Illus. 1. Thus men have formed the complex notions of eating, drinking, dressing, sleeping, walking, riding, running, buying, selling, ploughing, sowing, a dance, a fair, a feast, a wedding, a burial, war, a battle, victory, triumph, peace; and other words without number.

2. Such things must frequently be the subject of conversation; and if we had not a more compendious way of expressing them than by a detail of all the simple notions which they comprehended, we should lose the benefit of speech; for who, for example, to communicate the complex notion which the word war gives civilized men, would ever go about gravely to tell us, "The consideration of safety leads to the invention of arms, and places of retreat. The earliest weapons were men's fists, then clubs, slings, and bows and arrows. To these succeeded, in process of time, the spear and the sword, joined to the buckler and the shield; fire-arms, called matchlocks, cannon, and then musketry and rockets. But the desire of retreats gave rise to fortification; and the art of war, in every age, must be accommodated to the species of arms, engines and methods of fortification in use."-Yet even this roundabout meaning of the complex notion we have of the general term war, hath not included companies, regiments, brigades, armies; magazines of provisions, commissaries; barracks, camps; army contractors, army agents, army accoutrement makers; a commander in chief, loans to goverment to carry on the war, and a thousand other terms, not one of which is simple, are all component parts of the complex notion which the experience of our own times gives us of that detestable word war.

3. The different talents, dispositions, and habits of men in socicty, have in every language general names; such as wise, foolish, knowing, ignorant, proud, vain.

4. In every operative art the tools, instruments, materials, the work produced, and the various excellencies or defects of these, must have general names.

5. Technical terms in the sciences, make another class of general names of complex notions; as in mathematics, axiom, definition, problem, theorem, corollary, scholium, lemma.

6. The various relations of persons and of things, which cannot escape the observation of men in society, lead them to many complex general notions; such as, father, brother, friend, enemy, master, servant, property, theft, rebellion.

7. In all the languages of mankind, not only the writings and discourses of the learned, but the conversation of the vulgar, is almost entirely made up of general words, which are the signs of general conceptions, either simple or complex. And in every language, we find the terms signifying complex notions to be such, and only such, as the use of language requires.

193. A very large class of complex terms are those by which we name the species, genera, and tribes of natural substances. Utility leads to the adoption of these general names, and nature directs us in combining the attributes which are included under any specific name; but in form

ing other combinations of mixed modes and relations, the actions or thoughts of men, or the occurrences of life, bring the ingredients together.

Illus. We form a general notion of those attributes wherein many individuals agree. To this combination we give a specific name, which is common to all substances, having those attributes, which either do or may exist. The specific name comprehends, neither more.nor fewer attributes than we find proper to put into its definition. It comprehends not time, nor place, nor even existence, though there can be no individual without these.

194. Without some general knowledge of the qualities of natural substances, human life would not be preserved. And there can be no general knowledge of this kind, without reducing them to species under specific names.

Illus. For this reason, among the rudest nations, we find names for fire, water, earth, air, mountains, fountains, rivers; for the kinds of vegetables which those nations use; for the animals which they hunt or tame, or which are found useful or hurtful. Each of those names signifies, in general, a substance having a certain combination of attributes. The name must therefore be common to all substances in which those attributes are found.

195. As the knowledge of nature advances, more species of natural substances are observed, and their useful qualities discovered. And in order that this important part of human knowledge may be communicated, and handed down to future generations, it is not sufficient that the species have names; the fluctuating state of language does not permit general names always to retain the same precise signification; hence the necessity of definitions, in which men are disposed to acquiesce.

Illus. 1. To give names and accurate definitions of all the known species of substances is necessary, in order to form a distinct language concerning them, and consequently to facilitate our knowledge respecting them, and to convey it to future generations.

2. Every species that is known to exist ought to have a name; and that name ought to be defined by such attributes as serve best to distinguish the species from all others.

3. Nature invites to this work, by having formed things so as to make it both easy and important.

For, first, We perceive numbers of individual substances so like in their obvious qualities, that the most unimproved tribes of men consider them as of one species, and give them one common name.

Secondly. The more latent qualities of substances are generally the same in all the individuals of a species; so that what, by observation or experiment, is found in a few individuals of a species, is presumed, and commonly found to belong to the whole. By this we are enabled, from particular facts, to draw general conclusions, This kind of induction is indeed the master-key to the knowledge

of nature, without which we could form no general conclusions in that branch of philosophy.

And, thirdly, By the very constitution of our nature, we are led, without reasoning, to ascribe to the whole species what we have found to belong to the individuals. It is thus we come to know that fire burns, and that water drowns; that bodies gravitate, and that bread nourishes.

196. The species of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, seem to be fixed by nature, by the power which they have of producing their like. And in these, men in all ages and nations, have accounted the parent and the progeny the same species.

Obs. 1. The differences observed by naturalists, with regard to the species of these two kingdoms, are termed varieties, and may be produced by soil, climate, and culture, and sometimes by monstrous productions, which are, however, comparatively rare.

2. In the inanimate kingdom things have been divided into species, though the limits of these species seem to be somewhat arbitrary; but, from the progress already made, there is ground to hope, that even in this kingdom, as the knowledge of it advances, the various species may be so well distinguished and defined, as to answer every valuable purpose.

