INTRODUCTION. ON THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE; AND THE MODES AND MATERIALS USED BY THE ANCIENTS FOR TRANSMITTING KNOWLEDGE BEFORE THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. "How grateful is the search! with pride to trace Useful inventions, that exalt our race; ONE of the most distinguished privileges which Providence has conferred upon mankind, is the power of communicating their thoughts one to another. Destitute of this power, fason would be a solitary, and, in some measure, an unavailable principle. Speech is the great instrument by which man becomes beneficial to man, and it is by the intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself. If we carry our thoughts back to the first dawn of language among men, and reflect upon the feeble beginnings from which it must have arisen, and upon the many, and great obstacles which it must have encountered in its progress, we shall and reason for the highest astonishment, on viewing the height which it has attained. We admire several of the inventions of art-we plume ourselves on many discoveries which have been made in latter ages, serving to advance knowledge, and to render life comfortable; we speak of them, as the boast of human reason, but, certainly, no invention is entitled to any such degree of admiration as that of Language;-if, indeed, it can be considered as a hanan invention at all. The fountains Man is formed, as well internally as externally, for the communication of thoughts and feelings. He is urged to it, by the necessity of receiving, and by the desire of imparting whatever is useful or pleasant. His wants and his wishes cannot be supplied by individual Sower; his joys and his sorrows cannot be limited to individual sensation. This wisdom, and of his love, spontaneously flow, not only to fertilize the neighbouring *l, but to augment the distant ocean. But the mind of man, which is within him, can ay be communicated by objects which are without, by gestures, sounds, characters, more les expressive, and permanent,-instruments, not merely useful, for this particular se, but many times pleasing in themselves, or rendered so by the long continued tion of habit. These, reason adopts,-she combines,—she arranges,—and the result » Language. Speech, or the language of articulate sounds, is the most wonderful, the most delightful of the arts, thus taught by nature and reason. It is also the most perfect, it enables us, as B it were, to express things beyond the reach of expression;-the infinite range of beingthe exquisite fineness of emotion-and the intricate subtleties of thought. Of such effect are those shadows of the soul, those living sounds which we call words! Compared with these, how poor are all other monuments of human power-of perseverance—or skill—or genius! They render the mere clown an artist; nations immortal; orators poets; philosophers divine. As it is evident, that there is no instinctive articulated language, it becomes an inquiry of some importance, how mankind were first induced to fabricate articulate sounds; and to employ them for the purpose of communicating their thoughts. On this question, only two opinions can be formed. Language must either have been originally revealed from heaven, or the fruit of human invention. The greater part of the Jews, and the Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems so far to be supported by the authority of Moses, that he represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the names of animals. (GEN. ii. 19, 20.) The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. Amongst the moderns, Astle, in his celebrated work on the Origin and Progress of Writing, ranks foremost, for his elaborate defence of the human invention of alphabetical characters. The arguments of Mr. Astle, were, however, powerfully combated by an able critic in the Monthly Review, (Old Series) vol. lxxi. p. 271; Drs. Warburton, Delany, Johnson, Beattie, Blair, Gilbert Wakefield, Gale, in his Court of the Gentiles; Hartley, in his Observations on Man; Winder, in his History of Knowledge; Dr. Adam Clarke, in his Remarks on the Origin of Language; Horne, in his Introduction to the Study of Bibliography; the author of Conjectural Observations on the Origin and Progress of Alphabetical Writing; and Smith, of New Jersey, who think that language was originally from heaven, consider all accounts of its human invention as a series of mere suppositions, hanging loosely together, and the whole depending on no fixed principle. The opinions of the Greek and Roman writers, frequently quoted in support of the human invention of language, are of no greater authority than the opinions of other men; for as language was formed, and brought to a great degree of perfection, long before the era of any historian with whom we are acquainted; their authority, who are comparatively of yesterday, gives them no advantage, in this inquiry, over the philosophers of France and England. The oldest book extant, contains the only rational cosmogony known to the ancient nations; and that book represents the first human inhabitants of this earth, not only as reasoning and speaking animals; but also in a state of high perfection and happiness, of which they were deprived for disobedience to their Creator. Moses, setting aside his claim to inspiration, deserves, from the consistency of his narrative, at least as much credit as Mochus, or Democritus, or Epicurus; and from his higher antiquity, if antiquity on this subject could have any weight, he would deserve more, as having lived nearer to the ' period of which they all write. But the question respecting the origin of language may be decided, without resting on