326 ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 
CHAPTER XIII. 
ETYMOLOGIC BEARINGS. 
We must not permit ourselves to be guided solely by the eye nor by the grammarian either; but must, on the contrary, 
consult the ear.—Bonnycastle, Classical Museum, No. 23, p. 32. 
§ 315. Mr. Ellis has calculated (Plea, 2d ed., § 36,) that not more than one person in 
1600 can be benefited by an etymologic orthography, and it has been asserted that all 
the countries of which English is the language, do not furnish five hundred etymologists. 
There are, in fact, more good mathematicians and good chemists than good etymologists, 
and whilst few chemists would be at a loss to give the rationale of their processes, the 
authors (Sullivan, Graham, Lynd,) of popular school etymologies, cannot explain their own 
examples, nor distinguish between mutation, elision, and insertion. 
316. The chemist works primarily with things, and secondarily, with symbols; the scho- 
lar does the reverse, studying symbols rather than living speech, as a deaf mute would be 
compelled to do. Hence Schele de Vere* calls the French word for water “eau (0)” a 
triphthong; he says most English radical words have been reduced to monosyllables “at 
? 
least in pronunciation;” and that “the changes of sounds and their growth go on conti- 
nually, and thus the spelling of a language gives us the only true account of its first form 
and subsequent historic changes. This is the principal and all-powerful argument against 
phonography.” A perverse inference from a correct premise. ‘ For nearly fourteen cen- 
turies of our Christian era but few persons in France and Germany could write, and how 
was it. possible to judge of words and their etymology without seeing them?” Dr. Latham 
says—“ To those writers who, denying the affinity between the Irish and Welsh, can iden- 
tify the Erse with the Hebrew, I apply the term nyctalopia—the power of seeing best in 
the dark.” Yet an Irish laborer who had acquired Welsh in Wales, when asked some 
questions about his own language, stated of his own accord that Welsh was “a good deal 
like it.” And yet how different: but Ais language instinct had not been extirpated, and 
he could grasp the relations as readily as an American savage can disentangle an etymo- 
logy in his vernacular. 
317. The Dictionary of Derivations; or, an Introduction to Etymology, by Robert Sul- 
livan, LL. D., T.C. D., meets with the approbation of “the distinguished Philologist and 
Anglo-Saxon scholar,” Dr. Bosworth, and causes the Dublin University Magazine to “ con- 
fess we have been startled at the extent of the ignorance of many previous writers on the 
subject.” Dr. Sullivan, with many others, gives divinity (an older word) as from divine, 
* Outlines of Comparative Philology. New York, 1853. See also § 6 a. 