197. When the species are so numerous as to burden the memory, it is greatly assisted by distributing them into genera; the genera into tribes; the tribes into orders; and the orders into classes. Such a regular distribution of natural substances, by divisions and subdivisions, has got the name of a system.

Illus. 1. It is not, however, a system of truths, but a system of general terms, with their definitions; and it is not only a great help to the memory, but facilitates very much the definition of the terms. For the definition of the genus is common to all the species of that genus, and is so understood in the definition of each species, without the trouble of repetition. In like manner the definition of a tribe is understood in the definition of every genus, and species of that tribe; and the same may be said of every superior division.

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2. The effect of such a systematical distribution of the productions of nature, is seen in our systems of zoology, botany, and mineralogy; in which a species is accurately defined in a line or two, which, without this systematical arrangement, could hardly be defined in a page.

3. The talent of arranging properly affords the strongest proof of genius, and is entitled to a high degree of praise. There is an intrinsic beauty in arrangement; it captivates the mind and gives pleasure, even abstracting from its utility. The arrangement of an army drawn up for battle, is a grand spectacle; the same number of men crowded together in a fair has no such effect.

4. In order to remove all ambiguity in the names of diseases, and

to advance the healing art, very eminent medical men have now reduced into a systematical order the diseases of the human body, and given distinct names and accurate definitions, of the species, genera, orders, and classes, into which they distribute them. And in Paris there is now a professor of medicine, who, in lecturing to his students on cutaneous diseases, arranges the patients according to the classes or varieties of the disease, under trees when the weather will permit, on which a large placard is fixed, to indicate the class or variety of the disease; and when it is necessary for the professor to have a patient beside him, to afford ocular demonstration of the illustrations he is giving, in place of calling the patient by his Christian or sirname, the professor calls him by the name of the class to which his disease belongs. Such improvements, like the invention of printing, serve to embalm a most important branch of human knowledge, and to preserve it from being corrupted or lost.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, OR COMBINATION.

198. ASSOCIATION, or the combination of ideas, is the faculty by which we connect objects together, according to various relations, essential or accidental, so that they are suggested to us, the one by the other.

Obs. It is matter of the most familiar observation, that we are apt to connect together the various objects of our thoughts according to some real or supposed relations which we observe among them; so that they come afterwards to be suggested to the mind, the one by the other. By the faculty of abstraction we analyse individual objects, so as to make their various qualities and attributes separate subjects of our thoughts; by the faculty of combination we form these objects into various classes, or groups, according to some observed resemblance among them, or we connect together certain individuals which have no real relation to one another, merely on account of some accidental circumstance which has occasioned them to be present to our thoughts at the same moment. Both faculties are eminently subservient to the advancement of our knowledge, and the progress of scientific investigation; the object of which is, to ascertain those general laws, or first principles, accor ding to which the phenomena of whole classes of beings are regulated.

199. Association, or the combination of ideas, naturally divides itself into two parts: the first, as it relates to the influence of association, in regulating the succession of our thoughts; the second, as it relates to its influence on the intellectual powers, and on the moral character, by the more

intimate and indissoluble combinations which it leads us to form in infancy and early youth.

200. The influence of association in regulating the succession of our thoughts, is a fact familiar to all men: that one thought is often suggested to the mind by another; and that the sight of an external object often recals former occurrences and revives former feelings, are facts which have never been disputed by those who speculate least on the principles of their nature.

Illus. 1. Travelling along a road that we have formerly traversed with a friend, the particulars of the conversation in which we were then engaged, are frequently suggested to us by the objects with which we meet.-A field, a house, a plantation, a stream, will suggest the conversation, and the arguments which were discussed start like apparitions to our mind's eye, or recur spontaneously to the memory.

2. On the same general law of our nature, are obvious the connection formed in our mind between the different words of a language and the ideas they denote; that between the different words of a discourse we have committed to memory; and that between the notes of a piece of music in the mind of the musician.

201. The influence of perceptible objects in reviving former thoughts and former feelings, is peculiarly remarkable.

Illus. "Whilst we were at dinner," says Captain King, "in this miserable hut, on the banks of the river Awatska, the guests of a people with whose existence we had before been scarce acquainted, and at the extremity of the habitable globe, a solitary half-worn pewter spoon, whose shape was familiar to us, attracted our attention; and, on examining it, we found it stamped on the back with the word London. I cannot pass over this circumstance in silence, out of gratitude for the many pleasant thoughts, the anxious hopes, and tender remembrances, it excited in us. Those who have experienced the effects that long absence, and extreme distance from their native country, produce on the mind, will readily conceive the pleasure such a trifling incident gave us.'

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202. The relations in consequence of which association takes place, are either essential or accidental.

203. Among the essential relations, the most remarkable appear to be, 1. Resemblance; 2. Analogy; 3. Contrariety ; 4. Mutual Dependence; as of cause and effect, premises and conclusion, means and end, and the like.

204. The accidental relations, or the sources of associa tion, seem chiefly reducible to the circumstance of the two, objects of thought having been presented to the mind together; or from what the philosophers call the contiguity of time and place, in consequence of which we are led after