writers. A class language for a literary aristocracy, however, seems scarcely an ideal to arouse enthusiasm. More appealing would be the project of throwing all words, all constructions of the language, into the melting pot of popular and unsophisticated usage, taking as valid English whatever came out. The language would certainly not lose in reality and directness, in certainty of meaning and feeling. What the popular mind genuinely assimilates, it expresses in terms that bring the expression close to immediate experience. The vagueness and the decay of learned words in popular use is often only a decay from the learned point of view, for the popular mind gives all words which are genuinely popular a clear meaning.` But a little learning is the dangerous thing. Half-learned English has neither the unconscious certainty of popular English nor the scholarly precision of the carefully correct speaker and writer. Authors can bring nothing but harm to the language if they lead to the substitution of a vaguely remembered literary English in the place of the simpler and more natural English of the common life of the English people. The faithful disciple of authority often bases his practice in language on a foundation broader than good authors when he professes to rest upon the custom of the best speakers and writers, or upon the consensus of the best opinion as to what the use of the language should be. Custom and use, however, are not exactly the same thing. The distinction which prevails in legal terminology with respect to these words may also be made to apply to language. Custom is use which has become generalized in practice. But custom implies no absolute degree of extent of use. When a situation arises only twice and is satisfied by the same practice of language, within these limits the practice is already a custom of the language. In Horace's famous definition, therefore, cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, the word usus should be translated by the English word XIII THE MORALS OF GOOD ENGLISH WHETHER the principle of correctness be analogy, logic, etymology, or some kind of formal authority, these external rules of procedure can never be decisive for good English. They can never be so because such rules are rational generalizations and abstractions, whereas every act of language is an individual act, as important on the emotional as on the intellectual side, and with its own special needs and adaptations. The final test of good English must therefore be sought not in generalizations based upon the past performances of the language, or upon theoretical prescriptions, but in the very nature of the language as a living and present activity. Rules of correctness, it is true, may be sensible and reasonable, and mildly applied, they may have a certain suggestivevalue in directing or clarifying the immediate uses of the language. When they are administered too strenuously, however, they become false and harmful. They lose their suggestive value and change from opinions to dogmas.. The difference between opinion and dogma has been described as like the different notes which can be produced on a fife. By blowing with moderate force, a middle tone is produced, but by blowing much harder on the same position, the tone is raised an octave Theories of correctness in speech, when they are held reasonably and moderately, are opinions which may be interesting and helpful. When one bears too heavily upon them, they change their character and become dogmas, and as such have no place in the free life of the language. Correctness in language is therefore a notion of very limited usefulness. The essence of correctness is conformity to specifications. The rules of correctness are made first from former acts of speech and present speech is then adapted to the rules. But as a living activity we, find that in speech infinite diversity exists. No two persons ever have the same impulses in speech or are ever surrounded by the same circumstances. The effect of rules rigorously applied would be therefore to impose a mechanical regularity upon that which is not regular. Rules can produce uniformity only by destroying that diversity which is the evidence of genuine life in language. Only in the most elementary and broadest way, therefore, can rules of correctness be made the tests of good English, For English which is correct, English which is written to correspond to specifications, is not by that fact alone good English. In writing or speech of any pretension to dignity, this kind of correctness may be taken for granted. It is too elementary to be counted as a virtue. It is merely a common necessity, a necessity that must not be permitted to usurp the place of other things more important. The rules of correctness must be the serv-、 ants, not the masters of language. There is something greater, something much more interesting, in the success-ful use of language than correctness. But the less cannot produce the greater, and one may worship never so faithfully at the altar of correctness without catching a glimpse of the face of the true goddess of good English. The fear of decay and disintegration in the language undoubtedly accounts in a large degree for the respect which is paid to the rules of correctness. And if the rules really could accomplish the end of preventing deterioration, or of keeping society homogeneous and the members of it mutually more intelligible and interesting to each other, then the rules would deserve the most faithful obedience and commendation. They might even be accepted as compulsory. All the English speaking peoples might unite in an academy, or institute, or a league of good English, and having laid down their rules, they might acquire power to enforce obedience to them in every school, printing office, newspaper, pulpit, bar, and street corner in the English speaking world. Of course proposals like this in spirit have been made from time to time and are still being made. In the New York Times for October 8, 1923, a former editor of a London newspaper proposed an Institute of English, by which the language "can be purified and standardized against a peril which now threatens it." The peril lies in what is characterized as that "indiscriminate system of language building" which has become a "menace to the purity and natural evolution of English." "Everywhere uncontrolled forces are at work," continued the proposer of this new institute, "distorting the language of Shakespeare, carrying on a policy of drift with a riotous individualism which mars the purity and blurs the beauty of the language and tends to disintegration.' What is advocated here is control and forcible regula-、 tion of the language. The policy of drift, we are told, is distorting the language of Shakspere. But one may ask how it happened that Shakspere could become the supreme master of English without an institute to help him. Or has the world and human nature changed so |