Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) ON THE NATURE OF THOUGHT, OR THE ACT OF THINKING, AND ITS CONNEXION WITH A PERSPICUOUS SENTENCE. BY JOHN HASLAM, M.D. LATE OF PEMBROKE HALL, CAMBRIDGE, AND AUTHOR OF MANY WORKS ON THIS SUBJECT OF INSANITY. London: [Printed by G. HAYDEN, Little College Street, Westminster,] PUBLISHED BY LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN & LONGMAN, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1835. [_PRICE TWO SHILLINGS._] _Polonius_--What do you read, my Lord? _Hamlet_--Words, words, words.--_Act 2d._ * * * * * MEPHISTOPHELES. "Im Ganzen--haltet euch an Worte! Dann geht ihr durch die sichere Pforte Zum Tempel der Gewissheit ein." SCHULER. "Doch ein Begriff muss bey dem Worte seyn." MEPHISTOPHELES. "Schon gut! nur muss man sich nicht allzu aengstlich quaelen, Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten zeit sich ein. Mit Worten laesst sich trefflich streiten, Mit Worten ein System bereiten. An Werte laesst sich trefflich glauben, Von einem Wort laesst sich kein Iota rauben."--_Goethe's Faust._ * * * * * "And when I have enumerated these, I imagine I have comprehended almost every thing which can enter into the composition of the intellectual life of man. With the single exception of reason, (and reason can scarcely operate without the intervention of language,) is there any thing more important to man, more peculiar to him, or more inseparable from his nature than speech? Nature indeed could not have bestowed on us a gift more precious than the human voice, which, possessing sounds for the expression of every feeling, and being capable of distinctions as minute, and combinations as intricate as the most complex instrument of music; is thus enabled to furnish materials so admirable for the formation of artificial language. The greatest and most important discovery of human ingenuity is writing; there is no impiety in saying, that it was scarcely in the power of the Deity to confer on man a more glorious present than LANGUAGE, by the medium of which, he himself has been revealed to us, and which affords at once the strongest bond of union, and the best instrument of communication. So inseparable indeed are mind and language, so _identically one_ are thought and speech, that although we must always hold reason to be the great characteristic and peculiar attribute of man, yet language also, when we regard its original object and intrinsic dignity, is well intitled to be considered as a component part of the intellectual structure of our being.