Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/45

I.] How this language is kept in existence is clearly shown by the foregoing exposition. It is preserved by an uninterrupted tradition. Each generation hands it down to the generation following. Every one is an actor in the process; in each individual speaker the language has, as we may say, a separate and independent existence, as has an animal species in each of its members; and each does what in him lies to propagate it&mdash;that is to say, his own part of it, as determined in extent and character by the inherent and acquired peculiarities of his nature. And, small as may be the share of the work which falls to any one of us, the sum of all the shares constitutes the force which effects the transmission of the whole language. In the case of a tongue like ours, too, these private labours are powerfully aided and supplemented by the influence of a literature. Each book is, as it were, an undying individual, with whom, often, much larger numbers hold intercourse than any living person can reach, and who teaches them to speak as he speaks. A great body of literary works of acknowledged merit and authority, in the midst of a people proud and fond of it, is an agent in the preservation and transmission of any tongue, the importance of which cannot easily be over-estimated: we shall have to take it constantly into account in the course of our further inquiries into the history of language. But each work is, after all, only a single person, with his limitations and deficiencies, and with his restricted influence. Even Shakspeare, with his unrivalled wealth and variety of expression, uses but about fifteen thousand words, and Milton little more than half so many&mdash;mere fragments of the encyclopedic English tongue. The language would soon be shorn of no small part of its strength, if placed exclusively in the hands of any individual, or of any class. Nothing less than the combined effort of a whole community, with all its classes and orders, in all its variety of characters, circumstances, and necessities, is capable of keeping in life a whole language.

But, while our English speech is thus passed onward from generation to generation of those who learn to speak it, and, having learned themselves, teach others, it does not remain