Part 4 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
”Tot fallaciis obrutum, tot hallucinationibus demersum, tot adhuc tenebris circumfusum studium hocce mihi visum est, ut nihil satis tuto in hac materia praestari posse arbitratus sim, nisi nova quadam arte critica praemissa”--SCIPIO MAFFEIUS: _Cassiod Cos is, forpoint in their history Ain of speech, it has been ift from Heaven, or an acquisition of industry--a natural endow that has ever yet been said upon it, sufficient to set the question permanently at rest That there is in soe, a natural connexion between the sounds uttered and the things signified, cannot be denied; yet, on the other hand, there is, in the use of words in general, so much to which nature affords no clew or index, that this whole process of coht by speech, seems to be artificial Under an other head, I have already cited frora of that zealous instructor, the following sentence from Dr Blair very obviously accords: ”To suppose words invented, or nas, in a round or reason, is to suppose an effect without a cause There nation of one name rather than an other”--_Rhet_, Lect vi, p 55
2 But, in their endeavours to explain the origin and early progress of language, several learnedwhom is this celebrated lecturer, have needlessly perplexed both themselves and their readers, with sundry questions, assus, which are manifestly contrary to what has been nifies it[18] for a man to tell us how nations rude and barbarous invented interjections first,[19] and then nouns, and then verbs,[20] and finally the other parts of speech; when he hie ”can be considered a huht to have believed, that the speech of the first mented by those who afterwards used it, was, essentially, the one language of the earth for e _de novo_, could surely have fallen upon no arden of Paradise, had doubtless some aids and facilities not common to every wild man of the woods
3 The learned Doctor was equally puzzled to conceive, ”either how society could fore, or hoords could rise into a language, previously to society formed”--_Blair's Rhet_, Lect vi, p 54
This too was but an idle perplexity, though thousands have gravely pored over it since, as a part of the study of rhetoric; for, if neither could be previous to the other, theyup simultaneously And it is a sort of slander upon our priest, that, because he was ”_the first_,” he must have been ”_the rudest_” of his race; and that, ”consequently, those first rudiments of speech,” which alone the supposition allows to him or to his family, ”must have been poor and narrow”--_Blair's Rhet_, p 54 It is far more reasonable to think, with a later author, that, ”Adas far beyond the acutest philosopher, asof na to their different constitutions”--_Robinson's Scripture Characters_, p 4
4 But Dr Blair is not alone in the viehich he here takes The saested by other learned men Thus Dr James P Wilson, of Philadelphia, in an octavo published in 1817, says: ”It is difficult to discern how coe, and equally so to discover how language could have obtained, in a peopled world, prior to society”--_Wilson's Essay on Gram_, p 1 I know not how so ion too, with the Bible in their hands, can reason upon this subject as they do We find the to represent prie_, whose 'howl at the appearance of danger, and whose exclaht of his prey, reiterated, or varied with the change of objects, were probably the origin of language'--_Booth's analytical Dictionary_ In the dawn of society, ages may have passed aith little more converse than what these efforts would produce”--_Gardiner's Music of Nature_, p 31 Here Gardiner quotes Booth with approbation, and the latter, like Wilson, ht by a rave, learned, and oracular, that the last of the ten parts of speech was in fact the first: ”_Interjections_ are exceedingly interesting in one respect
They are, there can be little doubt, _the oldest words_ in all languages; and may be considered the elements of speech”--_Bucke's Classical Gram_, p 78 On this point, however, Dr Blair seems not to be quite consistent with hira and passionate s of speech”--_Rhet_, Lect vi, p 55 ”The _naes_, the words most early introduced”--_Rhet_, Lect xiv, p 135 ”The _names of sensible objects_,” says Murray too, ”were the words most early introduced”--_Octavo Gram_, p 336 Bat what says the Bible?
