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

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Polonius—What do you read my Lord ? Hamlet—Words, words, words. Act 2d. Mepiustopheles. Iip Ganzcn—haltct euch an Worte I Dann geht ihr durch die sichere Pfortc Zum Terapel der Gewissheit ein. Schuler. Doch ein Begriff muss bey dem Worte seyn. Mephistopheles. Schon gut! nur muss man sich nicht allzu iingstlich qualen, Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen. Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten zeit sich ein. Mit Worten ISsst sich trefflich streiten, Mit Worten ein System bereiten. An Worte lasst sich trefflich glauben. Von einem Wort lisst sich kein Iota rauben.”—Goethe's Faust. And when I have enumerated these, I imagine I have comprehended almost every thing which can enter into the composition of the intellectual life of man. With the single exception of reason, (and reason can scarcely operate without the intervention of language,) is there any thing more im- portant to man, more peculiar to him, or more inseparable from his nature than speech? Nature indeed could not have bestowed on us a gift more precious than the human voice, which, possessing sounds for the expression of every feeling, and being capable of distinctions as minute, and combina- tions as intricate as the most complex instrument of music; is thus enabled to furnish materials so admirable for the formation of artificial language- The greatest and most important discovery of human ingenuity is writing; there is no impiety in saying, that it was scarcely in the power of the Deity to confer on man a more glorious present than Language, by the medium of which, he himself has been revealed to us, and which affords at once the strongest bond of union, and the best instrument of communication. So inseparable indeed are mind and language, so identically one are thought and speech, that although we must always hold reason to be the great charac- teristic and peculiar attribute of man, yet language also, when we regard its original object and intrinsic dignity, is well intitled to be considered as a com- ponent part of the intellectual structure of our being. And although, in strict application, and rigid expression, thought and speech always are, and always must be, regarded as two things metaphysically distinct,—yet there only can we find these two elements in disunion, where one or both have been employed imperfectly or amiss. Nay, such is the effect of the original unity or identity that, in their most extensive varieties of application, they can never be totally disunited, but must always remain inseparable, and every where be exerted in combination.”—Frederick SchlegePs Lectures on the History of Literature, (English Translation, 1818,J page 11.
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