Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/67

II.] obvious desirability, our English orthography! But speech is a thing of far nearer and higher importance; it is the most precious of our possessions, the instrument of our thoughts, the organ of our social nature, the means of our culture; its use is not daily or hourly alone, but momently; it is the first thing we learn, the last we forget; it is the most intimate and clinging of our habits, and almost a second nature: and hence its exemption from all sweeping or arbitrary change. The community, to whom it belongs, will suffer no finger to be laid upon it without a reason; only such modifications as commend themselves to the general sense, as are virtually the carrying out of tendencies universally felt, have a chance of winning approval and acceptance, and so of being adopted into use, and made language.

Thus it is indeed true that the individual has no power to change language. But it is not true in any sense which excludes his agency, but only so far as that agency is confessed to be inoperative except as it is ratified by those about him. Speech and the changes of speech are the work of the community; but the community cannot act except through the initiative of its individual members, which it follows or rejects. The work of each individual is done unpremeditatedly, or as it were unconsciously; each is intent only on using the common possession for his own benefit, serving therewith his private ends; but each is thus at the same time an actor in the great work of perpetuating and of shaping the general speech. So each separate polyp on a coral-bank devotes himself simply to the securing of his own food, and excretes calcareous matter only in obedience to the exigencies of his individual life; but, as the joint result of the isolated labours of all, there slowly rises in the water the enormous coral cliff, a barrier for the waves to dash themselves against in vain. To pick out a single man, were he even an emperor, and hold him up to view in his impotence as proof that men cannot make or alter language, is precisely equivalent to selecting one polyp, though the biggest and brightest-coloured of his species, off the growing reef, and exclaiming over him, "See this weak and puny