, "stepping forward" in a physical
sense. We cannot have an idea that the mind or the morals or the manners
take steps. So when we say we will consider a matter we do not
necessarily mean that two or more of us will _sit together_ about the
matter. When we meet for _deliberation_ there is no process of weighing
intended, no proposal to use the scales, in arriving at a conclusion in
the matter we have in mind. We _say_ "stepping forward," "sitting
together" and "weighing," but we _mean_ something else. When Professor
Whitney, in the quotation I have given in the early part of this paper,
says of the spelling conservatives, "They know best their own infirmity
of back," he has no idea that the back has anything to do with their
refusal to follow him in his chimerical ramble after an ideal
orthography. When Professor March, in the paper from which I have
quoted, says that "a host of scholars are pursuing the historical study
of the English language," he means something more than, and different
from, what his words indicate, and he certainly doesn't mean what his
words do indicate. The matter of pursuit is altogether one of physics.
These words of an intellectual significance which I have noted are so
used because we have no words in our language which have meanings such
as those we attach to them. We are obliged to take words of a physical
and material significance and use them as intimations of the sense we
wish to convey. As men take a material substance--gold, silver, ivory,
wood or stone--and use it as an image or symbol of the deity they
worship, so we use words of a material sense to express, in some faint
degree, the intellectual and moral ideas we desire to disclose.

The bald statement, expressed or implied, that the sounds we produce in
our attempts to utter a word constitute the true word, requires some
material modification, but to what extent it is not for me now to
discuss. When that necessity for modification is admitted by the
reformers, it is for them to survey its limits. They are the aggressors
in the contest that is precipitated. They must outline and define their
own case.

There are many considerations favorable to a modification of the present
spelling of several classes of words. A reform is needed, and must come,
but it will not come, and ought not to come, with the character and to
the extent desired by the "reformers." A reform that shall make the
spelling better, and not merely make it over, sho