e used for the same purpose. And here again, as
long as these words are fully understood and kept alive, they resist
phonetic corruption; but the moment they lose, so to say, their presence
of mind, phonetic corruption sets in, and as soon as phonetic corruption
has commenced its ravages, those portions of a word which it affects
retain a merely artificial or conventional existence, and dwindle down to
grammatical terminations.

I am afraid I should tax your patience too much were I to enter here on an
analysis of the grammatical terminations in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, in
order to show how these terminations arose out of independent words, which
were slowly reduced to mere dust by the constant wear and tear of speech.
But in order to explain how the principle of phonetic decay leads to the
formation of grammatical terminations, let us look to languages with which
we are more familiar. Let us take the French adverb. We are told by French
grammarians(28) that in order to form adverbs we have to add the
termination _ment_. Thus from _bon_, good, we form _bonnement_, from
_vrai_, true, _vraiment_. This termination does not exist in Latin. But we
meet in Latin(29) with expressions such as _bona mente_, in good faith. We
read in Ovid, "Insistam forti mente," I shall insist with a strong mind or
will, I shall insist strongly; in French, "J'insisterai fortement."
Therefore, what has happened in the growth of Latin, or in the change of
Latin into French, is simply this: in phrases such as _forti mente_, the
last word was no longer felt as a distinct word, and it lost at the same
time its distinct pronunciation. _Mente_, the ablative of _mens_, was
changed into _ment_, and was preserved as a merely formal element, as the
termination of adverbs, even in cases where a recollection of the original
meaning of _mente_ (with a mind), would have rendered its employment
perfectly impossible. If we say in French that a hammer falls
_lourdement_, we little suspect that we ascribe to a piece of iron a heavy
mind. In Italian, though the adverbial termination _mente_ in _claramente_
is no longer felt as a distinct word, it has not as yet been affected by
phonetic corruption; and in Spanish it is sometimes used as a distinct
word, though even then it cannot be said to have retained its distinct
meaning. Thus, instead of saying, "claramente, concisamente y
elegantemente," it is more elegant to say in Spanish, "clara, concisa y
elegante mente.