26 Universal Terms. 



The intellect of man is accommodated to the world around him. 

 It is the external world which, by means of his senses, particularly 

 the sight, comes to be transferred, as it were, within, and to have 

 there an immaterial being; and it is, that we may read out,- to our 

 fellow men what we thus perceive, mysteriously existing within, that 

 we have invented language. If things exist in the mind single, man 

 invents words to express them as such; if they are perceived togeth- 

 er as constituting a sort or kind, then he invents a word expressive 

 of a class., 



Mark on this subject the words of the inspired historian, who in 

 nothing is more particular in the history of creation, than in the state- 

 ment of the fact that God expressly intended the things which he 

 made should be in sorts or kinds. " And God said, Let the earth 

 bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding 

 fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth. And the 

 earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and 

 ■ the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself, after his kind. And 

 God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, 

 which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and ev- 

 • ery winged fowl after his kind. And God said, let the earth bring 

 forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and 

 beast of the earth' after his kind." 



Man, in his works, has imitated his Maker, and his creations ho 

 less are made each after its kind. They are inventions to supply 

 his necessities or minister to his pleasures, and being addressed to 

 a common nature, are ordinarily many of a sort. Such are the im- 

 plements of husbandry, of navigation, and of rural economy. 



The names, then, that men have invented to express the general 

 conceptions of the mind, answering to the things which the Creator 

 (and man in his puny works) sees good to make every one after his 

 kind, are no less early invented than those which express particu- 

 lars. This abundantly appears from the fact, that little children in 

 the case of familiar natural*' classes of objects so small that the eye 

 takes in a number at once, learn the general before the particular ap- 

 pellation. Observe two children at a window, one of two years old, 

 the other of four ; you will hear the younger exclaim, as these ob- 



* Observe that the word natural, as hero used, refers not to the object, but to tlie 

 mind. Hence I would call chairs, tables, guns, ships, natural classes, although 

 they are not natural objects. Nature did not make them, but nature makes every 

 human mind recognize them as things of the same sort. 



