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Starting from this principle, the first enquiry naturally is, what is it which ordinary children acquire in learning a language? Not words merely, for words are not valuable for their own sake, but for that of their significancy. As the signs of ideas, words are valuable; for they enable their possessor at any moment to awaken in the mind of another, the precise notion which exists in his own; and thus constitute a palpable evidence, that both have before them, at once, the same object of contemplation.

The child, in learning language, has, then, to make an acquisition much more important than that of words -- the acquisition of ideas. It is, furthermore, essential that his ideas should be identical with those of other men, and that, for both, they should attach themselves to the same words. These conditions are equally essential to the utility of language. Unless they exist, no one can be certain that he is understood; nor will words supply the evidence, they are usually supposed to do, that two minds are, at the same moment, occupied with the same idea.

In this remark, it may not be amiss here to observe, we have a probable clue to the origin of much of the misunderstanding and controversy, which interrupts the harmony of those, whose real opinions are not materially at variance, and who would else be friends. Whole folios of polemics spring into existence, because an unfortunate word represents one thing for one man, and another thing, differing from the former "but in the estimation of a hair," for another.

Such differences are evils in some degree necessary, and resulting from the constitution of things. For while the child, in early life, is engaged unconsciously in acquiring ideas, he is, so to speak, his own teacher: or rather he is learning without a teacher at all; he is carrying on a series of inductions upon the language of his fellow-men. The same may be said in reference to much of what his gains in later years. The number of ideas thus independently acquired may be loosely estimated, by considering, how great a part of the words, any individual believes himself to understand, have been unconsciously treasured up. Corresponding to each of these, the individual must, also unconsciously, have imbibed one or more ideas, right or wrong. Years of attentive observation are often necessary to perfect the notion associated in his mind with a single word. He is, in the meantime, conscious in many cases, of the successive modifications which this notion undergoes, in its transition from stage to stage of gradually diminishing errour. He is ultimately assured of its correctness, by observing its uniform fitness for the circumstances, in which he finds the corresponding word introduced among men.

Mere words, then, are but a subordinate part of the knowledge, which ordinary children gather up in early life; since they exist only in consequence of the pre-existence of the ideas, of which they are the registers and the instruments. The idea and the word stand to each other in the relation of soul and body The one manifests itself through the other; the former is the essence, the latter, the abiding-place and organ.

But the mere possession of ideas, even with corresponding signs, is nor all that is necessary to the intercommunication of minds. The objects of our knowledge exist in certain states, they present themselves to our judgements in certain relations, and they often act upon and affect each other's modes of existence, or their own. All these circumstances are variable. For every possible variation, there must be either a new nomenclature, or a single given set of words must be made to assume corresponding variations, either by the aid of auxiliaries, or by a change of form, or of position, or of both. Hence originates the science of grammar.

The circumstances just enumerated constitute a class of general notions, many of which have to represent them, no particular words; but rather a certain order of collocation, or certain inflections, of whatever words may be before the mind. These notions are laws of construction: they constitute the syntax of a language.

Though a part of our ideas, they are not, in general, distinctly abstracted, or made the prominent objects of our contemplation: they are nevertheless recognized in each individual case, and thus they render us a constant and silent service, indispensable to the power of communicating our thoughts. They enable us, by combination in phrases and sentences, to supply the deficiencies of our vocabularies; and it is, in fact, but a wide extension of the principle of generalization to say, that all sentences whatever, are but individual, though complex signs, in lieu of which, a perfect nomenclature, were such a creation possible, would possess only single words, and would constitute a language, in which the necessity of syntax would no longer be felt. Could we suppose the infinite mind to employ signs like our own as the instrument of thought, instead of grasping all things by the power of intuition, we might presume it to avail itself of precisely such a nomenclature. The supposition, however, implies an absurdity; and to a finite mind, moreover, were it otherwise, the construction and the attainment of a language so boundless, would be alike impossible. Syntax is, therefore, a necessary part of every conventional mode of expressing ideas among men. A practical acquaintance with it is attained by speaking children, quite as imperceptibly as any other part of their knowledge, and almost simultaneously with words.