from his nature than speech? Nature indeed could
not have bestowed on us a gift more precious than the human voice,
which, possessing sounds for the expression of every feeling, and
being capable of distinctions as minute, and combinations as
intricate as the most complex instrument of music; is thus enabled
to furnish materials so admirable for the formation of artificial
language. The greatest and most important discovery of human
ingenuity is writing; there is no impiety in saying, that it was
scarcely in the power of the Deity to confer on man a more glorious
present than LANGUAGE, by the medium of which, he himself has been
revealed to us, and which affords at once the strongest bond of
union, and the best instrument of communication. So inseparable
indeed are mind and language, so _identically one_ are thought and
speech, that although we must always hold reason to be the great
characteristic and peculiar attribute of man, yet language also,
when we regard its original object and intrinsic dignity, is well
intitled to be considered as a component part of the intellectual
structure of our being. And although, in strict application, and
rigid expression, thought and speech always are, and always must
be, regarded as two things metaphysically distinct,--yet there only
can we find these two elements in disunion, where one or both have
been employed imperfectly or amiss. Nay, such is the effect of the
original unity or _identity_ that, in their most extensive
varieties of application, they can never be totally disunited, but
must always remain inseparable, and every where be exerted in
combination."--_Frederick Schlegel's Lectures on the History of
Literature_, (_English Translation_, 1818,) _page 11_.

* * * * *

TO

_MRS. HUNTER, DUNDEE._

_My dearest Daughter_,

_This Essay on_ THOUGHT _is appropriately dedicated to a lady of whom I
am constantly thinking:--whose dutiful conduct, and filial affection,
have rendered a protracted life the subject of consolation, under all
its contingent miseries_.

_33, Great Ormond Street,
June 1835._

ON

THE NATURE OF THOUGHT,

_&c. &c. &c._

In our survey of the Creation endowed with life and intellect, we are
impelled to the conclusion, that the human mind is, beyond all
comparison, the most perfe