Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

306 LOGOPANDECTEISION.
6. As all things of a single compleat being by Aristotle into ten classes were divid-
ed, so may the words whereby those things are to be signified be set apart in their
several storehouses.
7. Arts, sciences, mechanick trades, notionall 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 severall natures of
things, with their properties and essentiall 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 severall eels of his understanding, each
in their definite and respective places.
9. But in matter of the words whereby those things are expressed, no language
ever hitherto framed hath observed any order relating to the thing signified by them ;
for if the words be ranked in their alphabeticall series, the things represented by them
will fall to be in severall 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 languages that ever yet have been
known ; by reason whereof, forraign tongues are said to be hard to learn, and when
obtained, easily forgot.
1 1. The effigies of Jupiter in the likenesse of a bull, should be liker to that of lo
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 the simili-
tude of things as they are in the object, even so ought the words 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 lan-
guage 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 use of are never by two nations pronounced after the
same fashion ; the French A with the English being the Greek lira, and the Italian
B with the Spanish, the Hebrew vau.
13. This is that which maketh those of one dominion so unskilful in the idiome ot