CHAPTER IV. 



LANGUAGE. 



&quot; Kational language is a bond of connexion between the mental and 

 material world which is absolutely peculiar to man.&quot; 



IN the last chapter, an endeavour was made to justify our 

 Lan uage spontaneous belief in a real external world, pos- 

 tt e een n mind sessing the properties we attribute to it in addition 

 and matter. ^ Q our 8 p 0n taneous belief in our own continued 

 mental existence in other words, a belief in the reality of 

 the material world as well as the reality of the world of 

 mind. We shall be following a natural order, therefore, if 

 we now consider that which is the special bond and connexion 

 between these two worlds, material and mental that by 

 which our feelings, memories, thoughts, and volitions are 

 made manifest to the senses of other men, and that by which 

 we ourselves come to learn other men s feelings, memories, 

 thoughts, and volitions. I mean language. 



But the word &quot; language&quot; denotes two very different things. 

 Language It denotes the expression of the mere feelings or 

 and rational, emotions emotional language, and it also denotes 

 the expression of thoughts rational language. It is the 

 latter only which especially merits our attention here, as the 

 language of mere feeling cannot by itself be said to be a bond 

 of union between external nature and mind as revealed in the 

 self-consciousness we are interrogating. 



Rational speech is evidently made up of the union of 

 two distinct factors the one mental, the other corporeal 

 the one the idea conceived by the mind, the other the bodily 



