But there was a time when, through lack of words, we compressed our thought
into a single word. The child says to his father, _up_, meaning, _Take me
up into your lap_; or, _book_, meaning, _This thing in my hand is a book_.
These first words always deal with the things that can be learned by the
senses; they express the child's ideas of these things.
We have spoken of thoughts and sentences; let us see now whether we can
find out what a thought is, and what a sentence is.
A sentence is a group of words expressing a thought; it is a body of which
a thought is the soul. It is something that can be seen or heard, while a
thought cannot be. Let us see whether, in studying a sentence, we may not
learn what a thought is.
In any such sentence as this, _Spiders spin_, something is said, or
asserted, about something. Here it is said, or asserted, of the animals,
spiders, that they spin.
The sentence, then, consists of two parts,--the name of that of which
something is said, and that which is said of it.
The first of these parts we call the +Subject+ of the sentence; the second,
the +Predicate+.
Now, if the sentence, composed of two parts, expresses the thought, there
must be in the thought two parts to be expressed. And there are two: viz.
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