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Excerpt from Modern English: Its Growth and Present Use
Another conclusion of the modern political historians is applicable to the history of language. It is a very general Opinion among historians that the justification of the study of the history of past periods is to be found in the application of the results of such study to the conditions of present life. Man learns to know himself better, to conduct the affairs of his public and private life better, from having observed the consequences of the actions of men in other days. SO also by the study of the history of his speech he learns to adjust himself more wisely to the conditions' of present speech. He learns that contemporary speech is not, on the one hand, a chaos of individual instances, nor is it, on the other, governed according to the decrees of a rigid, theoretical system. He perceives that it is a living thing, and that the principles which it illustrates in its growth have all the flexibility and variety of life. To enable a speaker or writer to realize this Spirit, or life, of his own present Speech is one Of the main ends of the historical study of language.
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