languages have a variety of significations, and that it cannot well be otherwise, unless we are willing to multiply them to an inordinate and burdensome degree. This is true;-but it may justly be replied, that no well constituted language admits varieties of meaning, which the train of the discourse, the natural connection of thought fails to suggest. When, therefore, a person uses an important. word in an argument with another, or in any separate discourse, whether the signification be the common one or not, it is rightly expected, that he employ it in the same sense afterwards, in which he was understood to use it, when he began. If he do not, there will be unavoidable misunderstanding; the most laboured discourses will fail of giving instruction, and controversies under such circumstances cannot be terminated. This making the same word stand for different ideas, is spoken of by Mr. Locke, as á species of cheating; it being much the same, as if a person in settling his accounts, should employ the number, THREE, sometimes for three; at others, for four, five, or nine, which could not be attributed to any thing else, than great ignorance, or great want of honesty.

§. 133. Words are to be employed agreeably to good and reputable use.

THE FOURTH RULE is, that we are to employ names with such ideas, as good and reputable use has affixed to them. One object of language is to communicate our ideas to others; and this object necessarily fails without an observance of this rule, since common or general use, in the meaning of writers on rhetorick, is no other, than good or reputable use.

This subject was briefly touched upon in §. 126, where it appeared, that, if we would fulfil the purposes of language, we ought to use words with their customary signifi cation, employing them with that meaning, which, as far as we are able to learn, is ordinarily and generally attached to them. But this remark does not exhaust this topick

It still remains to be inquired, What we are to unders

stand-by common, or, what is to be considered the same thing, good and reputable usage ?-and this is a point, which cannot be decided without some care, and a recurrence to some general principles. In answer to the question, What is the common usage of a language ?-What is good and reputable use ?--or What is that use of a word, which will justify one in adopting and employing it? the three following rules may be given.

§. 134. What constitutes good and reputable use.

(1) It is one circumstance in favour of the good and reputable usage of a word, which constitutes what is otherwise termed common use, that it is found in the writings of a considerable number, if not the majority of good authors. It is not, in ordinary cases, sufficient to authorize a word, that it is found in one merely, or even in a few such writers, and those, who are supported by such limited authority, cannot expect to be generally understood.

(2) A second direction is, that the words, which lay claim to good and reputable use, should not be provincial, or limited to a particular district of country;-Further, those words, which are recently introduced from a foreign tongue, either by merchants in the intercourse of business, or by travellers for other reasons or in other ways, but which are not naturalized, and are not known to be necessary, have not this character. Good and reputable words are such, as are in use among the great mass of the people in all parts of the territories of a country, however extensive, where any language is professed to be spoken. This is what is termed national use, in distinction from that jargon, which often springs up in neighbourhoods, or which, in the ways, to which we have already alluded, is at times introduced from a foreign source.

(3) There is implied, thirdly, in the common and reputable use of a language, that use, which prevails at the present time. If we would employ words with their customary signification, with that meaning, which is ordinarily attached to them, we must adopt the use of the period,

in which we live. in this rule, that

It is not, however, necessarily implied we must limit ourselves to the present year or even the present age. Certain limits, it is true, must be fixed upon, which include our own times, but they may be of greater or less extent, although it is a matter of no small difficulty judiciously to ascertain and define them.

NOTE, The subject of the nature and characteristicks of the use, which gives law to language, is particularly examined by Dr. Campbell in his Philosophy of Rhetorick. To this book, the reputation of which is too well established to stand in need of any recommendation here, the reader is referred for further suggestions on the topick of this

section.

§. 135. Of an universal language.

The inquiry has sometimes been started, Whether there might not be a language, which should be permanent, and be employed by all nations;-in other words, Whether there might not be an universal language? The impracticability of such an universal tongue appears both from the nature and the history of this mode of expressing thought.

(1) The nature of language shows its impracticability. It is an idea, which observation seems to have well established, that whatever is imperfect has a tendency to work out its own ruin; and language, however excellent an invention, can never be otherwise than imperfect, since the human mind, which forms it, is itself limited, and is often running into errour. It will illustrate this remark, when we are reminded, that the external, material world is one of the great sources of our ideas, but our mental powers being imperfect, different persons form different ideas of the same objects. They then agree in giving the same names to these ideas or combinations of ideas, and there often arises in this way a mutual misapprehension of that very agreement, which is not'only the origin, but the support of language. The seeds of the mutability and destruction of language are, therefore, sown in its very birth,

since a very little reflection cannot fail to show, how many perplexities, how many discussions, how many changes may arise from this single circumstance, that, in consequence of the imperfection of our faculties, men often agree to consider words, as standing for what they imagine to be the same ideas, but which are not. We cannot, then, reasonably expect an universal and permanent language, until our minds can fully penetrate into the true nature of things, until our ideas are perfect, and different individuals can certainly and exactly inform themselves of the thoughts, existing in the minds of others.

Further; the political institutions of one country, the peculiarities in the aspects of its natural scenery, early associations, occupations, and habits, lay the foundation for. a variety of thoughts and shades of thought, which, in other countries, will not exist, because the causes of their existence are not to be found. If thoughts, feelings, imaginations exist under these circumstances, words will be needed to express them, for which there will be no occasion in another country and among another people ;-so that we find here also a permanent and extensive cause of the diversities of language.

(2) The impracticability of an universal language is seen also from the history of languages in times past.

We cannot conceive of an universal language without supposing it to be permanent, for if there were any causes, which would operate to affect its permanency, the operation of the same causes would be felt in checking and preventing its universality. But if we search the whole history of man, in order to find a language, that has remained permanent, unaltered; it will be an entirely fruitless pursuit. Not one such can be found.

There appears to have been originally in Asia Minor a language, spoken to a great extent, which after a time disappeared, so that the very name is lost. So far from being able to maintain itself and increase the territories, where it was spoken, it was at last broken up into a variety of subordinate idioms, certainly no less than seven, the Hebrew,

the Syriack, the Chaldaick, the Arabick, the Ethiopick, the Phenician, and Samaritan.

A common language seems also to have been the original foundation of the different dialects of Greece.

No reason can be given in explanation of the want of permanency in these ancient languages, which would not lead us to expect constant changes in any other tongue, and under any other circumstances. If all the nations of the earth could, by the providence of the Supreme Being, be made to-morrow acquainted with one universal speech, a knowledge of the nature of language and of its history would warrant us in predicting the speedy discontinuance of this universality and the division of the language of the world into the dialects of islands, continents, and sectional territories. So that the remark of De Stutt-Tracy, a French writer on the Mind, that an universal language is as much an impossibility as a perpetual motion, is not without reason.

§. 136. Remarks of Condillac on the changes, and corruptions of language.

It is a remark of Condillac, to whose treatise on the Origin of Knowledge, we have already had occasion to refer, that it is nearly the same in language, as in physicks, where motion, the source of life, becomes the principle of destruction. "When a language abounds (says he) with original writers in every kind, the more a person is endowed with abilities, the more difficult he thinks it will be to surpass them. A mere equality would not satisfy his ambition; like them he wants the pre-eminence. He, therefore, tries a new road. But as every style analogous to the character of the language, and to his own, hath been already used by preceding writers, he has nothing left but to deviate from analogy. Thus in order to be an original, he is obliged to contribute to the ruin of a language, which a century sooner he would have helped to improve.

Though such writers may be criticised, their superiour abilities must still command success. The ease there is in copying their defects, soon persuades men of indiffer