is indefensible, and the example will serve three purposes: first to
show how different significations of the same word may make practical
homophones, secondly the radical mischief of all homophones, and
thirdly our insensibility towards an absurdity which is familiar: but
the absurdity is no less where we are accustomed to it than where it
is unfamiliar and shocks us.

[Sidenote: Tolerance due to habit.]

And we are so accustomed to homophones in English that they do not
much offend us; we do not imagine their non-existence, and most people
are probably unaware of their inconvenience. It might seem that to
be perpetually burdened by an inconvenience must be the surest way of
realizing it, but through habituation our practice is no doubt full
of unconscious devices for avoiding these ambiguities: moreover,
inconveniences to which we are born are very lightly taken: many
persons have grown up to manhood blind of one eye without being aware
of their disability; and others who have no sense of smell or who
cannot hear high sounds do not miss the sense that they lack; and so I
think it may be with us and our homophones.

But since if all words were alike in sound there would be no spoken
language, the differentiation of the sound of words is of the essence
of speech, and it follows that the more homophones there are in
any language, the more faulty is that language as a scientific and
convenient vehicle of speech. This will be illustrated in due course:
the actual condition of English with respect to homophones must be
understood and appreciated before the nature of their growth and the
possible means of their mitigation will seem practical questions.