stance, as exhibited in the etymological variety of corresponding appellations. In this capacity of language to yield to its historical investigator information concerning both the internal life and external history and circumstances of those who have made it what it is, lies, as was pointed out in the outset of our inquiries, no small portion of the interest attaching to linguistic study.
But etymological reminiscences, while thus of the highest value to him who reflects upon language and examines its history, are, as regards the practical purposes of speech, of very subordinate consequence; nay, they would, if more prominent before our attention, be an actual embarrassment to us. Language would be half spoiled for our use by the necessity of bearing in mind why and how its constituents have the value we give them. The internal development of a vocabulary, too, would be greatly checked and hampered by a too intrusive etymological consciousness. All significant transfer, growth of new meanings, form-making, is directly dependent upon our readiness to forget the derivation of our terms, to cut loose from historical connections, and to make the tie of conventional usage the sole one between the thing signified and its spoken sign. Much the greater part of the resources of expression possessed by our language would be struck off at a blow, if a perceived bond of meaning between etymon and derivative were a requisite to the latter's existence and use. Those, then, are greatly in error who would designate by the name "linguistic sense" (sprachsinn) a disposition to retain in memory the original status and value of formative elements, and the primary significance of transferred terms; who would lay stress upon the maintenance of such a disposition, and regard its wane as an enfeeblement, a step downward toward the structural decay of language. On the contrary, the opposite tendency is the true principle of lively and fertile growth, both of the form and content of speech, and, as we shall see hereafter, it prevails most in the languages of highest character and destiny. A certain degree of vividness, of graphic and picturesque quality, it is true, is conferred upon a term which has been applied by a metaphor to a mental or philosophic use, by the
