24 March 1814 Omitt out of school 2 +

School {or Logic}

1

Language

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'. Importation of Words from Foreign Languages dead and living - its conveniences and inconveniences.

There exists not that state in life, be it ever so humble, in which a man's wellbeing is not, in some shape or other, in some degree or other more or less dependent on the acquaintance he has with his own language - of the language in which he not only converses but thinks. Language being not merely the instrument of discourse but, moreover, the instrument of thought, the stock of a man's ideas is limited and determined by the stock of the words which he finds at his command for giving expression to those ideas.

In every language, words are found in clusters growing out of the same root. Whatsoever be the cluster to which the word in question belongs, the comprehension a man has of its import is comparatively imperfect, if it include not a more or less general acquaintance with the whole cluster to which it belongs. In the stock of words of which the English language is composed, a very considerable, not to say the largest, portion, are borrowed from some one or other of several foreign languages; in some instances at a very early date, in others at different points of time from the remotest down to the most recent. In some instances these words so borrowed were transplanted in a single state, in others in large clusters, in others in smaller clusters, which, after transplantation, have gradually grown into larger ones.

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