22 Jany. 1816

Chrestom or Language

Ch. 2. Uses of this end

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Thus much being premised, I proceed to bring to view the order in which the principal and most comprehensive topics - viz. those in which, taken together, all others will be included - will follow one another in the ensuing pages.

I. Modes or forms of which discourse or language has been found susceptible, viz. audible, visible, and their respective substitutes.

II. Uses of language viz. 1. Primary or social: viz. communication of the matter of thought from mind to mind. 2. Secondary or solitary viz. 1. Recordative of the matter of thought. 2. Improvement of thought viz. always with a view to action: otherwise the improvement is no better but imaginary not real.

III. Operations performable in relation to discourse or language: viz. 1. Employing in the ordinary manner, 2. Choosing for use. 3. Learning. 4. Teaching. 5. Improving.

IV. Different occasions on which it may be desirable that language should be respectively applied to the several sorts of uses to which it is applicable viz. 1. Simple information, applying to the conception. 2. Probation, applying to the judgement. 3. Gratification, applying to the sensitive faculty. 4. Excitation, applying to the will through the medium of the affections and the passions.

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