292 PHILOSOPHY OF ZOOLOGY. 



same sciences, and conducting their plans and making 

 known their successes, eacli in his own city or village, will 

 necessarily enlarge the number of new terms, and even 

 create that ambiguity occasioned by dissimilar sounds be- 

 ing used in synonimous expression. Fashion alone, in 

 these cases, assigns the preference to that of one individual 

 rather than to another, guided by circumstances which fol- 

 low ho law. Again, inventions and discoveries demand new 

 names to express the new combinations, objects, qualities, 

 or actions to which they refer. These new names are 

 speedily employed in a figurative as well as a literal sense, 

 and, by degrees, assume the station which others had for- 

 merly occupied. 



There is added to all these, another powerful excitement 

 to change. When distinction of rank begins to prevail, 

 there is an attempt to mark the limits by a distinction of 

 sounds. The great avoid the use of many expressions, 

 because indicative of vulgarity the common people, on 

 the other hand, strive to imitate the language of their su- 

 periors, considering it as genteel. There is thus a constant 

 change induced in the language of a country, by the at- 

 tempts at novelty on the part of nobles, the eager imitation 

 of the lower ranks, and the departure of both from the or- 

 dinary practice* 



These seeds of change, then, are coeval with our race, 

 and must always continue to spring up and flourish where- 

 ever new objects or new actions present themselves to man. 

 All the expectations, therefore, of rendering a language 

 stationary, by enumerating the terms of its vocabulary, or 

 establishing standards for their pronunciation, are vain, 

 and founded in ignorance of its origin and its relation to 

 the wants of man. In spite of all the labours of the lexi- 

 cographer, all the rules of the grammarian, or the combined 

 influence of writers of taste, the language which we now 

 use, will, in the course of a few generations, become anti- 



