must be previously taught, before man could become a rational creature; and none could teach him but God. (Scholar Armed; vol. i. p. 140.) Locke's principles concerning the nature of language, although he did not see his way with sufficient clearness to lead him to the right conclusion, the last named writer proves to be perfectly correspondent to the above reasoning. (Ibid. pp. 138, 139.) And in an able work published at Berlin by Susmilchius in 1766, the same principles are successfully applied to establish the same conclusion; namely, that the origin of language must have been divine. Even Hobbes admits, that "the first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight." (Leviath. ch. iv. p. 12.) From the impossibility of conceiving how language could have been invented, some have been led, in opposition to all just reasoning, to pronounce it innate. Many even of the ancients, totally unaided by revelation, were obliged to confess, that the discovery of this art exceeded all human powers. Thus Socrates, in the Cratylus of Plato, is represented as saying, "the first names were framed by the gods;" and in the same work we are told, that "the imposition of names on things, belonged to a nature superiour to that of man," and that it could "pertain only to him, who hath a full discernment of their several natures."-Pol. Syn. on Gen. ii. 19.-Stilling. Orig. Sac. B. i. ch. i. sec. 3.-and Euseb. Prap. Evang, lib. xi. cap. 6.

It must be remarked, that they who hold the opinion, that language is of mere human invention, are for the most part obliged to proceed on suppositions of the original state of man, totally inconsistent with the Mosaick history. Thus, amongst the ancients, Diodorus Siculus, (Biblioth. lib. i.) Vitruvius, (De Archit. lib. ii. cap. 1, 2.) Lucretius, &c. ground their reasonings upon an idea, (derived from the atomick cosmogony of Moschus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which represented human beings as springing from the earth like vegetables,) that men first lived in woods and caves like brute beasts, uttering only cries and indistinct noises, until gradual association for mutual defence, brought with it at length conventional signs for communication. And the respectable and learned, though strangely fanciful, author of the Origin and Progress of Language, who is among the latest that have written in defence of this opinion, is compelled to admit, that the invention of language is too difficult for the savage state of man; and accordingly he holds, that men having been placed originally in a solitary and savage state, must have been associated for ages, and have carried on some common work, and even framed some civil polity, and must have continued for a considerable length of time in that state, so as ultimately to acquire such powers of abstraction as to be able to form general ideas, before language could possibly be formed. Now whether such theories, in supposing a mute emergence from savage barbarism to reflecting civilization, and a

continued association* without an associating tie, prove any thing else than their own extravagance; and by the prodigious difficulty and delay which even they attach to the invention of speech, whether they do not give strong confirmation to the Mosaick, account, which describes man as destined for the immediate enjoyment of society, and consequently instructed in the art of speech; it is for the reader to judge.

Other writers again, Condillac, (in his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge,) Batteaux, (in his Principles of Literature,) and Gebelin, (in his Monde Primitif,) maintain, that man is not by nature the mutum pecus he is represented by the Scotch philosopher: but that sounds, either excited by passions, or produced by imitation, would necessarily be formed, so as to constitute an inarticulate language; which would ultimately suggest the idea, and supply the elements of more perfect speech. The transition, however, from the simple sound to the diversified articulation, is still a wide chasm in each of these solutions. And whilst the range of the passions seems on the one hand to present a limit, which the powers of communication, derived from that source, cannot be conceived to transcend: the various sounds and motions in nature must, on the other, be admitted to exhaust the models, which alone could draw forth the imitative powers of the human voice. So that, according to these theories, single tones, or cries, either excited by some passion or formed in imitation of some natural sound, must in all just reasoning fill up the measure of human language. * It is not easy then to discover any advantage possessed by these theories, over that of Lord Monboddo, and the ancient Epicurean Philosophers. The latter but represent the human kind originally placed in the condition of brutes; the former seem careful to provide that it should never rise above that condition.

As it may be matter of curiosity, to know in what manner these writers endeavour to explain the transition from mere vocal sounds to articulate speech, it may be proper to subjoin here a specimen taken from one of them, by no means the least distinguished in the literary world, the Abbé De Condillac. He admits the operation to be extremely tedious, for that "the organ of

Dr. Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetorick, (vol. i. p. 71.) makes the following just and apposite observations:-"One would think, that in order to any language fixing and extending itself, men must have been previously gathered together in conside rable numbers: society must have been already far advanced: and yet, on the other hand, there seems to have been an absolute necessity for speech, previous to the formation of society. For, by what bond could any multitude of men be kept together, or be made to join in the prosecution of any common interest, until once, by the intervention of speech, they could communicate their wants and intentions to each other? So that, either how society could form itself, previously to language, or how words could rise into a language, previously to society being formed, seem to be points attended with equal difficulty. And when we consider, &c. difficulties increase so much upon us on all hands, that there seems to be no small reason for referring the first origin of all language to divine teaching or inspiration."

speech, (in grown persons,) for want of early use, would be so inflexible that it could not articulate any other than a few simple sounds: and the obstacles which prevented them from pronouncing others, would prevent them from suspecting that the voice was susceptible of any further variation." Now it may be fairly asked, would not these obstacles for ever prevent any articulations, or even sounds, beyond those which the passions might excite, or other sounds suggest? How is this difficulty, which has been fairly admitted by the author, to be removed? He shall answer for himself. The child, from the pliancy of its vocal organs, being freed from the obstructions which incapacitated the parent, will accidentally fall upon new articulations in the endeavour to communicate it's desire for a particular object; the parent will endeavour to imitate this sound, and affix it as a name to the object, for the purpose of communicating with the child: and thus by repeated enlargements of articulation in successive generations, language would at length be produced.*

