27 July 1814

Logic

2

Ch.3.III. Operations

'.7.VI. Communication

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2

The hearing - its organ, the ear - the sight - its organ, the eye - the touch - its organ, the skin, and more particularly the skin of the hand - to all these senses has what is called discourse been made to address itself. Audible, visible, and tangible - such accordingly has respectively been the nature of the signs of which in these several cases discourse, this organ of the mind, has been composed.

Till a comparatively late point in the time[?] of human existence, of all those sorts of signs, those which address themselves to the ear were almost the only ones in actual existence: to the infinite multitude and variety of these, the few that as yet in those days addressed themselves immediately to the eye formed but a feeble supplement, and a still more feeble and inadequate succedaneum.

Through the medium of the French word Langue - a tongue, Language - in French Langage - the discourse of the tongue - is derived from the Latin, lingua, a tongue. When addressed to the ear, it is from the tongue that the discourse addresses itself. For discourse, for the product of the operation called discourse, in the form in which it addresses itself to the eye, as contradistinguished from that in which it addresses itself to the ear, neither the French, nor the Latin, nor the English, affords any proper appellative.

French or English language - French or English tongue - if applied to the contents of a manuscript or a printed book - a palpable contradiction and inconsistency will, upon consideration, be found involved in any one of these expressions.

Yet for these solicisms however palpable as they are, the demand is frequent, and so urgent, as scarcely to be resisted.