custom, and ask what beauty can be found in a daub of red paint or a piece of black court-plaster. The beauty consists not in these, but in the change produced in the whole countenance by the new addition, and which change no intellect can anticipate. It is often great, though the effect may not accord with our present tastes.

85. That the intellect can reveal to me no sight that seeing has not informed me of, is a physical truth which experience will substantiate, and I advert to it rather than press it by argument. But a kindred position is equally true of our other senses. Let an epicure prescribe some unusual mixture of known ingredients, and after his imagination has feasted on the compound, let him present it to his taste, and he will discover the inefficiency of his intellectual foreknowledge. No brilliancy of imagination nor . acuteness of the intellect can perform the office of any of

our senses.

86. The like may be said of feelings. A person who has never felt pain (if we can conceive such a being), will possess no correct unverbal meaning of the word; and he who has felt no greater pain than a tooth-ache, may be told of the superior agonies of the gout, but he will not be able to divine the feeling. Language can refer us to any sensible knowledge we possess, but it can reveal to us none in its unverbal aspect that we possess not.

87. We may say the same of sounds. If I have never heard a cataract, you may inform me what the sound is like; and if I have heard a similar sound, I shall be in

structed; but the intellect can effect no more than such an approximation. Should you wish to acquaint a child with the sound of cataract, his unverbal conception of it will be very oneous; not because his intellect is less acute than yours, or language less operative on him than on you; but because his sensible experience is less than yours, and language can be sensibly significant to him of his sensible experience only. If he has heard no sound more consonant, you must refer to even the lowing of an ox. You may qualify the comparison, by saying the cataract is awfully louder; but if he has heard nothing louder, the qualification will not add to his sensible instruction, except that it may teach him intellectually, that he is still ignorant of the correct sound of a cataract.

I

But cannot the letters of the alphabet be combined, so that by looking at the combination, my intellect can teach me a sound that hearing has never informed me of? may combine letters so as to denote a new sound; but the sound, so far as it is new, will be unknown to me, till my organs of speech have uttered the combination, and thus made my hearing acquainted with it. Seeing the letters ́can teach us a new sound, no more than it can teach sound to a deaf mute. Nor let any person suppose that his intellect can compound known sounds, and thus acquire a sound which he never heard. The most practised musician can, no more than the most unskilful, know unverbally the sound which will be produced by a new combination of familiar notes. So far as the combination will produce

a sound that he never heard, so far the effect of the combination must be sensibly unknown to him, despite all the efforts of his intellect. The power of written characters, to communicate sounds to me, is limited to sounds already known by me. We accordingly find when an Englishman attempts to learn the French language by means of written directions as to the pronunciation, he will still utter only English sounds; though to a Frenchman the written directions may represent French sounds. The obstacle to the mere Englishman is organic, and insurmountable by any visible or intellectual contrivance whatever.

8 8. From the inadequacy of language to teach us unverbal things not already known, arises the inefficacy of verbal instruction. A writing master may direct a child how to make a perpendicular mark; but in every particular in which the directions refer to some motion which the pupil has never produced, or to some muscular effort that he has never made, the directions are as impotent as a discourse on colours is to the blind.

Nearly every word that possesses an unverbal meaning, possesses a verbal meaning also.

81. That the sensible significancy of a man's language is limited to his sensible experience would be readily admitted, were we not embarrassed with one difficulty. Bonfire names a sight, and melody a sound. If these words possessed no other signification, we should immediately understand that the unverbal import of bonfire

must ever be unknown to the blind, and the unverbal import of melody unknown to the deaf. But these words, and nearly all others, name words also; and till you understand this, you will not understand clearly that our senses alone can reveal to us the sensible signification of any word. When Locke says that the meaning of rainbow can be revealed to a person who never saw one, provided he has seen red, violet, green, etc., Locke is alluding to the verbal meaning of rainbow. This meaning can be known to the blind; and I once saw a company surprised when a blind youth was exhibiting what was esteemed a triumph of education over natural defects, by giving in words a description of the appearance of rainbows. The company knew not that rainbow possesses two significations; one unverbal, which nothing can reveal but seeing, and the other verbal, that can be learnt by hearing. You may suppose that we differ from the blind; and that a verbal enumeration of the colours of a rainbow, and of their figure, size, position and arrangement, to us who know the sights which the words signify unverbally, would reveal to us a rainbow, not verbally merely, but visibly. Take, however, any one of the colours, say red: it names unverbally not one sight only, but numerous sights. Fire is red, blood is red, my hand is red, bricks are red, and an Indian is red; which of these unverbal sights is he to imagine, when you speak of the red of a rainbow?

The same remark will apply to the other colours, and to their figure, position and arrangement. But admit that

a person who has never seen a rainbow, shall still have seen all its colours. Admit further, that when you enumerate the colours, he shall guess the precise red, orange, yellow, etc., to which you refer; yet, for the person to know how the colours will look unverbally when they are combined, will be impossible; much less, how they will appear unverbally when drawn into the shape, size and position of a rainbow. If he has seen such a combination, he has seen a rainbow; but if he has not seen the combination, language is inadequate to reveal it. After the most copious definition, and the most familiar acquaintance with the sights separately that are referred to by the defining words, a person will be conscious of a new sight the moment he sees a rainbow.

§ 2. Words also which refer to intellections and to internal feelings, possess a verbal meaning in addition to the unverbal. The instructors of the deaf may find this discrimination important. If they wish to teach a deaf mute the signification of the word joy, they should teach him its verbal signification and its unverbal. The verbal is easily taught, but the unverbal can be disclosed by only making the mute apprehend, by any method you can, the feeling within him which joy names. To understand this analytical discrimination in the meaning of words will make the mute's knowledge definite, and facilitate his acquisitions.

88. I have thus, I hope, shown that our knowledge is not a cyclopedia of mere words, but that unverbal things underlie words and constitute an unverbal meaning to