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part. With them rests merely the privilege of final acceptance or refusal. It is the individual, from whom all social alterations start, be they linguistic, or political, or economic. If it be admitted that innovations in language are not “nature growths” but social products, there is no good reason why criticism should not be passed on them. If language be primarily a tool, why should we not have a right to fashion it in the same manner in which we fashion social conduct by laws, and with the same partial success” (Collitz). “Reverence for the historical creations of the people” is the proper attitude of the historian, including the historian of language; but it gives us no help as to the position we ought to take towards a proposed innovation. The first question, in such a case, is whether it is worth while to take any action whatever, and if this be answered in the affirmative, by what canon we should judge; and for this purpose Noreen’s principles appear sound and practical; first, that changes in the existing speech-material by which a distinct gain is not obtained should be discountenanced; second, that, as the chief aim of all speech is to be a means of communicating thought, that form of speech must be deemed best which is most quickly and most clearly understood by the listener and at the same time, most easily produced by the speaker. Wrong (because counteracting the very purpose of speech) is therefore everything which is likely to be misunderstood, or cannot be understood at all, or is understood only by some effort, or increases the difficulty of production (as the retention of foreign sounds in naturalized words), or requires special mental labour on the speaker’s part by falling outside his customary association groups, or additional physical exertion by unnecessary fullness. And finally, a point neglected by Noreen, as speech is the raw material from which literature is hewn, the aesthetic canons of literature must in a certain measure react upon speech, that the adoption or rejection of an innovation may depend on purely aesthetic considerations, such as ugliness due to low