On the nature of thought, or the act of thinking, and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence / [John Haslam].

  • Haslam, John, 1764-1844
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature of thought, or the act of thinking, and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence / [John Haslam]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cant, there is no one but may become the key¬ stone in a sentence; and therefore a word blotted out in a perspicuous, that is, a properly constructed sentence, would render it unintelligible. To the composition of a sentence, whatever may be the thought, certain words are absolutely necessary, each containing an individual meaning; which, like a sum in addition, composed of different units, each possessing a separate and intrinsic value, may, when added together, produce the total. To those who have not attentively considered the subject, there is considerable difficulty in understanding how a determinate number of words can include the intelligence contained in a proposition or sen¬ tence : and especially how these components of separate significations can become connected for such general and comprehensive meaning. It should be recollected that such is the amazing in¬ closure of language, that it comprehends all the living and inanimate materials of this world, all that perception can detect, memory recall, or thought elaborate. This exposition includes the present posture of human affairs, and the move¬ ments we observe:—much that has heretofore oc¬ curred, which the characters of language have pre¬ served unfaded from dark and remote ages: and are competent to transmit to a distant posterity, with accumulated interest: all that experience has amassed, accompanied with the consoling promises d 2