higher spiritual cravings,) he would find utterance freely. The great
logical, or grammatical, framework of language, (for grammar is the
logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason,) he would
possess, he knew not how; and certainly not as the final result of
gradual acquisitions, and of reflexion setting these in order, and
drawing general rules from them; but as that rather which alone had
made those acquisitions possible; as that according to which he
unconsciously worked, filled in this framework by degrees with these
later acquisitions of thought, feeling, and experience, as one by one
they arrayed themselves in the garment and vesture of words.

Here then is the explanation of the fact that language should be thus
instructive for us, that it should yield us so much, when we come to
analyse and probe it; and yield us the more, the more deeply and
accurately we do so. It is full of instruction, because it is the
embodiment, the incarnation, if I may so speak, of the feelings and
thoughts and experiences of a nation, yea, often of many nations, and
of all which through long centuries they have attained to and won. It
stands like the Pillars of Hercules, to mark how far the moral and
intellectual conquests of mankind have advanced, only not like those
pillars, fixed and immovable, but ever itself advancing with the
progress of these. The mighty moral instincts which have been working
in the popular mind have found therein their unconscious voice; and the
single kinglier spirits that have looked deeper into the heart of
things have oftentimes gathered up all they have seen into some one
word, which they have launched upon the world, and with which they have
enriched it for ever--making in that new word a new region of thought to
be henceforward in some sort the common heritage of all. Language is
the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been
safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning