goes, we want to know when and where we may expect it; and are uneasy till we find something which, being present, brings this feeling along with it, and, being removed, removes it. This, when found, we call the cause of it; not in a strict and philosophical sense, as if the feeling were really effected or produced by that cause, but in a popular sense; for the mind is satisfied if there is a constant conjunction between them; and such causes are in reality nothing else but laws of nature. Having found the smell thus constantly conjoined with the rose, the mind is at rest, without inquiring whether this conjunction is owing to a real efficiency or not; that being a philosophical inquiry, which does not concern human life. But every discovery of such a constant conjunction is of real importance in life, and makes a strong impression upon the mind. So ardently do we desire to find everything that happens within our observation thus connected with something else as its cause or occasion, that we are apt to fancy connections upon the slightest grounds; and this weakness is most remarkable in the ignorant, who know least of the real connections established in nature. A man meets with an unlucky accident on a certain day of the year, and, knowing no other cause of his misfortune, he is apt to conceive something unlucky in that day of the calendar; and, if he finds the same connection hold a second time, is strongly confirmed in his superstition. I remember, many years ago, a white ox was brought into this country, of so enormous a size that people came many miles to see him. There happened, some months after, an uncommon fatality among women in child-bearing. Two such uncommon events, following one another, gave a suspicion of their connection, and occasioned a common opinion among the countrypeople that the white ox was the cause of this fatality. However silly and ridiculous this opinion was, it sprung from the same root in human nature on which all natural philosophy grows namely, an eager desire to find out connections in things, and a natural, original, and unaccountable propensity to believe that the connections which we have observed in time past will continue in time to come. Omens, portents, good and bad luck, palmistry, astrology, all the numercus arts of divination and of interpreting dreams, false hypotheses and systems, and true principles in the philosophy of nature, are all built upon the same foundation in the human constitution, and are distinguished only according as we conclude rashly from too few instances, or cautiously from a sufficient induction. As it is experience only that discovers these connections between natural causes and their effects; without inquiring further, we attribute to the cause some vague and indistinct notion of power or virtue to produce the effect. And, in many cases, the purposes of life do not make it necessary to give distinct names to the cause and the effect. Whence it happens, that, being closely connected in the imagination, although very unlike to each other, one name serves for both; and, in common discourse, is most frequently applied to that which, of the two, is most the object of our attention. This occasions an ambiguity in many words, which, having the same causes in all languages, is common to all, and is apt to be overlooked even by philosophers. Some instances will serve both to illustrate and confirm what we have said. Magnetism signifies both the tendency of the iron towards the magnet, and the power of the magnet to produce that tendency; and, if it was asked, whether it is a quality of the iron or of the magnet, one would perhaps be puzzled at first; but a little attention would discover, that we conceive a power or virtue in the magnet as the cause, and a motion in the iron as the effect; and, although these are things quite unlike, they are so united in the imagination, that we give the common name of magnetism to both. The same thing may be said of gravitation, which sometimes signifies the tendency of bodies towards the earth, sometimes the attractive power of the earth, which we conceive as the cause of that tendency. We may observe the same ambiguity in some of Sir Isaac Newton's definitions; and that even in words of his own making. In three of his definitions, he explains very distinctly what he understands by the absolute quantity, what by the accelerative quantity, and what by the motive quantity, of a centripetal force. In the first of these three definitions, centripetal force is put for the cause, which we conceive to be some power or virtue in the centre or central body; in the two last, the same word is put for the effect of this cause, in producing velocity, or in producing motion towards that centre. Heat signifies a sensation, and cold a contrary one; but heat likewise signifies a quality or state of bodies, which hath no contrary, but different degrees. When a man feels the same water hot to one hand and cold to the other, this gives him occasion to distinguish between the feeling and the heat of the body; and, although he knows that the sensations are contrary, he does not imagine that the body can have contrary qualities at the same time. And when he finds a different taste in the same body in sickness and in health, he is easily convinced, that the quality in the body called taste is the same as before, although I the sensations he has from it are perhaps opposite. The vulgar are commonly charged by philosophers, with the absurdity of imagining the smell in the rose to be something like to the sensation of smelling; but I think unjustly; for they neither give the same epithets to both, nor do they reason in the same manner from them. What is smell in the rose? It is a quality or virtue of the rose, or of something proceeding from it, which we perceive by the sense of smelling; and this is all we know of the matter. But what is smelling? It is an act of the mind, but is never imagined to be a quality of the mind. Again, the sensation of smelling is conceived to infer necessarily a mind or sentient being; but smell in the rose infers no such thing. We say, this body smells sweet, that