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trials, this too was brought to subjection—and thus the work was at length carried so far forward that the single step, or the few steps, which remained to be taken, were within the power of an individual mind. When one of us now undertakes to invent a language (as in fact happens from time to time), it is as if one who had been all his life an engineer should sit down to invent a steam-engine: he does nothing but copy with trifling modifications a thing which he is already familiar with; he reärranges the parts a little, varies their relative dimensions, uses new material for one and another of them, and so on—perhaps making some improvements in matters of minor detail, but quite as probably turning out a machine that will not work. To call upon a man who has never spoken to produce a complete language is like setting a wild Fijian or Fuegian at constructing a power-loom or a power-press; he neither knows what it is nor what it will be good for. The conditions of the problem which is set before the language-makers are manifest: man is placed in the midst of creation, with powers which are capable of unlocking half its secrets, but with no positive knowledge either of them or of himself; with apprehensions as confused, with cognitions as synthetic, as are those of the lower animals; and he has to make his way as well as he can to a distinct understanding of the world without and the world within him. He accomplishes his task by means of a continuous process of analysis and combination, whereof every result, as soon as it is found, is fixed by a term, and thus made a permanent possession, capable of being farther elaborated, and communicated by direct instruction. It is necessary to study out what needs to be expressed, as well as the means of its expression. Even the naming of concrete objects, as we saw, demands an analysis and recognition of their distinctive qualities; and to find fitting designations for the acts and relations of the external sensible world, and then, by an acute perception of analogies and a cunning transfer, to adapt those designations to the acts, states, and relations of the intellectual and moral world within the soul, was not an easy or rapid process; yet, till this was measurably advanced, the mind had no instrument with which it