become insignificant the moment they are applied where no corresponding existences are discoverable.

§ 20.-In Gill's Body of Divinity is the following proposition: "Though angels possess no bodies, and so are not in place circumspectively; yet, as they are creatures, they must possess a somewhere in which they are definitively."

Why? If you attempt to dispose of this book so that it shall exist, and still possess no location, you will discover the impracticability. But when the same impracticability is predicated of angels, it exists only in the forms of language; forms which possess no more substantiality, when the sensible phenomena to which they allude are subtracted, than the musterrolls of an army, when the soldiers are all deserted.

§ 21.—The writer proceeds with his verbal discoveries : "where existed a place for angels before heaven and earth were made? Nowhere." Why? Because we are referring to our sensible experience. The writer, however, thinks he is proving that the heavens or the earth must have been created before angels. Yet even this obvious consequence of his premises is authoritative only because it refers to our operations: thus, you cannot mark with chalk till you have something on which to inscribe the mark. Why? Try, and you will find. Our senses affix to the inability a signification; but when we apply the language to angels, the inability is verbal only.

§ 22.-Locke says, "number applies to men, angels, actions, thoughts, and every thing imaginable." If any proposition is inherently significant, this of Locke must be the one. Yet even this is indebted for its significance to our operations and experience. Why must apples be either one or more? Try to prevent the necessity, and you will discover. The necessity depends not on the structure of language, but on our experience. But why must angels be either one or more? The necessity here is merely verbal. Number may be applicable to angels by virtue of the authority of revelation, but not by virtue of our logick. Number is a name given by us to certain sights and

feels, &c; where these exist not, number is a word divested of its signification.

§ 23. I have now shown, that when language forces us to admit that apples must be either one or more, the necessity of admitting the conclusion is founded on our experience. I have also shown that when propositions have thus obtained an authoritative character, we apply them where no corresponding experience exists: as that angels must be either one or more. In such applications, the necessity of admitting the conclusion is merely verbal, and therefore fallacious.

§ 24.-The solicitude which philosophical writers usually evince for the establishment of names and definitions, arises from the verbal deductions which they intend to draw from the

names.

Examples of the foregoing fallacies might be further accumulated without difficulty, but I have probably stated a sufficient number and variety to show that 'the errour enters deeply into all our learning. We shall now be able to discover a reason for the solicitude evinced often about names and definitions. For instance, if a mathematician wishes to demonstrate that the surface of a fish-pond is not level, the earth must be denominated a sphere, and the sphere be properly defined; after this preliminary, the fish-pond will constitute a part of the circumference of a sphere, and the surface of the pond cannot be a straight line. The further consideration of this solicitude of abstruse writers is important to the view which I wish to present of language, and it constitutes the theme of our next lecture.

LECTURE XVII.

PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATIONS ARE OFTEN NOTHING BUT VERBAL DEDUCTIONS FROM NAMES AND DEFINITIONS.

§ 1. What we have experienced in an orange, we deem predicable of every thing that is called an orange; without reflecting that every word possesses as many meanings as it possesses applications to different objects.

THEORISTS are solicitous about names and definitions, because speculations are often verbal deductions from such names: for instance, if you wish to prove that the surface of a pond is not level, you can accomplish it verbally by premising that the earth is a sphere, and the pond a part of the circumference.*

2.-Words possess as many significations as they possess applications to different phenomena; consequently, though the assertion is true when applied to an artificial sphere, that no part of its circumference is level; yet the assertion is sophistical when the word sphere is applied to the earth, because sphere possesses then a different signification.

§3.-What we infer from given facts is not identical with what we discover by our senses.

I lately asked a friend what he meant by saying the earth was round. He said it was round like any other round body. I desired an example. He pointed to an artificial globe. "But," said I, "does the earth present the same sight as the globe, or the same feel?" "Neither:- but when a fly walks

* My illustrations may be defective and otherwise inaccurate; but, if they enable the reader to ascertain the principles which I seek to illustrate, my object will be attained.

over the globe, he produces an appearance similar to what a receding ship exhibits to spectators on the shore. Again, when a ship sails in a continued course westwardly, it returns to the country whence it originally departed: as a fly returns when he walks on an artificial globe. Besides, the shadow of an artificial globe resembles the appearance which is exhibited on the moon when eclipsed: an appearance which astronomers say is the shadow of the earth.

§ 4.—The word sphere, therefore, when applied to the earth, is not the name of a sight and feel, (as it is when applied to an artificial globe,) but the name of the above and some other phenomena. To prove by argument that an artificial globe is spherical, would be idle. The word names what we see and feel in the artificial globe. But the earth has been repeatedly subjected to experiments, for the procurement of data from which its shape might be inferred; and the word sphere, when applied to the earth, is a name of these data only.

§ 5.-Phraseology is not important while we employ it (say the word Cæsar) to designate any thing; but phraseology is very important when we infer from the word Cæsar that an individual must be a Roman Emperor.

Whether the earth be named a sphere or a plane is of little consequence, so long as we use the name to only designate certain data; but the name becomes essential, if we employ it ⚫ to determine whether the surface of a pond is level, or to determine whether two perpendicular poles that stand before me are parallel. If I use the word sphere, the two poles are not parallel, maugre all that seeing and feeling can testify to the contrary; because you can mathematically demonstrate that no two lines perpendicular to the surface of a sphere can be parallel.

§ 6. If I admit that my hand touches fire, you may deduce therefrom that my hand will be burnt. The conclusion seems inevitable. But you ought to know first whether I apply the word fire to what you have always found productive of such a

result. Perhaps I hold in my hand paper on which the word fire is written. This, however, you would denounce as a quibble. It is a quibble; and the above, together with a vast many philosophical conclusions, are produced by a process similar in character to the quibble, though not so obvious to detection.

§ 7.—The phenomena exhibited by the heavenly bodies are equally apparent to all men; and we may call them the motion of the heavenly bodies around the earth, or the motion of the earth around its own axis, and around the sun. The choice of phraseology is unimportant, so long as we employ the words to only designate phenomena which our senses discover: but when we employ the words to make discoveries beyond our senses, the phraseology is very important. By adopting the latter phraseology, we make all mankind travel at a giddy velocity of more than a thousand miles a minute in one direction, and about a thousand miles an hour in another direction. By adopting the first phraseology, we escape from disturbing the quiescence of the earth; but we unmercifully cause the sun and stars to travel with a rotation of about twenty-five thousand miles every minute.

§ 8.-Again: if, with Newton, we call the sun a body of fire, the language is harmless, so long as we use it to merely designate the phenomena which the sun exhibits, or to designate any thing; but if we intend to deduce consequences from the word fire, the phraseology is essential: thus, as the planet Saturn is ten times further from the sun than our earth, and as fire dispenses heat and illumination in a degree which distance diminishes in a ratio inverse the square of the distance, we enjoy a hundred times more light and heat than Saturn. This piteous conclusion is accordingly predicated of Saturn. The poor inhabitants of that planet are, however, not permitted to exist with these privations only, but more adventurous speculators urge the deductive process further, and prove that water exists among them in solidity only, and consequently they know not the luxury of fish. Humanity must rejoice that these distressful consequences are avoidable, by the simple contrivance of a late philanthropist, who has extinguished the solar fire, and