Thus, having adopted the
adjective fraternal, it is a root which should legitimate fraternity,
fraternation, fraternization, fraternism, to fratenate, fraternize,
fraternally. And give the word neologism to our language, as a root,
and it should give us its fellow substantives, neology, neologist,
neologization; its adjectives, neologous, neological, neologistical;
its verb, neologize; and adverb neologically. Dictionaries are but
the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the
work-shop in which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses
a new word, if ill formed, it is rejected in society, if well formed,
adopted, and after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries.
And if, in this process of sound neologization, our trans-Atlantic
brethren shall not choose to accompany us, we may furnish, after
the Ionians, a second example of a colonial dialect improving on its
primitive.
But enough of criticism: let me turn to your puzzling letter of May the
12th, on matter, spirit, motion, &c. Its crowd of scepticisms kept me
from sleep. I read it, and laid it down: read it, and laid it down,
again and again: and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur
ultimately to my habitual anodyne, 'I feel, therefore I exist.' I feel
bodies which are not myself: there are other existences then. I call
them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion.
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