Whenever the nature of the subject permits our reasoning processes to be, without danger, carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while in the contrary case, it should be so constructed that there shall be the greatest possible obstacles to a merely mechanical use of it.
I am aware that this maxim requires much explanation, which I shall at once proceed to give. And first, as to what is meant by using a language mechanically. The complete or extreme case of the mechanical use of language, is when it is used without any consciousness of a meaning, and with only the consciousness of using certain visible or audible marks in conformity to technical rules previously laid down. This extreme case is nowhere realized except in the figures of arithmetic and the symbols of algebra, a language unique in its kind, and approaching as nearly to perfection, for the purposes to which it is destined, as can, perhaps, be said of any creation of the human mind. Its perfection consists in the completeness of its adaptation to a purely mechanical use. The symbols are mere counters, without even the semblance of a meaning apart from the convention which is renewed each time they are employed, and which is altered at each renewal, the same symbol _a_ or _x_ being used on different occasions to represent things which (except that, like all things, they are susceptible of being numbered) have no property in common. There is nothing, therefore, to distract the mind from the set of mechanical operations which are to be performed upon the symbols, such as squaring both sides of the equation, multiplying or dividing them by the same or by equivalent symbols, and so forth. Each of these operations, it is true, corresponds to a syllogism; represents one step of a ratiocination relating not to the symbols, but to the things signified by them. But as it has been found practicable to frame a technical form, by conforming to which we can make sure of finding the conclusion of the ratiocination, our end can be completely attained without our ever thinking of anything but the symbols. Being thus intended to work merely as mechanism, they have the qualities which mechanism ought to have. They are of the least possible bulk, so that they take up scarcely any room, and waste no time in their manipulation; they are compact, and fit so closely together that the eye can take in the whole at once of almost every operation which they are employed to perform.