NATIONAL STYLE 175 



of national character expressed in language and in myth. 

 Still, though the science of origins throws as yet no light 

 upon the birth of languages and the process whereby they 

 became the symbols of each educated nation's genius, it is 

 not impossible to trace the biography of a people in the 

 development of its mother tongue, and the assimilation 

 through speech of mental qualities derived from other races. 



' Language,' says Walt Whitman, c is not an abstract 

 construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is 

 something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, 

 tastes of long generations of humanity, and has its bases 

 broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are 

 made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most 

 to do with actual land and sea.' 



That is true in the essential, in the cradle-age of races. 

 But language early passes into a metaphorical stage, when 

 words expressive of the concrete and material are applied 

 to abstract and intellectual concepts when the diaphragm 

 becomes the mind, and the breath of man's nostrils becomes 

 the soul, and to grasp a thing with the hand signifies to 

 comprehend with the intelligence. Later on, as thought is 

 forced deliberately to forge equivalents in speech for abstract 

 ideas, the influence of individual thinkers begins to tell. 

 Aristotle imposes the nomenclature of logic upon his nation, 

 and through Greek literature upon posterity until the present 

 day. Races intermingle, and assimilate religions, philosophies, 

 systems of jurisprudence. At this point, by borrowing terms 

 which do not suit their native genius, or by clumsy attempts 

 at translation, they run the risk of absorbing elements imper- 

 fectly adapted to the ideas they are intended to express. 

 A new mythology of abstractions comes into being. The 

 vTroorao-ie of Greek metaphysic (originally groundwork or 

 substratum, then real existence or substance) takes shape in 

 the Latin Athanasian creed as persona (originally a mask and 

 then a personage), and is repeated in our churches with mis- 

 taken connotation by the vulgar in the form of person. 



During this process of growth, the style of the race mani- 

 fests itself both by what it assimilates and by what it rejects, 



