Where can “peremptory adhesion unto authority” be found better exemplified than in children’s persistence in believing what they are first taught? Impressions made in childhood days certainly retain a strong hold long afterward, and this should be a powerful incentive toward giving them true impressions. One of the most popular language books now in use in primary schools, if not _the_ most popular, has conversations between teacher and pupil. Here is one: “_T._--When I say, _falling leaves rustle_, does _falling_ tell what is thought of leaves? _P._--No. _T._--What does _falling_ do? _P._--It tells the _kind_ of leaves you are thinking and speaking of.” Is it not simply astounding that our children must learn in school that _falling leaves_ means a _kind_ of leaves?
There is plenty of the same quality in books at the other extreme of schooling--the very popular university grammar, for instance, William Chauncey Fowler’s “English in its Elements and Forms,” which says: “While language has power to express the fine emotions and the subtle thoughts of the human mind with wonderful exactness, still it must be admitted that it is imperfect as a sign of thought. It is imperfect because the thing signified by a term in a proposition either does not exist at all in the mind of the hearer, or because it exists under different relations from what it does in the mind of the speaker. In other words, language is imperfect because the term in a proposition, if it has any meaning in the mind of the speaker, has a different one from what it has in the mind of the hearer. Hardly any abstract term has precisely the same meaning in any two minds; when mentioned, the term calls up different associations in one mind from what it does in another.... The phrase ‘beast of burden’ might, to one mind, mean a _horse_; to another, a _mule_; to another, a _camel_.... It should be added that there is great vagueness in the common use of language, which, in practice, increases its imperfection as a medium of thought.”
Yes, there is “great vagueness,” and here, in passing, is an amusing instance of it by a well-known writer on meteorology: “All cloud which lies as a thin flat sheet must either be pure stratus or contain the word _strato_ in combination.” Did any one ever see a cloud containing the word _strato_ in combination? “Great vagueness” is exemplified also in the grammarian’s own writing, and in a connection that demands a full exposition of it.