834 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



define itself, does with, the same spontaneity. Two words, formerly 

 synonymous, are differentiated by an immediate apperception. The 

 history of language is a series of repartitions. The earliest stam- 

 mering of a child is nothing eke, for it is by repartition that he 

 applies to distinct objects the sylables which he at first bestowed in- 

 differently on everything he met. 



When the popular mind has once determined a repartition of a 

 certain order, it is naturally tempted to complete the series. There 

 are languages in which the different acts of life are not designated in 

 the same way when performed by a person of high dignity and by 

 a common person. To express that a man eats, the Cambodians use 

 the word si; in speaking of a chief, pisa; and of a bonze or king, 

 soi. In speaking to an inferior, I is anh; to a superior, "knhom; to 

 a bonze, chhan. The followers of Zoroaster, who regard the world 

 as divided between two opposing powers, have a double vocabulary, 

 according as they speak of creatures of Ormuzd or of Ahriman. 



Nothing, in fact, is more natural or more necessary than reparti- 

 tion; for our mind collects words from different ages and different 

 mediums, and would be in absolute confusion if it did not give some 

 kind of order to them. We all do what the dictionaries of synonyms 

 do; when we examine the terms which usage distinguishes or subordi- 

 nates, we find that etymology rarely gives a reason for the differences 

 we assign to them. If we take, for example, the words genus and spe- 

 cies, what reason is there for giving one a larger capacity than the 

 other? There is nothing in the words division, brigade, regiment, 

 and battalion to indicate the special and exact subordination of one to 

 another that exists between them. Passing to moral ideas, we per- 

 ceive no gradation imposed by etymology in the words esteem, 

 respect, and veneration. It required precise and clear minds, a 

 society well ordered and careful of its ranks, to establish some of 

 these distinctions. 



Still, repartition has its limits. First, as it does not create, but 

 attaches itself to what is to be distinguished, terms to be differentiated 

 must exist in the language. We might cite instances of confusion 

 from which, for the lack of a word, the most perfect idioms have 

 never succeeded in freeing themselves. On the other hand, the mind 

 may not always be able to fructify all the riches the language offers 

 it. Grammatical mechanism, by combining existing elements, could 

 produce such a quantity of forms that the mind would be embarrassed 

 with them. George Curtius calculated that the number of personal 

 forms in the Greek verb rose to 268, but this is much inferior to the 

 861 forms of Sanskrit. Another limit is imposed. Certain shades 

 of meaning are possible only among cultivated peoples. In syn- 

 onymy we can discern what objects the thought of a nation is occu- 



