, or experiment, and
these require Language, or a composition of words. Knowledge supplies
the materials for thought, and every thought must be a distinct
proposition, or sentence composed of words. A single word, although it
possesses a distinct meaning, cannot constitute a thought, which
implies a separate proposition or inference contained in a sentence:
still less can it be supposed to result from an individual phantasm or
Idea. When it is considered that language is composed of words adapted
by position to represent all the phenomena and contingencies of human
affairs, and that we employ them, _by commutation_, for all that we can
experience as sentient and intellectual beings, we shall be able to
understand that they are the mental currency previously described, and
that they are the only instruments of intelligence to which we can
resort for the communication of our thoughts, or for the process of
their elaboration. They must be expressed in words, and by words
prepared for such expression. Without attempting to investigate the
different kinds of words, or parts of speech, the province of general or
philosophical grammarians, whose unsettled disputes still perplex the
patient and modest inquirer, it will be sufficient to remark that we
possess words adapted to convey all the shades of opinion and degrees of
feeling: and when these words, under the guidance of acquired knowledge,
are perspicuously arranged into a proposition or sentence, they
constitute Thought: and the act of thinking consists in their correct
selection and arrangement for the purpose of promulgation by speech or
writing, and which is very properly termed composition. When we
reflect, that from our infancy to the natural decline of our
intellectual powers, we are employed, during our waking hours, in the
exercise of language;[8]--by conversation, often desultory, where we
range through a variety of topics, as the bird sports from branch to
twig; to the more deliberate act of composition, where the mind
enduringly broods on the subject;--or when we read, and attentively
consider the thoughts of others:--these occupations contribute to
augment our vocabulary, and fix the meaning of the words we employ. By
these words, and the intelligence that resides in them, although many
centuries have passed by, we participate, and feel impregnated with the
pure and exalted spirit that conceived the Iliad and Odyssey. Time has
not diminished the vigour or impair