Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/169

 modified. We, ourselves, have had to produce these changes in nervous substance. The processes are our own, only the method, as a pattern, was supplied to us. In this sense the mother-tongue dominates us as a law of governance. Thus our greatest lesson in psychology is the language that we first learn.

Nothing perhaps wields greater power over the inner life of the individual than does his struggles with language. These ceaseless efforts not only determine his attitude toward what we call life, but they mould the character of his thought. Continually spurred by necessity from the days of resilient youth to those of rigid age, man must struggle with the problems of language. He encounters mysterious things during every moment of consciousness; these he must harmonize, somehow, with his conceptions; he must associate cause and effect; he must link up word and image; he must learn the valyes of signs and the accepted standards whereby values are