quantity of the other syllables, whether long or short ones, to appear; they are simply overwhelmed. The roots of the majority of words are unquestionably as a general rule short, compact,[25] of one or two syllables. If thus, as is for instance pre-eminently the case with our mother tongue, these root-stems appropriate almost invariably the accent to themselves, such an accent is to an overwhelming degree one of the sense, _significance',_ not a definition, however, in which the medium--that is, the utterance as sound--would be free, or could assert the relation of the length, shortness, or accentuation of syllables independently of the intelligible content of the words. Consequently a rhythmical configuration of time-movement and emphasis liberated from the stem syllable and its meaning can here no longer be maintained. We have merely left us, in contradistinction to the former hearing of the ample sound and duration of such long and short beats in their varied juxtaposition, a general impression of sound,[26] which is apprehended. entirely aloof from the accented fundamental syllable with its weight of significance. And, indeed, apart from this, as we have seen, the ramification of the stem into syllables as modified into particular words is also an independent process. Such words receive thereby an independent worth, and, while preserving their own significance, they make us at the same time hear the identical coalescence of meaning and accent, which we have observed in the case of the stem or root word around which they are ranged. We are therefore forced to restrict our attention to the sense of every word; and, instead of being occupied with the natural length and shortness of syllables and their sensuous[27] accentuation, are only able to hear the accent asserted by the main and substantive meaning.