Problems and Powers
The intellectual activities of man brought forth his language. Order, which is indispensable to intellectual activity, finds its parallel in the laws of linguistics. These laws are so nicely related to what they govern that we loosely call language an organism. It is evident, however, that its organic character arises from similarity rather than from actuality; and it is owing to the order in mental processes that language has its being. The human will, socially expressed, is as apparent in the orderly development of language as is will-power associated with the faculty of speech. The individual will delimited by the social will, as exemplified by the institution of language, has given rise to the misleading theory of blind organic laws as the basis of language.
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