An Essay on the signs of Ideas. 257 
certain operations which occasionally take 
place in the human mind. 
Those kinds of words, usually called con- 
junctions and prepositions, were, till very 
lately, considered as not of themselves ex- 
pressive of ideas. Locke says, ‘“ they are 
not truly, by themselves, the names of any 
ideas ;’’ and Harris says they are words de- 
voidof signification. But that mostacute of 
men, the late John Horne Tooke, has shewn, 
in the clearest manner, that words of this 
kind are really contractions: and representa- 
tives of other words. Those other words are, 
m general, abbreviated complex terms ex- 
pressive of a number of ideas. Thus, the 
conjunction and signifies to add, and to add 
is an abbreviated term to express the placing 
of one thing with another, either in fact or 
imagination. In the same manner, the pre- 
position with signifies to joi, which is a like 
abbreviated term. 
It may be here observed, in passing, that 
what are, in the technical language of gram- 
mar, called verbs, are to be considered in ge- 
neral as complex terms, signifying, along 
with their nominative, ideas of peculiar modes 
of existing, acting, or suffering of some per- 
son or thing. Of this kind are the verbs to 
VOL, Il. Kk 
