The unwarranted importance attached to the historical study of language forms is paralleled by the equally unwarranted importance ascribed to grammatical and orthographic correctness in the use of language. This perverse pedantry has been carried to such lengths that it is considered almost dishonorable for any one to violate the usual forms of his mother tongue, or even of a foreign language, like the French. We forget that neither Shakespeare nor Luther nor Goethe spoke or wrote a "correct" English or German, and we forget that it cannot be the object of a true cultivation of language to _preserve_ as accurately as possible existing linguistic usage, with its imperfections, amounting at times to absurdities. Its real object lies rather in the appropriate _development_ and _improvement_ of the language. We have already mentioned the fact that in one department, orthography, the true conception of the nature of language and of its development is gradually beginning to assert itself. Among most nations efforts are being made to improve orthography with a view to unambiguity, and when once sufficient clearness is had as to the object aimed for in spelling, there will be no special difficulty in finding the required means to attain it. But in all the other departments of language we are still almost wholly without a conception of the genuine needs. Though the example of the English language proves that we can entirely dispense with the manifold co-ordinations in the same sentence as appearing in the special plural forms of the adjective, verb, pronoun, etc., yet the idea of consciously applying to other languages the natural process of improvement unconsciously evolved in the English language seems not to have occurred even to the boldest language reformers. So strongly are we all under the domination of the "schoolmaster" ideal, that is to say, the ideal of preserving every linguistic absurdity and impracticability simply because it is "good usage."