440 Edward Livingston Younians. 



attainments, almost always tacitly imply a theory that the investiga- 

 tion of truth consists in contemplating and handling our ideas, or 

 conceptions of things themselves ; a doctrine tantamount to the as- 

 sertion that the only mode of acquiring knowledge of Nature is to 

 study it at second-hand, as represented in our own minds. Mean- 

 while, inquiries into every kind of natural phenomena were incessantly 

 establishing great and fruitful truths on most important subjects by 

 processes upon which these views of the nature of Judgment and 

 Reasoning threw no light.* 



Another step brings us to language — the system of 

 marks and labels for thought — the " signs of ideas." These 

 are the implements furnished by art for dealing with ideas 

 of tilings. Through the association of ideas with visible 

 symbols, language becomes the embodiment of thought, 

 and there arises a relation among words growing out of the 

 relations among ideas, which again grow out of the rela- 

 tions among things. Both rest upon the order of Nature 

 which science reveals ; but that order is twice refracted 

 through distorting media, and although the semblance of 

 science is to be found in both, yet so many imperfections 

 are introduced at each change, that we are only safe by 

 keeping the intellectual eye steadily fixed upon the primal 

 source of truth. The overshadowing error of present edu- 

 cation is the propensity to accept words in place of the ideas 

 and things for which they stand, and from which they borrow 

 all their value. This false estimate has been well character- 

 ized by the observation that " words are the counters of wise 

 men, but the money of fools." Of course, most of the reali- 

 ties of knowledge are inaccessible to us ; we know them only 

 through their verbal signs; but all the more necessary is it 

 that we should never forget that we are dealing with third- 

 hand representations. Words are the tools of the thinker, 

 which he must know how to handle, or they are useless ; 

 but the sensible mechanic remembers that his tools are for 



* Mill's System of Logic, vol. i, p. 98. 



