Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/72

50 to their attainment, to be fundamentally and essentially different from that of atoms moved by gravity, chemical affinity, and the other immutable forces of nature, as we call them—by such, the study of language, whose dependence upon voluntary action is so absolute that not one word ever was or ever will be uttered without the distinct exertion of the human will, cannot but be regarded as a moral science; its real relationship is with those branches of human knowledge among which common opinion is accustomed to rank it—with mental philosophy, with philology, with history.

While, however, we are thus forced to the acknowledgment that everything in human speech is a product of the conscious action of human beings, we should be leaving out of sight a matter of essential consequence in linguistic investigation if we failed to notice that what the linguistic student seeks in language is not what men have voluntarily or intentionally placed there. As we have already seen, each separate item in the production or modification of language is a satisfaction of the need of the moment; it is prompted by the exigencies of the particular case; it is brought forth for the practical end of convenient communication, and with no ulterior aim or object whatsoever; it is accepted by the community only because it supplies a perceived want, and answers an acknowledged purpose in the uses of social intercourse. The language-makers are quite heedless of its position and value as part of a system, or as a record with historical content, nor do they analyze and set before their consciousness the mental tendencies which it gratifies. A language is, in very truth, a grand system, of a highly complicated and symmetrical structure; it is fitly comparable with an organized body; but this is not because any human mind has planned such a structure and skilfully worked it out. Each single part is conscious and intentional; the whole is instinctive and natural. The unity and symmetry of the system is the unconscious product of the efforts of the human mind, grappling with the facts of the world without and the world within itself, and recording each separate result in speech. Herein is a real language fundamentally different from the elaborate and philosophical structures