account of them. Through what struggles the harmonious use
of the organs of speech was acquired; to what extent the conditions of
human life were different; how far the genius of individuals may have
contributed to the discovery of this as of the other arts, we cannot
say: Only we seem to see that language is as much the creation of the
ear as of the tongue, and the expression of a movement stirring the
hearts not of one man only but of many, 'as the trees of the wood are
stirred by the wind.' The theory is consistent or not inconsistent with
our own mental experience, and throws some degree of light upon a dark
corner of the human mind.

In the later analysis of language, we trace the opposite and contrasted
elements of the individual and nation, of the past and present, of
the inward and outward, of the subject and object, of the notional
and relational, of the root or unchanging part of the word and of the
changing inflexion, if such a distinction be admitted, of the vowel and
the consonant, of quantity and accent, of speech and writing, of poetry
and prose. We observe also the reciprocal influence of sounds and
conceptions on each other, like the connexion of body and mind; and
further remark that although the names of objects were originally proper
names, as the grammarian or logician might call them, yet at a later
stage they become universal notions, which combine into particulars and
individuals, and are taken out of the first rude agglomeration of sounds
that they may be replaced in a higher and more logical order. We see
that in the simplest sentences are contained grammar and logic--the
parts of speech, the Eleatic philosophy and the Kantian categories. So
complex is language, and so expressive not only of the meanest wants of
man, but of his highest thoughts; so various are the aspects in which it
is regarded by us. Then again, when we follow the history of languages,
we observe that they are always slowly moving, half dead, half alive,
half solid, half fluid; the breath of a moment, yet like the air,
continuous in all ages and countries,--like the glacier, too, containing
within them a trickling stream which deposits debris of the rocks over
which it passes. There were happy moments, as we may conjecture, in the
lives of nations, at which they came to the birth--as in the golden age
of literature, the man and the time seem to conspire; the eloquence of
the bard or chief, as in later times the creations of t