CHAPTER ELEVENTH.

USE OF WORDS.

§. 114. Superiour excellence of alphabetical language.

In whatever way we may have come by alphabetical language, whether God himself were directly its author, or whether he early raised up some happy inventor, whose remembrance is now passed away, it is truly, if we may be allowed a scriptural allusion, a price, put into our hands, for the getting of wisdom. The single circumstance, that it is fitted to be employed, as a sign both of things and of vocal sounds, renders it greatly superiour to the afore-mentioned modes of expressing thought, gestures, symbolick actions, hieroplyphicks, paintings, Chinese characters, or other methods, which may have been at any time used.

As mental exertions are intimately connected with those means, by which they become obvious or are made known to others, one proof, and by no means a small one, of the superiour excellence of this over other methods may be found in the intellectual degradation of Savages and even of the Chinese themselves, compared with the nations of Europe. To whatever other causes this difference may be ascribed, the superiority of the latter in the signs of thought, which they employ, is undoubtedly one cause.

It may be said of alphabetical language in one sense, that it not only expresses our ideas, but multiplies them; at least, the facility of expressing and communicating thought by means of it sets men upon renewed thinking, and the result is wider views, more correct principles, sounder policy; moral, civil, and scientifick improvement.

§. 115. Words are artificial and arbitrary signs.

Words, whether we consider them, as written or spoken, for, as they are thus respectively considered, they form the

two general divisions of written and spoken language, are arbitrary and conventional. They are used, as the signs of ideas, not because there is any natural or inherent fitness in them for this purpose, but are thus employed by agreement or general consent. So that the emperour, Augustus, confessed with good reason, that, while the political and military movements of the world were under his direction, he had not power, of himself alone, to introduce a single, new word into the Latin tongue. If this statement were not correct, if words had any natural fitness for that purpose, for which they are employed, and were not conventional, there would be but one language; all nations would use the same words, instead of the English employing the word, WHITE; the Latin language, Albus; the French, ELANC; and the German, WEISS for the same thing, with a similar diversity in the expression of other ideas, and in other languages.

It ought to be observed, however, if we consider language, as it meets the ear instead of the eye, if we look at spoken, in distinction from written language, that there is a slight exception to this general view of its nature. We allude to a class of terms, of which the words, CRASH, TWANG, BUZZ, WHISTLE, SHRILL, RATTLE, may be mentioned as specimens. There is evidently some resemblance between these words, as they are enunciated by the voice, and the things, for which they stand; in other languages, some words, similar to these, that is, having a like relation to the things, for which they stand, are to be found.

So that in regard to this very limited class, when we consider them merely, as they come from the voice or are sounded, there may be said to be a natural fitness or adaptation in the words to the things, which they express: but with this exception, which is one of very limited extent, words are truly arbitrary and conventional signs.

116. Words at first few in number and limited to particular objects.

In the infancy of the human race, men were without a

knowledge of the arts; they had no laws, but the dictates of conscience, no regularly instituted form of government; they lived under the open sky, except when they retreated from the storm or the sunshine to the shade of trees or the cooler recesses of caverns. Their ideas, therefore, were few; the articulate sounds, which either the active ingenuity of nature, or the special interference of Providence had taught them not only to frame, but to employ as the instituted signs of things, must have been few also; even more so, than their ideas.

The few names, which they were able thus early to employ, related solely to the objects, with which they were immediately and particularly conversant; they had a name for the tree, under which they sat at noon; for the cavern, to which they occasionally retired; for the fruit, which relieved their hunger; and for the running water, at which they slaked their thirst. Afterwards they were led to form general names, standing for a number of objects, and probably in the following manner.

§. 117. Of the formation of general names or appella

tives.

Man, naturally possessed of too much activity of spirit, to rest satisfied with remaining in one place, or to quiet his curiosity with a small number of objects, engages in some new enterprise, explores new tracts of country, and thus enlarges his knowledge. In going from place to place, he necessarily meets again with those particular objects, with which he had formed such an intimate acquaintance in his first residence. He meets with other trees, with other animals, with other caves and fountains, which he at once perceives to be of the same kind with those, that have previously come under his observation.

The recurrence of these new objects instantly calls up the others. This happens by a law of his nature, which he cannot control;--and the recollection is the more intense, as, in the infancy of things, curiosity is more alive, and astonishment more readily and deeply felt. The ob

jects, with which he had become first acquainted, could not be recalled without a remembrance, at the same time, of the names, which he had given them. As he perceives. the objects, which he now beholds, to be the same in kind with these, which he first knew, he at once, and it might almost be said, by a natural impulse, concludes, that they have an equal right to the names with those, to which those names were first appropriated. He, therefore, exclaims, a tree! a cave! a fountain! whenever and wherever he meets them. And thus what was at first a particular term, and was employed to express only an individual, has its meaning extended, and comes in time to stand for a whole class of objects.

Such, there can hardly be a question, was the origin of general names; and the statement is not only agreeable to the natural course of things, but is indirectly confirmed by many incidents. When the Spaniards first arrived at a certain region, bordering on the gulph of Mexico, and found, that the soil was rich, the dwellings good, the peo ple numerous; they cried out, it is another Spain, and after that it bore the name of New Spain. And Livy, in connection with the early history of Rome, relates concerning two Trojan chiefs, Antenor and Aeneas, that the places in Italy, where they respectively landed, were called by them Troy, probably from the perception of some slight resemblance in the appearance of the shore or of the interiour country to the places of their previous residence; -so readily does the mind connect together things, which are remote, and seek for analogies between what is novel and what is familiar. And it is on this principle, that we so often find ourselves in this country giving names to the objects around us, in allusion to what exists in some other continent; calling a large river, another Thames, and lofty mountains, the American Alps.

§. 118. The formation of appellatives the result of a feeling of resemblance.

We discover, in the way which has been mentioned, the origin of appellatives or common names, (in treatises of

logick more commonly termed genera and species,) the formation of which has sometimes been considered a point of difficult solution. Taking the statement, in the last section, to be the true one, it follows, that there is, previous to the giving of the common name, a feeling or perception of resemblance, prevailing among those objects, to which the common name is applied.

If there had not, between the perception of the objects and the giving of the common name, been an intermediate feeling of resemblance, the primitive framers of language would have been as likely to have assigned the appellative to the cave and the mountain, or to any other things altogether dissimilar, as to those resembling objects, to which it was assigned.

When, therefore, those persons, who hold to the doctrine of the Nominalists, say, that all general ideas are but names, they appear to mistake;-there is something more than the mere name, viz., that feeling of resemblance, which has been mentioned, and which, although it is difficult to explain it, except it be by referring each one to his own intellectual experience, is clearly too important a circumstance to be hastily overlooked, and thrown out of the question.

§. 119. Our earliest generalizations often incorrect.

When man first opens his eye on nature, (and in the infancy of our race, he finds himself a novice, wherever he goes,) objects so numerous, so various in kind, so novel and interesting, crowd upon his attention; that, attempting to direct himself to all at the same time, he loses sight of their specifical differences, and blends them together, more than a calm and accurate examination would justify. And hence our earliest classifications, the primitive genera and species, are often incorrectly made.

Subsequently, when knowledge has been in some measure amassed, and reasoning and observation have been brought to a greater maturity, these errours are attended to; individuals are rejected from species, where