inted with alphabetic characters, and unite them into words: and in
the same manner discriminate, and record the musical notes. Some of the
blind have become highly intelligent, and have excelled in
conversational acuteness; and as human beings have left the deaf and
dumb in the rear, notwithstanding the latter are furnished with all the
_Ideas_ that can be inherited from sight. This constant employment of
words, impregnated with meaning, affords the blind considerable facility
in acquiring information by pertinent questions, and enables him to
communicate his thoughts with precision and correctness. These words,
and the intelligence that resides in them, are the only sources of his
knowledge, (his perceptions being commuted for words,) and the meaning
they import is all that it is necessary for him to comprehend. It may
here be repeated that the capacity by which man exclusively exercises
the range of thought by sounds that are significant, and receives from
others the same oral intelligence, has no material basis that we can
possibly detect or logically infer: but must be considered an endowment
of infinite power and wisdom.

Before we attribute such vast powers to these Ideas or phantasms, the
shadows of visual perception, it will be convenient to inquire into
their nature, and endeavour to ascertain the laws by which they are
regulated. In that state of mental relaxation, when the intellect is not
intently occupied on any particular subject, numberless phantasms will
involuntarily intrude: for, during the time we are awake, the mind is
never wholly unoccupied, and such irregular presentations of Ideas
constitute our reveries. However these ignes fatui may glimmer in their
wanderings, tumultuously assemble, or abruptly depart; such confluence
or dispersion contributes nothing to effective thought. As far as these
Ideas or phantasms, the obsequious shadows of visual perception, can be
traced, they are incapable of being summoned to appear by any voluntary
command; but are consequently revived by the term or word for which the
perception is commuted. Thus, having previously noticed them with
attention, when we speak of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey,
the attendant visions of these buildings immediately arise, and we are
impressed with a memorial picture in conjunction with, and through the
intervention of the word. The will possesses no power to unite or
separate Ideas; they adhere to, and remain the unaltera