of the
traditional forms. Disaster follows rebellion against tradition or
against utility, which are the basis and root of our taste and
progress. But, within the given school, and as exponents of its
spirit, we can adapt and perfect our works, if haply we are better
inspired than our predecessors. For the better we know a given
thing, and the more we perceive its strong and weak points, the
more capable we are of idealizing it.

_Form in words._

Sec. 42. The main effect of language consists in its meaning, in the
ideas which it expresses. But no expression is possible without a
presentation, and this presentation must have a form. This form of
the instrument of expression is itself an element of effect, although
in practical life we may overlook it in our haste to attend to the
meaning it conveys. It is, moreover, a condition of the kind of
expression possible, and often determines the manner in which the
object suggested shall be apperceived. No word has the exact value
of any other in the same or in another language.[13] But the
intrinsic effect of language does not stop there. The single word is
but a stage in the series of formations which constitute language,
and which preserve for men the fruit of their experience, distilled
and concentrated into a symbol.

This formation begins with the elementary sounds themselves,
which have to be discriminated and combined to make recognizable
symbols. The evolution of these symbols goes on spontaneously,
suggested by our tendency to utter all manner of sounds,
and preserved by the ease with which the ear discriminates
these sounds when made. Speech would be an absolute and
unrelated art, like music, were it not controlled by utility. The
sounds have indeed no resemblance to the objects they symbolize;
but before the system of sounds can represent the system of objects,
there has to be a correspondence in the groupings of both. The
structure of language, unlike that of music, thus becomes a mirror
of the structure of the world as presented to the intelligence.

Grammar, philosophically studied, is akin to the deepest
metaphysics, because in revealing the constitution of speech, it
reveals the constitution of thought, and the hierarchy of those
categories by which we conceive the world. It is by virtue of this
parallel development that language has its function of expressing
experience with exactness, and the poet -- to whom language is an
instrument of art -- has to