Page images
PDF
EPUB

H.

Indeed I do not. The business of the mind, as far as it concerns Language, appears to me to be very simple. It extends no farther than to receive Impreffions, that is, to have Senfations or Feelings. What are called its operations, are merely the operations of Language. A confideration of Ideas, or of the Mind, or of Things (relative to the Parts of Speech) will lead us no farther than to Nouns i. e. the figns of thofe impreffions, or names of ideas. The other Part of Speech, the Verb, must be accounted for from the neceffary ufe of it in communication. It is in fact the communication itfelf: and therefore well denominated Pnua, dictum. Ρημα, For the Verb is quon loqui

mur; the Noun, DE QUO.

B.

Let us proceed then regularly; and hear what you have to say on each of your two neceffary Parts of Speech.

*«Alterum eft quod loquimur; alterum de quo loquimur."

[blocks in formation]

ΕΠΕΑ ΠΤΕΡΟΕΝΤΑ, &c.

CHAP. IV.

OF THE NOUN.

H.

OF the first Part of Speech-the Noun,—it being the best understood, and therefore the most spoken of by others, I fhall need at present to say little more than that it is the fimple or complex, the particular or general fign or name of one or more Ideas.

I shall only remind you, that at this stage of our inquiry concerning Language, comes in moft properly the confideration of the Force of terms: which is the whole business of Mr. Locke's Effay; to which I refer you. And I imagine that Mr. Locke's intention of confining himself to the confideration of the Mind only, was the reason that he went no farther than to the Force of Terms; and did not meddle with their Manner of fignification, to which the Mind alone could never lead him.

B. Do

B.

Do you fay nothing of the Declenfion, Number, Cafe and Gender of Nouns?

H.

At present nothing. There is no pains-worthy difficulty nor difpute about them.

B.

And Mr. Harris par

Surely there is about the Gender. ticularly has thought it worth his while to treat at large of what others have slightly hinted concerning it *: and has supported his reasoning by a long lift of poetical authoriWhat think you of that part of his book?

ties.

Pythagorici fexum in cunctis agnofcunt, &c. Agens, Mas; Patiens, "Fœmina. Quapropter Deus dicunt mafculinè; Terra, fœmininè; & Ignis, masculinè; & Aqua, foemininè: quoniam in his Actio, in iftis "Paffio relucebat."

"

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Campanella.

"In rebus inveniuntur duæ proprietates generales, fcilicet proprietas Agentis, & proprietas Patientis. Genus eft modus fignificandi nominis fumptus a proprietate activa vel paffiva. Genus mafculinum eft modus "fignificandi rem fub proprietate agentis: Genus femininum eft modus "fignificandi rem fub proprietate patientis."

Scotus-Gram. Spec.. Cap. xvi..

H. That,

H.

That, with the rest of it, he had much better have let it alone. And as for his poetical authorities; the Mufes (as I have heard Mrs. Peachum fay of her own fex in cafes of murder) are bitter bad judges in matters of philosophy. Befides that Reafon is an arrant Defpot; who, in his own dominions, admits of no authority but his own. And Mr. Harris is particularly unfortunate in the very outset of that " fubtle kind of reafoning (as he calls it) which "difcerns even in things without sex, a distant analogy to "that great natural distinction." For his very first inftances, the SUN and the MOON,-destroy the whole subtilty of this kind of reasoning *. For Mr. Harris ought to have known, that in many Afiatic Languages, and in all the northern Languages of this part of the globe which we inhabit, and particularly in our Mother-language the Anglo-faxon (from which SUN and MOON are immediately

* It can only have been Mr. Harris's authority, and the ill-founded praises lavished on his performance, that could mislead Dr. Priestley, in his thirteenth lecture, hastily and without examination, to fay—" Thus, for example, "the sun having a stronger, and the MOON a weaker influence over the "world, and there being but two celeftial bodies fo remarkable; All nations, "I believe, that ufe genders, have afcribed to the Sun the gender of the 66 Male, and to the Moon that of the Female."

In the Gothic, Anglo-faxon, German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, sun is feminine: In modern Ruffian it is neuter.

derived

derived to us) SUN is Feminine, and мOON is Masculine *. So feminine is the Sun, [" that fair hot wench in flame❝colour'd taffata"] that our northern Mythology makes her the Wife of Tuifco.

And if our English Poets, Shakespeare, Milton, &c. have, by a familiar Profopopeia, made them of different genders; it is only because, from their claffical reading, they adopted the fouthern not the northern mythology; and followed the pattern of their Greek and Roman masters.

* "Apud Saxones, Luna, Mona. Mona autem Germanis fuperioribus "Mon, alias Man; a Mon, alias Man veterrimo ipforum rege & Deo patrio, quem Tacitus meminit, & in Luna celebrabant.-Ex hoc Lunam "mafculino (ut Hebræi) dicunt genere, Der Mon: Dominamque ejus &

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Amafiam, e cujus afpectu aliàs languet, aliàs refipifcit, Die Son; quafi "bunc Lunam, banc Solem. Hinc & Idolum Lunæ viri fingebant fpecie ; non, ut Verstegan opinatur, fœminæ." Spelman's Gloff. MONA.

"

[ocr errors]

"De generibus Nominum (quæ per articulos, adjectiva, participia, & pronomina indicantur) hic nihil tradimus. Obiter tamen obfervet Lector, "ut ut minuta res eft, Solem (Sunna vel Sunne) in Anglo-faxonica esse feminini generis, & Lunam (Mona) effe mafculini." G. Hickes.

[ocr errors]

Quomodo item Sol eft virile, Germanicum Sunn, femininum. Dicunt "enim Die Sunn, non Der Sunn. Unde & Solem Tuifconis uxorem fuiffe

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »