[28] “Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air.  There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.  Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh, a barbarian; and he that speaketh, shall be a barbarian unto me.”—­1 Cor., xiv. 9, 10, 11.  “It is impossible that our knowledge of words should outstrip our knowledge of things.  It may, and often doth, come short of it.  Words may be remembered as sounds, but [they] cannot be understood as signs, whilst we remain unacquainted with the things signified.”—­Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 160.  “Words can excite only ideas already acquired, and if no previous ideas have been formed, they are mere unmeaning sounds.”—­Spurzheim on Education, p. 200.

[29] Sheridan the elecutionist makes this distinction:  “All that passes in the mind of man, may be reduced to two classes, which I call ideas and emotions.  By ideas, I mean all thoughts which rise, and pass in succession in the mind.  By emotions, all exertions of the mind in arranging, combining, and separating its ideas; as well as the effects produced on all the mind itself by those ideas; from the more violent agitation of the passions, to the calmer feelings produced by the operation of the intellect and the fancy.  In short, thought is the object of the one; internal feeling, of the other.  That which serves to express the former, I call the language of ideas; and the latter, the language of emotions.  Words are the signs of the one:  tones, of the other.  Without the use of these two sorts of language, it is impossible to communicate through the ear, all that passes in the mind of man.”—­Sheridan’s Art of Reading; Blair’s Lectures, p. 333.

[30] “Language is the great instrument, by which all the faculties of the mind are brought forward, moulded, polished, and exerted.”—­Sheridan’s Elocution, p. xiv.

[31] It should be, “These are.”—­G.  B.

[32] It should be, “They fitly represent.”—­G.  B.

[33] This is badly expressed; for, according to his own deduction, each part has but one sign.  It should be, “We express the several parts by as many several signs.”—­G.  Brown.

[34] It would be better English to say, “the instruments and the signs.”—­G.  Brown.

[35] “Good speakers do not pronounce above three syllables in a second of time; and generally only two and a half, taking in the necessary pauses.”—­Steele’s Melody of Speech.

[36] The same idea is also conveyed in the following sentence from Dr. Campbell:  “Whatever regards the analysis of the operations of the mind, which is quicker than lightning in all her energies, must in a great measure be abstruse and dark.”—­Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 289.  Yet this philosopher has given it as his opinion, “that we really think by signs as well as speak by them.”—­Ib., p. 284.  To reconcile these two positions with each other, we must suppose that thinking by signs, or words, is a process infinitely more rapid than speech.