If these points were remembered, there would be less absurd employment of the grammatical categories of one group of languages to systematise another. Greek and Sanscrit grammar plays sad havoc with the organism of a Semitic tongue, and it is not less out of place as a schema for delineating e. g. South African dialect. Isolated words even in an Indo-Germanic language--even, we may say, in such a language as English--are still fractional, and do not get life and individuality except in their context. And it needs but a little experience to show how various that individuality may be. It needs perhaps still more meditation to realise that it is in this individuality that the real life of language lies: in the words said and written to express the thought of a personality. But, first, because language has its material and mechanical side, and secondly, because in civilised countries it further acquires a more stereotyped mechanism in written and printed language, its parts tend to gain a pseudo-independence. It is one aim of a philosophical dictionary to restore the organic interconnexion which in the mere sequence of vocables in juxtaposition is apt to be lost. What we call the meaning of a word is something which carries us beyond that mere word,--which restores the connexions which have been broken off and forgotten. In the form of a dictionary, of course, this can only be done piece-meal: but if each piece is done thoroughly, it can hardly fail to bring out certain comprehensive connexions. The mere word seems a simple thing; and one is at first disposed to get rid of its difficulty by substituting a so-called synonym. But a deeper study reveals the fact that an exact synonym is a thing one can no more find than two peas which are absolutely indistinguishable. A synonym is only a practical _pis aller_. But every word is really as it were a point in an infinitely complex organic life, with its essence or meaning determined by the currents to and fro which meet in it.