Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/136

114 There is a large and important class of words, the history of whose development of meaning illustrates, not so much an elimination of the physical element, a transfer from a sensible to an intellectual use, as an effacement of significance, a fading-out of distinctive colour, a withdrawal of substantiality, a reduction to the expression of relation rather than of quality. Take as an instance the preposition of, already referred to as having been, not long since, undistinguished from off, in either form or meaning. Off still retains its distinct physical sense, of removal in place; it means 'from, away from, forth from;' in of, we have attenuated this original idea of removal, procedure, derivation, into the most general and indefinite one of possession, appurtenance, connection: we say the top of the mountain, though the former is not off, but on, the latter; we say the father of the boy, as well as the son of the man; we say a sword of steel, pride of birth, the time of Moses, the city of Athens, and so on. For, from fore, 'in front of,' has passed through a process closely similar. Also (A.-S. ealswa) was made up of all and so, and meant 'altogether thus, in just that way, in like wise;' now, like the abbreviated form of the last expression, likewise, it simply adds a circumstance coördinate with one already mentioned; it is hardly more than a particle of connection. As, as was pointed out above, is a mutilated form of the same word, with its demonstrative meaning usually converted into a relative: the act of apprehension which, in a phrase like "he is as good as he is great' (that is, 'he is in that degree or manner good in which degree he is great'), attributes a demonstrative sense to the former as, and a relative to the latter, is not less arbitrary than the one which attributes, in "the more, the merrier" (that is, 'in what degree more, in that degree merrier'), a relative sense to the former the, and a demonstrative to the latter. All those relative words which bind the parts of a sentence together into an organic whole, instead of leaving it a congeries of independent clauses, are of like origin, coming by a gradual change of meaning from words originally demonstrative or interrogative. "I knew that he was ill" is but an altered form of "he was ill; I