Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/323

 quickly understood, comes easily into circulation, is taken up and accepted. Since mutual imitation is the expression of unanimity, this, the natural harmony of minds, may be regarded as the first cause of a current meaning of words, as of other signs. In every nursery, in the bosom of every happy family, we may see how new names for men and things are invented and understood, how they are taken up and repeated from delight in them or in their inventor—e.g., the child who imitates the sound. It is similar when, in larger communities of language, orators and authors introduce new and special words, or new meanings for old words; through the fact that they please, or through the impressiveness and influence of the inventor, they become current for a time at least, i.e., they are imitated, repeated. And with respect also to the origin of language we must suppose that these springs of free invention, of attempts at introduction and at temporary validity, flowed freely when once the organs were accustomed to form a variety of sounds. What then maintains itself in permanent use and is handed down to younger generations, is obtained by selections from this wealth of original word-germs; selections which are themselves being constantly renewed. The psychological causes of those luxuriantly abounding germs in which words are created together with their sensuously felt meaning, we may denote as speech-feeling, or speech-instinct, or better as the impulse to the formation of speech; and this we may then show to be the basis of customary language. It is well-known that just the crudest languages are burdened with a superfluity of synonyms, and also that in them dialects generally vary according to the smallest local districts.

43. Language, like other systems of signs such as writing, notes, signals, is handed on by teaching. With reference to one’s native language, it is true that the teaching is generally mingled with custom and given in imperceptibly small doses, which act all the more strongly from their continuity. But it is always the authority of the teacher which communicates as a fact that the thing is called so and so, that the word and the sentence (as unity of several words) have such a meaning. This statement must be met, not only by the desire and ability to understand, to impress it upon the memory and to show oneself as imitative, but also by the belief of the learner. But everything is easily believed which finds no psychological hindrances in opposed knowledge, in personal mistrust, or in dislike of the subject. Belief is acceptance and confirmation, as it were endorsement