Life is action, and without activity whatever powers lie within any conscious being are only potential. Activity is the bridge between the inner man and the outer world, by which he impresses his thought, in forms, on chaos or the atoms about him, receiving in return increased knowledge and experience of all he touches, and knowledge of himself through the results of his own actions; and it is the bridge between man and man. For this reason the verb, the word of action, is the most important and most developed part of speech. The three hypostases of life, as of language, are the self, activity, and the world; and it is for the expression of all the possible varied relations between these three, that all the forms of any language come into being. And from the way in which these forms are developed, and the relative importance which is given to this or that form of thought or activity, the character of the people, their grasp of nature, and their own conception of themselves and their relation to the world, can be seen.[49-*] Some languages have the strong impress of impersonality, without any loss of virility; others are strongly egotistic and self-assertive, with perhaps the braggart’s lack of genuine strength. Each spoken language that we know has its own color and tone, to which our thought must respond, if we would know and use it well. To speak good Swedish, for instance, requires clear thinking to an exceptional degree. To show this, the form “come here,” which is the ordinary English expression, is simply _bad grammar_ in Swedish; the use of “come _hither_” (_kom hit_, instead of _kom här_) is imperative. We have the “hither” in English, but it has become stilted, and the linguistic distinction lost. Compare also the use of _få_, as a common auxiliary; nor are these exceptions, but, on the contrary, characteristic examples. Also to enunciate the language rightly one must hold the back and neck erect and the muscles firm. In some languages the speaker thinks of himself and his completed action as inseparable, as a single idea, as the Latin _edi_ for I have eaten; in others he thinks of himself subconsciously as possessing the results of his action, as our _I have eaten_; and in others, as among the Irish peasantry, he separates himself and his action entirely, as _I am after eating_. In some grammars, as in Maya, the verbal concept starts with the past; in others, as our own, we live in the present; in the Welsh, the future is the chief tense. The mere choice of _shall_ or _will_ as the first person future auxiliary denotes a specific mental quality.