authority of any kind, merely by considering the nature of speech, and the mental and corporeal powers of man. Those who maintain language to be of human invention, suppose men, at first, to have been solitary animals, afterwards to have herded together without government or subordination, then to have formed political societies, and by their own exertions, to have advanced from the grossest ignorance to the refinements of science. But, say the reasoners, whom I har quoted in its defence, this is a supposition contrary to all history, and all experience. There is not upon record, a single instance, well authenticated, of a people emerging, by their own efforts, from barbarism to civilization. The original savages of Greece, were ted by the Pelasgi, a foreign tribe, and afterwards further polished by Orpheus, Cecrops, Cadmus, and others, who derived their knowledge from Egypt and the East. The ancient Romans, a ferocious and motley crew, received the blessings of law and religion from a succession of foreign kings-and the conquests of Rome, at a later period, contributed to civilize the rest of Europe. It is said, that before language could be invented, mankind must have existed for ages in large political societies, and have carried on, in concert, some common work; but if inarticulate cries, and the natural visible signs of the passions and affections, were modes of communication sufficiently accurate to keep a large society together for ages, and to direct its members in the execution of some common work, what could be their inducement to the invention of an art so useless and difficult as that of language? Men, who have not learned to articulate in their childhood, never afterwards acquire the faculty of speech, but by such helps as savages cannot obtain; and, therefore, if speech was invented at all, it must either have been invented by children, who seem incapable of invention, or by men who were incapable of speech;-a thousand, nay, a milion of children could not think of inventing a language; and, therefore, reason, as well as history intimates that mankind in all ages must have been speaking animals; the young having constantly acquired this art, from imitating those that were older; we may then, in despite of every assertion to the contrary, warrantably conclude, that our first parents received the blessing of language by Divine inspiration. There are several well authenticated cases on record of children having been found in solitary places, leading a brutish life, incapable of communicating ideas by language, and apparantly completely ignorant of all the social usuages of mankind. These remarkable instances exhibit how degraded and miserable is the condition of a human being, when its mind has been unformed by the example of others, and no moral or intellectual traing has been bestowed upon it. The two most striking examples of this unhappy state are those furnished by the individuals known by the names of PETER THE WILD BOY, and THE SAVAGE OF AVEYRON. The first was found in July, 1724, in a field belonging to a townsman of Hameln, naked, covered with a brownish black hair, apparently about twelve years of age, and uttering no sound. In October, 1725, he was sent for by George L. to Hanover, from whence he was escorted to London, and finally placed with a farmer in Hertfordshire, with whom he resided till his death in 1785. Peter could not be taught to speak; the plainest of the few articulate sounds he could utter were Peter ki she, and qui ca; the two latter being attempts at pronouncing King George and Queen Caroline. He was of middle size, somewhat robust in appearance, and strong, and had a good beard. He was fond of warmth and relished a glass of brandy. Peter was first in the act of sucking a cow, in the woods of Hanover. Queen Caroline, who ely interested herself about Peter, was very desirous of having him educated, and emplayed various masters to teach him to speak. After the Queen's death Government allowed a pension for him, and he was placed with Thomas Fen, a respectable farmer in Hertfordshire. He was accustomed in the spring of the year to wander away, subsisting on the green buds of trees, &c. His adventure in Norfolk, during one of these excursions, has been related, to which we may add that he was saved from the consequences of his supposed contumacy by some person reading in a newspaper an advertisement describing the missing Wild Boy. To prevent the recurrence of such serious adventures, he was provided with a brass collar, on which was inscribed "Peter the Wild Boy, Broadway Farm, Berkhampstead." When Peter was angry, he never attempted to strike or use his hands in any way, but always endeavoured to bite. Pleasure he expressed by kissing the object that excited his admiration. When pleased he would also often dance about, shaking his brass collar, and making a humming noise which he intended for singing, but in which it was difficult to trace an air. Painting delighted him, and he would imnediately kiss any object that was of vivid colours. He was passionately fond of music, and would endeavour to enter the room where any kind of music was performing, jumping and dancing to it. We have already described the extent of his vocabulary, to which he afterwards added "Hom Hen" (Tom Fen), intended for the name of the farmer whom he recognized as his master. Though quite harmless, Peter was sometimes sullen, and would never work if desired to do so; but, if nothing were said to him, he would often assist in the farm and do more work than three other men. He usually had bread and milk for supper, and as soon as he had taken it he always went up to bed; so that if he was wished out of the way, some bread and