Plymouth banner. (Plymouth, Marshall County, Ind.) 1852-1855, 1855-01-18
Communicated.
For the B INNER.
INNOVATION NOT IMPROVEMENT.

There are q few people whose ideas
are so excessively refined. their progress
sive faculties SO wonderfully sharpened.
that they seem to pierce with prophetic
eye, the dark shadows Of futurity, and be
able TO forsee the wants aud exigences of
coming centuries, bu, it generally hap
pens that they can see only what their
ou limited and partial imaginations tell
them would be an improvement in the
presen. state Of affairs; and il also, some
times. happens that thosa far seeing suges
are lacking the judgment to discover the
difference between innovation and amend
ment.
With their second sight. they see wo'
man elevated 10 a political and physical
equality with man-see her, with calm
confidence driving the Iron Horse. at the
ra tie of 100 miles an hour, along the great
Pacific Railway: or. with hard and black.
ened hands. "polling" the heavy "scow"
along our magnificent rivers; while her
tanned and gentle acorser half stays de-
murely al home, 10 quiet the noisy chill
dren and make the butter. They hear
her sole mnly delivering her opinions
from the Legal bench; shouting her con-
victions from the pulpit; or ba Wing
through The streets at the head Of fan
atical crowd. seeking redress for some
real or fancied injury; they See children
educated on entirely new and improved
principles. by which a child Of ordinary
capacity can require all the useful and
solid branches Of education in four easv
lessons. 1.-The ornamental in six. The press.
propelled BIZ the power Of electro mag
neiism. throws off its 100 600 copies in
an hour. and in all hooks. papers and
manuscripts. s,enogrsphy and pbonetics
have superseded and taken the place OF
typography. and chirography. The law
yer writes. the Clergyman breaches. and
the child spells in phonetics. Every
thng done on new system which he
has been advocating for years. seems. to
his excited Imagination to be in vogue
among the deniz-ns of earth at thai ha D.
py period. and his whole being is inspir-
ed with new life and vigor on witnessing
the workings Of those his darling schemes
But his eagerness has perverted his Set
ter Judgment. and what he sees are only
the pHantasmagorical shapes that fli, in
bis own heated Imagination.
Now. let us ask AIRY candid, impartial
thinker, what good can result from the
e fTor,s of men such as these and one
class in particular. who are striving to
overthrow our entire system Of nrthogra-
ply. which is certainly based upon as
pure principles of Rhetoric as that Of ar v
language now in use, and who would ir-
troduce horrid system Of cross-lines.
dots and scratches for our beautiful and
symmetrical chirography. What benefit
:, can acrue from the adoption of such an
: absurd system OF writing and spelling as
: the phonetic? The only argument in its
f.vpr that csn be brought forward, is tina I
each sound has its own SYMBOL, and OF
course there can be no such things as ST..
lent letters. &c. but instead OF auxiiler-
les found by combinations of the same
symbols. we must introduce a system of
crooked marks containing Il more char.
ac.ers than there are in our present sl.
pha bet, so that we, because we are somr-
thing OF an original people. may have
something original about our lauguag e
But in truth. there is little that is purely
original about our language. It is a
compounded one formed from rudi me- n is
taken from original, and a or derived
: languages; which com pound has given US,
/, according to the u,'ssment of the greatest
living essayist. the most "eyp,cc ssive lam
gusge now in use," and for oil the pun.
poses Of the poet, statesman and philos
,, opher. 'equalled by that of Greece a.
lone"
The greatest objection to our present
system. that the advocates of phonetics
can urge. is. that many words pronounc-
ed exactly alike, are spelled by different
com binations Of letters, and that some
combna lions are pronounced differently
in different words. Now tina: is certain
" jus, ss il should be- for words of diff
fercnt or,hography which are pronounc-
ed alike. alwavs have different sienifi-
cation. and the mind receives the idea
much easier when the real meaning of
does when we have TO discover ii by
the connection. Words are only SYM
bols by which the idea is presented to the
mind, then what is the use Of learning
a new system, which. to become master
Of would require as much study as il
would to go through course Of mathe
mates, and which presents fully as many
difficulties and absurdities ss the one now
in use. when The same results can only
be accomplished? We often hear an old
prover5 which seems very applicable to
the case before US. LET good enough a
lone" What, if we are Americans? Is
that any reason that we should have
written language ih,t'no other ma ten can
learn or understand? No more so than
that we should eat and drink differently
from other people. There is another
! good reason for our holding on 20 our
/ present system. Four of the most en-
! lightened nations Of the earth now use
the same system Of chirosrsphy, they are
the English French. Spanish and Italians.
! tb LAS he ~ -