22 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



This observation led the speaker to inquire what are the 

 essential differences between a language merely spoken and 

 one that is also written. 



In a spoken language there are two agents at work, the 

 speaker and the hearer. The former is the creator of lan- 

 guage, as well as its progressive or destructive agent. The 

 latter is the preserver of language, being its conservative and 

 defensive agent. It is evident that a language at any period 

 of. its history is a compromise between these two opposing 

 forces. Again, the amount of usefulness in a purely spoken 

 language must be exceedingly limited, being measured by 

 the ability of its conservators to remember what is said, in 

 conjunction with the manner of saying it. The compass of 

 such a speech, the definiteness and variety of expression, 

 must be exceedingly circumscribed. 



When we combine the writer and the reader with the 

 speaker and the hearer, we have four forces in place of two; 

 we add another aggressive and another conservative agency, 

 and the status of the language at any period will be a com- 

 promise of a more intricate character. The aggressiveness 

 of the writer is generally much less than that of the speaker, 

 and also the preservative power of written language is im- 

 mensely greater than that of pure memory among a people 

 without writing. We ought to find, therefore, that the in- 

 vention of the art of writing has had a tendency to place 

 speech upon a more stable basis. The invention of the writ- 

 ten symbol is itself a confession of the inadequacy of the old 

 method, and would never have taken place if the improved 

 status in culture had not called loudly for linguistic facili- 

 ties which speech alone did not furnish. 



Again, the means of retaining before the mind a great 

 number of facts leads to the improvement of observation and 

 classification, the readjustment of the categories of thought, 

 and, consequently, the recompounding of words upon a more 

 scientific basis. The chief improvement, however, is in the 

 sentence. The spoken thought is but- breath " that fits ere 

 you can point its place;" but the written sentence is like 



