Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere
intersected by the lines of analogy. Like number from which it seems to
be derived, the principle of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern
the similarities and differences of things, and their relations to one
another. At first these are such as lie on the surface only; after a
time they are seen by men to reach farther down into the nature of
things. Gradually in language they arrange themselves into a sort of
imperfect system; groups of personal and case endings are placed side
by side. The fertility of language produces many more than are wanted;
and the superfluous ones are utilized by the assignment to them of new
meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity are thus partially
compensated by each other. It must be remembered that in all the
languages which have a literature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin,
we are not at the beginning but almost at the end of the linguistic
process; we have reached a time when the verb and the noun are nearly
perfected, though in no language did they completely perfect
themselves, because for some unknown reason the motive powers of
languages seem to have ceased when they were on the eve of completion:
they became fixed or crystallized in an imperfect form either from the
influence of writing and literature, or because no further
differentiation of them was required for the intelligibility of
language. So not without admixture and confusion and displacement and
contamination of sounds and the meanings of words, a lower stage of
language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no further. When
we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails in all the
vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question; or no
other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which, like
number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both
visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not (a)
arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a
Latin noun in “us” should end in “um;” nor (b) from any necessity of
being understood,—much less articulation would suffice for this; nor
(c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds.
Such notions were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive
man. We may speak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest,
easiest, most euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one
of two competing sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to
our knowledge. We may try to grasp the infinity of language either
under the figure of a limitless plain divided into countries and
districts by natural boundaries, or of a vast river eternally flowing
whose origin is concealed from us; we may apprehend partially the laws
by which speech is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if we
should never know, any more than in the parallel case of the origin of