ed to enable the idea
to be carried out with greater accuracy.

Now it is quite true that it is by their sound that we recognise or
denote our words. Hence our alphabet was originally phonetic in
principle, and indeed still is so, although the correspondence is
imperfect. As the use of visible signs develops spelling seems to fall
into certain fixed frames and to deviate more and more from pure
phonetic simplicity. But why is this so? It is because the sounds are
merely the symbols or indicators of the different forms of vocal
articulation (vocal acts), and it is really as the symbols and
indicators of these actions that they possess any meaning and acquire
such permanence and identity as they have. The phonetic system,
therefore, becomes in use subordinated to the expression of the acts by
which are produced these radical vocables which constitute the
essentials of rational Discourse.

In all this the process of the expression of words in spelling is a
microcosmic counterpart of the process of cognition as we have tried to
explain it.

It is noteworthy that the same thing necessarily happens in the case of
any new system of spelling.

The most prominent advocates of phonetic spelling have been also the
authors of a system of phonetic shorthand.

Like the written and printed alphabet of Europe, the alphabet of
Phonography was made phonetic. Indeed it started off as a more nearly
perfect phonetic system than the ordinary European alphabet. But as its
use advances its employment undergoes the same change. The phonetic
symbols are abbreviated by grammalogues and contractions, and this
proceeds in accordance with a principle unconsciously recognised but
which really depends on the same inherent necessity to preserve in a
consistent form the expression of the radical vocables of Speech.
Finally, in the hands of the expert stenographer the system of phonetic
shorthand (though he still uses the sound as the guide and indicator of
his actions) is as far removed from a pure phonetic representation as
the ordinary method of spelling. Indeed, unless some such suprasensible
and unifying principle were available, phonetic spelling would speedily
perish in an infinity of degenerate variations.

We adduce this illustration as one which very well confirms our main
argument. We have no desire to discuss on its merits the general
question of Spelling Reform, which of course is quite apart from the
attempt to establish a scheme of