Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/57

II.] phases, into what it is at present. Before, now, we go on to examine in detail the processes of linguistic change, setting forth more fully their causes and modes of action, and exhibiting their results upon a more extended scale, we have to draw from what has been already said one or two important conclusions, touching the nature of the force by which those processes are carried on, and the character, and place among the sciences, of the study which undertakes their investigation.

And, in the first place, we see, I think, from our examination of the manner in which language is learned and taught, in which its life is kept up, what is meant when we speak and write of it as having an independent or objective existence, as being an organism or possessing an organic structure, as having laws of growth, as feeling tendencies, as developing, as adapting itself to our needs, and so on. All these are figurative expressions, the language of trope and metaphor, not of plain fact; they are wholly unobjectionable when consciously employed in their proper character, for the sake of brevity or liveliness of delineation; they are only harmful when we allow them to blind us to the real nature of the truths they represent. Language has, in fact, no existence save in the minds and mouths of those who use it; it is made up of separate articulated signs of thought, each of which is attached by a mental association to the idea it represents, is uttered by voluntary effort, and has its value and currency only by the agreement of speakers and hearers. It is in their power, subject to their will; as it is kept up, so is it modified and altered, so may it be abandoned, by their joint and consenting action, and in no other way whatsoever.

This truth is not only often lost from view by those who think and reason respecting language, but it is also sometimes explicitly denied, and the opposite doctrine is set up, that language has a life and growth independent of its speakers, with which men cannot interfere. A recent popular writer asserts that, "although there is a