What is speech? I shall endeavour to define it in such terms as will relieve it of ambiguity, and deal with it as a known quantity in the problems of mental commerce. Speech is that form of materialised thought which is confined to oral sounds, when they are designed to convey a definite idea from mind to mind. It is, therefore, only one mode of expressing thought, and to come within the limits of speech, the sounds must be voluntary, have fixed values, and be intended to suggest to another mind a certain idea, or group of ideas, more or less complex. The idea is one factor, and sound the other, and the two conjointly constitute speech. The empty sounds alone, however modulated, having no integral value, cannot be speech, nor can the concept unexpressed be speech. Separately, the one would be noise, and the other would be thought; and they only become speech when the thought is expressed in oral sounds. Sounds which only express emotion are not speech, as emotion is not thought, although it is frequently attended by thought, and is a cause of which thought is the effect. Music expresses emotion by means of sounds, but they are not speech; and even though the sounds which express them may impart a like emotion to the hearer, they are not speech. The sounds which express crying, sighing, or laughter, may indeed be a faint suggestion of speech, since we infer from them the state of the mind attending the emotions which produce them, yet they are not truly speech. To be regarded as speech, the expression must be preceded by consciousness, and the desire to make known to another the sensation by which the expression is actuated. As the impulse can only come from within, it appears that emotion is one source from which thought is evolved, and speech is the natural issue of thought. Desire gives rise to a class of thoughts having reference to the sensations which produce them, and such thoughts find expression in such sounds as may suggest supplying the want. As the wants of man have increased with his changing modes of life and thought, his speech has drawn upon the resources of sound to meet those increased demands for expression. It appears only reasonable to me that thought must precede in point of time and order any expression of thought, for thought is the motive of expression, and the expression of thought in oral sounds is speech. [Sidenote: NATURE OF SPEECH] Speech is not an invention, and therefore is not symbolic in its radical nature. True, that much that is symbolic has been added to it, and its bounds have been widened as men have risen in the scale of civil life, until our higher types of modern speech have departed so far from the natural modes of speech and first forms of expression, that we can rarely trace a single word to its ultimate source. And viewing it as we do from our present standpoint, it appears to be purely symbolic; but if that be so, then we must deny the first