1

of natural sounds, and by the instinctive utterances which all violent impressions produce alike in animals and in men. The reason why new words, except of an imitative kind, are not invented is because every word involves a long history from its sensational origin to its final meaning, and the result without the process is felt to be a contradiction and an impossibility. This is why all attempts to frame an artificial language have been a failure, and the ponderous schemes of Kircher, and Becker and Dalgarno, and Wilkins, and Faignet, and Letellier can only move us to a smile, because they are based on a conventional theory of language which is utterly mistaken. This, too, is the reason why language is stronger than emperors, and Tiberius 2 could neither give the citizenship to a word, nor Claudius 3 procure acceptance even for a useful letter. A radically new word to have any chance of obtaining currency must of necessity be of an imitative character. It is a curious fact that some of the tribes on the coast of New Guinea derive even the names which they give to their children from direct imitations of the first sounds or cries which they utter.

We are surely entitled then to draw secure inferences from the facts hitherto observed, and those inferences

For an account of their systems see Du Ponceau, Mém. sur le Syst. Gram. de quelques Nations Indiennes, pp. 26-31, 320. Hallam, Lit. Eur. iii. 362; and Letellier, Établissement immédiat de la Langue

Universelle.

2 Tu enim Cæsar civitatem potes dare hominibus, verbis non potes,' said Capito to Tiberius.-Sueton. De Illustr. Gram.

3 Claudius vainly tried to introduce into the Roman alphabet an antisigma X, with the value Ps. 'pro qua Claudius Cæsar Antisigma > hac figurâ scribi voluit, sed nulli ausi sunt antiquam scripturam mutare. --Priscian, i. De Literarum Numero et Affinitate.

4

Salverte, Hist. of Names, i. 62. Engl. Transl.

may be summed up in the observation that animals were among the first objects to receive names, and that, in the absence of any previous words, they could not have been named except by onomatopoetic designations. This we have endeavoured to render strong and secure by many proofs, drawn both à priori from the nature of the case, and from the analogies presented by the methods in use among children and among savages; and à posteriori from the phenomena which have invariably recurred when, in the course of history, a condition of circumstances has been reproduced which in any way resembles that which must have existed in the case of primal man,

As we have here arrived at a sort of landing-place, we may devote a separate chapter to consider the full bearing of the conclusions thus formed. In so doing, we are not digressing from the main point, but rather we are removing a groundless prepossession which would lie in the road of all further advance, and we are at the same time calling attention to one of those important facts which it is the object of philology to illustrate or discover.

For, obviously, if language was a human invention, and was due to a gradual development, there must have been a time in man's history when he was possessed of nothing but the merest rudiments of articulate speech; in which, therefore, he must have occupied a lower grade than almost any existing human tribe. This is a conclusion which cuts at the root of many preconceived

theories. Thus, Lessing1 remarks that God is too good to have withheld from his poor children, perhaps for centuries, a gift like speech; and M. de Bonald asks how we can suppose that a Good Being could create a social animal without remembering that he ought also from the first moment of his existence to inspire him with the knowledge necessary to his individual, social, physical, and moral life.' Such reasoners, therefore, reject the doctrine of the human origin of language as alike an injustice to God and an indignity to man.

In answer to such 'high priori' reasonings, it might be sufficient to say that we are content, for our part, humbly to observe and record what God has done, rather than to argue what He ought to do or ought not to do, incompetent as we are in our absolute ignorance 'to measure the arm of God with the finger of man.' Claiming for ourselves the character of observers only, and desirous to accept the results to which our enquiries directly lead, without any regard to system or prejudice, we might easily repudiate assumptions which rest on the mere sandy basis of systematic prejudice. It is childish arrogance in us to argue what plans are consonant to, and what are derogatory of God's Divine Power and Infinite Wisdom. Seeing that we have not the capacity for understanding that which is, it is preposterous in us to argue on any general principles as to what must have been. Perfect humility and perfect faith, a faith in Truth which seems to have the least power in many the loudest champions of a supposed orthodoxy,—are the first elements of scientific success. The problems and mysteries which encumber all our enquiries, the

1 Sämmtl. Schriften, Bd. x.

of

adamantine wall against which we dash ourselves in vain whenever we seek to penetrate the secrets of the Deity, should at least prevent us from following Lessing and M. de Bonald in laying down rules of our own, in accordance with which we fancy that God MUST inevitably have worked.

Moreover, if language was a Revelation and not an Invention, at what period in man's life was it revealed? If, indeed, man was, according to the Chaldee paraphrast, created ‘a speaking intelligence' (see p. 10), we get over this difficulty, though it is only at the expense of an absurdity, and by making the Bible contradict itself. But if not, there must have been a time, on any supposition, when man wandered in the woods a dumb animal, till God bethought Him of inspiring language. Surely such a view is even less pious than that of Lucretius himself. Any one,' says Steinthal,' 'who thinks of man without a Language' [or, he should have added, the capacity for evolving a language] 'thinks of him as one of the Brutes; so that any one who calls down the Deity as his teacher of Language, gives Him only an animal as a scholar.' In other words, unless man was born speaking,-(and it is apparent in Scripture that language was subsequent to creation),—then, even on this theory, man must have once been destitute of a language, and must, therefore, on this theory also, have emerged from a condition of mutism. Why then should a similar belief be held an insuperable objection to a theory so certain as the human discovery of language? It is forsooth an insult to the dignity of man and a slur on the beneficence of God to suppose that

1 Urspr. d. Sprache, p. 40.