stinks; but we do not say, this mind smells sweet and that stinks. Therefore, smell in the rose, and the sensation which it causes, are not conceived, even by the vulgar, to be things of the same kind, although they have the same name. From what hath been said, we may learn that the smell of a rose signifies two things: First, a sensation, which can have no existence but when it is perceived, and can only be in a sentient being or mind; Secondly, it signifies some power, quality, or virtue, in the rose, or in effluvia proceeding from it, which hath a permanent existence, independent of the mind, and which, by the constitution of nature, produces the sensation in us. By the original constitution of our nature, we are both led to believe that there is a permanent cause of the sensation, and prompted to seek after it; and experience determines us to place it in the rose. The names of all smells, tastes, sounds, as well as heat and cold, have a like ambiguity in all languages; but it deserves our attention, that these names are but rarely, in common language, used to signify the sensations; for the most part, they signify the external qualities which are indicated by the sensations-the cause of which phænomenon I take to be this. Our sensations have very different degrees of strength. Some of them are so quick and lively as to give us a great deal either of pleasure or of uneasiness. When this is the case, we are compelled to attend to the sensation itself, and to make it an object of thought and discourse; we give it a name, which signifies nothing but the sensation; and in this case we readily acknowledge, that the thing meant by that name is in the mind only, and not in any thing external. Such are the various kinds of pain, sickness, and the sensations of hunger and other appetites. But, where the sensation is not so interesting as to re | quire to be made an object of thought, our constitution leads us to consider it as a sign of something external, which hath constant conjunction with it; and, having found what it indicates, we give a name to that: the sensation, having no proper name, falls in as an accessory to the thing signified by it, and is confounded under the same name. So that the name may, indeed, be applied to the sensation, but most properly and commonly is applied to the thing indicated by that sensation. The sensations of smell, taste, sound, and colour, are of infinitely more importance as signs or indications, than they are upon their own account; like the words of a language, wherein we do not attend to the sound but to the sense. Section X. WHETHER IN SENSATION THE MIND IS ACTIVE OR PASSIVE? There is one inquiry remains, Whether, in smelling, and in other sensations, the mind is active or passive? This possibly may seem to be a question about words, or, at least, of very small importance; however, if it leads us to attend more accurately to the operations of our minds than we are accustomed to do, it is, upon that very account, not altogether unprofitable. I think the opinion of modern philosophers is, that in sensation the mind is altogether passive. And this undoubtedly is so far true, that we cannot raise any sensation in our minds by willing it; and, on the other hand, it seems hardly possible to avoid having the sensation when the object is presented. Yet it seems likewise to be true, that, in proportion as the attention is more or less turned to a sensation or diverted from it, that sensation is more or less perceived and remembered. Every one knows that very intense pain may be diverted by a surprise, or by anything that entirely occupies the mind. When we are engaged in earnest conversation, the clock may strike by us without being heard; at least, we remember not, the next moment, that we did hear it. The noise and tumult of a great trading city is not heard by them who have lived in it all their days; but it stuns those strangers who have lived in the peaceful retirement of the country. Whether, therefore, there can be any sensation where the mind is purely passive, I will not say; but I think we are conscious of having given some attention to every sensation which we remember, though ever so recent. This is far too absolutely stated.-H. No doubt, where the impulse is strong | moist with a liquor which is so universal a and uncommon, it is as difficult to withhold menstruum, and which deserves to be exattention as it is to forbear crying out in amined more than it hath been hitherto, racking pain, or starting in a sudden fright. both in that capacity, and as a medical But how far both might be attained by unguent. Nature teaches dogs, and other strong resolution and practice, is not easy animals, to use it in this last way; and its to determine. So that, although the Peri- subserviency both to taste and digestion patetics had no good reason to suppose an shews its efficacy in the former. active and a passive intellect, since attention may be well enough accounted an act of the will, yet I think they came nearer to the truth, in holding the mind to be in sensation partly passive and partly active, than the moderns, in affirming it to be purely passive. Sensation, imagination, memory, and judgment, have, by the vulgar in all ages, been considered as acts of the mind. The manner in which they are expressed in all languages, shews this. When the mind is much employed in them, we say it is very active; whereas, if they were impressions only, as the ideal philosophy would lead us to conceive, we ought, in such a case, rather to say, that the mind is very passive; for, I suppose, no man would attribute great activity to the paper I write upon, because it receives variety of cha racters. The relation which the sensation of smell bears to the memory and imagination of it, and to a mind or subject, is common to all our sensations, and, indeed, to all the operations of the mind: the relation it bears to the will is common to it with all the powers of understanding; and the relation it bears to that quality or virtue of bodies which it indicates, is common to it with the sensations of taste, hearing, colour, heat, and cold-so that what hath been