ving it. Beginning with
English we should ask, what means have we for finding out why _I love_
should mean I am actually loving, whereas _I loved_ indicates that that
feeling is past and gone? Or, if we look to languages richer in
inflections than English, by what process can we discover under what
circumstances _amo_, I love, was changed, through the mere addition of an
_r_, into _amor_, expressing no longer _I love_, but _I am loved_? Did
declensions and conjugations bud forth like the blossoms of a tree? Were
they imparted to man ready made by some mysterious power? Or did some wise
people invent them, assigning certain letters to certain phases of
thought, as mathematicians express unknown quantities by freely chosen
algebraic exponents? We are here brought at once face to face with the
highest and most difficult problem of our science, the origin of language.
But it will be well for the present to turn our eyes away from theories,
and fix our attention at first entirely on facts.

Let us keep to the English perfect, _I loved_, as compared with the
present, _I love_. We cannot embrace at once the whole English grammar,
but if we can track one form to its true lair, we shall probably have no
difficulty in digging out the rest of the brood. Now, if we ask how the
addition of a final _d_ could express the momentous transition from being
in love to being indifferent, the first thing we have to do, before
attempting any explanation, would be to establish the earliest and most
original form of _I loved_. This is a rule which even Plato recognized in
his philosophy of language, though, we must confess, he seldom obeyed it.
We know what havoc phonetic corruption may make both in the dictionary and
the grammar of a language, and it would be a pity to waste our conjectures
on formations which a mere reference to the history of language would
suffice to explain. Now a very slight acquaintance with the history of the
English language teaches us that the grammar of modern English is not the
same as the grammar of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's English again may be traced
back to what, with Sir Frederick Madden, we may call Middle English, from
1500 to 1330; Middle English to Early English, from 1330 to 1230; Early
English to Semi-Saxon from 1230 to 1100; and Semi-Saxon to
Anglo-Saxon.(102) It is evident that if we are to discover the original
intention of the syllable which changes _I love_ into _I loved_, we must
consult the original form