of frequent and familiar use. An illustration is the word eke as a verb, usually found in the phrase to eke out. Etymologically this phrase means to increase something by adding to it. So a person may eke out his income by doing extra work, or if one has not much chicken, one can eke it out with rice. Sometimes, however, the word eke is used simply in the sense of acquiring by great effort or hard labor, as in "With pity he looked down upon those members of the human race . . . who labor to eke a meagre existence out of the products of the wilderness" (Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 1); "the Germans must eke along until the new harvest" (New York Tribune). But the two examples cited illustrate the fact that eke has become a somewhat unfamiliar, literary, and artificial word. Such words are easily avoided, and only a full realization of their values justifies the use of them. The topics discussed in this chapter suggest one further subject of inquiry. The question is, What constitutes the identity of a word? Words are like all other objects in that we must recognize each of them to be itself by its particular marks of identification, just as an elm tree is recognized by the presence of certain characteristics of leaf, limb, and habits of growth, which give to the elm an identity of its own. Now with words we must always keep in mind a double aspect. Words have a physical form and a psychical form. The physical form of a word is its sound when pronounced and its visual representation when written or printed. In a highly developed literary language like English, the aural and visual aspects of words are inseparable. On the physical side it is extremely easy to recognize the identity of familiar words. No one has any doubt that the words horse, tree, cow, merely as groups of sounds or groups of letters, are the same words. that they were yesterday, or that they will continue in their identity in the future. But if one went back far enough, one might have certain doubts. For example, the word tree in Anglo-Saxon is trēow, and the word cow is cũ. Are trêow and cũ the same words as tree and cow? To the person who knows nothing of the history of the language, they are scarcely the same words, because they have not the marks of resemblance by which their identity is readily recognized. But to the trained student they are still the same words, because his fuller information enables him to recognize the same physical features in them and to explain the gradual change by which a word like Anglo-Saxon treow has become Modern English tree. This is indeed a comparatively simple task of identification. The words hussy and gossip, mentioned above, look less like their Anglo-Saxon proto-types hus-wif and god-sib, and modern English lord and lady look still less like Anglo-Saxon hläford and hläfdige. Yet these various words in their several forms contain sufficiently clear marks of identification on the side of sound and spelling, if one has knowledge enough to recognize these marks, to enable one to say with assurance that they are the same words. The problem of the modern science of etymology is largely the problem of discovering hidden and obscure identifications of this kind. But the physical existence of a word is only half of its life, and the less important half. On the side of their psychical content, the recognition of the identity of words is not so simple a matter. It is probably true that no word ever has precisely the same content of meaning in two minds, or precisely the same meaning at two different moments in the same mind. When one speaks of the identity of a word on the side of its meaning, one does not imply an absolute identity of meaning. The word house would be commonly understood to be the same word whether it refers to a three-room or a twelve-room house, a chicken house or a dog house, an ice house or a boat house. But would it be the same word when it refers to a political body, such as the House of Representatives at Washington, or the House of Commons in London? And the words buxom and hussy, which the etymologist has no hesitancy in identifying on their physical side with their Anglo-Saxon originals, are words like these in their modern senses the same words that they were in their Anglo-Saxon senses? No one could maintain that they are. It is evident indeed that the identity of a word on its psychical side is a very different thing from the identity of a word on its physical side. A word which changes its meaning becomes thereby, and in respect to meaning, a new word. Every change of significance implies a change of identity in the word. If the changes are relatively slight, by common consent they may be overlooked in the practical use of the language. But when several different psychical contents of a word of the same physical content thrust themselves upon the attention, then we have to do with as many different words on the psychical side as there are distinguishable differences in thought. Each of these different psychical words must stand on its own feet. They may be as independent of each other as they would be if they did not have the same or a similar physical form. They are in effect entirely separate words, and the correctness of one meaning cannot be determined by appeal to a different meaning. ΧΙ LOGIC THE term "logic" has special and technical uses as well as more general applications. The general senses are the ones intended in the employment of the term in the present chapter. Just what the precise technical meaning of the term "logic" should be is a matter that must be left for the professional logician to decide. But the general meanings of the word are within the reach of everybody. Broadly these general meanings correspond to the processes of order and reasonableness in thinking. A person who speaks and writes logically arranges his thoughts in ways which satisfy the sense of proper relationships and sequence. One who does not speak or write logically, arranges his thoughts without rime or reason, in such a way that the hearer or reader is unable to foretell what the next step of the illogical person will be. The illogical person fails to satisfy the expectations of the person who is looking for what seems to him a natural and coherent expression of thought. A thought which does not seem to arise out of a preceding thought or which does not seem to bear any reasonable relation to a succeeding thought, or which does not seem to be rationally connected with the situation which the language is supposed to reveal, is commonly regarded as an illogical thought. Some persons are said to have logical minds, that is, to express themselves in ways which bear proper relationships to the objects and the ideas they desire to express. The illogical mind produces an impression of lack of harmony between the forms of expression and the content of it. In this general sense we also speak of the logic of circumstances, meaning thereby that plausible relation of the elements in a situation which corresponds to our conviction of their proper connection one with another. It is the purpose of this chapter to discuss this notion of orderliness and reasonableness in language, which we have called logic, from the point of view of its value as a test~ of correctness in language. The appeal to logic so frequently made as a test of correctness in speech is not surprising, when one considers the close connection which exists between logic and language. In a way logic and language may be regarded as double aspects of the same thing. John Stuart Mill somewhere remarks that the structure of every sentence is a lesson in logic. For language provides the forms in which thought must of necessity be molded. What we are agreed to call logical ways of thought come to the child as the child learns the formal ways of expressing thought. The child's mind becomes logical as the child acquires language. A curious inquirer might thus be led to raise a difficult question. The question would be, Does the mind become logical because it acquires language, or does language become logical because logic is inherent in the nature of the mind? If the latter possibility is accepted, then language is merely a reflection of an innate logical necessity that exists independently of any forms of expression. But if the former possibility be preferred, then logic is practically equivalent to language that is, logic is no more、 than the customary ways of expressing thought. What |