sense, like the essentials, is positive, unalterable, and cannot be
submitted to any jurisdiction; it is a law to itself; it is ever the
same; even an Act of Parliament cannot alter it.

Words, and even usages in style, may be altered by custom, and
proprieties in speech differ according to the several dialects of
the country, and according to the different manner in which several
languages do severally express themselves.

But there is a direct signification of words, or a cadence in
expression, which we call speaking sense; this, like truth, is
sullen and the same, ever was and will be so, in what manner, and in
what language soever it is expressed. Words without it are only
noise, which any brute can make as well as we, and birds much
better; for words without sense make but dull music. Thus a man may
speak in words, but perfectly unintelligible as to meaning; he may
talk a great deal, but say nothing. But it is the proper position
of words, adapted to their significations, which makes them
intelligible, and conveys the meaning of the speaker to the
understanding of the hearer; the contrary to which we call nonsense;
and there is a superfluous crowding in of insignificant words, more
than are needful to express the thing intended, and this is
impertinence; and that again, carried to an extreme, is ridiculous.

Thus when our discourse is interlined with needless oaths, curses,
and long parentheses of imprecations, and with some of very indirect
signification, they become very impertinent; and these being run to
the extravagant degree instanced in before, become perfectly
ridiculous and nonsense, and without forming it into an argument, it
appears to be nonsense by the contradictoriness; and it appears