the Attick dialect, the public executioner. In English, a Speaker is any person who fpeaks; but the fpeaker is he who prefides in the Houfe of Commons. 102. And now it appears, that in Latin there are nine forts of words, the Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Participle, Adverb, Interjection, Prepofition, and Conjunction. In Greek, Hebrew, English, and many other languages, there is also an ar ticle, and confequently there are ten parts of fpeech. The Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Participle, Prepofition, and Conjunction, feem to be effential to language; the Article, Interjection, and most of the Adverbs, are rather useful than neceffary. So much for the Faculty of Speech, and Univerfal Grammar. SECT. SECT. IV. Of Perception or External Senfation. 103. AS S this fubject is connected with Natural Philosophy, I fhall make but a few flight remarks upon it; with a view chiefly to fome things that are to follow. The foul, ufing the body as its inftrument, perceives external things, that is, bodies and their qualities. All animals have this faculty in a greater or lefs degree, and all complete animals in that precife degree which is neceffary to their life and well-being. Corporeal things, when within the fphere of our perceptive powers, and attended to by us, affect our organs of fenfe in a certain manner, and fo are pérceived by the foul or mind. We know that this is the fact, but cannot explain it, or trace the connection that there is between our minds and impreffions made on our bodily organs; being ignorant of the nature of that union which fubfifts be tween tween the foul and its body. Our perception of bodies is accompanied with a belief, that they exist and are what they appear to be, and that we perceive the bodies themselves and this belief is unavoidable, and amounts to abfolute certainty. We cannot prove by argument, that bodies exist, or that we ourselves exist; nor is it necessary that we should: for the thing is felf-evident, and the conftitution of our nature makes it impoffible for us to entertain any doubt concerning this matter. 104. It would be a task equally tedious and unprofitable, to explain the notions of philofophers with refpect to the manner in which the mind has been supposed to perceive things external. Aristotle fancied, that, by means of our fenfes, outward things communicate to the mind their form without their matter; as the feal imparts to the wax the figures carved on it, without the fubftance. These forms of things, in their first appearance to the mind, he calls fenfible fpecies; which, as retained by the memory, or exhibited in the imagination, he terms Phantafms. And these phantasis, when by the operation of the intellect they are refined into general ideas, he calls intelligible fpecies. For example: I fee a man; this perception is the fenfible fpecies. I. afterwards remember his appearance; or perhaps his appearance occurs to my mind, without my remembering, or confidering that I had perceived it before: this is a phantafin. Lastly, my intellect, taking away from this phantafm every thing that distinguishes it from others, and retaining fo much of it only as it has in common with a kind or fort, (see § 19.), transforms it into an intelligible fpecies, or general idea, which we exprefs by the common ap¬ pellative man. All this feems to imply, that a thought of the mind has fomething of body in it, and confifts of parts that may be feparated: which to me is inconceivable. 105. Moft modern philofophers give an account of this matter in words that are indeed different, but feem to amount to the fame thing. They will not admit that the mind can perceive any thing which is not in the mind itfelf, or at least in the fame fame place with it. Now the fun, moon, and stars, and the other things external to us, are neither in the mind, nor in the fame place with it; for if they were, they would be in the infide of the human body. External things themselves, therefore, our mind, we are told, does not perceive at all; but it perceives ideas of them, which ideas are actually in the fame place with the mind; either in the brain, or in fomething which has got the name of fenforium, in which the percipient being called the foul, or mind, is fuppofed to have its refidence. See § 13. 106. When it was objected, That, on the fuppofition of our perceiving, not outward things themselves, but only ideas of them, we cannot be certain that outward things exift, the fame philofophers, or rather their fucceffors in the fame school, admitted the objection; and came at laft to affirm, that the foul perceives nothing but its own ideas; and that the fun and moon, the fea and the mountains, the men and other animals, and, in a word, the whole univerfe which we fee around us, has no exiftence K 2 |