Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/177

IV.] impressed and guided by feelings and experiences, differently swayed by the weight of existing analogies. Such tendency to variation is, to be sure, within comparatively narrow limits; individual speakers of English would not, if left to their own devices, rush madly off toward a Choctaw or Kamchatkan model of speech; yet its results are by no means imperceptible or insignificant; it is like the variation of the separate individuals of a species of plants or animals in respect to traits of structure and disposition, which, however slow its progress, would finally, if suffered to accumulate its effects, break up the species into well-marked varieties. Linguistic development is thus made up, as we may fairly express it, of an infinity of divergent or centrifugal forces.

But, in the second place, there is not wanting an effective centripetal force also, which holds all the others in check, which resolves them, giving value to that part of each which makes in a certain direction, and annulling the rest: this centripetal force is the necessity of communication. Man is no soliloquist: he does not talk for his own diversion and edification, but for converse with his fellows; and that would not be language which one individual alone should understand and be able to employ. Every one is, indeed, as we have already seen, engaged in his way and measure in modifying language; but no one's action affects the general speech, unless it is accepted by others, and ratified in their use, Every sign which I utter, I utter by a voluntary effort of my organs, over which my will has indefeasible control; I may alter the sign as I please, and to any extent, even to that of substituting for it some other wholly new sign; only, if by so doing I shock the sense of those about me, or make myself unintelligible to them, I defeat the very end for which I speak at all. This is the consideration which restrains me from arbitrariness and license in the modification of my speech, and which makes me exert my individual influence upon it only through and by the community of which I am a member. If those who form one community do not talk alike, and cannot understand one another, the fundamental and essential office of speech is not fulfilled. Hence,