said of this sense, may easily be applied to several of our senses, and to other operations of the mind; and this, I hope, will apologize for our insisting so long upon it. CHAPTER III. OF TASTING. A GREAT part of what hath been said of the sense of smelling, is so easily applied to those of tasting and hearing, that we shall leave the application entirely to the reader's judgment, and save ourselves the trouble of a tedious repetition. It is probable that everything that affects the taste is, in some degree, soluble in the saliva. It is not conceivable how anything should enter readily, and of its own accord, as it were, into the pores of the tongue, palate, and fauces, unless it had some chemical affinity to that liquor with which these pores are always replete. It is, therefore, an admirable contrivance of nature, that the organs of taste should always be It is with manifest design and propriety, that the organ of this sense guards the entrance of the alimentary canal, as that of smell the entrance of the canal for respiration. And from these organs being placed in such manner that everything that enters into the stomach must undergo the scrutiny of both senses, it is plain that they were intended by nature to distinguish wholesome food from that which is noxious. The brutes have no other means of choosing their food; nor would mankind, in the savage state. And it is very probable that the smell and taste, noway vitiated by luxury or bad habits, would rarely, if ever, lead us to a wrong choice of food among the productions of nature; although the artificial compositions of a refined and luxurious cookery, or of chemistry and pharmacy, may often impose upon both, and produce things agreeable to the taste and smell, which are noxious to health. And it is probable that both smell and taste are vitiated, and rendered less fit to perform their natural offices, by the unnatural kind of life men commonly lead in society. These senses are likewise of great use to distinguish bodies that cannot be distinguished by our other senses, and to discern the changes which the same body undergoes, which, in many cases, are sooner perceived by taste and smell than by any other means. How many things are there in the market, the eating-house, and the tavern, as well as in the apothecary and chemist's shops, which are known to be what they are given out to be, and are perceived to be good or bad in their kind, only by taste or smell? And how far our judgment of things, by means of our senses, might be improved by accurate attention to the small differences of taste and smell, and other sensible qualities, is not easy to determine. Sir Isaac Newton, by a noble effort of his great genius, attempted, from the colour of opaque bodies, to discover the magnitude of the minute pellucid parts of which they are compounded: and who knows what new lights natural philosophy may yet receive from other secondary qualities duly examined? Some tastes and smells stimulate the nerves and raise the spirits: but such an artificial elevation of the spirits is, by the laws of nature, followed by a depression, which can only be relieved by time, or by the repeated use of the like stimulus. By the use of such things we create an appe- | hundred different wines, he would hardly tite for them, which very much resembles, find two of them that had precisely the and hath all the force of a natural one. It same taste. The same thing holds in cheese, is in this manner that men acquire an ap- and in many other things. Yet, of five petite for snuff, tobacco, strong liquors, hundred different tastes in cheese or wine, laudanum, and the like. we can hardly describe twenty, so as to give a distinct notion of them to one who had not tasted them. Nature, indeed, seems studiously to have set bounds to the pleasures and pains we have by these two senses, and to have confined them within very narrow limits, that we might not place any part of our happiness in them; there being hardly any smell or taste so disagreeable that use will not make it tolerable, and at last perhaps agreeable, nor any so agreeable as not to lose its relish by constant use. Neither is there any pleasure or pain of these senses which is not introduced or followed by some degree of its contrary, which nearly balances it; so that we may here apply the beautiful allegory of the divine Socrates-that, although pleasure and pain are contrary in their nature, and their faces look different ways, yet Jupiter hath tied them so together that he that lays hold of the one draws the other along with it. As there is a great variety of smells, seemingly simple and uncompounded, not only altogether unlike, but some of them contrary to others, and as the same thing may be said of tastes, it would seem that one taste is not less different from another than it is from a smell: and therefore it may be a question, how all smells come to be considered as one genus, and all tastes as another? What is the generical distinction? Is it only that the nose is the organ of the one and the palate of the other? or, abstracting from the organ, is there not in the sensations themselves something common to smells, and something else common to tastes, whereby the one is distinguished from the other? It seems most probable that the latter is the case; and that, under the appearance of the greatest simplicity, there is still in these sensations something of composition. If one considers the matter abstractly, it would seem that a number of sensations, or, indeed, of any other individual things, which are perfectly simple and uncompounded, are incapable of being reduced into genera and species; because individuals which belong to a species must have something peculiar to each, by which they are distinguished, and something common to the whole species. And the same may be said of species which belong to one genus. And, whether this does not imply some kind of composition, we shall leave to metaphysicians to determine. The sensations both of smell and taste do undoubtedly admit of an immense variety of modifications, which no language can express. If a man was to examine five Dr Nehemiah