The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864: Devoted To Literature And National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
It is the completion of this Intellectually Analytical process which
offers the _point of incipency_ for the new and immense Lingual
Structure of the future, and the ultimate virtual unification of Human
Speech. It may be quite true, as Professor Mueller affirms, that the
Instinctual Development of Language--by which _we_ mean the whole
Lingual History of the Past, with the exception of our present very
imperfect Scientific nomenclatures--has never proved adequate to the
introduction of a single new _root_, since the 'Instinct' exhausted
itself, as he says, in the nascent effort. But it is a pure assumption,
when he supposes, for that reason, that the informed Human Intellect of
the Future will not be competent to constitute thousands of them. It is
just as legitimate as would have been the assumption in the infancy of
Chemistry, that because Nature never _synthetized_ in _her_ laboratory
more than a few simple salts, the modern chemist would never be able to
produce any one of the two thousand salts now known to him. This kind of
assumption is the common error of the expounders of existing science, as
contrasted with the bolder originality of discoverers.
But, again, though it is true that the _Intuitional_ (or Instinctual)
faculty of man has, in a manner, declined, as in the case of the sense
of Smell, while the _Intellect_ (the Analogue of the Eye) has been
developed, still it is assuming too much to say that it utterly fails us
even yet. It remains, like the sense of Smell, an important helper even
in our present investigations. Professor Mueller should not, because he
may happen to have a cold, affirm that nobody smells anything any more.
To explain what I mean in this respect, the following extract may serve
as a text:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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