But if a little time transforms them thus, a longer time changes them more.

So that I say that, if those who departed from this life a thousand years ago should come back to their cities, they would believe those cities to be inhabited by a strange people, who speak a tongue discordant from their own.

On this subject I will speak elsewhere more completely in a book which I intend to write, God willing, on the "Language of the People." Again, the Latin was not subject, but sovereign, through virtue.

Each thing has virtue in its nature, which does that to which it is ordained; and the better it does it so much the more virtue it has: hence we call that man virtuous who lives a life contemplative or active, doing that for which he is best fitted; we ascribe his virtue to the horse that runs swiftly and much, to which end he is ordained: we see virtue of a sword that cuts through hard things well, since it has been made to do so.

Thus speech, which is ordained to express human thought, has virtue when it does that; and most virtue is in the speech which does it most.