dull or an amusing collection of
curiosities. Tooke held, and surely with reason, that an investigation
of language, the great instrument of thought, may help to throw light
upon the process of thinking. He professes to be a disciple of Locke in
philosophy as in politics. Locke, he said,[146] made a lucky mistake in
calling his book an essay upon human understanding; for he thus
attracted many who would have been repelled had he called it what it
really was, 'a treatise upon words and language.' According to Tooke, in
fact,[147] what we call 'operations of mind' are only 'operations of
language.' The mind contemplates nothing but 'impressions,' that is,
'sensations or feelings,' which Locke called 'ideas,' Locke mistook
composition of terms for composition of ideas. To compound ideas is
impossible. We can only use one term as a sign of many ideas. Locke,
again, supposed that affirming and denying were operations of the mind,
whereas they are only artifices of language.[148]

The mind, then, can only contemplate, separately or together, aggregates
of 'ideas,' ultimate atoms, incapable of being parted or dissolved.
There are, therefore, only two classes of words, nouns and verbs; all
others, prepositions, conjunctions, and so forth, being abbreviations, a
kind of mental shorthand to save the trouble of enumerating the separate
items. Tooke, in short, is a thoroughgoing nominalist. The realities,
according to him, are sticks, stones, and material objects, or the
'ideas' which 'represent' them. They can be stuck together or taken
apart, but all the words which express relations, categories, and the
like, are in themselves meaningless. The special objects of his scorn
are 'Hermes' Harris, and Monboddo, who had tried to defend Aristotle
against Locke. Monboddo had asserted that 'every kind of relation' is a
pure 'idea of the intellect' not to be apprehended by sense.[149] If so,
according to Tooke, it would be a nonentity.

This doctrine gives a short cut to the abolition of metaphysics. The
word 'metaphysics,' says Tooke,[150] is nonsense. All metaphysical
controversies are 'founded on the grossest ignorance of words and the
nature of speech.' The greatest part of his second volume is concerned
with etymologies intended to prove that an 'abstract idea' is a mere
word. Abstract words, he says,[151] are generally 'participles without
a substantive and therefore in construction used as substantives.' From
a misunderstanding o