This fact however, though sufficient to show how ineffectual the scheme
of phonetic spelling would prove, even for the removing of those
inconveniences which it proposes to remedy, is only the smallest
objection to it. The far more serious charge which may be brought
against it is, that in words out of number it would obliterate those
clear marks of birth and parentage, which they bear now upon their
fronts, or are ready, upon a very slight interrogation, to reveal.
Words have now an ancestry; and the ancestry of words, as of men, is
often a very noble possession, making them capable of great things,
because those from whom they are descended have done great things
before them; but this would deface their scutcheon, and bring them all
to the same ignoble level. Words are now a nation, grouped into tribes
and families, some smaller, some larger; this change would go far to
reduce them to a promiscuous and barbarous horde. Now they are often
translucent with their inner thought, lighted up by it; in how many
cases would this inner light be then quenched! They have now a body and
a soul, the soul quickening the body; then oftentimes nothing but a
body, forsaken by the spirit of life, would remain. These objections
were urged long ago by Bacon, who characterizes this so-called
reformation, 'that writing should be consonant to speaking,' as 'a
branch of unprofitable subtlety;' and especially urges that thereby
'the derivations of words, especially from foreign languages, are
utterly defaced and extinguished.
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