Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/856

834 define itself, does with, the same spontaneity. Two words, formerly synonymous, are differentiated by an immediate apperception. The history of language is a series of repartitions. The earliest stammering of a child is nothing else, for it is by repartition that he applies to distinct objects the sylablessyllables [sic] which he at first bestowed indifferently on everything he met.

When the popular mind has once determined a repartition of a certain order, it is naturally tempted to complete the series. There are languages in which the different acts of life are not designated in the same way when performed by a person of high dignity and by a common person. To express that a man eats, the Cambodians use the word si; in speaking of a chief, pisa; and of a bonze or king, soï. In speaking to an inferior, I is anh; to a superior, knhom; to a bonze, chhan. The followers of Zoroaster, who regard the world as divided between two opposing powers, have a double vocabulary, according as they speak of creatures of Ormuzd or of Ahriman,

Nothing, in fact, is more natural or more necessary than repartition; for our mind collects words from different ages and different mediums, and would be in absolute confusion if it did not give some kind of order to them. We all do what the dictionaries of synonyms do; when we examine the terms which usage distinguishes or subordinates, we find that etymology rarely gives a reason for the differences we assign to them. If we take, for example, the words genus and species, what reason is there for giving one a larger capacity than the other? There is nothing in the words division, brigade, regiment, and battalion to indicate the special and exact subordination of one to another that exists between them. Passing to moral ideas, we perceive no gradation imposed by etymology in the words esteem, respect, and veneration. It required precise and clear minds, a society well ordered and careful of its ranks, to establish some of these distinctions.

Still, repartition has its limits. First, as it does not create, but attaches itself to what is to be distinguished, terms to be differentiated must exist in the language. We might cite instances of confusion from which, for the lack of a word, the most perfect idioms have never succeeded in freeing themselves. On the other hand, the mind may not always be able to fructify all the riches the language offers it. Grammatical mechanism, by combining existing elements, could produce such a quantity of forms that the mind would be embarrassed with them. George Curtius calculated that the number of personal forms in the Greek verb rose to 268, but this is much inferior to the 861 forms of Sanskrit. Another limit is imposed. Certain shades of meaning are possible only among cultivated peoples. In synonymy we can discern what objects the thought of a nation is