ble deposits of
perception. Let it next be asked, what human purpose can be effected by
their sole agency? On those solemn occasions when we address our prayers
to the Divine Source, can these effusions of grateful feeling, and
humble petition, be conveyed in phantasms? Does not the lamenting and
repentant sinner emphatically articulate his anxious supplications? Can
any human contract be concluded by mere Ideas, or any system of
jurisprudence be established on such visionary basis? Ideas therefore
cannot enable us to perform our duty towards God, or our neighbour.[6]

In pursuing this important subject, the candid confession of Mr. LOCKE
bewrays his distrust of the powers and efficiency of his favourite
Ideas. "To form a clear notion of _Truth_, it is very necessary to
consider Truth of Thought, and Truth of words distinctly one from
another: but yet it is very difficult to treat of them asunder. Because
it is unavoidable, in treating of mental propositions to make use of
words; and then the instances given of _mental_ propositions, cease
immediately to be barely mental, and become _verbal_. For a mental
proposition, being nothing _but a bare consideration of the Ideas_, as
they are in our minds _stripped_ of names, they lose the nature of
purely mental propositions, as soon as they are put into words. And that
which makes it _yet harder_ to treat of mental and verbal Propositions
separately, is, that most men, if not all, in their THINKING, and
reasonings within themselves, make use of WORDS, instead of Ideas, at
least when the subject of their meditation contains in it complex Ideas.
Which is a great evidence of the imperfection and uncertainty of our
Ideas of that kind, and may, if attentively made use of, serve for a
mark to shew us, what are those things, we have clear and perfect
established Ideas of, and what not."--_Vol._ II. _C._ 5, _p._ 195. Mr.
LOCKE was a patient and acute observer of that which passed in his own
mind, when he strictly meditated any particular subject: and in this
process he was likewise aware, in common with others, that he employed
_words_ instead of Ideas in his thinking and reasoning within himself.
By Ideas alone, he confesses that he could not advance; and for this
evident reason, because Ideas are incapable of being communicated to
others, or received by ourselves, excepting through a verbal medium.
There is no evidence of Thought without it be perspicuously expressed in
words addres