PERSONAL IDENTITY. 83 



to be passed over — hence the slang and cant words of 

 every profession, and indeed all language ; for language 

 at best is but a kind of " patter," the only way, it is 

 true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to one 

 another, but still a very bad way, and not for one 

 moment comparable to the unspoken speech which we 

 may sometimes have recourse to. The metaphors and 

 fagons de parler to which even in the plainest speech 

 we are perpetually recurring (as, for example, in this 

 last two lines, "plain," "perpetually," and "recur- 

 ring," are all words based on metaphor, and hence 

 more or less liable to mislead) often deceive us, as though 

 there were nothing more than what we see and say, 

 and as though words, instead of being, as they are, the 

 creatures of our convenience, had some claim to be the 

 actual ideas themselves concerning which we are 

 conversing. 



This is so well expressed in a letter I have recently 

 received from a friend, now in New Zealand, and 

 certainly not intended by him for publication, that I 

 shall venture to quote the passage, but should say that 

 I do so without his knowledge or permission which I 

 should not be able to receive before this book must be 

 completed. 



" Words, words, words," he writes, " are the stum- 

 bling-blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of 

 things as they are, and not of the words that misre- 

 present them, you cannot think rightly. Words pro- 

 duce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there 

 are none. Words divide ; thus we call this a man, that 

 an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only 



