Preface
consciousness; and greater than either is the mystery of the Faculty of Speech.
Language is of human origin—that should go without saying. Although its purposes are definite, it has remarkably indefinite aspects. Regarded as a law, we must accept the law as man-made. Subjected to the continual stress of subconscious habit, vivified by ceaseless activity, language has escaped the dominion of the will whilst deriving its powers from the mind. As a law, language parallels, the laws of life—but on a different plane, in common with all other laws of art. It is organic in the sense of its parallelism; and thus only is language a “natural” law. Treated as an organism, its relations in the broad conception of them are threefold: physical, physiological, and psychical. Because these relations are threefold is one reason why even group tongues or individual languages are slow to change. The co-ordinate processes are too delicate for rude or hasty readjustment.
Again, the obstinacy of language-change is
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