“I endeavour, as much as I can, to deliver myself from those fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves, by taking words for things. It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by making a noise with sounds without clear and distinct significations. Names made at pleasure, neither alter the nature of things, nor make us understand them, but as they are signs of, and stand for, determined ideas.”—Locke, Hum. Und. b. ii. ch. 13, § 18.

WE have now surveyed the more simple and obvious phenomena of the human mind. We have seen, first, that we have SENSATIONS; secondly, that we have IDEAS, the copies of those sensations; thirdly, that those ideas are sometimes SIMPLE, the copies of one sensation; sometimes COMPLEX, the copies of several sensations so combined as to appear not several ideas, but one idea; and, fourthly, that we have TRAINS of those ideas, or one succeeding another without end.

These are simple facts of our nature, attested by experience; and my chief object in fixing upon them the attention of the reader has been, to convey to him that accurate and steady conception of them, which is requisite for the successful prosecution of the subsequent inquiries.

128 After delineating the simple and elementary states of consciousness, it follows, in order, that we should endeavour to show what is contained in those that are complex. But in all the more complicated cases of human consciousness something of the process of Naming is involved. These cases, of course, cannot be unfolded, till the artifice of Naming is made known. This, therefore, is necessarily an intermediate inquiry; and one to which it is necessary that we should devote a particular degree of attention.

There are two purposes, both of great importance, for which marks of our ideas, and sensations; or signs by which they may be denoted; are necessary. One of these purposes is, That we maybe able to make known to others what passes within us. The other is, That we may secure to ourselves the knowledge of what at any preceding time has passed in our minds.

The sensations and ideas of one man are hidden from all other men; unless they have recourse to some expedient for disclosing them. We cannot convey to another man our sensations and ideas directly. Our means of intercourse with other men are through their senses exclusively. We must therefore choose some SENSIBLE OBJECTS, as SIGNS of our inward feelings. If two men agree, that each shall use a certain sensible sign, when one of them means to make known to the other that he has a certain sensation, or idea, they, in this, and in no other way, can communicate a knowledge of those feelings to one another.

Almost all the advantages, which man possesses above the inferior animals, arise from his power of acting in combination with his fellows; and of accomplishing, by the united efforts of numbers, what could 129 not be accomplished by the detached efforts of individuals. Without the power of communicating to one another their sensations and ideas, this co-operation would be impossible. The importance, therefore, of the invention of signs, or marks, by which alone that communication can be effected, is obvious.

Among sensible objects, those alone which are addressed to the senses of seeing and hearing have sufficient precision and variety to be adapted to this end. The language of Action, as it has been called, that is, certain gesticulations and motions, has very generally, especially among rude people, whose spoken language is scanty, been found in use to indicate certain states, generally complicated states, of mind. But, for precision, variety, and rapidity, the flexibility of the voice presented such obvious advantages, not to mention that visible signs must be altogether useless in the dark, that sounds, among all the varieties of our species, have been assumed as the principal medium by which their sensations and ideas were made known to one another.

There can be little doubt that, of the two uses of marks, Communicating our thoughts, and Recording them, the advantage of the first would be the earliest felt; and that signs for Communicating would be long invented, before any person would see the advantage of Recording his thoughts. After the use of signs for Communication had become familiar, it would not fail, in time, to appear that signs might be employed for Recordation also; and that, from this use of them, the highest advantages might be derived.

In respect to those advantages, the following particulars are to be observed.

130 1. We cannot recall any idea, or train of ideas, at will. Thoughts come into the mind unbidden. If they did not come unbidden, they must have been in the mind before they came into it; which is a contradiction. You cannot bid a thought come into the mind, without knowing that which you bid; but to know a thought is to have the thought: the knowledge of the thought, and the thought’s being in the mind, are not two things but one and the same thing, under different names.

If we cannot recall at pleasure a single idea, we are not less unable to recall a train. Every person knows how evanescent his thoughts are, and how impossible it is for him to begin at the beginning of a past train, if it is not a train of the individual objects familiar to his senses, and go on to the end, neither leaving out any of the items which composed it, nor allowing any which did not belong to it, to enter in.

2. It is most obvious that, by ideas alone, the events which are passed, are to us any thing. If the objects which we have seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched, left no traces of themselves; if the immediate sensation were every thing, and a blank ensued when the sensation ended, the past would be to us as if it had never been. Yesterday would be as unknown as the months we passed in the womb, or the myriads of years before we were born.

3. It is only by our ideas of the past, that we have any power of anticipating the future. And if we had no power of anticipating the future, we should have no principle of action, but the physical impulses, which we have in common with the brutes. This great law of our nature, the anticipation of the future from the 131 past, will be fully illustrated in a subsequent part of this inquiry: at present, all that is required is, the admission, which will probably not be refused, of this general truth: That the order, in which events have been observed to take place, is the order in which they are expected to take place; that the order in which they have taken place is testified to us only by our ideas; and that upon the correctness, with which they are so testified, depends the faculty we possess of converting the powers of nature into the instruments of our will; and of bringing to pass the events which we desire.

4. But all this power depends upon the order of our ideas. The importance, therefore, is unspeakable, of being able to insure the order of our ideas; to make, in other words, the order of a train of ideas correspond unerringly with a train of past sensations. We have not, however, a direct command over the train of our ideas. A train of ideas may have passed in our minds corresponding to events of great importance; but that train will not pass again, unvaried, except in very simple cases, without the use of expedients.

5. The difference between the occasions of our IDEAS, and the occasions of our SENSATIONS, affords a resource for this purpose. Over the occasions of our sensations; we have an extensive power. We can command the smell of a rose, the hearing of a bell, the sight of a tree, the sensation of heat or of cold, and so on. Over the occasions of our ideas we have little or no direct power. Our ideas come and go. There is a perpetual train of them, one succeeding another; but we cannot will any link in that chain of ideas; each link is determined by the foregoing; and every man knows, how impossible 132 it is, by mere willing, to make such a train as he desires. Thoughts obtrude themselves without his bidding; and thoughts which he is in quest of will not arise.

By the power, however, which we have over the occasions of our sensations, we can make sure of having a train of sensations exactly the same as we have had before. This affords us the means of having a train of ideas exactly the same as we have had before. If we choose a number of sensible objects, and make use of them as marks of our ideas, we can ensure any succession which we please of the sensible objects; and, by the association between them and the ideas, a corresponding succession of the ideas.

6. To one of the two sets of occasions, upon which Signs are thus useful, evanescent Signs are the best adapted; permanent signs are absolutely necessary for the other. For the purposes of speech, or immediate communication, sounds are the most convenient marks. Sounds, however, perish in the making. But for the purpose of retracing a train of ideas, which we have formerly had, it is necessary we should have marks which do not perish. Marks, addressed to the sight, or the touch, have the requisite permanence; and, of the two, those addressed to the eye have the advantage. Of marks addressed to the eye, two kinds have been adopted; either marks immediately of the ideas intended to be recalled; such as the picture-writing, or hieroglyphics, of some nations: or, visible marks, by letters, of the audible marks employed in oral communication. This latter kind has been found the most convenient, and in use among the largest, and most intelligent portion of our species.

133 According to this scheme, spoken language is the use of immediate marks of the ideas; written language, is the use of secondary marks of the ideas. The written marks are only signs of the audible marks; the audible marks, are signs of the ideas.40

⁴⁰ This exposition of Naming in its most general aspect, needs neither explanation nor comment. It is one of those specimens of clear and vigorous statement, going straight to the heart of the matter, and dwelling on it just long enough and no longer than necessary, in which the Analysis abounds.—Ed.