sorts of words which are necessary for the communication of our thoughts.

B. And they are?

H.-1. Noun, and

2. Verb.

B. These are the common names, and I suppose you use them according to the common acceptation.

H.-I should not otherwise have chosen them, but because they are commonly employed; and it would not be easy to dispossess them of their prescriptive title: besides, without doing any mischief, it saves time in our discourse. And I use them according to their common acceptation.

B. But you have not all this while informed me how many Parts of Speech you mean to lay down.

or more.

H.-That shall be as you please. Either Two, or Twenty, In the strict sense of the term, no doubt both the necessary Words and the Abbreviations are all of them Parts of Speech; because they are all useful in Language, and each has a different manner of signification. But I think it of great consequence both to knowledge and to Languages, to keep the words employed for the different purposes of speech as distinct as possible. And therefore I am inclined to allow that rank only to the necessary words': and to include all the others (which are not necessary to speech, but merely substitutes of the first sort) under the title of Abbreviations.

B.-Merely Substitutes! You do not mean that you can discourse as well without as with them?

H.-Not as well. A sledge cannot be drawn along as smoothly, and easily, and swiftly as a carriage with wheels; but it may be dragged.

B. Do you mean then that, without using any other sort of word whatever, and merely by the means of the Noun and Verb alone, you can relate or communicate any thing that I can relate or communicate with the help of all the others?

H.-Yes. It is the great proof of all I have advanced. And, upon trial, you will find that you may do the same. But,

1 "Res necessarias philosophus primo loco statuit: accessorias autem et vicarias, mox."-J. C. Scaliger de Causis L. L. cap. 110.

after the long habit and familiar use of Abbreviations, your first attempts to do without them will seem very awkward to you; and you will stumble as often as a horse, long used to be shod, that has newly cast his shoes. Though indeed (even with those who have not the habit to struggle against) without Abbreviations, Language can get on but lamely: and therefore they have been introduced, in different plenty, and more or less happily, in all Languages. And upon these two points-Abbreviation of Terms, and Abbreviation in the manner of signification of words-depends the respective excellence of every Language. All their other comparative advantages are trifling.

B.I like your method of proof very well; and will certainly put it to the trial. But before I can do that properly, you must explain your Abbreviations; that I may know what they stand for, and what words to put in their room.

H.-Would you have me then pass over the two necessary Parts of Speech; and proceed immediately to their Abbreviations?

B.—If you will. For I suppose you agree with the common opinion, concerning the words which you have distinguished as necessary to the communication of our thoughts. Those you call necessary, I suppose you allow to be the signs of different sorts of Ideas, or of different operations of the mind.

H.-Indeed I do not. The business of the mind, as far as it concerns Language, appears to me to be very simple. It extends no further than to receive impressions, that is, to have Sensations or Feelings. What are called its operations, are merely the operations of Language. A consideration of Ideas, or of the Mind, or of Things (relative to the Parts of Speech), will lead us no further than to Nouns : i. e. the signs of those impressions, or names of ideas. The other Part of Speech, the Verb, must be accounted for from the necessary use of it in communication. It is in fact the communication itself: and therefore well denominated 'Pnaa, Dictum. For the Verb is QUOD loquimur'; the Noun, DE QUO.

B.-Let us proceed then regularly; and hear what you have to say on each of your two necessary Parts of Speech.

1 "Alterum est quod loquimur; alterum de quo loquimur."Quinctil. lib. 1. cap. 4.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE NOUN.

H.-Or the first Part of Speech-the Noun,-it being the best understood, and therefore the most spoken of by others, I shall need at present to say little more than that it is the simple or complex, the particular or general sign or name of one or more Ideas.

I shall only remind you, that at this stage of our inquiry concerning Language, comes in most properly the consideration of the force of Terms: which is the whole business of

Mr. Locke's Essay; to which I refer you. And I imagine that Mr. Locke's intention of confining himself to the consideration of the Mind only, was the reason that he went no further than to the Force of Terms; and did not meddle with their Manner of signification, to which the Mind alone could never lead him.

B.

Do you say nothing of the Declension, Number, Case and Gender of Nouns ?

H.-At present nothing. There is no pains-worthy difficulty nor dispute about them.

B. Surely there is about the Gender. And Mr. Harris particularly has thought it worth his while to treat at large of what others have slightly hinted concerning it': and has supported his reasoning by a long list of poetical authorities. What think you of that part of his book?

H.-That, with the rest of it, he had much better have let it alone. And as for his poetical authorities; the Muses (as I have heard Mrs. Peachum say of her own sex in cases of murder) are bitter bad judges in matters of philosophy.

1

Pythagorici sexum in cunctis agnoscunt, &c. Agens, Mas; Patiens, Fœmina. Quapropter Deus dicunt masculine; Terra, fœminine et Ignis, masculine; et Aqua, fœminine: quoniam in his Actio, in istis Passio relucebat."-Campanella.

"In rebus inveniuntur duæ proprietates generales, scilicet proprietas Agentis, et proprietas Patientis. Genus est modus significandi nominis sumptus a proprietate activa vel passiva. Genus masculinum est modus significandi rem sub proprietate agentis: Genus fœmininum est modus significandi rem sub proprietate patientis."-Scotus Gram. Spec. cap. 16.

