EDITOR'S TABLE. 



503 



their influence on the world would 

 be in every way powerful for good. 



LANGUAGE AND LIFE. 



The ordinary school education 

 in language and grammar is doubt- 

 less responsible for the impression 

 which we find existing in so many 

 minds that, in all matters of verbal 

 expression, there is some one abso- 

 lute standard of authority to which 

 it implies simply ignorance not 

 to bow — some supreme court, as it 

 were, empowered to decide for us 

 what words we are to use, how we 

 are to pronounce them, and what 

 rules of syntax we are to follow. It 

 would be difficult, doubtless, to im- 

 part to children or very young peo- 

 ple the wider and more scientific 

 view of language, inasmuch as they 

 need, in the first place, clear guid- 

 ance as regards usage rather than 

 correct theory. The idea, therefore, 

 with which they grow up, if their 

 school studies take any hold upon 

 them at all and if no wider culture 

 comes to change their way of look- 

 ing at things, is that some very wise 

 man made an infallible grammar 

 and another veiy wise man an in- 

 fallible dictionary, and that no one 

 need be in doubt in regard to what 

 is orthodox in language who has ac- 

 cess to these tables of the law. We 

 have known grown-up persons to 

 turn away with a very skeptical air, 

 and a kind of look as if they had 

 found out a weak spot in your 

 educational armor, when they were 

 told that really it was impossible 

 to say which of two pronunciations 

 of a word was right and which 

 was wrong — that either might be 

 employed without mortal offense 

 against elegance of speech or good 

 breeding. 



A hidebound view of language 

 tends so much to narrow thought 

 on general subjects that it seems 

 to us of importance that the. true 

 and scientific view of the subject 



should be brought forward when- 

 ever opportunity offers. Mr. Wil- 

 liam Archer, the well-known Eng- 

 lish critic, contributed an article not 

 long ago to the Pall Mall Magazine 

 which might be read with much ad- 

 vantage by pedants and purists, and 

 all blind followers of authority. He 

 takes the broad ground that lan- 

 guage is a transcript, as it were, of 

 life, and that as life widens and be- 

 comes more varied, language must 

 do the same. It must reflect the 

 fancy, the imagination, and the hu- 

 mor of the day, and not merely the 

 fancy, imagination, and humor of 

 past generations. If we want a lan- 

 guage that is fixed and unalterable 

 in its forms we must seek one that 

 has ceased to be spoken by men. 

 Even then we can not always get 

 absolute decisions. Cicero is perhaps 

 the best standard of Latin prose, 

 but no competent critic would say 

 that his writing was flawless. We 

 know that grammatical questions 

 were much debated among the an- 

 cients, and we have no doubt that 

 many such questions were left un- 

 settled. In a living language there 

 must be unsettled questions. There 

 is a constant struggle for life going 

 on among the words and phrases 

 with which men endeavor to express 

 their ideas, and, at a given moment, 

 it is impossible to say which shall 

 prosper, this or that. The word or 

 phrase that prospers — that com- 

 mends itself, after adequate trial, 

 for expressiveness, convenience, or 

 euphony, or for any combination of 

 useful qualities — will survive and 

 become classic; the expression that 

 has nothing special to commend it, 

 beyond its novelty and slanginess, 

 will probably pass, after a brief and 

 partial currency, into the vast limbo 

 of the unfit. All we can say of a 

 word at a given moment is how far 

 it has actually become current and 

 what kind of society it keeps. What 

 its fortune will be we can only 

 guess. Just as in the financial 



