These instances will suffice to show you what we mean when we say, every thing acts according to the ability God has given it to act.  I might go into a more minute examination of the properties of matter, affinity, hardness, weight, size, color, form, mobility, &c., which even old grammars will allow it to possess; but I shall leave that work for you to perform at your leisure.

Whoever has any doubts remaining in reference to the abilities of all things to produce, continue, or prevent motion, will do well to consult the prince of philosophers, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after Gallileo, has treated largely upon the laws of motion.  He asserts as a fact, full in illustration of the principles I am laboring to establish, that in ascending a hill, the trace rope pulls the horse back as much as he draws that forward, only the horse overcomes the resistance of the load, and moves it up the hill.  On the old systems, no power would be requisite to move the load, for it could oppose no resistance to the horse; and the small child could move it with as much ease as the strong team.

Who has not an acquaintance sufficiently extensive to know these things?  I can not believe there is a person present, who does not fully comprehend my meaning, and discover the correctness of the ground I have assumed.  And it should be borne in mind, that no collection or arrangement of words can be composed into a sentence, which do not obtain their meaning from a connection of things as they exist and operate in the material and intellectual world, and that it is not in the power of man to frame a sentence, to think or speak, but in conformity with these general and exceptionless laws.

This important consideration meets us at every advancing step, as if to admonish us to abandon the vain project of seeking a knowledge of language without an acquaintance with the great principles on which it depends.  To look for the leading rules of speech in set forms of expression, or in the capricious customs of any nation, however learned, is as futile as to attempt to gain a knowledge of the world by shutting ourselves up in a room, and looking at paintings and drawings which may be furnished by those who know as little of it as we do.  How fallacious would be the attempt, how much worse than time thrown away, for the parent to shut up his child in a lonely room, and undertake to impress upon its mind a knowledge of man, beasts, birds, fish, insects, rivers, mountains, fields, flowers, houses, cities, &c., with no other aid than a few miserable pictures, unlike the reality, and in many respects contradictory to each other.  And yet that would be adopting a course very similar to the one long employed as the only means of acquiring a knowledge of language; limited to a set of arbitrary, false, and contradictory rules, which the brightest geniuses could never understand, nor the most erudite employ in the expression of ideas.  The grammars, it was thought, must be studied to acquire the use of language, and yet they were forgotten before such knowledge was put in practice.