404 OBSERVATIONS ON THE 



seems to be nothing else than the noun " res" in an inde- 

 clinable form. / signifies " go ;" I-re, " go-thing ;" go con- 

 sidered as a thing, or Object of thought. Vult i-re, " he wills 

 going, or the thing to go." 



Those inarticulate sounds which express strong sensation, 

 which are not originally addressed to any hearer, and are ut- 

 tered even by the deaf and dumb, such as laughing, crying, 

 and expressions, of surprise, are the only sounds that precede 

 Imperatives. They are in the first place involuntary, and af- 

 terwards uttered from design. A man desirous of impressing 

 another with a particular passion first contrives to excite it in 

 his own mind, and then utters the sound by which it is ex- 

 pressed. Some sounds bearing a resemblance to these are 

 conveyed by articulate syllables, and ranked by grammarians 

 under a head by themselves, to which they give the name of 

 Interjections. Mr Tooke refuses them any place in human 

 language, because they are common to us with brutes, and are 

 in some degree symptoms of the wildness of mental dereliction. 

 Language, however, must include every sound addressed by 

 one man to another, from the lowest to the highest state of 

 mental cultivation. Interjections may be considered as a mix- 

 ture of involuntary expression with social discourse. In the 

 use of this part of speech, man is seen to rise from the charac- 

 ter of an animal impelled by passion, to that of a reflecting be- 

 ing, who discovers intelligence and address in influencing his 

 fellow-creatures. Interjections, in so far as they partake of the 

 nature of social discourse, are real imperatives. 



The imperative influence which mankind, by means of lan- 

 guage, exert over the thoughts, of one another, is subject to a 

 variety of modifications, which depend not so much on the di- 

 versities of their thoughts themselves, as on the different forms 

 of the relative situation in which the speaker stands to the per- 

 son 



