Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/173

 much the language affects the thought and the thought the language (since thought and language are not identic) is of less moment than the fact that they do influence one another. The thought of the multitude creates a world of abstractions that are signified in the popular speech; and the popular speech reacts on the mass-thought.

Language, in one of its aspects, is a social institution crystallized in the fluid medium of intellectual activity. In everyday speech these crystals are used much as builders employ ready-made material in the structures they erect. The innumerable ready-made abstractions, generalities, and classifications admirably serve the popular need; they supply a useful translation of fact, easily transposed to the purposes otherwise difficult of execution. Notions of magnitude, duration, number, phases of change, relative conditions and situations, could not well get on in a popular way without this vast intellectual preparation made in abstract linguistics.