On the nature of thought, or the act of thinking, and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence / [John Haslam].

  • John Haslam
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature of thought, or the act of thinking, and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence / [John Haslam]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    distinct meaning, cannot constitute a thought, which implies a separate proposition or inference contained in a sentence: still less can it be sup¬ posed to result from an individual phantasm or Idea. When it is considered that language is composed of words adapted by position to repre¬ sent all the phenomena and contingencies of human affairs, and that we employ them, by commutation, for all that we can experience as sentient and in¬ tellectual beings, we shall be able to understand that they are the mental currency previously des¬ cribed, and that they are the only instruments of intelligence to which we can resort for the commu¬ nication of our thoughts, or for the process of their elaboration. They must be expressed in words, and bywords prepared for such expression. With¬ out attempting to investigate the different kinds of words, or parts of speech, the province of general or philosophical grammarians, whose unsettled dis¬ putes still perplex the patient and modest inquirer, it will be sufficient to remark that we possess words adapted to convey all the shades of opinion and degrees of feeling: and when these words, under the guidance of acquired knowledge, are perspicu¬ ously arranged into a proposition or sentence, they constitute Thought: and the act of thinking con¬ sists in their correct selection and arrangement for the purpose of promulgation by speech or writing, and which is very properly termed composition. f
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