been speaking, having been only recently constituted a
substantive, and employed in this sense, while yet its utility is
obvious. 'Confluents' would perhaps be a fitter name, where the rivers,
like the Missouri and the Mississippi, were of equal or nearly equal
importance up to the time of their meeting{124}.

{Sidenote: '_Selfishness_', '_Suicide_'}

Again, new words are coined out of the necessity which men feel of
filling up gaps in the language. Thoughtful men, comparing their own
language with that of other nations, become conscious of deficiencies,
of important matters unexpressed in their own, and with more or less
success proceed to supply the deficiency. For example, that sin of sins,
the undue love of self, with the postponing of the interests of all
others to our own, had for a long time no word to express it in English.
Help was sought from the Greek, and from the Latin. 'Philauty' ({Greek:
philautia}) had been more than once attempted by our scholars; but found
no popular acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin; one writer
trying to supply the want by calling the man a 'suist', as one seeking
_his own_ things ('sua'), and the sin itself, 'suicism'. The gap,
however, was not really filled up, till some of the Puritan writers,
drawing on our Saxon, devised 'selfish' and 'selfishness', words which
to us seem obvious enough, but which yet are little more than two
hundred [and fifty] years old{125}.

{Sidenote: _Notices of New Words_}

Before quitting this part of the subject, let me say a few words in
conclusion on this deliberate introduction of words to supply felt
omissions in a language, and the limits within which this or any other
conscious interference with the development of a language is desirable
or possible. By the time that a people begin to meditate upon their
language, to be aware by a conscious reflective act either of its merits
or deficiencies, by far the greater and more important part of its work
is done; it is fixed in respect of its structure in immutable forms; the
region in which any alteration or modification, addition to it, or
substraction from it, deliberately devised and carried out, may be
possible, is very limited indeed. Its great laws are too firmly
established to admit of this; so that almost nothing can be taken from
it, which it has got; almost nothing added to it, which it has _not_
got. It will travel indeed in certain courses of change; but it would be
as easy