8.  So far as language is a work of art, and not a thing conferred or imposed upon us by nature, there surely can be in it neither division nor union that was not first in the intellect for the manifestation of which it was formed.  First, with respect to generalization.  “The human mind,” says Harris, “by an energy as spontaneous and familiar to its nature, as the seeing of colour is familiar to the eye, discerns at once what in many is one, what in things dissimilar and different is similar and the same.”—­Hermes, p. 362.  Secondly, with respect to division.  Mechanical separations are limited:  “But the mind surmounts all power of concretion; and can place in the simplest manner every attribute by itself; convex without concave; colour without superficies; superficies without body; and body without its accidents:  as distinctly each one, as though they had never been united.  And thus it is, that it penetrates into the recesses of all things, not only dividing them as wholes, into their more conspicuous parts, but persisting till it even separate those elementary principles which, being blended together after a more mysterious manner, are united in the minutest part as much as in the mightiest whole.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 307.

9.  It is remarkable that this philosopher, who had so sublime conceptions of the powers of the human mind, and who has displayed such extraordinary acuteness in his investigations, has represented the formation of words, or the utterance of language, as equalling in speed the progress of our very thoughts; while, as we have seen, an other author, of great name, avers, that thought is “as instantaneous as the impression of light on the eye.”  Philosophy here too evidently nods.  In showing the advantage of words, as compared with pictures, Harris says, “If we consider the ease and speed with which words are formed,-an ease which knows no trouble or fatigue, and a speed which equals the progress of our very thoughts,[38]—­we may plainly perceive an answer to the question here proposed, Why, in the common intercourse of men with men, imitations have been rejected, and symbols preferred.”—­Hermes, p. 336.  Let us hear a third man, of equal note:  “Words have been called winged; and they well deserve that name, when their abbreviations are compared with the progress which speech could make without these inventions; but, compared with the rapidity of thought, they have not the smallest claim to that title.  Philosophers have calculated the difference of velocity between sound and light; but who will attempt to calculate the difference between speech and thought!”—­Horne Tooke’s Epea Pteroenta, Vol. i, p. 23.