Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/64

 are uttered, in a sense varying from that of the speaker by many shades of difference. Thought, symbolised in words, is subjected, first, to those conditions that attach to language from the universal ambiguity, or the convertible import of language; and then to the indistinctness of the speaker's conceptions, and of the hearer's also. Yet when a perfectly intelligible and familiar fact is affirmed in words that are intended to be understood in their literal, or primitive sense, we may loosely say that such utterances are unconditioned; as thus—Brutus stabbed Csesar in the senate-house at Rome. Julius Caesar, with his legions, landed in Britain. William of Normandy did the like with his Normans centuries later.

It is otherwise in affirmations such as the following—The main principles of political economy, as taught by Adam Smith, rest upon a rock, and will never be overthrown. The great principle of religious liberty, as embodied in Locke's First Letter on Toleration, have hitherto, and will ever defy the utmost efforts of intolerant hierarchies to shake them. The aristocracy of England is the pillar of the British monarchy:—the throne and the aristocracy must stand or fall together. In affirmations of this kind the Thought of the speaker or writer—that is to say, his ultimate intention—is conditioned by its conveyance in terms that are wholly figurative, and which therefore must await,