The language
was not and never will be built to fit these rules. The usage of the
people is the only authority. Even clear logic goes down before usage.
Languages grow like mushrooms, or lilies, or bears, or human bodies.
Like these they have occult and profound laws which we can never hope
to penetrate,---which are known only to the creator of all things
existent. But as in botany and zoology and physiology we may observe
and classify our observations, so we may observe a language, classify
our observations, and create an empirical science of word-formation.
Possibly in time it will become a science something more than empirical.
The laws we are able at this time to state with much definiteness are few
(doubling consonants, dropping silent e's, changing y's to i's, accenting
the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables, lengthening and shortening
vowels). In addition we may classify exceptions, for the sole purpose of
aiding the memory.
Ignorance of these principles and classifications, and knowledge of the
causes and sources of the irregularities, should be pronounced criminal
in a teacher; and failure to teach them, more than criminal in a
spelling-book.
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