They who live in or near a town, even though it be a very small one, speak of it when at home by the name of the town.

99. Those words only take the article, which are capable of being made more definite with it than they are without it. I, thou, and he, are as definite as they can be, and therefore never take the article. Names that denote genera and species may be more or less definite, and may therefore take the article; a man, the man, an animal, the animal. Proper names too may take it when they become common appellatives; as the Caesars, the Catos. The proper names of some great natural objects, as mountains and rivers, take in English the definite article; as the Alps, the Grampians, the Thames. But one single mountain, however great, if it have a proper name, does not take it: we say, Etna, Atlas, Lebanon, Olympus; not the Etna, &c. The Greeks sometimes prefix their article to the proper name of a man or woman; in order, perhaps, to mark the gender of the name, or to make the expression more emphatical, or merely to improve the sound of the sentence. This is not usual in other languages. But the Italians sometimes prefix their definite article to proper names of favourite poets, singers, and fidlers, and no doubt think that by so doing they give energy to the expression.

100. So far is the indefinite article from being necessary in language, that the Greeks have nothing like it; and in English we never prefix it to the

plural number. By the Greek poets the article is more frequently omitted than used; and it is also frequently omitted in the prose of the Attic dialect. Sometimes we may put the one article for the other without changing the sense: as, the proverb says, or a proverb says, that nothing violent lasts long. These things seem to show that articles are not very necessary. At other times, however, and for the most part, the two articles differ widely in signification. Thus, instead of, Nathan said unto David, hou art the man, if we were to say, thou art a man, we should entirely change the meaning of the pass

age.

101. In Latin, there is no article; its place, when it is necessary, being supplied by a pronoun, as ille and ipse. And this seems to be sufficient. The last example, translated thus, dixit Nathan Davidi, tu es ille homo, or tu es ille, is as significant in Latin as in English. Sometimes, by prefixing the definite article to a noun, we bestow a peculiar signification upon it. In Greek, ar@pwoc is a man, but i arpwos is, in the Attic dialect, the public executioner. In English, a speaker is any person who speaks; but the speaker is he who presides in the house of commons.

102. And now it appears, that in Latin there are nine sorts of words, the noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, participle, adverb, interjection, preposition, and conjunction. In Greek, Hebrew, English, and many other languages, there is also an article, and

consequently there are ten parts of speech. The noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, participle, preposition, and conjunction, seem to be essential to language; the article, interjection, and most of the adverbs, are rather useful than necessary. much for the faculty of speech, and universal

So

gram.

mar.

SECTION IV.

Of Perception, or External Sensation.

103. As this subject is connected with natural philosophy, I shall make but a few slight remarks upon it; with a view chiefly to some things that are to follow.-The soul, using the body as its instrument, perceives external things, that is, bodies and their qualities. All animals have this faculty in a greater or less degree, and all complete animals in that precise degree which is necessary to their life and well-being. Corporeal things, when within the sphere of our perceptive powers, and attended to by us, affect our organs of sense in a certain manner, and so are perceived by the soul or mind. We know that this is the fact, but cannot explain it, or trace the connection that there is between our minds and impressions made on our bodily organs; being ignorant of the nature of that union which subsists between the soul and its body. Our perception of bodies is accompanied with a belief, that they exist and are what they appear to be, and that

we perceive the bodies themselves: and this belief is unavoidable, and amounts to absolute certainty, We cannot prove by argument, that bodies exist, or that we ourselves exist; nor is it necessary that we should for the thing is self-evident, and the constitution of our nature makes it impossible for us to entertain any doubt concerning this matter.

104. It would be a task equally tedious and unprofitable, to explain the notions of philosophers with respect to the manner in which the mind has been supposed to perceive things external. Aristotle fancied, that, by means of our senses, outward things communicate to the mind their form without their matter; as the seal imparts to the wax the figures carved on it, without the substance. These forms of things, in their first appearance to the mind, he calls sensible species; which, as retained by the memory, or exhibited in the imagination, he terms phantasms. And these phantasms, when by the operations of the intellect they are refined into general ideas, he calls intelligible species. For example: I see a man ; this perception is the sensible species. I afterwards remember his appearance; or perhaps his appearance occurs to my mind, without my remembering, or considering that I had perceived it before: this is a phantasm. Lastly, my intellect, taking away from this phantasm every thing that distinguishes it from others, and retaining so much of it only as it has in common with a kind or sort, (see § 19), transforms it into an intelligible species, or general idea, which we express by

the common appellative man. All this seems to imply, that a thought of the mind has something of body in it, and consists of parts that may be separated; which to me is inconceivable.

105. Most modern philosophers give an account of this matter in words that are indeed different, but seem to amount to the same thing. They will not admit that the mind can perceive any thing which is not in the mind itself, or at least in the same place with it. Now the son, moon, and stars, and the other things external to us, are neither in the mind, nor in the same place with it: for if they were, they would be in the inside of the human body. External things themselves, therefore, our mind, we are told, does not perceive at all; but it perceives ideas of them, which ideas are actually in the same place with the mind; either in the brain, or in something which has got the name of sensorium, in which the percipient being called the soul, or mind, is supposed to have its residence. See § 13.

106. When it was objected, that, on the supposition of our perceiving, not outward things themselves, but only ideas of them, we cannot be certain that outward things exist, the same philosophers, or rather their successors in the same school, admitted the objection; and came at last to affirm, that the soul perceives nothing but its own ideas; and that the sun and moon, the sea, and the mountains, the men and other animals, and, in a word, the whole universe which we see around us, has no