ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 



H7 



person Avould single out a class of heavenly bodies to call by such a 

 name ; many races have never formed the conception. To those who 

 gained learning enough, the meaning was further enriched by connec- 

 tion with the Ptolemaic system of cycles and epicycles. Then, as by 

 a touch, Copernicus altered the whole aspect of the word, and changed 

 the classification which it represented, ejecting the sun and moon, and 

 taking in the earth. And all this is now used to help give shape to 

 the at first dim and formless idea, which the language-learner is made 

 to entertain along with the sign which is taught him. Once more, the 

 child is made to count, and in the process his conceptions of number 

 are cast into a decimal shape, one in which each higher factor is made 

 up of ten of the next lower, till he comes to feel that such tenfoldness 

 is a natural characteristic of enumeration. Yet, if we inquire Avhence 

 comes this particular shape, we find it growing out of the simple fact 

 that we have two hands, with five fingers on each ! So utterly ex- 

 traneous and accidental a cause as this, as turned to account by the 

 simple races who laid the deep foundations of our mathematics, de- 

 termines the " inner form " assumed by the mathematical concep- 

 tions of each new member of our race ; of course, quite without his 

 knowledge. 



So it is all the way through language. Along with and by means 

 of words, the young learner is made to take in the ideas which the 

 knowledge and experience of older men have shaped ; he accepts the 

 current classifications and abstractions of his community, at first only 

 imjierfectly, then with fuller and more independent action of his own, 

 till finally he grows up to the stature of his language, and has, at least 

 in some departments, nothing more to learn of those about him. At 

 the beginning, and in less degree later, he was so hurried on by the 

 superiority of his instructors in knowledge and mental development, 

 that he had neither leisure nor inclination to be original ; now he be- 

 comes in his turn a teacher, and also a shaper. By his action and that 

 of his fellows, the common instrument of expression undergoes a con- 

 stant slow change. Their new knowledge has somehow to be worked 

 in. It is done partly, as in the case of planet^ by reshaping the con- 

 ceptions contained in old words, and shifting the boundaries of old 

 classifications ; partly by the cognition of new particulars which are 

 brought under old names, expanding so far their contents as when 

 Uranus and Neptune are brought into the class of planets, and the 

 satellites of Jupiter and Saturn make a class for the formerly unique 

 appellation moon y and partly by providing new names for objects, 

 products, qualities, relations, before unperceived, or so dimly appre- 

 hended as not to seem to call for expression. And the provision is 

 made in part by deliberately going to other tongues and borrowing 

 material from them (so Uranus, Neptune), or else by forming new 

 compounds of native material (so steamboat, railroad), or, very fre- 

 quently, by mere transfer of old words to new uses, substituted or ad- 