milk was given to him, and when he had finished it he would immediately go off to bed, even though it were still broad daylight. Peter could live on the simplest fare, but he much liked anything sweet, and any kind of confectionary. There is an anecdote, of his having made his way into a room where all the sweet things were laid out, that were prepared for a grand fête given to Lord Chatham; and when the second course was called for, Peter was discovered, with a large bowl, in which he had mixed pastry, jellies, creams, and other niceties, employed, quite to his own satisfaction, in eating the whole collection with his hands. Peter was capable of very sincere affection; for he became attached in an extraordinary manner to the farmer who succeeded Tom Fen in the charge of him; and when this person died, he went to his bed-side, raised his hands, and endeavoured to awaken him; but when he found his efforts unavailing, he went down stairs and seated himself by the chimney. What his ideas of death were, cannot be known; but he refused his food and pined away, till in a few days he actually died of grief,-for he never had any illness. The Savage of Aveyron was found in the forest of Cawne in the year 1801, being, it was supposed, about eleven or twelve years of age. He was quite naked, and seeking acorns and roots for food, was met by three huntsmen who laid hold of him at the moment he was climbing a tree to avoid his pursuers. In 1802 he was taken to Paris, where he excited great curiosity, and his actions furnished occasion to observations of the most interesting nature. Language is the expression of our ideas and their various relations by certain articulate sounds, which are used as the signs of those ideas and relations. By articulate sounds are meant, those modulations of simple voice emited from the thorax, which are formed by means of the mouth, and its several organs-the teeth-the tongue-the lips.—and the palate. In a more general sense, the word language is sometimes used to denote all sounds by which animals of any kind express their particular feelings and impulses, in a manner that is intelligible to their own species. The Divine author of nature has endowed every mimal with powers sufficient to make known all those of its sensations and desires, with which it is necessary for the preservation of the individual, or the continuance of the kind, that others of the same species should be acquainted. It is necessary for animals to how the voices of their enemies, as the voices of their friends, and the roaring of the lion is a sound, of which previous to experience, every beast of the forest is naturally afraid. Between these animal sounds and the language of men, there is however, very little analogy. Human language is capable of expressing ideas and notions, which there is every reason to believe that animal instinct cannot conceive. Every human language is learned by imitation, and is intelligible only, to those who either inhabit the country where it is venacular, or have been taught by a master, or by books; but the voices of animals are not learned by imitation, and being wholly instinctive, they are intelligible to all the animals of that species by which they are uttered, though brought together from the remotest parts of the world. That the barkings or yelps of a Lapland dog would be instinctively understood by the dogs of Spain, Calabria, India, or my other country,—but there is no reason to imagine, that a man who had never heard any language spoken, would himself speak; and it is well known that the language spoken in one country is unintelligible to the natives of another, where a different language is spoken. Herodotus, indeed, records a fact, which, could it be depended upon, would tend to overturn the above reasoning; as it infers a natural relation between ideas and certain articulate sounds. He tells us, that a King of Egypt, in order to discover which was the oldest language, caused two children newly born of poor parents, to be brought up by a shepherd amongst his cattle, with a strict injunction that they should never hear a human voice, and that at the end of two years, they pronounced, at the same time, the word signifying bread. This is one of the many fables of that credulous historian. The exercise of cultivated reason, and the arts of civil life, have, indeed, eradicated many of our original instincts, but they have not eradicated them all. There are external indications, of the internal feelings and desires which appear in the most polished society, ad which are confessedly instinctive. The passions, emotions, sensations, and appetites, are naturally expressed in the countenance, by characters which the savage and the courtier can read with equal readiness. The look serene, the smothered brow, the dimpled smile, and the glistening eye, denote equanimity and good will, in terms which no man mistakes. The contracted brow, the glaring eye, the sullen gloom, and the threatening air, denote rage, indignation, and defiance, as plainly and forcibly, as revilings or imprecations. To teach to disguise their instinctive indications of their temper, and "to carry smiles and wine in their face, when discontent sits heavy at their heart," constitute a great part of modern and refined education. The words of language are either proper names, or the signs of ideas or relations; but i cant be supposed, that the Allwise instructor, would load the memories of men with wed to denote things then unknown, or the signs of ideas which they had not then apred. It was sufficient that a foundation was laid, of such a nature, as would support the zest superstruction which they might ever have occasion to raise upon it. |