LANGUAGE. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE. MAN is a rational, social, and accountable being, and as such he has faculties to cultivate, and duties to perform. To the possession of reason he owes his superiority to brutes; and to the degree in which reason is cultivated, one man owes his superiority to another. In every operation of reasoning, language is the instrument employed; and so essential is it to the exercise of thought, that without language or something equivalent, it is doubtful whether man could ever extend his thoughts beyond the immediate objects of his senses. It is not to be doubted, that persons born without the power of hearing, and who are consequently dumb, are capable of thinking to a certain extent, even before they are made acquainted with language, by those means, which in modern times, have been happily devised for instructing them; but in regard to all the ideas expressed by what are called abstract terms, such as virtue, vice, wisdom, folly, infinity, eternity, &c., it may justly be presumed, they are wholly ignorant. And in all those combinations of ideas denominated thoughts, if in their minds such combinations are actually formed, it is probable they have recourse to some means, with which those who possess the power of speech are unacquainted. For as it regards the latter, in whatever way ideas are originally obtained, words are the signs by which they are recalled and combined; and such is the importance of words in the art of thinking, that were a man banished to a desert island, where he would not have occasion even to hear the sound of his own voice, yet if he would continue to improve his mind, he must pay an unremitting attention to their use. Let any one make the experiment, whether it be possible to recal the idea of any thing that has once been an object of his senses, or of his understanding, and he will find that without words uttered or thought upon, he cannot succeed. It is an observation of Condillac, that "we think only through the medium of words. The art of reasoning," says he, "is nothing more than a language well arranged:" and Dr. Campbell, the ingenious author of the "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says, that "without speech thought could not have existed." This however must be understood with such limitations as those specified above. |