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it may appear, I do not recollect to have met with it in the writings of any of my predecessors. It is very possible, that in this my memory may deceive me; but one thing is certain, that none of them has attempted to exemplify it systematically in his own practice.

After these remarks, it is almost superfluous for me to add, that it is, in many cases, a fortunate circumstance, when the words we employ have lost their pedigree; or (what amounts nearly to the same thing) when it can be traced by those alone who are skilled in ancient and in foreign languages. Such words have in their favor the sanction of immemorial use; and the obscurity of their history prevents them from misleading the imagination, by recalling to it the sensible objects and phenomena to which they owed their origin. The notions, accordingly, we annex to them may be expected to be peculiarly precise and definite, being entirely the result of those habits of induction which I have shown to be so essentially connected with the acquisition of language.

THE philological speculations, to which the foregoing criticisms refer, have been prosecuted by various ingenious writers, who have not ventured (perhaps, who have not meant) to draw from them any inferences in favor of materialism. But the obscure hints frequently thrown out, of the momentous conclusions to which Mr. Tooke's discoveries are to lead, and the gratulations with which they were hailed by the author of Zoonomia, and by other physiologists of the same school, leave no doubt with respect to the ultimate purpose to which they have been supposed to be subservient. In some instances, these writers express themselves, as if they conceived the philosophy of the human mind to be inaccessible to all who have not been initiated in their cabalistical mysteries; and sneer at the easy credulity of those who imagine, that the substantive spirit means any thing else than breath; or the adjective right, any thing essentially different from a line forming the shortest distance between two points. The language of

those metaphysicians who have recommended on abstraction from things external as a necessary preparation for studying our intellectual frame, has been censured as bordering upon enthusiasm, and as calculated to inspire a childish wonder at a department of knowledge, which, to the few who are let into the secret, presents nothing above the comprehension of the grammarian and the anatomist. For my own part, I have no scruple to avow, that the obvious tendency of these doctrines to degrade the nature and faculties of man in his own estimation, seems to me to afford, of itself, a very strong presumption against their truth. Cicero considered it as an objection of some weight to the soundness of an ethical system, that "it savoured of nothing grand or generous," (nihil magnificum, nihil generosum sapit :)-Nor was the objection so trifling as it may at first appear; for how is it possible to believe, that the conceptions of the multitude concerning the duties of life are elevated by ignorance or prejudice, to a pitch, which it is the business of reason and philosophy to adjust to a humbler aim? From a feeling somewhat similar, I frankly acknowledge the partiality I entertain towards every theory relating to the human mind, which aspires to ennoble its rank in the creation. I am partial to it, not merely because it flatters an inoffensive, and perhaps not altogether a useless pride; but because, in the more sublime views which it opens of the universe, I recognize one of the most infallible characteristics, by which the conclusions of inductive science are distinguished from the presumptuous fictions of human folly.

When I study the intellectual powers of Man, in the writings of Hartley, of Priestley, of Darwin, or of Tooke, I feel as if I were examining the sorry mechanism that gives motion to a puppet. If, for a moment, I am carried along by their theories of human knowledge, and of human life, I seem to myself to be admitted behind the curtain of what I had once conceived to be a magnificent theatre; and, while I survey the tinsel frippery of the wardrobe, and the paltry decorations of the scenery, am mortified to discover the trick which had cheated my eye at a distance. This surely is not the

characteristic of truth or of nature; the beauties of which invite our closest inspection; deriving new lustre from those microscopical researches which deform the most finished productions of art. If, in our physical inquiries concerning the material world, every step that has been hitherto gained, has at once exalted our conceptions of its immensity, and of its order, can we reasonably suppose, that the genuine philosophy of the Mind is to disclose to us a spectacle less pleasing, or less elevating, than fancy or vanity had disposed us to anticipate?

In dismissing this subject, it is, I hope, scarcely necessary for me to caution my readers against supposing, that the scope of the remarks now made, is to undervalue the researches of Mr. Tooke and his followers. My wish is only to mark out the limits of their legitimate and very ample province. As long as the philologer confines himself to the discussions of grammar and of etymology, his labors, while they are peculiarly calculated to gratify the natural and liberal curiosity of men of erudition, may often furnish important data for illustrating the progress of laws, of arts, and of manners;— for clearing up obscure passages in ancient writers ;-or for tracing the migrations of mankind, in ages of which we have no historical records. And although, without the guidance of more steady lights than their own, they are more likely to bewilder than to direct in the study of the Mind, they may yet (as I shall attempt to exemplify in the Second Part of this Volume) supply many useful materials towards a history of its natural progress; more particularly towards a history of Imagination, considered in its relation to the principles of Criticism. But, when the speculations of the mere scholar, or glossarist, presume to usurp, as they have too often done of late, the honors of Philosophy and that for the express purpose of lowering its lofty pursuits to a level with their own, their partisans stand in need of the admonition which Seneca addressed to his friend Lucilius, when he cautioned him against those grammatical sophists who, by the frivolous details of their verbal controversies, had brought discredit on the

splendid disputations of the stoical school: "Relinque istum ludum literarium philosophorum, qui rem magnificentissimam ad syllabas vocant, qui animum minuta docendo demittunt et conterunt, et id agunt ut philosophia potius difficilis quam magna videatur." *

Seneca, Epist. 71.-" Abandon this literary pastime, introduced by men who would bring the noblest of all sciences to the test of words and syllables; who, by the minuteness of their disquisitions, let down the mind and wear out its powers, and seem anxious to invest philosophy with new difficulties, when it ought to have been their aim to display her in all her grandeur."

CHAPTER FOURTH.

ANOTHER mistaken idea, which runs through the theories of some of our late philologers, although of a far less dangerous tendency than that which has been just remarked, is yet of sufficient consequence to deserve our attention, before we close the present discussion. It relates, indeed, to a question altogether foreign to the subject of the foregoing essays; but has its origin in an error so similar to those which I have been endeavouring to correct, that I cannot expect to find a more convenient opportunity of pointing it out to the notice of my readers.

The idea to which I refer is assumed, or, at least, implied as an axiom, in almost every page of Mr. Tooke's work; That, in order to understand with precision, the import of any English word, it is necessary to trace its progress historically through all the successive meanings which it has been employed to convey, from the moment that it was first introduced into our language; or if the word be of foreign growth, and transmitted to us from some dialect of our continental ancestors, that we should prosecute the etymological research, till we ascertain the literal and primitive sense of the root from whence it sprung.* Nor is this idea peculiar to Mr. Tooke. It forms, in a great measure, the ground-work of a learned and ingenious book on French Synonymes, by M. Roubaud; and, if we may judge from the silence of later writers, it seems to be now generally acquiesced in, as the soundest criterion we can appeal to in settling the very nice disputes to which this class of words have frequently given occasion.

For my own part, I am strongly inclined to think, that the instances are few indeed, (if there are, in truth,

In one passage, he seems to pay some deference to usage;

"Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi ;"

But the whole spirit of his book proceeds on the opposite principle; and even in the page to which I allude, he tells us, that "capricious and mutable fashion has nothing to do in our inquiries into the nature of language, and the meaning of words."-Vol. II. p. 95.

VOL. IV.

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