On Figurative Language. 103 
Mortalia cuncta peribunt ; 
Nedum sermonum stet honos, et gratia vivax: 
Multa renascentur que jam cecidere, cadentque, 
Quz nunc sunt in honore vocabula. 
As the knowledge of things is acquired 
through the medium of words, it becomes 
highly necessary for us to become acquainted 
with the mamner in which, in the progress 
of the developement of human reason, words 
have been applied to things, how they become 
the means of communicating thoughts and 
trains of ideas, and in what manner the 
structure of human speech has been built 
from the time of laying the first rough stone 
at the foundation, to the completion of an 
useful and ornamental edifice. Our know- 
ledge of words can by no means be deemed 
perfect, except we are acquainted with their 
various modifications and changes. | Though 
we actually learn a language and the different 
meanings of words in a manner very different 
from this—and that too in a manner fully 
adequate to all the useful purposes of life— 
yet in attempting to reduce language to its 
primary elements, and words to their original 
sources, we must be able clearly to see the 
whole course of their progress, their various 
windings and deflections, their compositions 
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