Besides that Reason is an arrant Despot; who, in his own dominions, admits of no authority but his own. And Mr. Harris is particularly unfortunate in the very outset of that— "subtle kind of reasoning (as he calls it) which discerns even in things without sex, a distant analogy to that great natural distinction." For his very first instances,-the SUN and the MOON,-destroy the whole subtilty of this kind of reasoning'. For Mr. Harris ought to have known, that in many Asiatic Languages, and in all the northern Languages of this part of the globe which we inhabit, and particularly in our Motherlanguage the Anglo-Saxon (from which SUN and MOON are immediately derived to us), SUN is Feminine, and MOON is Masculine. So feminine is the Sun, ["that fair hot wench in flame-colour'd taffata""] that our northern Mythology makes her the Wife of Tuisco.

And if our English Poets, Shakespeare, Milton, &c. have, by a familiar Prosopopeia, made them of different genders; it

1 It can only have been Mr. Harris's authority, and the ill-founded praises lavished on his performance, that could mislead Dr. Priestley, in his thirteenth lecture, hastily and without examination to say"Thus, for example, the SUN having a stronger, and the MOON a weaker influence over the world, and there being but two celestial bodies so remarkable; All nations, I believe, that use genders, have ascribed to the Sun the gender of the Male, and to the Moon that of the Female."

In the Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, SUN is feminine: In modern Russian it is neuter.

2 "Apud Saxones, Luna, Mona. Mona autem Germanis superioribus Mon, alias Man; a Mon, alias Man veterrimo ipsorum rege et Deo patrio, quem Tacitus meminit, et in Luna celebrabant.-Ex hoc Lunam masculino (ut Hebræi) dicunt genere, Der Mon; Dominamque ejus et Amasiam, e cujus aspectu alias languet, alias resipiscit, Die Son; quasi hunc Lunam, hanc Solem. Hinc et idolum Lunæ viri fingebant specie; non, ut Verstegan opinatur, fæminæ."-Spelman's Gloss. MONA.

"De generibus Nominum (quæ per articulos, adjectiva, participia, et pronomina indicantur) hic nihil tradimus. Obiter tamen observet Lector, ut ut minuta res est, Solem (Sunna vel Sunne) in AngloSaxonica esse fœminini generis, et Lunam (Mona) esse masculini." G. Hickes.

"Quomodo item Sol est virile, Germanicum Sunn, fœmininum. Dicunt enim Die Sunn, non Der Sunn. Unde et Solem Tuisconis uxorem fuisse fabulantur."-G. J. Vossius. › First part of Henry IV.

is only because, from their classical reading, they adopted the southern not the northern mythology; and followed the pattern of their Greek and Roman masters.

Figure apart, in our Language, the names of things without sex are also without gender'. And this, not because our Reasoning or Understanding differs from theirs who gave them gender; (which must be the case, if the Mind or Reason was concerned in it,) but because with us the relation of words to each other is denoted by the place or by Prepositions; which denotation in their language usually

1 "Sexus enim non nisi in Animali, aut in iis quæ Animalis naturam imitantur, ut arbores. Sed ab usu hoc factum est; qui nunc masculinum sexum, nunc fœmininum attribuisset. -Proprium autem generum esse pati mutationem, satis patet ex genere incerto; ut etiam Armentas dixerit Ennius, quæ nos Armenta."-J. C. Scaliger de Causis, cap. 79.

Nominum quoque genera mutantur adeo, ut privatim libros super hac re veteres confecerint. Alterum argumentum est ex iis quæ Dubia sive Incerta vocant. Sic enim dictum est, Hic vel Hæc Dies. Tertium testimonium est in quibusdam : nam Plautus Collum masculino dixit. Item Jubar, Palumbem, atque alia, diversis quam nos generibus esse a priscis pronunciata."-Id. cap. 103.

"Amour qui est masculin au singulier, est quelquefois feminin au pluriel; de folles amours. On dit au masculin Un Comté, Un Duché ; et au feminin Une Comté pairie, Une Duché pairie. On dit encore De bonnes gens, et Des gens malheureux. Par où vous voyez que le substantif Gens est feminin, lorsqu'il est précédé d'un adjectif; et qu'il est masculin, lorsqu'il en est suivi."-L'Abbé de Condillac, part 2. chap. 4.

The ingenious author of Notes on the Grammatica Sinica of M. Fourmont-says, According to the Grammaire Raisonnée, les genres ont eté inventés pour les terminaisons." But the Mess. du Port Royal have discovered a different origin; they tell us, that-Arbor est feminine, parceque comme une bonne mere elle porte du fruit.-Miratur non How could Frenchmen forget that in their own la meilleure des langues possibles, Fruit-trees are masculine and their fruits feminine? Mr. Harris has adopted this idea: he might as well have left it to its legitimate parents."-P. 47.

sua.

2" Sane in sexu seu genere physico omnes nationes convenire debebunt; quoniam natura est eadem, nec ad placitum scriptorum mutatur. At Poetæ et Pictores in coloribus non semper conveniunt. Ventos Romani non solum finxerunt esse viros, sed et Deos: at Hebræi contra eos ut Nymphas pinxerunt. Arbores Latini specie fœminea pinxerunt; virili Hispani, &c. Regiones urbesque Deas esse voluit Gentilium Latinorum Theologia: at Germani omnia hæc ad neutrum rejecerunt. Et quidem in Genere, seu sexus distinctione grammatica,