THEORY OF LANGUAGE. 389 



being recorded for more complete investigation, as promising 

 to lead us to new and unexceptionable conclusions. 



The design of the following paper is to suggest a few consi- 

 derations for the purpose of solving some difficulties in which 

 the Theory of Language is involved. 



It will be requisite, in the first place, to consider minute- 

 ly the object or purpose of Language, — a subject which 

 the greater part of writers, and Mr Tooke himself, seem to 

 have thought liable to no diversity of opinion, and which is in- 

 troduced at the beginning of every treatise on universal gram- 

 mar, rather for the sake of form than with a view to establish 

 any peculiar doctrine. 



No grammarian seems to have disputed the justness of this 

 account of the object of language, that it is " to communicate 

 " our thoughts to one another," 



We communicate our thoughts, sometimes by presenting the 

 objects of them to the senses of another ; sometimes by sug- 

 gesting them through the medium of signs. When we hold 

 out an apple or a stone, when we point to a river or to a 

 mountain, we communicate to another a thought which exists 

 in our own mind. This act has been reckoned a specimen of 

 natural language. It is, however, with signs, and only with 

 that species of signs called words, that universal grammar is 

 conversant ; and, in our inquiries into this subject, we are to 

 consider the use that is made of these signs, as completely se- 

 parate from any immediate exhibition of the objects of our 

 thoughts themselves. 



Words are, indeed, objects of thought, and are perceived, 

 like other objects, by the senses. They are not, however, pre- 

 sented on their own account, but only for exciting different 

 ideas, for which they conventionally stand as signs. The ori- 



Vol. VII. P. II. 3D ginal 



