CHAPTER I. 



Speech Defined.— The True Nature of Speech.— The Use of 

 Speech. — The Limitations of Speech. 



What is speech ? I shall endeavor to define 

 it in such terms as will relieve it of ambiguity, 

 and deal with it as a known quantity in the prob- 

 lems of mental commerce. Speech is that form 

 of materialized thought confined to oral sounds 

 when they are designed to convey a definite idea 

 from mind to mind. It is, therefore, only one 

 mode of expressing thought ; and to come within 

 the limits of speech the sounds must be volun- 

 tary, have fixed values, and be intended to sug- 

 gest to another mind a certain idea or group of 

 ideas more or less complex. The idea is one fac- 

 tor and sound the other, and the two conjointly 

 constitute speech. The empty sounds alone, how- 

 ever modulated, having no integral value, cannot 

 be speech; nor can the # concept, unexpressed, be 

 speech. Separately, the one would be noise and 

 the other would be thought; and they only be- 

 come speech when the thought is expressed in 



i43 



