1.  The peculiar power of language is another point worthy of particular consideration.  The power of an instrument is virtually the power of him who wields it; and, as language is used in common, by the wise and the foolish, the mighty and the impotent, the candid and the crafty, the righteous and the wicked, it may perhaps seem to the reader a difficult matter, to speak intelligibly of its peculiar power.  I mean, by this phrase, its fitness or efficiency to or for the accomplishment of the purposes for which it is used.  As it is the nature of an agent, to be the doer of something, so it is the nature of an instrument, to be that with which something is effected.  To make signs, is to do something, and, like all other actions, necessarily implies an agent; so all signs, being things by means of which other things are represented, are obviously the instruments of such representation.  Words, then, which represent thoughts, are things in themselves; but, as signs, they are relative to other things, as being the instruments of their communication or preservation.  They are relative also to him who utters them, as well as to those who may happen to be instructed or deceived by them.  “Was it Mirabeau, Mr. President, or what other master of the human passions, who has told us that words are things?  They are indeed things, and things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high-wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political questions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, by the adroit substitution of one phrase or one word for an other.”—­Daniel Webster, in Congress, 1833.

2.  To speak, is a moral action, the quality of which depends upon the motive, and for which we are strictly accountable.  “But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”—­Matt., xii, 36, 37.  To listen, or to refuse to listen, is a moral action also; and there is meaning in the injunction, “Take heed what ye hear.”—­Mark, iv, 24.  But why is it, that so much of what is spoken or written, is spoken or written in vain?  Is language impotent?  It is sometimes employed for purposes with respect to which it is utterly so; and often they that use it, know not how insignificant, absurd, or ill-meaning a thing they make of it.  What is said, with whatever inherent force or dignity, has neither power nor value to him who does not understand it;[28] and, as Professor Duncan observes, “No word can be to any man the sign of an idea, till that idea comes to have a real existence in his mind.”—­Logic, p. 62.  In instruction, therefore, speech ought not to be regarded as the foundation or the essence of knowledge, but as the sign of it; for knowledge has its origin in the power of sensation, or reflection, or consciousness, and not in that of recording or communicating thought.  Dr. Spurzheim was not the first to suggest, “It is time to abandon the immense error of supposing that words and precepts are sufficient to call internal feelings and intellectual faculties into active exercise.”—­Spurzheim’s Treatise on Education, p. 94.