ed the beauty of those memorials that
have survived the extinction of the Grecian states, and the glory of the
eternal city; and such is the luminous correspondence of Language, that
by transfusion into our vernacular idiom, we may receive a satisfactory
measure of the original inspiration. Let it be kept in view, that Ideas,
the frail associates of a perception, possess no permanence, are
incapable of being transferred, and must fade away when our existence
terminates. It is the word that forms the nucleus, and contains the
intellectual deposit, that may become the inheritance of future
generations.

This process, in no manner or degree tends to subvert the spiritual
nature of Thought, which has its source in the capacities whereby we
perceive, remember, and comprehend that significant sounds or words are
the commuted representatives of the objects of intelligence. The
perceptive organs of many animals are more exquisitely endowed than man,
and their local memory more retentive; yet they are wholly incapable of
comprehending language or calculating numbers;--capacities by which the
Creator has exclusively dignified the human race.

It may excite some surprise that an Essay on Thought should be connected
with the construction of a perspicuous sentence. To explain this
conjunction, it may be urged, that there can be no evidence of thought,
until it is promulgated by speech or written character: and, on all
important occasions, such communications of meaning become absolutely
necessary. Acquiescence or dissent may indeed be tacitly conveyed, by
holding up the hand, or by ballot, without condescending to offer any
verbal reasons for the adoption or rejection of the proposed measure.
Affirmation or negation does not in any manner constitute Thought; such
determination may result from caprice, from ignorance, or from
prejudice, without the slightest consideration. Thought requires some
proposition clearly conceived and perspicuously expressed in a sentence;
and the clearness of the Thought will be ascertained by the perspicuity
of its verbal expression. There may be some difficulty respecting the
precise meaning of individual words, arising from the corruptions of the
ignorant; but more especially from the perversions of writers who have
been deemed authorities. This distortion of the original sense, is, in a
certain degree, incidental to all living languages, which being in
childhood acquired by the ear, the learner is com