224 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
using of the opportunity afforded. Language being therefore 
examined in its maturer stages, and the individual being con¬ 
sidered rather as the linguistic master-workman than as a 
mere apprentice, it still is worthy of remark that well-developed 
language may retract an offered opportunity and also that the 
master-workman’s choice may otherwise be vitiated—even nul¬ 
lified. 77 
In examining the former case, it must be recognized that lin¬ 
guistic life implies linguistic growth—but not of necessity al¬ 
ways in all directions. In any language neither dead nor 
dying, the inventory of ideas available for thought-construction 
will show no doubt from time to time a gain in number and in 
quality. On the other hand, the English language, for ex¬ 
ample, though very much alive and making gratifying gains 
of that description, has for generations hardly invented or ex¬ 
tended any plan of combining ideas into thoughts. That is, 
the architecture of thought has not advanced in scope or type. 
What is more immediate to my purpose, added means of indi¬ 
cating architecture have not been found. Various influences— 
tribal, sectional, professional, of sex or caste—-have even oper¬ 
ated to reduce their number and their potency. 
Such results, familiar in the case, for instance, of defective 
verbs, 78 though fostered by the various influences above sug¬ 
gested, often look, no doubt, for their beginning, to the merest 
accident—say even blundering—which will perhaps appear 
more clearly in a blundering into usage that is new, than in a 
blundering out of what is old. To illustrate what I may call 
creative blundering, I cite an amusing linguistic treasure-trove 
of recent date. To make this intelligible, let it be remembered 
that General Burnside, whose picture during part of the Civil 
War was.everywhere, wore lateral whiskers of a partic- 
77 Strictly speaking, choice implies co-recognition of more than one 
activity as possible—not merely a preconception of what one does, 
but also a preconception of what might be done but is not done. I 
shall however include in this discussion occasional cases in which a 
preconceived activity is carried out because per se approved, however 
incompletely at the moment other possible activities be recognized. 
78 Note the awkwardness of many substitutes for “I can’t now, but 
hope to can to-morrow.” 
