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. 

 Yet 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 the nature of things, rather than to look for authorities ; the 

 second, to be humble respecting what we may fancy to be our own 

 discoveries, since we 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 to a former example, let it be supposed proper to demand a di- 

 rect answer to the question, whether the human race be white or 



