Page:Handbook of simplified spelling.djvu/73

 by bilding a good road thru it. Fruits and vegetables that grow wild in their natural state ar greatly and universally improved and adapted to human needs by cultivation. Every process of manufacture, from roasting a potato to bilding a battleship, involvs an artificial change in natural products. All civilization is based on man's ability to direct natural processes. We can not depend on Nature to improve her products. Weeds grow more abundantly than wholesome grains.

The "Natural" Changes

The other false premis is that the changes that hav hitherto taken place in spelling ar results of natural processes. On the contrary, they hav always been the direct results of human effort. No change could possibly take place in the spelling of any word unless some writer first made it and others consciously adopted it.

Spelling, like all other human inventions if neglected, is subject to only one natural change—obsolescence and eventual decay. This is the "natural" change in English spelling that the Simplified Spelling Board desires, in the interest of all English-speaking people, to avert.

The "Etimological" Bugaboo

The objection to the proposed changes in spelling that they wil "destroy etimology"—by which is only ment that they wil obscure the derivation of words—is stil heard, tho much les frequently than formerly. It is never heard from etimologists, who know—as has been shown in Part 1 (pp. 5-7) that the present spelling is misleading as to the true derivation of many words; that a rational spelling would correct these eti -