ereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running
streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the
secular growth of trunk and branch.

The historical conditions of society may be compared with those of
language. It must be admitted that the language of cultivated nations
is in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the
civilized world are only approximately intelligible to each other, and
even that, only at the cost of long study; one word stands for many
things, and many words for one thing; the subtle shades of meaning, and
still subtler echoes of association, make language an instrument which
scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness and
certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which has been again and
again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has
at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no
uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of
many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten
years,"--a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects
the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic
signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science,
but will never express _life_, which is a great deal more than science.
With the anomalies and inconveniences of historical language, you will
have parted with its music and its passion, with its vital qualities
as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capabilities
of wit, with everything that gives it power over the imagination; and
the next step in simplification will be the invention of a talking
watch, which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the
communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be
represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A
"melancholy language of the future!" The sensory and motor nerves that
run in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a more necessary
and delicate union than that which binds men's affections, imagination,
wit and humor with the subtle ramifications of historical language.
Language must be left to grow in precision, completeness and unity, as
minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness and sympathy. And there is
an analogous relat