THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE. 819 
to the same purpose. Take, for instance, the words “ The 
weather is fine.” The tone in which the slave pronounces 
these simple words indicates his fear of giving offence, and 
his desire to. avoid ill-treatment, The ruler, on the other 
hand, utters them as the authoritative statement of a fact, 
“impugn it whoso list.”” Again, we know that a voice that 
is sweet and low is an excellent thing, as conveying the im- 
pression of sweet reasonableness in the soul of the speaker. 
The sounds that make up the speech of a man indicate not 
only his personal character, but also his character as a 
member of a community, a province, or a nation. Unless 
and until his character is changed by new surroundings, the 
peculiar intonation of his speech remains. It is a matter 
of common experience that children of foreign parents can 
learn to produce the exact sounds of the native language. 
Their feelings are easily influenced, and so is the expression 
of their feelings. | But when the feelings have become 
habitual, it is very difficult to change the intonation of the 
speech. There is also a physiological reason for this. If 
feelings become habitual, the same nerves and muscles are 
continually set in motion, and acquire not only the habit 
of acting in certain ways, but the shape most conducive to 
ease in acting in those ways; the muscles, as well as the 
feelings that ultimately govern them, become set, and act 
automatically or sub-consciously. This is manifest not only 
with regard to the muscles that produce the sounds of 
speech, but generally. For instance, the walk and carriage 
of a man indicate very plainly the feelings that are most 
constant in his soul. The soldier’s martial strut is char- 
acteristically different from the coward’s slouching gait. 
We return to the consideration of single words, and find 
further evidence of the influence of the soul upon the speech 
in the changes which words undergo in the course of time. 
These changes declare to the student of language the history 
of the nations that used the words; for the history or 
experience of a man or of a nation leaves its impression upon 
the character; and the character is shown by the sounds 
that are uttered most frequently, and therefore most natur- 
ally and most easily. 
Modern etymology is not, as its older form was, a tissue 
of idle speculations, but an exact science. It rests on the 
fundamental principle that nothing happens without ade- 
quate cause, and that no explanation of a phenomenon is 
valid unless it demonstrates why the phenomenon is such 
as it appears to be. The etymologist must obtain his argu- 
ments from psychology—from the knowledge of the working 
