raised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for
which it was designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words;
they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in
which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or
architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas
of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which
they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a discourse
of this kind.

SECTION II.

THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF THINGS.

The common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that
of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by
raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them
to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to
observe that words may be divided into three sorts. The first are such
as represent many simple ideas _united by nature_ to form some one
determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, &c. These I call
_aggregate words_. The second are they that stand for one simple idea of
such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the
like. These I call _simple abstract_ words. The third are those which
are formed by an union, an _arbitrary_ union of both the others, and of
the various relations between them in greater or lesser degrees of
complexity; as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the like.
These I call _compound abstract_ words. Words, I am sensible, are
capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem
to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that
order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the
ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third sort of
words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility.
Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the
passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the
mind of the things for which they stand. As compositions, they are not
real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas. Nobody, I
believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor,
conceives any precise notions of the particular modes of action and
thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the several
re