3.  But to this it may be replied, When God wills, the signs of knowledge are knowledge; and words, when he gives the ability to understand them, may, in some sense, become—­“spirit and life.”  See John, vi, 63.  Where competent intellectual faculties exist, the intelligible signs of thought do move the mind to think; and to think sometimes with deep feelings too, whether of assent or dissent, of admiration or contempt.  So wonderful a thing is a rational soul, that it is hard to say to what ends the language in which it speaks, may, or may not, be sufficient.  Let experience determine.  We are often unable to excite in others the sentiments which we would:  words succeed or fail, as they are received or resisted.  But let a scornful expression be addressed to a passionate man, will not the words “call internal feelings” into action?  And how do feelings differ from thoughts?[29] Hear Dr. James Rush:  “The human mind is the place of representation of all the existences of nature which are brought within the scope of the senses.  The representatives are called ideas.  These ideas are the simple passive pictures of things, or [else] they exist with an activity, capable of so affecting the physical organs as to induce us to seek the continuance of that which produces them, or to avoid it.  This active or vivid class of ideas comprehends the passions.  The functions of the mind here described, exist then in different forms and degrees, from the simple idea, to the highest energy of passion:  and the terms, thought, sentiment, emotion, feeling, and passion, are but the verbal signs of these degrees and forms.  Nor does there appear to be any line of classification, for separating thought from passion:  since simple thoughts, without changing their nature, do, from interest or incitement, often assume the colour of passion.”—­Philosophy of the Human Voice, p. 328.

4.  Lord Kames, in the Appendix to his Elements of Criticism, divides the senses into external and internal, defining perception to be the act by which through the former we know outward objects, and consciousness the act by which through the latter we know what is within the mind.  An idea, according to his definition, (which he says is precise and accurate,) is, “That perception of a real object which is raised in the mind by the power of memory.”  But among the real objects from which memory may raise ideas, he includes the workings of the mind itself, or whatever we remember of our former passions, emotions, thoughts, or designs.  Such a definition, he imagines, might have saved Locke, Berkley, and their followers, from much vain speculation; for with the ideal systems of these philosophers, or with those of Aristotle and Des Cartes, he by no means coincides.  This author says, “As ideas are the chief materials employed in reasoning and reflecting, it is of consequence that their nature and differences be understood.