Sec. 5. The greater forcibleness of Saxon English, or rather non-Latin English, first claims our attention. The several special reasons assignable for this may all be reduced to the general reason--economy. The most important of them is early association. A child's vocabulary is almost wholly Saxon. He says, _I have,_ not _I possess_---_I wish,_ not I _desire;_ he does not _reflect,_ he _thinks;_ he does not beg for _amusement,_ but for _play_; he calls things _nice_ or _nasty,_ not _pleasant_ or _disagreeable._ The synonyms which he learns in after years, never become so closely, so organically connected with the ideas signified, as do these original words used in childhood; and hence the association remains less strong. But in what does a strong association between a word and an idea differ from a weak one? Simply in the greater ease and rapidity of the suggestive action. It can be in nothing else. Both of two words, if they be strictly synonymous, eventually call up the same image. The expression--It is _acid,_ must in the end give rise to the same thought as--It is sour; but because the term _acid_ was learnt later in life, and has not been so often followed by the thought symbolized, it does not so readily arouse that thought as the term sour. If we remember how slowly and with what labour the appropriate ideas follow unfamiliar words in another language, and how increasing familiarity with such words brings greater rapidity and ease of comprehension; and if we consider that the same process must have gone on with the words of our mother tongue from childhood upwards, we shall clearly see that the earliest learnt and oftenest used words, will, other things equal, call up images with less loss of time and energy than their later learnt synonyms.