Meaning of Words

“Finally, I could not make the work pleasant to readers but I have tried faithfully to make it brief and intelligible, and especially, to make it useful to those who desire a knowledge of the structure of language – a knowledge which bears the same relation to all speculative learning as a knowledge of the qualities of drugs bears to the practice of medicine, or as a knowledge of perspective and colours bears to painting. Persons who know not the latent sophistries of language, know no verbal knowledge unfallaciously, and in proportion as their defect is unsuspected, – the world, considered speculatively, will be full of mysteries, and differ from unverbal realities as jugglery differs from ordinary operations. A celebrated English physician deemed a milk diet so healthful, that he said a stomach which cannot endure milk is the stomach most in need of milk; and I will parody the remark, by saying that a man who supposes he has nothing to learn in relation to the structure of language, is probably the man who is most in need of such learning. To show still more strongly my own opinion of the nature of this publication – aside from its execution, of whose many defects I am only too painfully conscious – I believe that a full fruition of what is herein attempted will make no longer true the ancient oracle, which I suppose referred to language, and which was engraven on the pavement of Minerva’s temple, ‘I am all that has been, that is, and that shall be, and none among mortals has hitherto taken off my veil.” – A. B. JOHNSON