alism.

Ideas have been generally employed, and held competent, by many of the
tribe of metaphysicians, to explain the phenomena and operations of our
intellectual nature: but they have failed in the attempt. They have
endeavoured to confer on them an agency they do not possess, and have
given the mind a dominion over them that it cannot exert.[3] Ideas are
the memorial phantasms of visual perception, a largess bestowed, perhaps
exclusively, on the sense of sight, and this bounty contributes
essentially to the acquirement and retention of knowledge. They are the
unfading transcripts of vision, and they exhibit the original picture to
the retrospect of memory. They are but little under the immediate
direction of the will, and cannot be arbitrarily summoned or dismissed,
but owe their introduction to a different source, to be explained
hereafter. They perform important offices, although they are not the
materials to rear and consolidate the edifice of thought.

Those writers on the human mind who have adhered to the doctrine of
Ideas, and have been the advocates for the Spirituality of Thought, have
insufficiently considered, or held in subordinate regard, Language; the
prominent criterion, by which a human being is proudly elevated above
the rest of the animated creation. Speech, and its representation by
characters, are exclusively comprehensible by man; and these have been
the sources of his vast attainments and rapid progression. The ear
receives the various intonations that convey intelligence, and the
characters or symbols of these significant sounds are detected by the
human eye. Some of the more docile animals have been supposed capable of
comprehending the meaning of a few individual words, but no one worthy
of belief, has affirmed that they could understand a sentence or
distinct proposition: still less, has any person, however confiding in
the marvellous, ever ventured to assert that they were able to read. The
important feature, and obvious utility of language, consists in the
commutation of our perceptions for a significant sound or word, which by
convention may be communicated to others, bearing a common and identical
meaning. In this manner we become intelligible to each other, by the
transmission and reception of these articulate and significant sounds.
Words are not only the representatives of the perceptions we receive
through the medium of our five senses, but likewise of many internal
feelings, passio