192 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sight had not changed. Still less had the hieroglyphics gone out of 

 use. The real and only cause of change was that the minds of the 

 people had with the lapse of time become more accustomed to these 

 characters, and that an abridged indication of them was sufficient 

 to make them legible. It was therefore unnecessary to reproduce 

 the detail of the figures, and all that was not essential was omitted. 

 If the line of characters always presented an identical text, one of 

 those unvarying formulas found in all languages, the abbreviations 

 of the design would be still bolder. The hand and the eyes could 

 easily run over these lines, the contents of which were known in 

 advance. 



The prime cause of phonetic changes is therefore mental. The 

 word is a sort of vocal image impressed in the memory, the more or 

 less complete reproduction of which is committed to our organs. 

 The mind gradually familiarizes itself with this image, and no 

 longer takes the same pains in reproducing it accurately, for it is sure 

 of being understood. The will ceasing to watch over the organs, 

 they follow their propensities. But if exactness becomes necessary, 

 a slight effort of will is effective, the old consonants appear again, 

 the contracted syllables resume their places, and we hear the word in 

 its primary integrity. 



While we have drawn our comparison from hieroglyphics, any 

 movement directed by the will might have furnished a similar an- 

 alogy. If we make the same gesture twenty times in succession, 

 it will probably be less marked the twentieth time than the first. 



Passing from one insensible change to another, it may happen 

 that some sounds will quite disappear from the language, as has 

 occurred, for example, with the liquid I in Zend, where it has been 

 absorbed in r. If the organs in such cases seem incapable, it is not 

 because they are different, but because they lack practice. If a 

 Parisian youth is trained by an English governess, he runs the 

 risk of having an English accent in speaking French. This does not 

 prove that the conformation of his organs is peculiar, but that lan- 

 guage has as much to do with making the organs as they with mak- 

 ing language. 



A third axiom is that the scale of sounds is never returned upon ; 

 that is, that when an articulation is once modified, it is never restored 

 in its primitive purity. The habit of the Latin language is to con- 

 tract its words; but domnus is at least as old as dominus, Hercles as 

 Hercules, and valde as validus; and in inscriptions of the time of 

 the empire, we find discipulina for disciplina, tempuli for templi, 

 and liberitas for libertas. Change of s into r is one of the most 

 general rules of Latin. But this change could not impose itself 

 upon certain proper names, which fidelity or the taste for archaism 



