INTRODUCTORY. 1 1 



piention only one or two instances, I refer first to the 

 treatment of the subject in the writings of Locke, with 

 whom one of the principal lines of modern philosophical 

 thought originated. 



But I prefer, for the sake of general interest, to quote 

 what Edmund Burke says at the close of his ' Enquiry 

 into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,' 

 which was published in the middle of the eighteenth 

 century. The fifth part of this treatise deals with 

 Words, and in the fourth section, " On the Effect of 

 Words," he says : " If words have all their possible 

 extent of power, three effects arise in the mind of the 

 hearer. The first is, the sound ; the second, the picture, 

 or representation of the thing signified by the sound ; 

 the third is, the affection of the soul produced by one or 

 l)y both of the foregoing. Compounded abstract words 

 of which we have been speaking (honour, justice, liberty, 

 and the like) produce the first and the last of these 

 effects, but not the second. Simple abstracts are useful 

 to signify some one simple idea without much adverting 

 to others which may chance to attend it, as blue, green, 

 hot, cold, and the like ; these are capable of affecting 

 all three of the purposes of words ; as the aggregate 

 words, man, castle, horse, &c., are in a yet higher 

 degree." 



In recent years, when the study of philosophy has 

 again brought into the foreground the problem of lan- 

 guage. Prof. Stout has fully discussed this passage of 

 Burke, and in connection with it reviewed the opinions 

 of other eminent thinkers.^ 



1 G. F. Stout, 'Analytic Psychology,' 1902, vol. i. p. 80. 



