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that is, lies in a different mind, and must be hit on as the thing meant, by the sagacity of that mind. "We are as one who puts together a complicated machine by a printed description and directions before him. Careful observation is required to determine the parts referred to, and failing of this, all is confusion. Yet in this illustration the parts are fixed, separate, with a permanent, independent existence; while the parts of a complex, mental state admit of various divisions, or may disappear altogether, like some rivet in the dust of the shop. To attach words, therefore, to their objects; to unite the two so that there shall be no escape for either, is a delicate and uncertain process. The ambiguity of words embarrasses all forms of statement and reasoning, but is never elsewhere the source of so much idle discussion and fruitless inquiry as in philosophy.

A further obstacle presented by language is, that it comes to mental phenomena saturated with the imagery of the external world. Words are born amid sensible facts, and thence transferred to the mind. They come, therefore, to this new service with the images and associations acquired in the old. They subserve a popular, familiar use only the more aptly for this reason. It is when they are made the subject of careful analysis, when they are treated as the exact expression of the thing named, that their physical root and relations reveal themselves disastrously. The mind reaching this interior analogical thread of interpretation is pleased by it, and overlooks the fact, that investigation is thus sure to be led astray; to be turned entirely from true mental phenomena, and to be sent wandering among their shadows and reflections in the external world. Thus, from the very beginning, every discussion concerning liberty has been embarrassed, and in most instances has miscarried, through the application to motives and desires, in a figurative sense, of words begotten amid the necessary