836 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



slipped into errors and faults, but which nevertheless had a degree 

 of fixedness, for these languages were transmitted from generation 

 to generation for ages. "When we consider how much trouble it 

 takes now to learn these languages, we are surprised. But we 

 must recollect that education in the maternal language has the 

 advantage that it is going on all the time and everywhere, that it 

 is stimulated by necessity, that it addresses itself to fresh minds, and 

 that it offers the unique characteristic of associating words with 

 things, and not the words of one language with those of another. 

 The same conditions are in play in all mother tongues, and in all 

 the child's mind achieves a triumph. Our modern languages, while 

 less encumbered with formal apparatus, are still not far from it; and 

 the complication bears upon another point, consisting in the use of 

 words of slight meaning, and so abstract and servile that we never 

 think of them, while we always put them in their proper places. In 

 this we observe intelligence passing to a condition of instinct. This 

 is not through any kind of a notion of the value of the word, but 

 by virtue of a certain number of locutions which memory retains, and 

 which serve as models. Our intelligence derives the same services 

 in daily operations from language that we derive from calculations. 

 In consequence of the infirmity of our understanding, it is easier for 

 us to deal with the signs of ideas than with the ideas themselves. Be- 

 fore the invention of writing, men counted with pebbles. Doubt- 

 less this idea must come first; but it is vacillating, fugitive, hard to 

 transmit. Once incorporated into a sign, we are sure we have it, 

 and can direct it at will and communicate it to others. This is the 

 service performed by language; it renders thought objective. 



If I had to say in what the superiority of the Indo-European 

 languages consists, I should not seek for it in the grammatical 

 mechanism, or in the compounds, or in the syntax; but in the 

 facility with which those languages, from the most ancient times of 

 which we know, have created abstract nouns. If we observe the 

 suffixes which serve this purpose, we shall be surprised at their num- 

 ber and variety. It is the presence of these nouns in large number, 

 as well as the possibility of making others after the same type, that 

 adapts the Indo-European languages so well to the expression of all 

 the operations of thought. 



Accustomed as we are to language, we do not easily conceive of 

 the accumulation of mental labor which it represents; but, to satisfy 

 ourselves concerning it, we have only to take up some book and 

 eliminate all the words which, not corresponding to any objective 

 reality, summarize a mental operation. Hardly anything would 

 be left of the page thus pruned. The peasant who talks of time and 

 seasons, the tradesman who expatiates on his stock of goods, and 



