The article, αρθρα, partakes of the nature of pronouns; and in apposition or concord with another name, either active or substantive, determines it to be a substantive, or the name of a substance, with its identity and number.
There are two sorts of articles, viz. _the_ and _an_; an becomes _a_ or _any_ before a consonant, and either of them being placed in apposition to an active convertible name, convert it into a substantive, as _to form_ into _a form_, _to chase_ into _a chase_. And, names being first formed in the plural number, both these then stood as signs of the singular number; but since plural names have been taken as singular, and new signs have been added thereto to form plurals, _the_ is also put in apposition to plural names, to indentify the person or thing meant or spoken of.
Example; Some may still imagine _the_ signification of _an_ article or _a_ letter, and perhaps more compound names to be indefinable, and the article to be useless; tho’ _the_ definitions here given thereof evidently shew _the_ contrary; and the Greeks and Romans not only made use of the genders ο, η, το, and hic, hæc, hoc, but also of a declining article at the end of nouns, as the Welsh did _un_ and _yr_, which last before a consonant sunk into y _the_, inflecting with the following radical consonant; and other nations have made use of the article. _To_ dispute the utility of the article seems therefore absurd, but it may be _a_ dispute, whether either determine _any_ particular individual, or only some third person alluded to, pointed at, meant or spoken of in discourse, or in the line of possession; ο, η, το, hic, hæc, hoc, this, that, yr, un, le, ein and der expressing as much.
A Noun Substantive denotes a substance, as a spirit, an animal, a vegetable, or any other thing that may be conceived to subsist, as _agreeableness_, _agility_, _acceleration_; which, tho’ their qualities, _agreeable_, _agile_, _accelerate_, are indefinite or indeterminate, yet by the signs, _ness_, _ty_, _ion_, signifying substances, properties, and the sun’s motion, acquire such a determinate meaning as to become substantives, and to shew their meaning without being joined with any other word. And all names, whether of substances, qualities, or other things, to which the articles _an_ or _the_, or any other substantive signs are joined or set in apposition, are nouns substantive.