LECTURE XI.

TO MAKE ALL LANGUAGE REFER TO SENSIBLE INFORMATION, FORCES US TO ESTIMATE, AS SENSIBLE INFORMATION, SOME INTERNAL PHENOMENA WHICH ENTER LARGELY INTO THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS, AND ARE NOT USUALLY INCLUDED AMONG SENSIBLE INFORMATION. WORDS ALSO ENTER LARGELY INTO THE SIGNIFICATION OF OTHER WORDS.

§ 1.—Language refers to our internal feelings.

IN my last discourse, I state that language can effect no more than refer us to the information of our senses. Language, however, refers to a large class of existences, which are not usually deemed the objects of our senses:-for instance, the phenomena that we designate by the words love, anger, joy, hope, faith, hunger, pity, sympathy, judgment, reverie, &c. These I call internal feelings; hence, I class them among the information that we derive from our senses. I will not defend the propriety of this classification. The sense of feeling is usually restricted to external information; but I adopt the term internal feelings, as it will probably indicate the phenomena which I wish to designate.

§ 2.—Language would lose a large portion of its meaning, to a person destitute of internal feelings.

To a person who should be destitute of internal feelings, love, hope, fear, &c., would be words of very little meaning; as also joy, sorrow, anger, anticipation, expectation, jealousy, hunger thirst, sleepy, weary, health, vigour, lassitude, &c. The words would not be destitute of meaning to him, because nearly every such word includes within its signification some external action or appearance, which enables us to determine by looking at a

man, that he is sleepy, faint, angry, jealous, envious, hungry, &c. By means of these external exhibitions, a man who should be void of internal feelings, might discourse about love, anger, envy, &c.; as a man who should be void of the sense of taste, could talk of the deliciousness of peaches, oranges, grapes, &c.-his words referring to the appearance of the fruits.

§3.-Internal feelings enter largely into the signification of words that relate to religion.

The words eternity, heaven, hell, angel, redemption, resurrection, faith, and many other words of sacred import, are connected, in religious men, with certain internal feelings which. give to the words a pungency and unction. With irreligious men, the words are connected with no such feelings, and are perhaps deemed significant of nothing but certain verbal definitions. An inattention to this difference in men produces much of the disagreement which exists on religious subjects.

§ 4.-The words Jupiter, Juno, Mars, &c., were associated with feelings which probably made the names awful to the Greeks and Romans; while, to us, the words are significant of nothing but historical narratives, or connected with feelings of derision. The word Jehovah was connected with such feelings in the ancient Jews, as made them refuse to utter it under any inducement. I am told, it is still thus esteemed by existing Jews.

§ 5.—Religious feelings seem a part of the human constitution, like hope, fear, &c.

Religious feelings seem as much a part of the human constitution as sympathy, hope, fear, doubt, uncertainty, confidence, &c. Religion may change its modes of worship, and the nominal objects of its worship; but the internal feelings which alone give urgency and vitality to the worship, must always make every man liable to religion;-though he may not be always religious, any more than he is always under the influence of love, sympathy, hope, fear, doubt, &c.

§ 6.-Religion, from its connexion with our internal feelings, is but little affected by adverse logick.

Infidels, when they seek to subvert Christianity, deem nothing necessary but to refute logically the tenets of revelation. Logick can, however, effect nothing, till it can prevent the Scriptures from exciting religious feelings. You may endeavour to convince a man that his wife is neither handsome nor lovely; but if she produce in him the feelings of love, your logick can effect but little, though he may be unable to refute it, or to discover that your arguments are untrue.*

§ 7.—Internal feelings enter largely into words that are not religious.

Ghost, witch, spectre, fairy, sorcerer, and a multitude of other words, derive their principal signification from the internal feelings with which they are associated. In children often, and in adults frequently, such words are highly significant and terrible.

§ 8.—The whole universe can be nominally analyzed into sights, sounds, tastes, feels, smells, internal feelings, thoughts, and words.

In our second lecture, when I resolved external existences into sights, sounds, tastes, feels, and smells, I avoided any reference to existences which are not external, because I feared that they would complex a classification which was already abstruse. I should else have said, that all existences which are not external can be characteristically designated as internal feelings, thoughts, and words :-hence, that the whole universe can be nominally analyzed into sights, sounds, tastes, feels, smells, internal feelings, thoughts, and words.

* Many men, as well as children, may be speculatively convinced that a corpse is harmless, and yet be prevented by fear from remaining alone with it at midnight.

§ 9.—Our analysis is artificial; the universe can be correctly expounded by itself alone.

You must remember that the object of my analysis is to teach you to subordinate language to nature. To effect this instruction, I must possess some mode of referring to natural existences; but if you desire to know what the universe truly is, you must dismiss my names, as well as all others, and contemplate the universe externally with your senses, and internally with your consciousness. The information thus obtained is the universe. The moment this information is clothed in language, either articulately or in thought, you are wandering from the substance of the universe to the shadow,-from the realities of creation to the artificial and conventional terms by which men communicate with each other; and you will infallibly become entangled and confused with the sophistries and errours which have been created by a long habit of estimating nature by language.

10.-Words that refer to our internal feelings are subject to all the rules of interpretation which are enumerated in the preceding lectures.

All that has been said in relation to the oneness and identity of external existences (as compared with the oneness and identity of their names), applies even more violently to internal feelings than to sights, sounds, tastes, feels, and smells. In treatises, for instance, which have been written on our passions, appetites, emotions, &c., the internal feelings, &c., which give significancy to the word love, are enumerated not as the meaning of the word love, but as the acts and propensities of a mysterious unit love, who holds his seat in the heart. Wisdom, reason, judgment, conscience, instinct, and numerous kindred units, are crowded into the head, where, on invisible tripods, they sit, and hold divided dominion over the conduct, thoughts, and feelings of the man in whom they are situated.

§ 11.-The identity of love is as fallacious as its oneness.

I love my dog, horse, children, property, country, &c. In each of these applications of the word love, it refers to a feeling which I experience; but the feelings that are thus referred to are not as identical in nature as in name. They possess a sufficient homogeneity to make the word love appropriate to them all; just as I discover in a whale, an anchovy, and an eel, a sufficient homogeneity to make the word fish appropriate to them. In both cases we should estimate the verbal identity by the revelations of nature; but we reverse this principle, and in both cases make the verbal identity authoritative over the natural diversity.

§ 12.—We subject our internal feelings to fewer verbal distinctions than our sensible information.

The remarks which I have made on the identity of love and its oneness, apply to pity, and every other word that refers to internal feelings. Indeed, the identity which we impute to the internal feelings that are designated by one name, is responded to by nature with less strictness.than the identity which we impute to the external existences that we designate by one name. If, for instance, your child should hurt itself grievously, you will be said to pity it; and if you see a wounded fly, you may pity the fly. The two feelings in you will differ much; yet, from the difficulty which men experience in indicating to each other the precise internal feeling that any event excites, we apply the word pity to both the above cases, and to a multitude of other varying cases. We are more definite with external differences. The words scarlet, red, pink, crimson, &c., designate sights which vary less from each other, than the pity which you felt for your child varies from the pity which you felt for the fly. The divisions to which we have subjected our internal feelings are gross and general. They are like the division of external objects into fish, birds, and insects; rather than like the nicer discrimination to which we refer by the words whale, grampus, porpoise, &c.