which are imputable only to the receiver.

It is

the interest and the duty of the speaker to facilitate, by every possible assistance that he can af ford, the task of the hearer; and to this nothing can contribute aid more effectual, than perspicuity. The term is equivalent to transparency; and means that we should present our ideas in so clear a light, that they may be completely received by the minds of the auditory, as natural objects are perceived, with all the advantages of daylight, through the medium of a cloudless atmosphere. To the clear perception of any material object three things are indispensable; first the object itself; secondly light, as the medium of vision; and thirdly unobstructed space between the eye and the object. Apply these principles by analogy to the public discourse; the object itself is the idea in the speaker's mind; the light is the words and sentences, by means of which he attempts its transmission to the minds of his auditors; and the unobstructed space is the absence of every other object or idea, which by intervention might intercept the communication of his thought. If the speaker has in his own mind no distinct idea, there can be no perspicuity; because there will be no object to be seen. The discourse

will be sound without sense; vox et præterea nihil. The language will be unintelligible.

2. If the words are not chosen with such judgment, as to bear in the hearer's mind the same meaning, which they have in his own, there will be a failure of light. The object is there; but it cannot be clearly discerned, because the medium of vision is imperfect. The discourse will be

obscure.

3. If the words selected should be ill chosen, and present another idea besides that, which he means to convey, the sight of the object is intercepted by a foreign substance, or doubled by an opaque vapor, exhibiting the object as double. It produces an optical illusion. The discourse is ambiguous. And hence arise all the offences against perspicuity; the unintelligible, the obscure, and the ambiguous; or in other words the no-meaning, the half-meaning, and the double meaning. The causes of these defects may be traced either to the imperfections of the speaker, or to those, which are inherent in human language.

Articulate speech eventually terminates in a language altogether of convention. But words are the representatives immediately of ideas, and

mediately of things.

If you name a horse or a tree, the sound of the words can never convey to my mind the ideas represented by them in yours, unless, by some previous reference to the things, I have been made to understand the connexion be

tween them, existing in your mind. If then you

have a new idea, which you are desirous of communicating to me, you must not only use a new word, or an old word with a new meaning, for the purpose of transferring it to my mind, but you must give me, by some reference to the thing, the connecting link between your articulate sound and the object you intend by it to express. If the thing, represented by the word, be susceptible of immediate exhibition to the senses, the natural and ordinary way of transmitting the idea is to expose the object to the sense, and to articulate the word at the same time. This is the manner, in which children and foreigners learn the first rudiments of a language; and it may be remarked, that the coincidence of speech and gesture to exhibit ideas remains an universal custom among the nations, which speak the primitive languages. Very small however is the portion of language, which can be thus made manifest to the senses.

The original

stock of words, which could thus have been fur

nished to any language, must have been very small. It has been attempted, and perhaps in some degree successfully, to trace all the modern languages of Europe to a very small number of such radical terms, and to account even for them; that is, to show that they were not arbitrary, but were dictated by the natural impression of the object upon the physical organs of the first speaker. However this may be, we must suppose a certain number of these articulate sounds to have been uttered and understood, until by common consent the sound was agreed upon, as the common representative of the thing, before we can have the basis of a language, after the confusion of Babel. When once the practice had made the meaning of words conventional, two new and copious sources arose for the multiplication of words; imitation and association. Instead of fixing the sense of the sound by a reference to the object itself, its meaning was indicated by the resemblance of the object to some other substance, already familiarized to the hearer's mind. If the resemblance were of one physical object to another, the new word was formed by the process of imitation; if the resemblance were only of attributes, it was produced by means of the association of ideas. But from these two

sources flowed at the same time the greatest imperfections of speech, and the most dangerous shades to perspicuity. From imperfect imitation came that multiplicity of senses, in which the same word is so frequently and often so improperly applied; and from imperfect association most of the obscurities, which are so apt to darken all figurative language. To illustrate this observation, let us take for example the words gun-powder and printing.

Gun-powder is a substance perhaps as universally known, as any thing that could be mentioned. It has been in use (in too common use) among men throughout the world, between four and five centuries; yet I know not any one language, in which it claims an appropriate name. In all the languages of Europe it goes by the name of powder; which it shares with a thousand other substances, all so different from it, that when designated by that word alone, without some accessary term to note its destination, the chances are an hundred to one, that it would be misunderstood, and taken for something else. In order to distin guish it from all other powders, the word is usually combined with some accessary term, which limits the boundaries of its meaning. But in different