[…] language is the expression of matured and practised thought, and the young learner enters into the use of it as fast as natural capacity and favoring circumstances enable him to do so. Others have observed, and classified, and abstracted, he only reaps the fruit of their labors.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.14

All through the world of matter and of mind, our predecessors, with such wisdom as they had at command, have gone observing, deducing, and classifying, and we inherit in and through language the results of their wisdom.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.21

Every exploring naturalist […] is all the time illustrating, in an openly reflective way, in his naming of species, the two principles which direct a great part of the world’s less conscious nomenclature. having in his hands a new plant, he at once proceeds to classify it that is to say, to determine of what current class-names it must swell the content […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.85