 

 likeness not merely in structure but also in manner of acting ; 

 not only in structure and acting, as these are popularly under- 

 stood, but also in thinking, in belief not only, that is to say, in 