Grew, a most judicious and laborious naturalist, in a discourse read before the Royal Society, anno 1675, hath endeavoured to shew that there are at least sixteen different simple tastes, which he enumerates." How many compounded ones may be made out of all the various combinations of two, three, four, or more of these simple ones, they who are acquainted with the theory of combinations will easily perceive. All these have various degrees of intenseness and weakness. Many of them have other varieties; in some the taste is more quickly perceived upon the application of the sapid body, in others more slowly-in some the sensation is more permanent, in others more transient-in some it seems to undulate or return after certain intervals, in others it is constant ; the various parts of the organ-as the lips, the tip of the tongue, the root of the tongue, the fauces, the uvula, and the throat-are some of them chiefly affected by one sapid body, and others by another. All these, and other varieties of tastes, that accurate writer illustrates by a number of examples. Nor is it to be doubted, but smells, if examined with the same accuracy, would appear to have as great variety. undulations of elastic air are required, which must all be of equal duration and extent, and follow one another with perfect regularity; and each undulation must be made up of the advance and recoil of innumerable particles of elastic air, whose motions are all uniform in direction, force, and time. Hence we may easily conceive a prodigious variety in the same tone, arising from irregularities of it, occasioned by the constitution, figure, situation, or manner of striking the sonorous body; from the constitution of the elastic medium, or its being disturbed by other motions; and from the constitution of the ear itself, upon which the impression is made. A flute, a violin, a hautboy, and a French horn, may all sound the same tone, and be easily distinguishable. Nay, if twenty human voices sound the same note, and with equal strength, there will still be some difference. The same voice, while it retains its proper distinctions, may yet be varied many ways, by sickness or health, youth or age, leanness or fatness, good or bad humour. The same words spoken by foreigners and natives-nay, by persons of different provinces of the same nation-may be distinguished. Such an immense variety of sensations of smell, taste, and sound, surely was not given us in vain. They are signs by which we know and distinguish things without us; and it was fit that the variety of the signs should, in some degree, correspond with the variety of the things signified by them. It seems to be by custom that we learn to distinguish both the place of things, and their nature, by means of their sound. That such a noise is in the street, such another in the room above me; that this is a knock at my door, that a person walking up stairs-is probably learnt by experience. I remember, that once lying abed, and having been put into a fright, I heard my own heart beat; but I took it to be one knocking at the door, and arose and opened the door oftener than once, before I discovered that the sound was in my own breast. It is probable, that, previous to all experience, we should as little know whether a sound came from the right or left, from above or below, from a great or a small distance, as we should know whether it was the sound of a drum, or a bell, or a cart. Nature is frugal in her operations, and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct, to give us that knowledge which experience will soon produce, by means of a general principle of human nature. For a little experience, by the constitution of human nature, ties together, not only in our imagination, but in our belief, those things which were in their nature unconnected. When I hear a certain sound, I conclude immediately, without reasoning, that a coach passes by. There are no premises from which this conclusion is inferred by any rules of logic. It is the effect of a principle of our nature, common to us with the brutes. Although it is by hearing that we are capable of the perceptions of harmony and melody, and of all the charms of music, yet it would seem that these require a higher faculty, which we call a musical ear. This seems to be in very different degrees, in those who have the bare faculty of hearing equally perfect; and, therefore, ought not to be classed with the external senses, but in a higher order. Section II. OF NATURAL LANGUAGE. One of the noblest purposes of sound undoubtedly is language, without which mankind would hardly be able to attain any degree of improvement above the brutes. Language is commonly considered as purely an invention of men, who by nature are no less mute than the brutes; but, having a superior degree of invention and reason, have been able to contrive artificial signs of their thoughts and purposes, and to establish them by common consent. But the origin of language deserves to be more carefully inquired into, not only as this inquiry may be of importance for the improvement of language, but as it is related to the present subject, and tends to lay open some of the first principles of human nature. shall, therefore, offer some thoughts upon this subject. I By language I understand all those signs which mankind use in order to communicate to others their thoughts and intentions, their purposes and desires. And such signs may be conceived to be of two kinds : First, such as have no meaning but what is affixed to them by compact or agreement among those who use them-these are artificial signs; Secondly, such as, previous to all compact or agreement, have a meaning which every man understands by the principles of his nature. Language, so far as it consists of artificial signs, may be called artificial; so far as it consists of natural signs, I call it natural. Having premised these definitions, I think it is demonstrable, that, if mankind had not a natural language, they could never have invented an artificial one by their reason and ingenuity. For all artificial language supposes some compact or agreement to affix a certain meaning to |