sed to the ear, or by their characters presented to the eye;
and the vain consciousness we may feel that our mind is teeming with
important Thoughts, is little to be relied on, until we are capable of
expressing them orally, or exhibiting them in writing. It has been a
prevailing opinion with those attached to the Ideal doctrine, and who
are advocates for the spiritual process of Thought, that the Idea is
first conceived mentally, and subsequently, by some process not
explained, invested with the corresponding expression. It is however
certain that the word itself, with the meaning that is attached to it,
must be previously acquired, and thoroughly comprehended, before the
abstract Idea, or naked Thought, can select the befitting expression,
and ransack the vast range of a copious vocabulary. The believers in the
extreme rapidity of thought to which we shall presently advert, must be
alarmed at this manner of explanation, which necessarily constitutes
Thought a two-fold process, and consequently would consume, at least
double the time for its disclosure. Perhaps in all instances the
phraseology we employ, like our manners, is derived from the society we
frequent: that which is imbibed from persons of good education bears the
stamp of superior discrimination and correctness, contrasted with the
rude dialect of the vulgar: but it still remains unsolved, by what means
these phantasms, or Ideas, accommodate themselves with the appropriate
words to express the Thoughts they have conceived.

Can it be supposed that the abstract, naked, and incommunicable
conception possesses an innate sagacity to clothe itself with a verbal
garb, at best of capricious and transient fashion?

"Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere, cadentque
Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus et norma loquendi."

It is certain that Ideas may exist in the mind, as the connected
results, and enduring phantasms of visual perception, independently of
words, and such condition is exemplified in those born deaf, who are
consequently dumb: to whom the business of life is a mere pantomime, who
only communicate the impulses of passion, and expose their want of
comprehension.

"In dumb significants proclaim their Thoughts."--_Henry VIth._

From these examples it appears that a human being may possess a
multitude of Ideas, and yet be wholly ignorant of language: and in the
instances of those