G R 



A M ]\I A R. 



mind ; and fiom the want of juil iikaa on tliis fubjeft, he 

 has, as \vc fliall lliow in the fequel, plunged himfelf and his 

 readers in deep and manifold errors. 



As general or abftradl ideas, v.-liich are the chief ma- 

 terials of fcience, are formed folely by the inftrumcntahty of 

 language, we may hence fee the reafon wliy the ftiidy of lan- 

 guage ought to form the Ittfis in every fyftem of education ; 

 and why fcience can flourilh only among a people previoufly 

 acquainted with the arts of eloquence and compofition. The 

 philofophy of grammar, moreover, as it retraces the track of 

 the human mind, in the formation of its ideas, through the 

 medium of fpeech, is the beil guide to the knowledge of its 

 powei'S and -operations, and confequently to their proper 

 direflion. Hence the only fyltems of metaphyfics and logic, 

 wortiiy tlie attention of a philofophical enquirer, are thofe 

 which are built on the foundation of grammatical analylls. 



But further, as words in the very commencement of 

 every man's education denote individual obiects, and become 

 figns of clalTes or kinds by the luccellive application of each 

 word to many individuals of that clafs, we might conclude 

 that in the original language of mankind, if iolely tlie effeCl 

 of human invention, each term at firlt wa^ but a proper 

 name of a thing or of a quality, and afterwards reprelented 

 a greater number of individuals as tlie mind advanced in the 

 principle of generalization. But this inference is contrary 

 to the faft. The Hebrew tongue carries us back almoll to 

 the infancy of human iociety, and, wliether it be the original 

 language of mankind or not, it prefents us with much fairer 

 fpeciinens of what language muil have been, than we can 

 gath-r from any modern dialect. The primitive words of 

 •hat language are founded upon the moft comprehenfive ana- 

 '/"•s.; and tlie learner, in acquiring that tongue, inftcad 

 c. being carried up from the individual to the fpecies, and 

 from the fpecies to the genus, finds himfelf on the top of 

 the moft extenfive clafs ; and in the formation of words he is 

 made to defcend from general to fpeoiiic terms, and from fpe- 

 cific terms to proper names; fo that all the proper names which 

 we meet with in the Hebrew records are really derived from 

 general appellations. This phenomenon appears to us complete- 

 ly to annihilate the fuppofition, that language is folely the 

 fruit of human ingenuity. Mofes, in his hillory, obliquely 

 ftates, and, with his ufual brevity, accounts for the t'aCl : 

 " And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beaft 

 of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them to 

 fee what he would call them : and whatfoever Adam c:.lled 

 every living creature, that was tlie name thereof." The 

 Arabic traiillation, we apprehend, alone places this verfe in its 

 proper light, by rendering to fee, to caufe to fie, i. s. tajhcja. 

 The author then intimates that God (hewed or directed 

 Adam in the application of names to things. And what 

 can be more probable, than that He, who formed the organs 

 of man, fhould at firll inftrutt man in the proper ufe of them, 



Lajlfyt it follows from the above explanation, that 

 words, as they are at firll afibciated with ideas, are in ftricl 

 propriety figns of ideas, and not figns of things. For unlefs 

 the idea he previoufly in the mind, there can be no union by 

 alFociation of fenie with found. The aflbciation takes place 

 in t?ie mind, and where the idea of the thing, and that of the 

 found do not meet, there can be no formation of articulate 

 found. The learner, however, is not fenfible of any diftinftion 

 between his ideas and the external objefts which are their 

 origin or prototypes ; and he refers the found immediately 

 to its prototype, witJiout being confcious that an impreffion 

 or idea of it exifls in his mind. As, however, we know nothing 

 of things but through the medium of our ideas, and as ideas 

 nyift depend for their properties ajid dUUnttion upon the 



things tliey reprefent, the above overfight is not productive 

 of any error or inconvenience ; and we may fay that words 

 are figns of things, or of the ideas of things, without any 

 prejudice to philofophical accuracy. This leads us to the 

 clafiification of fpeech, or its divifion into parts. 



The common dillribution in our own tongue is into 

 nouns, articles, tidjec/ives, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, 

 prepofitions, conjunSions, and interjeffions. This divifion has 

 obtained with little variation in other modern languages, and 

 has been derived, on the authority of ancient grammarians, 

 from the languages of Greece and Rome. The above claf- 

 fification, however general and convenient in a popular view, 

 is bv no means to be admitted in a philofophical grammar. 

 And the few writers of this kind in Englifli, or other tongues, 

 have been fenfible of the inaccuracy of tlie popular divifion. 

 The Oriental grammarians admit only three parts of Ipeech, 

 the verb, the noun, and particles derived from thefe. Plato, 

 whofe notion of language as a fcience mull have been form- 

 ed in Egvpt, mentions only two, the noun and the verb ; 

 torn. i. p. 261. Edit. Ser. And Arillotle mentions no more, 

 where he treats of propofitions. {De Inter, c. 2.) But Mr. 

 Harris, Herm. p. jS. thinks that thole philofophers were 

 not ignorant of the other parts of fpeech, but ipoke with 

 reference to logic or dialeetics, confidering the eflence of 

 fpeech as contained in thefe two, becaufe they alone com- 

 bined to make a perfect atfertive fentence, which none of the 

 reft without them are able to rft'ect. But Ariftotle, in his 

 tix-atife i)f Poetrv, v.liere he was to lay down tlie elements of 

 a more variegated fpeech, adds the article and conjundion to 

 the noun and verb. The latter iStoics, improving on the 

 authority of Arifl:otle, inftead oi four parts, made [five, by 

 dividing the noun into the appellative and proper. Others 

 increafed the number, by detaching the pronoun from the 

 noun ; the participle and adverb from the verb ; and the 

 prepofition from the conjunftion. The Latin grammarians 

 went farther, and detached the interjection from the adverb, 

 A^ithin which by the Greeks it was always included as a 

 fpecies. 



Mr. Harris, following Ariftotle and the elder Stoics, 

 divides fpeech into words that are fignificant as^Wnf/^/r, and 

 thole which are fignificant as nrr^Wcj, including under tlic 

 former clafs fitbjlantiv.s and attr'dnttives, and under the latter 

 definitives and conne3ivcs. This dillribution is fet afide 

 and ridiculed by Mr. Tooke, who fays, vol. i. p. 47 ; " In 

 Engliih, and in all languages, there are only two iorts of 

 words, which are ncceffary for the communication of our 

 thoughts, and they are noun and verb. And as to the parts 

 of fpeech, they may be cither two or twenty, or more. In the 

 ftrict fenfe of the term, both the necelfary words and the 

 abbreviations are all of them parts of fpeech ; becaufe they 

 are all uleful in language, and each has a different manner of 

 fignification. But I think it of great confequence, both to 

 knowledge and to languages, to keep the words employed for 

 the different purpofes of fpeech as diftinft as pofhble. And 

 therefore I am inclined to allow that rank only to neccjary 

 words : and to include all the others, which are not necelfary 

 to fpeech, but merely fubjlitules of the firft fort, under the 

 title of abbreviations." In thin boafted divifion, as we ihall 

 preientiy fee, there is neither utility nor accuracy, and tlie 

 author was betrayed to it by a fecret vvilh to place the novel- 

 ty of hjs own fyftem in the moll confpicuous light, namely, 

 that conjunilions and prepoCiions are but abbreviations of 

 nouns and verbs. 



Now it IS fingular, that the divifion which we 

 think the moll philofophical, and, therefore, the moft fimplc 

 aad ufeful, is l^at which is thus profcribed in a very laboured 



traatik . 



