4 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 



tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution: 

 let us make some struggles for our language." 



Undoubtedly traces of -this belief still linger among us: but in 

 general it meets no longer with acceptance. We have come to feel, 

 even when we have not come to know, that language has no inde- 

 pendent life outside of the life of those who speak it. Their spirit it 

 expresses, their hopes and aspirations it embodies; and as a conse- 

 quence it is operated upon by the same influences which affect their 

 action in other ways. It shall be my aim in the present address to 

 point out how it is so thoroughly the reflex of man's nature that even 

 the very agencies which affect the character of its vocabulary and the 

 development of its grammatical structure are essentially like those 

 which determine his conduct and career in other respects. My illus- 

 tration will naturally be drawn from the speech with which I am most 

 familiar; but parallel illustrations will occur to any one to whom the 

 possession of any cultivated tongue belongs by right of birth. 



Language is constantly acted upon by numerous influences, all of 

 which are diverse and some of which are not only different but act- 

 ually hostile. Speech is really a compromise between opposing tend- 

 encies in the minds of its users. The peculiar character it exhibits 

 in any given case is a result that has been brought about by these 

 various agencies. The time is too short to treat the subject with 

 exhaustive detail. Here it may be sufficient to give a general idea 

 of its nature by setting forth two or three of these conflicting agen- 

 cies which are always operating upon the users of speech, whether 

 educated or illiterate, -and affect unconsciously their methods of 

 utterance. Then we shall be in a position to consider with more 

 advantage the broad distinctions which prevail between the develop- 

 ment of cultivated and uncultivated tongues. 



The first, to which I call attention, of these contradictory tenden- 

 cies that are always manifesting themselves in speech, is the disposi- 

 tion to practice economy of utterance and the antagonistic disposition 

 to indulge in prodigality of utterance. By the former I am not refer- 

 ring to orthoepy, where its effects have been most frequently noted, 

 tending as they do to induce the speaker to spend as little time 

 as possible in the pronunciation of words, and as a result of this 

 economy of effort, modifying their form. It is the material itself 

 of language, the words as they are weaved into the sentence, that 

 comes here under consideration. The one aim that the user of speech 

 has constantly in mind is to express himself as briefly as possible 

 consistent with easy and full comprehension. This is a feeling which 

 affects all men in every conceivable stage of intellectual develop- 

 ment. Grammatically speaking, we are all endeavoring to convey 

 our meaning in any given sentence with the fullest economy of 

 utterance. Mark me, I say grammatically speaking, not rhetorically. 



