Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/426

posed to all the conclusions to which we have been thus far led by our inquiries into the nature and office of speech. Speech is not a personal possession, but a social; it belongs, not to the individual, but to the member of society. No item of existing language is the work of an individual; for what we may severally choose to say is not language until it be accepted and employed by our fellows. The whole development of speech, though initiated by the acts of individuals, is wrought out by the community. That is a word, no matter what may be its origin, its length, its phonetic form, which is understood in any community, however limited, as the sign of an idea; and their mutual understanding is the only tie which connects it with that idea. It is a sign which each one has acquired from without, from the usage of others; and each has learned the art of intimating by such signs the internal acts of his mind. Mutual intelligibility, we have seen, is the only quality which makes the unity of a spoken tongue; the necessity of mutual intelligibility is the only force which keeps it one; and the desire of mutual intelligibility is the impulse which called out speech. Man speaks, then, primarily, not in order to think, but in order to impart his thought. His social needs, his social instincts, force him to expression. A solitary man would never frame a language. Let a child grow up in utter seclusion, and, however rich and suggestive might be the nature around him, however full and appreciative his sense of that which lay without, and his consciousness of that which went on within him, he would all his life remain a mute. On the other hand, let two children grow up together, wholly untaught to speak, and they would inevitably devise, step by step, some means of expression for the purpose of communication; how rudimentary, of what slow growth, we cannot tell—and, however interesting and instructive it would be to test the matter by experiment, humanity forbids us ever to hope or desire to do so; doubtless the character of the speech produced would vary with difference of capacity, with natural or accidental difference of circumstances: but it is inconceivable that human beings should abide long in each other's society without efforts, and successful efforts, at intelligent interchange of