5 Revelation inforenitor was not only endoith the faculty of speech, but, as it would appear, actually incited by the Deity to exert that faculty in giving _naround the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam, to see what he would call the creature, that was the naave names to all cattle, and to the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a help meet for hi of the other creatures by man, is apparently a parenthesis in the story of the creation of woman, hich the second chapter of Genesis concludes But, in the preceding chapter, the Deity is represented not only as calling all things into existence _by his Word_; but as _speaking to the first human pair_, with reference to their increase in the earth, and to their do creatures formed to inhabit it So that the order of the events cannot be clearly inferred from the order of the narration The manner of this communication to man, may also be a subject of doubt Whether it was, or was not, made by a voice of words,the world and its inhabitants, manifested his own infinite wisdom, eternal power, and Godhead, does not lack words, or any other nification, if he will use the, he is certainly represented, not only as na, but as expressly calling the light _Day_, the darkness _Night_, the firs of the hty waters _Seas_
6 Dr Tho a work by Dr Ellis, concerning the origin of hu, says: ”It shows satisfactorily, that religion _and language_ entered the world by divine revelation, without the aid of which, ious creature”--_Study of the Scriptures_, Vol i, p 4 ”Plato attributes the priin;”
and Dr Wilson remarks, ”The transition fro too great for man”--_Essay on Gram_, p 1
Dr Beattie says, ”Mankindto speak by i those ere older; and, if so, our first parents must have received this art, as well as some others, by inspiration”--_Moral Science_, p 27 Horne Tooke says, ”I iine that it is, _in sohts, as with the vehicles for our bodies Necessity produced both”--_Diversions of Purley_, Vol i, p 20 Again: ”Language, it is true, _is an art_, and a glorious one; whose influence extends over all the others, and in which finally all science whatever inally invented by artless men, who did not sit down like philosophers to invent it”--_Ib_, Vol i, p 259
7 Milton i fro of his own voice; and that voice to have been raised, instinctively, or spontaneously, in an aniin--an inquiry in which he addresses to unintelligent objects, and inferior creatures, such questions as the Deity alone could answer:
”Myself I then perused, and limb by limb Surveyed, and sometior led: But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not; _to speak I tried, and forthwith spake; My tongue obeyed, and readily could naht, And thou enlightened Earth, so fresh and gay, Ye Hills and Dales, ye Rivers, Woods, and Plains; And ye that live and move, fair Creatures! tell, Tell, if ye sa careat Maker then, In goodness and in power preeminent: Tell me how I may know him, how adore, From whom I have that thus I move and live, And feel that I am happier than I know'”
_Paradise Lost_, Book viii, l 267
But, to the is not to philosophy We have not always thehow far he _literally_ believes what he states
8 My own opinion is, that language is partly natural and partly artificial And, as the following quotation froree to illustrate it, I present the passage in English for the consideration of those who may prefer ancient to modern speculations: ”In the sameis so positive; and as wood exists in nature, but a door is so positive; so is the nification of ideas by nouns or verbs is so positive And hence it is, that, as to the si vocal sound--which is as it were the organ or instrue or volition--as to this vocal power, I say, man seems to possess it from nature, in like nificantly nouns or verbs, or sentences co these, (which are not natural but positive,) this he possesses by way of peculiar es partakes of a soul which can move itself, and operate to the production of arts So that, even in the utterance of sounds, the inventive power of the ant compositions, both in metre, and without metre, abundantly prove”--_Ammon de Interpr_, p 51[21]
9 Man was made for society; and from the first period of human existence the race were social Monkish seclusion is e, is properly denominated a state of nature, only in contradistinction to that state in which the arts are cultivated
But to civilized life, or even to that which is in any degree social, language is absolutely necessary There is therefore no danger that the language of any nation shall fall into disuse, till the people by whom it is spoken, shall either adopt some other, or become themselves extinct
When the latter event occurs, as is the case with the ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the language, if preserved at all from oblivion, becomes the more per to ie, have ceased to operate upon those which are learned only from ancient books The inflections which now coes, and which indeed have ever constituted the peculiar characteristics of those forms of speech, es, its language, as did our forefathers in Britain, producing by a gradual aues a new one differing froras from the steady application of rules; and polish is the work of taste and refine the exaerae both of the history and of the present state of the science which they profess to teach I therefore think it proper rapidly to glance at s remote indeed in time, yet nearer to my present purpose, and abundantly more worthy of the student's consideration, than a thousand rammar by the authors of treatises professedly elementary
