S I R T H O M A S U R Q U H A R T
_____________________________________________from THE JEWEL
(1652)
The matter of the Preface begun after this manner
as it was divided into several Articles.
1. Words are the signes of things, it being to signifie that they were instituted at first; nor can they be, as such, directed to any other end whether they be articulate or inarticulate.
2. All things are either real or rational and the real either natural or artificial.
3. There ought to be a proportion betwixt the signe and thing signified. Therefore should all things, whether real or rational, have their proper words assigned unto them.
4. Man is called a microcosme because he may by his conception and words containe within him the representatives of what in the whole world is comprehended.
5. Seeing there is in nature such affinity 'twixt words and things as there ought to be in whatever is ordained for one another, that language is to be accounted most conform to nature which with greatest variety expresseth all manner of things.
6. As all things of a single, compleat being by Aristotle into ten classes were divided, so may the words whereby those things are to be signified be set apart in their several store-houses.
7. Arts, sciences, mechanick trades, notional faculties and whatever is excogitable by man have their own method, by vertue whereof the learned of these latter times have orderly digested them. Yet hath none hitherto considered of a mark whereby words of the same faculty, art, trade or science should be dignosced from those of another by the very sound of the word at the first hearing.
8. A tree will be known by its leaves, a stone by its grit, a flower by the smel, meats by the taste, musick by the ear, colours by the eye, the several natures of things with their properties and essential qualities by the intellect; and accordingly as the things are in themselves diversified, the judicious and learned man, after he hath conceived them aright, sequestreth them in the several cels of his understanding, each in their definite and respective places.
9. But in matter of the words whereby those things are expressed, no language every hitherto framed hath observed any order relating to the thing signified by them; for if the words be ranked in their alphabetical series, the things represented by them will fall to be in several predicaments; and if the things themselves be categorically classed, the word whereby they are made known will not be tyed to any alphabetical rule.
10. This is an imperfection incident to all the language that ever yet have been known; by reason whereof, foraign tongues are said to be hard to learn and, when obtained, easily forgot.
11. The effigies of Jupiter in the likeness of a bull should be liker to that of Io metamorphosed into a cow then to the statue of Bucephalus which was a horse; and the picture of Alcibiades ought to have more resemblance with that of Coriolanus being both handsome men, then with the image of Thersites who was of a deformed feature. Just so should things semblable in nature be represented by words of a like composure; and as the true, intelligible species do present unto our minds teh similitude of things as they are in the object, even so ought the word expressive of our conceptions so to agree or vary in their contexture as the things themselves, which are conceived by them, do in their natures.
12. Besides this imperfection in all languages, there is yet another — that no language upon the face of the earth hath a perfect alphabet, one lacking those letters which another hath, none having all, and all of them in cumulo lacking some. But that which makes the defect so much the greater is that these same few consonants and vowels commonly made us of are never by two nations pronounced after the same fashion . . .
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