ence; though our bias towards confounding the two, or rather the piquancy which attends the materializing of what we conceive intellectually, is conclusive to, at least, my feelings, that an unverbal and consequential difference exists between what we intellectually conceive and what we sensibly perceive.

Similar to the foregoing are the intellectually conceived assertions, that the moon and the sun cause the tides; that every fixed star is a sun, and the centre of a planetary system; that beyond all telescopic vision other stars exist, which also are the centres of more remote systems; that the earth appears like a star to the inhabitants of the planets, etc. Now, if a person chooses to say that no physical realities exist that conform to these intellectual conceptions, his negation will possess no physical significance beyond the sensible perceptions to which his negation may refer, and the negation will be wholly insignificant sensibly if it refer to nothing sensible. The absence of a physical negative will make any affirmative proposition true universally; yet the universal affirmation will still mean, physically, the physical particulars only to which the affirmation refers. A nursery couplet says, "The children of Holland take pleasure in making, what the children of England take pleasure in breaking." I want to avoid a like conduct if possible, though it is quite prevalent in speculative controversy. I take no pleasure in subverting any received speculative tenets, and only endeavour to manifest their proper unverbal signification.

And now a friend suggests to me the following queries: --"Have you any objective reasons for disbelieving that the earth would appear like a star, if you could view it from any of the planets which belong to our solar system? ---have you any objective reasons for disbelieving it would exhibit the sight round and the feel round, if you could possibly see it and feel it in entirety, as you can see and feel an artificial globe?-have you any objective reasons for disbelieving that the earth's motions would be as sensibly perceptible as an artificial globe's, were you located in relation to the earth as you are located in relation to an artificial globe?" To these queries I answer, that as they refer to nothing sensible that is within my knowledge, they are to me sensibly insignificant; but my intellect sees the cogency of the questions, and cannot avoid assenting thereto; and the intellectual assent no way conflicts with any position I have intended to establish. If any person shall discover a verbal conflict, the discovery will arise from my inability to express verbally what I intended unverbally.

I have treated far too summarily the important truths which the present Lecture embraces within its proper purview, but I will close it with an illustration of the embarrassment we may experience when we know not that a negation is subject to the same limitation in its unverbal interpretation as an affirmation; namely, that neither can mean objectively more than the objects to which it refers; and that either is insignificant sensibly when it refers to no

sensible object. I once heard a celebrated clergyman astonish and puzzle his hearers by the announcement that experience alone would not authorize the belief that we must all die; experience being able, he said, to speak of the past only-not of the future. He insisted that we can be affirmatively certain of death from only its being a prediction of revelation. Now the puzzle of the above vanishes when we discriminate between its intellectual significancy and its sensible significancy. That we must all die refers, certainly for its sensible signification, to only our sensible experience; but any doubt in relation thereto, and any negative in relation thereto, refer to no sensible experience, and, consequently, both doubt and negative are sensibly insignificant.

LECTURE VIII.

OF THE UNFALLACIOUS INTERPRETATION OF WORDS THAT ARE INTELLECTUALLY CONCEIVED.

CONTENTS.

1. Words conceived by the intellect mean, unverbally, the organism of the intellect; not the objects which the words mean when they apply to the perceptions of the senses.

2. Intellectually conceived words are subjective responses of the intellect to objective premises.

3. As a man increases his objective knowledge, he increases the material out of which his intellect conceives its subjective responses.

4. The intellect cannot originate objective knowledge except what relates to its own organism.

5. The responses of the intellect are independent of our volition.

§ 1. We are now arrived where we may usefully reflect upon so much of what we have accomplished as is necessary to make the past subsidiary to the future. The unverbal meaning of words is our theme; what the unverbal meanings are is the object of our researches. To make words tell what unverbal meanings are has always led speculation to where it wanders "in endless mazes lost;" and the result, as well as the attempt, may be likened to the efforts of a child to outrun its shadow, or of a kitten, by revolving, to catch its own tail. Words are as unable

to tell us what unverbal things are as the sounds of a bell are unable to tell us what unsonorous things are; or, as visible appearances, pictures, etc., are unable to tell us what invisible things are; or, as odours are unable to tell us what inodorous things are. What unverbal things are we can be told by only the mute unverbal revelations of our senses, internal feelings, and intellect. Into these alone we must translate words when we desire to know the ultimate unverbal signification of the words; and this mode of interpreting words constitutes one of the main precepts that I have attempted to inculcate.

§ 2. Unverbal things which I have thus postulated as the ultimate signification of words, differ among themselves generically; the revelations of each of our five senses differing from the revelations of the other four; and the revelations of the intellect and of the internal feelings differing from each other, and from sensible perceptions. Our speculative disregard of the generic differences which thus exist in our sensible, moral, and intellectual knowledge, (our estimating unverbal things by their verbal homogeneity rather than by their unverbal heterogeneity,) must, at some future period of the world's existence, astonish our successors, as much as we are astonished that our predecessors could ever believe that the intellectually conceived flight through the air of witches on broomsticks was homogeneous with a visible flight through the air of birds. When a juggler opens a box, and shows us it is empty, and again opens it and we find it full of sand, and again