_Malacopterygii Subbrachiati_, to signify _Under-arm soft
fins_, or _Anthropomorphus Inorganismoidismus_, to signify _things in
unorganized form, having a resemblance to man_, would soon come to be
regarded as the lingual monsters which they really are.

The difference between commencing the composition of words by the real
elements of speech, represented by single letters, each charged with its
own appropriate meaning, and conveying that meaning into every compound
into which it should enter, from commencing the composition by assuming
long words already formed in some existing language, as _Anthropos_
(Greek word for _man_), _Acanthos_ (Greek word for _spine_), _Keron_
(Greek word for _fin_ or _wing_), etc., as the first element of the new
compounds, is infinite in its results upon the facility, copiousness,
and expressiveness of the terminology evolved. It is like the difference
of man working by the aid of the unlimited resources of tools and
machinery and the knowledge of chemistry, on the one hand, and man
working with his unaided _bare hands_, and in ignorance of the nature of
the substances he employs, on the other hand. The scientific world has
not hitherto known how to construct the lingual tools and instruments
which are indispensable to its own rapidly augmenting and complicated
operations; to analyze and apply the lingual materials at its command;
and to simplify and unify the nomenclatures of all the sciences, in
order to quicken a thousandfold the operation of all the mental
faculties, in the perception and exact vocal indication of all the
infinitely numerous close discriminations and broad generalizing
analogies with which nature abounds.

It is hardly necessary to say that the particular meanings assigned
above to the single sounds in the analysis of the German word
_Finger-hut_, are not assumed in any sense to be the real meanings of
the vocal elements involved. The whole case is supposititious, and
assumed merely to illustrate the unused possibilities of Language in the
construction of significant words, and especially in the construction of
scientific technicalities. To found a real Language of this kind, it
would be necessary, first, to work up patiently to the true meanings of
the Elementary Sounds of Human Speech, and then to the analogy of those
meanings with the elements of universal being (the categories of the
understanding, etc.), and finally of these again with the elements of
each of the