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 As soon as we see order in relationships, and when we perceive that the order is constant, we call this phenomenal spirit a law. Then we lean back in our chairs, content with our knowledge and not always unmindful of our wisdom. This frowzy lack of humor, so often seen in smug professorial dignity, blights many a promising career.

Linguistics is an incomplete crystallization of the phenomena of language; but the crystallization is sufficient to show the great number of complexities that condition words and their relations. What are these laws, and how are they revealed? The study of grammar, so well begun by the Greeks and so successfully pursued by the French, has yielded its well-known rules. The rules are narrow, logical, and theoretically, strong. They enable us to distinguish between correct forms and those that are not. Practically, these rules have become so honeycombed with exceptions that they are weak.

Philology already was taught at the school