Universal Terms. 23 
rious languages? and could they be taught a visible ‘sign. by which to 
express these classes, unless they had such conceptions previously in 
their minds? Mr. Stewart informs us that James Mitchel, the poor 
boy who was from his birth destitute of the senses of sight and hear- 
ing, was fond of horses. He knew them by the perceptions of his 
other senses; and their consequent conceptions. Even the brutes 
have knowledge (or instinct, it here matters not which) of natural class- 
es and their general properties. A dog will avoid the horns of the ox 
and the heels of the horse, and he resigns himself with affection and 
trust, to. no animal but that erect and lordly being, to whom alone of 
his lower works, the Creator has imparted conscience and reason. 
¥et hear the language of Mr. Stewart:— Whether it might not 
have been possible for the Deity to have so formed us, that we might 
have been capable of reasoning, concerning classes of objects, with- 
out the use of signs, (i.e. general terms,) I shall not take upon me 
to determine. But this we may venture to affirm, with confidence, 
that man is not such a being.” ‘It has been already shown, that 
without the use of signs, all our knowledge must necessarily have been 
limited to individuals, and that we should have been perfectly inca- 
pable both of classification and general reasoning.” “Some authors 
have maintained that without the power of generalization,) which I 
have endeavored to show means nothing more than the capacity of - 
employing general terms,) it would have been impossible -for us to 
have carried on any species of reasoning whatever.” | 
Profoundly as we venerate the name and genius of Dugald Stew- 
art, we cannot but feel that here he lends them to perpetuate ab- 
surdities. From hence we may derive two lessons—the first, to 
search — of things, rather than to look for authorities; the 
second, to be umble 1 especting what we may fancy to be our own 
i find: that even minds like his may sometimes 
be mistaken, and there too, where they are most confident. 
As an additional proof that some such distinction of universals as 
we have made is correct, we adduce the very fact of the dispute so 
long and warmly kept up. Error, as Mr. Stewart justly observes, 
does not take a‘permanent hold of the mind, except by being associ- 
ated and blended with truth. ‘The mind being fully persuaded of 
the truth, receives without examination, whatever is conceived to be 
its necessary concomitants. So in the case under discussion, to re- 
cur toa former example, let it be supposed proper to demand a di- 
rect answer to the question, whether the human race be white or 
