progress to clearness and definiteness, should have desired a distinction between these two meanings, and should gladly have availed herself [sic] of the two derivatives, yuj and yudh, to mark this distinction."*

This can be interpreted to mean only that the men who spoke the language entertained the desire and gladly marked the distinction, † so that we have here the implicit recognition of another mental principle effecting verbal changes, the desire to mark differences of meaning couched under one word by some modification of that word -the desire, in fact, for definite and distinct expression.

These passages and a few others of similar tendency are slight indications, at the best, of the principles at work in the human mind when directed upon language, but they point to an important path of inquiry.

I will add that Mr. Garnett, in his able Essays, also gives a few similar indications.

He remarks that "in the Indian languages

* Lectures, p. 269.

† Mr. Müller excellently observes in an early lecture, "To speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring and dying away, is sheer mythology: and though we cannot help using metaphorical expressions, we should always be on our guard, when engaged in inquiries like the present, against being carried away by the very words which we are using."-Ibid. p. 41.

(American) there is an evident anxiety to leave nothing implied that can be expressed "- almost the opposite to the desire for brevity and despatch insisted upon by Horne Tooke.

Another principle to which Mr. Garnett attributes great effects is the taste or craving for agreeable sounds. "In some of the leading tongues, more particularly in Sanskrit and Greek, a vast number of articulations have been sacrificed to considerations of euphony." * In a former Essay he had mentioned that "in Sanskrit, finals are changed exclusively for the sake of euphony"†

in itself a notable fact for my present purpose. Collecting into one view these scattered and incidental notices, we obtain a small body of mental principles, to each of which, casually introduced as they are, important effects on language are ascribed, not, let it be observed, by myself, but by the writers who furnish them.

Thus a preponderant share in originating the different sorts of words, is attributed to the desire for dispatch; the sense of grammatical justice has (it is affirmed) eliminated many irregular forms; certain changes which from their nature must be numerous, are referred to a desire for definite and distinct expression; in a large family of languages there is manifested, we are told, a desire to express everything with fullness; in Greek and Sanskrit a

* Philological Essays, p. 325.

† Ibid. p. 81.

vast number of articulations, it is stated, have been sacrificed to a taste for euphony; and in the latter language, finals are said to be changed exclusively from the same principle.

These specimens, while they proclaim the importance, and the extensiveness of the field open to inquiry, are enough to indicate what might be accomplished by a systematic attention to a part or aspect of the subject, which seems hitherto to have attracted only casual notice.

193

LETTER XIII.

MORAL SENTIMENTS.

Ir has been one part of my plan in the foregoing discussions, to take hackneyed and yet unsettled questions, as far as possible, out of the language in which they have been unsuccessfully mooted, and put them into other and simpler forms. Thus, instead of concerning myself with human powers and faculties, which are fictitious entities or mere personifications that have too often engrossed and misled philosophers, I have treated directly of mental operations and affections, which are real events not to be questioned by any one without transparent inconsistency.

In pursuing the investigation of moral science, I purpose to adopt the same method by avoiding those venerated personifications "the moral sense," "the conscience," and "the heart;" all very convenient and unexceptionable phrases in ordinary speech or rhetorical discourse, and dear to the lovers of vague and indefinite speculation, but not easily reconcilable with close and consecutive thinking; and which I shall attempt to show, before I conclude, are superfluous and even detrimental forms of expression in philosophical

inquiries. Instead of such fictitious entities, I shall speak of the feelings, thoughts, and actions of mankind which we all recognize as real things.

The field of morality is human conduct, and our moral sentiments being the feelings with which that conduct inspires us, my present purpose is to trace their rudiments, follow their development, and ascertain their nature.

The facts in the human constitution in which moral phenomena originate, or on which they depend, mainly at least, are the following:

1. Man is susceptible of pleasure and pain of various kinds and of various degrees.

2. He likes and dislikes respectively the causes of them.

3. He resents (in the widest sense of the term)

or desires to reciprocate the pleasure and the pain received, when they are intentionally given by other sentient beings. 4. He expects them to be reciprocated when he has himself given them to his fellow-men;

coveting the reciprocation in the one case and shunning it in the other.

5. He not only is susceptible of pleasure and pain given directly to himself, but he feels under certain circumstances more or less sympathy with the pleasures and pains given to others, accompanied by a proportionate desire that those affections should be reciprocated to the givers.