On Figurative Language. 87 
Thus the expression of burying the axe, used 
among the American Indians, for making 
peace, may be regarded as a sort of historical 
_record of the circumstance being at some 
former period actually transacted. We have 
an account of something very similar to this 
in the writings of the Jewish prophets. 
But such a mode of communication is ex- 
tremely imperfect and deficient, and could be 
but of short continuance. Necessity plainly 
‘required, that words should be used under 
the character which distinguish verbs and 
adjectives as parts of language. No commu- 
nication, purely verbal, can possibly take place 
without the use of adjectives and verbs, in 
addition to nouns, or the names of things. 
Here, then, a most important question im- 
mediately oecurs—W hat is the origin of these 
words? Did men absolutely invent names, 
de novo, for qualities and actions? For in- 
stance, when the word. fly, for the action of 
flying, was first used as a verb, was it a verb 
in its first utterance, and at the same time an 
entirely new word, or was it the appropriation, 
in a certain way, and according to certain prin- 
ciples, of the name of the insect fly, to express 
the action which it very frequently performs? 
To me, the latter appears to have been the 
¢ase, in all instances, in the formation of verbs ; 
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