Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/114

 inert. Its initiative is repressed by the mass-habit, the inertia of which is owing somewhat to its arbitrary character. The system more or less is bound by precedent; it is hampered by inherited tendencies; it derives some of its meanings from tradition, and it takes on others from the times.

Opposed to this system of signs, so arbitrary and sluggish, are the mutable energies of fluid speech. This phantasmagoric sea ever is beating against the more solid shores. Innumerable and fluctuating factors disturb its surface. An infinite number of ephemeral signs, like waves, eternally striking the great land-masses of language, leave their impressions and thus effect those changes, which we recognize as inevitable. But the opposing orders of phenomena are less contradictory than they seem at first glance. The logic of change is unbroken when language is regarded in the light of its double aspect. Note must be taken of shifting phonetics, of mutations between image and con-