Natural objects affect us by the laws of that connection which Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind.  Painting affects in the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation.  Architecture affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; from which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for which it was designed is or is not properly answered.  But as to words; they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a discourse of this kind.

SECTION II.

THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF THINGS.

The common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them to stand.  To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to observe that words may be divided into three sorts.  The first are such as represent many simple ideas united by nature to form some one determinate composition, as man, horse, tree, castle, &c.  These I call aggregate words.  The second are they that stand for one simple idea of such compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the like.  These I call simple abstract words.  The third are those which are formed by an union, an arbitrary union of both the others, and of the various relations between them in greater or lesser degrees of complexity; as virtue, honor, persuasion, magistrate, and the like.  These I call compound abstract words.  Words, I am sensible, are capable of being classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the ideas they are substituted for.  I shall begin with the third sort of words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honor, persuasion, docility.  Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the mind of the things for which they stand.  As compositions, they are not real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas.  Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honor, conceives any precise notions of the particular modes of action and thinking, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the several relations of them for