11 As we have already seen, soe radual But of this they offer no proof, and froainst it Did Adaive names to all the creatures about hiotten? Did not both he and his fainal nouns in their social intercourse? and how could they use them, without other parts of speech to form them into sentences? Nay, do we not know from the Bible, that on several occasions our prient man, and used all the parts of speech which are now considered _necessary_? What did he say, when his fit partner, the fairest and loveliest work of God, was presented to him? ”This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woain: Had he not other words than nouns, when he ression: ”I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid roundless assunorant savages, and to affirm, with Dr
Blair, that ”their speech must have been poor and narrow?” It is not possible now to ascertain what degree of perfection the oral coes are non to improve in proportion to the ience, and as we cannot reasonably suppose the first inhabitants of the earth to have been savages, it seeue was at least sufficient for all the ordinary intercourse of civilizedin the simple manner ascribed to our early ancestors in Scripture; and that, in many instances, huinal standard
12 At any rate, let it be ree spoken on earth, whatever it was, originated in Eden before the fall; that this ”one language,” which all men understood until the dispersion, is to be traced, not to the cries of savage hunters, echoed through the wilds and glades where Niarden of God's own planting, wherein grew ”every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;” to that paradise into which the Lord God put the new-created man, ”to dress it and to keep it” It was here that Adam and his partner learned to speak, while yet they stood bla; free in the exercise of perfect faculties of body and h observation and experience, and also favoured with i nothing which he did not receive, could not originally bring any real knowledge into the world with hiree attained, must be, and must always have been, either an acquisition of reason, or a revelation fro of so, ”That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual”--_1 Cor, xv, 46_ That is, the spirit of Christ, the second Adam, was bestowed on the first Adaht of the imht of men,” a life which our first parents forfeited and lost on the day of their transgression ”It was undoubtedly in the light of this pure influence that Ada of the creation, as enabled hi to their several natures”--_Phipps, on Man_, p 4 A lapse froe of good withdrawn, and of evil ression Abandoned then in great measure by superhuman aid, and left to contend with foes without and foes within, mankind became what history and observation prove them to have been; and henceforth, by painful experience, and careful research, and cautious faith, and hue_; by a vain desire and false conceit of which, they had forfeited the tree of life So runs the story
”Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose ht death into the world, and all our wo, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat”
13 The analogy of words in the different languages non, has been thought by est the idea of their coreat; but perhaps not greater, than the differences in the several races offrom one common stock From the same source we learn, that, till the year of the world 1844, ”The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech”--_Gen_, xi, 1[22] At that period, the whole world of ht souls who had been saved in the ark, and so ht as had survived the flood one hundred and eighty-eight years Then occurred that remarkable intervention of the Deity, in which he was pleased to confound their language; so that they could not understand one an other's speech, and were consequently scattered abroad upon the face of the earth This, however, in the opinion of many learned es
14 But, whether new languages were thus immediately formed or not, the event, in all probability, laid the foundation for that diversity which subsequently obtained a froarded as the remote cause of the differences which now exist But for the iin of the peculiar characteristical differences which distinguish the various languages noe are not able with much certainty to account Nor is there even rammarians who have attempted to explain the order and manner in which the declensions, the es, were first introduced They caenerally known, and the partial introduction of them could seldom with propriety be made a subject of instruction or record, even if there were letters and learning at hand to do thenorance, than to for that is absurd or impossible For instance: Neilson's Theory of the Moods, published in the Classical Journal of 1819, though it exhibits ingenuity and learning, is liable to this strong objection; that it proceeds on the supposition, that the ues, were invented in a certain order by persons, not speaking a language learned chiefly fro a new one as necessity pro of Babel, has this ever happened? That no dates are given, or places rets, but he cannot eneral, and especially the minor parts of speech, have becoinal and proper signification according to their derivation, the etyist may often show to our entire satisfaction Every word in and history; and he who in such things can explain with certainty what is not commonly known, may do some service to science But even here the utility of his curious inquiries may be overrated; and whenever, for the sake of soions of conjecture, or allows himself to be seduced from the path of practical instruction, his errors are obstinate, and his guidance is peculiarly deceptive Men fond of such speculations, and able to support the, have done enious teachers from the best ether Etyical inquiries are ie theuage words must needs be of the same class, or part of speech, as that to which they may be traced in an other, deserves to be rebuked The words _the_ and _an_ h obviously traceable to so else in Saxon; and a learnedthat _if, though_, and _although_, are not conjunctions, but verbs!