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“Here babbling Insight shouts in Nature’s ears

His last conundrum of the orbs and spheres;

There Self-inspection sucks his little thumb,

With ‘Whence am I?’ and ‘Wherefore did I come?’”[61]

With readers of such a temperament it is idle to reason, nor do we expect that, while the world lasts, ignorance will cease to take itself for knowledge, and denounce what it cannot understand. To others we will merely say that these inquiries have occupied, and are still occupying in an increasing degree, some of the most profound and sober intellects in Europe, and that (in the words of Plato) ‘wise men do not usually talk nonsense.’

With this remark, let us proceed to our first question: How came sounds—mere vibrations of the atmosphere—to be accepted as signs, i.e. to be used as words?

But (as one inquiry leads us back, perpetually, to another, even until “all things end in a mystery”), we must here again pause for a moment to ask what is a word? So vast an amount has been written in answer to this inquiry, that it is obviously impossible to do more than state the conclusion[62] we adopt, with a mere hint as to the ground on which we adopt it.