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Show 116 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. 1'he next the fleeting images select Of action, suffering, causes and effect; Or mark existence, with the march sublime O'er earth and ocean of recording TIME. CANTO III. " The GIANT FoRM on Nature's centre stands, And waves in ether his unnumber'd hands; Whirls the bright planets in their silver spheres, And the vast sun round other systems steers; Till the last trump amid the thunder's roar ,, Sound the dread Sentence "TIME SHALL BE NO MORE· " Last steps Abbreviation, bold and strong, 39 1 And leads the volant trains of words along; With sweet loquacity to HERMES springs, . And decks his forehead and his feet with wings. VII. " As the soft lips and pliant tongue are taught With other minds to interchange the thought; CANTO III. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. And sound, the symbol of the sense, explains In parted links the long ideal trains; Frotn clear conceptions of external things The facile power of Recollection springs. 117 400 "Whence REASON's empire o'er the world presides, And man from brute, and man from man divides; In parted liulcs, I. 398. As our ideas consist of successive trains of the motions, or changes of figure, of the extremities of the nerves of one or more of our senses, as of the optic or auditory nerves; these successive trains of motion, or configuration, are in common life divided into many links, to each of which a word or name is ~iven, and it is called an idea. This chain of ideas may be broken mto more o~ fewer links, or divided in different parts of it, by the customs of d1ffcrent people. vVhence the meanings of the words of one language cannot always be exactly expressed by those of another; and hence the acquirement of different languages in their infancy may affect the modes of thinking and reasoning of whole nations, or of different classes of society; as the words of them do not accurate)y suggest the same ideas, or parts of ideal trains; a circumstance which has not been sufficiently analysed. lVflence Reason's empire, I. 401. The facility of the use of the voluntary power, which is owing to the possession of the clear ideas acquired by our superior sense of touch, and afterwards of vision, distinguishes man from brutes, and has given him the empire of the world, with the power of improving nature by tl1e exertions of art. Reasoning is that operation of the sensorium by which we excite two or many tribes of ideas, and then reexcite the ideas in which they differ or correspond. If we determine this difference, it is |