Now, language is just as much a natural growth as trees or rocks or human
bodies, and it can have no more irregularities, even in the matter of
spelling, than these have. Science would laugh at the notion of
memorizing every individual form of rock. It seeks the fundamental laws,
it classifies and groups, and even if the number of classes or groups is
large, still they have a limit and can be mastered. Here we have a
solution of the spelling problem. In grammar we find seven fundamental
logical relationships, and when we have mastered these and their chief
modifications and combinations, we have the essence of grammar as truly
as if we knew the name for every possible combination which our seven
fundamental relationships might have. Since rhetoric is the art of
appealing to the emotions and intelligence of our hearers, we need to
know, not the names of all the different artifices which may be employed,
but the nature and laws of emotion and intelligence as they may be reached
through language; for if we know what we are hitting at, a little
practice will enable us to hit accurately; whereas if we knew the name of
every kind of blow, and yet were ignorant of the thing we were hitting at,
namely the intelligence and emotion of our fellow man, we would be forever
striking into the air,---striking cleverly perhaps, but ineffectively.
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