ON ARTICULATE SPEECH 189 



and transposed has probably aided the development 

 of imagination, inventiveness, and of mobility and 

 plasticity of mind. The habitual association of 

 parts of knowledge with arbitrary fixed language 

 symbols has no doubt strengthened memory and 

 made conceptions more definite and less transitory. 



But this wonderful human language has not been 

 without evil consequences. The confusion of mind, 

 the disuse of the human faculty for independent 

 thought, the consequent deterioration of this faculty 

 in many persons, may be charged to some extent to 

 a language out of relation with the parts of knowledge 

 it symbolizes. Such mental conditions leave wide 

 openings for the admission of error in the passage 

 from knowledge to expression, and in the transit 

 from impression to representation in consciousness. 

 They tend to a habit by which language heard or 

 seen lodges in memory without producing a realiza- 

 tion in consciousness of the experiences to which it 

 alludes. 



Thence arises the tendency to vapid repetitions 

 void of earnestness or vitality of phrases and without 

 a realizing sense of their meaning. This explains 

 the existence of persons whose sensibilities are 

 tickled by the mere sounds of words, but whose 

 minds are callous to truth, sincerity, and accurate 

 meanings. Persons so constituted easily become 

 dangerous tools of ambitious, bold and unscrupulous 

 schemers. 



