Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/467

 Rh languages, ancient and modern, but purify and enlighten the intellectual atmosphere, furnish an antidote to the poison of metaphysical subtlety, and prevent words from imposing upon us "or flying back like Tartar's bows and mightily entangling the understanding;" and last, not least, convert bewildered and bewildering Aristotelian philosophlings into useful mechanics or harmless gentlemen.' His views were set forth in two pamphlets entitled, Reason the True Arbiter of Language, and The Labyrinth Demolished, or the Pioneer of Rational Philology, published in 1815; and he then entered on the formidable task of carrying out his principles in a new Dictionary of the English language, or Etymologic Interpreter, with an Introduction 'containing a full development of the Principles of Etymology and Grammar.' This Introduction was published separately as a precursor of the Dictionary in 1824. I will venture to give one brief extract, both as a taste of the writer's quality, and because it contains, as a friend well qualified to judge assures me, a clear anticipation of the doctrine of relativity, since developed at large by Professor Bain. 'As almost every expression (if there be any exception) is elliptical; so with almost every word (if here also any exception exist) there are several ideas associated in the mind of those who employ it, besides the individual idea which it was employed to indicate. The reason of this is too obvious to require any metaphysical abstrusity of theory or of explication. There is no such entity in either the natural or moral, physical or metaphysical world, as disconnected individuality. There is not any one single entity, be it an object of our senses, a sensation, an idea, a preception, a notion, or whatever you may choose to call it, which can exist alone or in absolute solitude, and separation from company. However much, therefore, it may be intended as the sole or exclusive object or indication of any verbal sign, or of any contrivance whatever, it is, after all, but one of a flock or group: it may be the first or largest of the flock, it may be the most