LANOUAQE AND LOGIC 497 



This statement, although true to a limited extent, is applicable only 

 to a small minority of mankind. The overwhelming majority is so 

 much under the sway of tradition and possessed of so few new ideas 

 that their vocabulary is entirely sufficient to afford them utterance. 

 Much more to the point is the following : 



Everywhere as the ultimate end of change we find two intellectual co- 

 existing elements, the one principal, the other accessory. After a long while 

 and by an unconscious path, the mind loses sight of the first, and only considers 

 the second, which either drives out the first or restricts its value. Under cover 

 of the same physiological fact — the word — the mind passes from one idea to 

 another. Now this unconscious process carrying the dominant fact from the 

 principal to the accessory detail is the very law of transformation which obtains 

 in the moral world. The history of religions, of social institutions, of politics, 

 jurisprudence and moral ideas, may be reduced to that slow process which 

 causes the unconscious habits of mind to forget the primary fact, to see the 

 secondary fact alone which is derived from it, and to make of it a primary fact 

 which in its turn will disappear before its insensibly increasing successor. 



While the origin of the ultimate constituents of words is rarely dis- 

 coverable, we can often trace their descendants up to our own time. 

 Typical terms are " derive," " rival," " derivation," " rivulet," and 

 many more that on the surface do not appear to have the most remote 

 connection with one another. The ancient Romans called a stream 

 rivus. To draw water from a stream was called derivare, the act deri- 

 vatio. Rivalis was one who lived on the banks of the same stream. 

 The idea of competition or rivalry is probably latent in the term. The 

 insight we get from other sources into primitive conditions makes it 

 plain that every man's hand was against every other man's. We have 

 by no means outgrown this stage. Thucydides testifies that in his time 

 in some parts of Greece the peasants went to work in their fields with 

 arms in their hands in order to be prepared to fight for what they con- 

 sidered their rights at all times. 



The Roman soldiers received no pay for their services while in the 

 field, but the state gave them a small allowance for the purchase of 

 salt, an indispensable but costly article of diet, in many places hard to 

 get. This allowance was called solarium, whence our familiar word 

 salary. So likewise emolumentum was the money paid for grinding 

 the grain. Lira means a "furrow," lirare to make a furrow, deliro to 

 get out of the furrow, deliratio a getting out of the furrow; hence, 

 folly, madness. The connection of these words with delirium and 

 deliramentum is plain. They were evidently formed when the ancient 

 Romans were an agricultural people. That the conclusion follows 

 from the facts is as clear as the law of deduction can make it. A cur- 

 rent German phrase to designate mental aberration is " to be out of 

 one's hut." A word that exhibits this gradual change, or rather, ex- 

 tension of meaning almost under our eyes, as it were, is our familiar 



VOL. LXXVIII.— 34 



