Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/119

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VII

Orderly Relationships

It is difficult to realize what a network of laws enmesh our poor little vocabularies; nor can we easier perceive from what mysterious source these laws have come. Have they no intelligent purpose? Are all these series of flexible yet constant relations the result of “blind forces” working to some purpose by fate or to no purpose by chance; and have they no destiny which, seeing the way, guides them through more than multitudinous wildernesses? Is intelligence the offspring of order, or is order the symbol of intelligence? We do not know; but we can not help suspecting that, somehow, intelligence and order are interdependent. And seeing order everywhere within range, we must believe that it extends beyond; and that where one is, there the other must be, also.

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