820 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
of the soul; for all that man does, or thinks, or feels, is 
ultimately done, thought, or felt in his soul. And the 
characteristic actions of the soul of an individual or of a 
nation are manifested in the visible and audible expressions 
of their thoughts and feelings, the chief of which is 
language. 
When we say that an English word is derived from the 
Latin language, we imply that substantially the same group 
of sounds expresses the same or an associated idea in both 
tongues. But the English word is the same as its Latin 
predecessor only so far as an old traveller is the same indi- 
vidual as the boy who left his father’s home long years ago, 
to wander in strange lands. We can tell the life-history of 
the word from the changes it has undergone. It may fall 
from the lips of Cicero in all the perfection that the great 
scholar could give it. The time of Cicero and his compeers 
passes away, and the word sets out on its travels. It leaves 
the pleasant villa at Tusculum and takes up its abode in the 
camp of the soldiers of Augustus. They strip it of its neat 
ornaments, and ridicule its refined and precise gait; perhaps 
they compel it to perform mean tasks in their dislike of what 
is above their own level. Then they take it with them, 
while they follow the Cesar to the wars. Some pass over 
the sea to Iberia, or to the province beyond the Alps, or 
even to Northern Gaul and into Brita. The word receives 
harsh usage during this time. In every resting-place it loses 
some of its garments, and makes up for the loss by mending 
or borrowing. 
The soldiers of Rome depart, and take it with them, or 
leave it behind in the strange land. New masters come and 
find it there, dress it in their own barbarous garb, and let it 
live; and so the word continues to exist, through many 
changes of fortune, even to our day, being now but a shadow 
of its former self. 
' This illustrates the fate of such words. The garments and 
ornainents that Cicero gave to that word are the syllables 
and single sounds which clothed its meaning in his mind. 
These sounds have undergone many changes; some are lost 
altogether. But for every change, and for the loss of every 
sound, there was a definite reason; and to the etymologist 
the word in its varying form reveals all these reasons; and 
every one of those changes indicates the state of the soul of 
the man who was the first to make the change, and of those 
who made it after him. The change in the sound proceeded 
from a change in the mind; and in its turn it gave the im- 
pulse to a similar change in the mind of the hearer. In the 