* It should be remarked, that were even all that is here contended for admitted to be practicable, language in the true sense of the word is not yet attained. The power of designating an individual object by an appropriate articulation, is a neces sary step in the formation of language, but very far removed indeed from its consummation. Without the use of general signs, the speech of man would differ little from that of brutes: and the transition to the general term from the name of the individual, is a difficulty which remains still to be surmounted. Condillac, indeed, proposes to show, how this transition may be made, in the natural course of things. "Un enfant appelle du nom d'Arbre le premier arbre que nous lui montrons. Un second arbre qu'il voit ensuite lui rappelle la même idée; il lui donne le même nom; de même á un troisième á un quatrième, et voilà le mot d'Arbre donné d'abord à un individu, qui devient pour lui un nom de classe ou de genre, une idée abstraite qui comprend tous les arbres en général." In like manner Adam Smith, in his Dissertation on the Origin of Languages, and Mr. Dugald Stewart, in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, endeavour to explain this process, representing those words which were originally used as the proper names of individuals, to be successively transferred to other individuals, until at length each of them became insensibly the common name of a multitude. This however is more ingenious than solid. The name given to an individual, being intended exclusively to designate that individual, it is a direct subversion of its very nature and design, to apply it to any other individual, known to be different from the former. The child, it is true, may give the name of father to an individual like to the person it has been taught to call by that name: but this is from mistake, not from design; from a confusion of the two as the same person, and not from a perception of resemblance between them whilst known to be different. In truth, they whose thoughts are occupied solely about individual objects, must be the most eareful to distinguish them from each other; and, accordingly, the child will most peremptorily retract the appellation of father, so soon as the distinctness is observed. The object with those, whose terms or signs refer only to individuals, must naturally be to take care, that every such term or sign shall be applied to its appropriate individual, and to none else. Resemblance can produce no other effect, than to enforce a greater caution in the application of the individual names, and therefore has no natural tendency to lead the mind to the use of general terms. It may be thought, indeed, that the idea of number, attaching to individuals of a similar appearance, might naturally lead to some general designation, whereby the aggregate of those individuals might be marked out. But it should be recollected, that the very notion of number, which seems one of the commonest and most familiar to the mind, does itself presuppose a class, since objects cannot be enumerated unless previously referred to some one genus or class, or, which is the same thing, unless they are previously expressed by

Such is the solution of the origin of language which human philosophy presents; sending us to the accidental babble of infancy, for the origination of that which it confesses must exceed the power of the imagination to invent, and of the organs of the man accomplish: inverting the order of nature by supposing the adult to learn the art of speech by imitation of the nursling; and in addition to all, building upon the gratuitous assumption, that the child could utter articulations undirected by any pre-existing model.On such reasoning it cannot be necessary to enlarge.

to

Besides, to all those theories which maintain the human invention of language, the test of experience may fairly be applied. We may safely challenge their authors to produce in their support a single fact; a single instance in the whole range of history, of any human creature's ever using articulate sounds as the signs of ideas, unless taught, either immediately and at once by God, or gradually by those who had been themselves instructed. That there have been instances of persons, who, possessing all the natural powers of mind and body, yet remained destitute of speech from the want of an instructor, there can be no question. Diodorus Siculus, (lib. iii. sec. 19. p. 187. tom. 1. Wessel.) informs us of an entire nation, wanting the use of speech, and communicating only by signs and gestures. But not to urge so extraordinary a fact, Lord Monboddo himself, in his first volume, furnishes several well attested instances; and relates particularly the case of a savage, who was caught in the woods of Hanover, and who, though by no means deficient either in his mental powers or bodily organs, was yet utterly incapable of speech. Had man then been left solely to the operation of his own natural powers, it is incumbent upon these writers to show, that his condition would have differed, as to speech, from that of the Hanoverian savage.

As for those writers who admit the Mosaick account, and yet attribute to Adam the formation of language, unassisted by divine instruction, they seem to entertain a notion more incomprehensi ble than the former; inasmuch as the first exercise of language by the father of mankind, is stated to have preceded the production of Eve, and cannot, consistently with the scripture account, be supposed to have been long subsequent to his own creation. So that according to these theorists, he must have devised a medium of communication, before any human being existed with whom to communicate: he must have been able to apply an organ unexercised and inflexible, to the arduous and delicate work of articulation: and he must at once have attained the use of words, without those multiplied preparatory experiments and concurring aids,

some common sign. Since, then, mere resemblance will not lead to the use of general terms; and since the notion of number actually presupposes the existence of general terms; it follows, that the transition from proper names to general terms, cannot be accounted for in the way in which these writers have endeavoured to explain it.

which seem on all hands admitted to be indispensable to the discovery and production of speech.

To remedy some of these difficulties, it has been said, that the faculty of speech was made natural to man as his reason, and that the use of language was the necessary result of his constitution. If by this were meant, that man spoke as necessarily as he breathed, the notion of an innate language must be allowed, and then the experiment of the Egyptian king to discover the primitive language of man, must be confessed to have had its foundation in nature: but if it be merely meant, that man was by nature invested with the powers of speech, and by his condition, his relations, and his wants, impelled to the exercise of these powers, the difficulty returns, and all the obstacles already enumerated oppose themselves to the discovery of those powers, and to the means by which he was enabled to bring them into actual exertion. It may perhaps add strength to the observations already made upon this subject, to remark, that the author who has maintained this last mentioned theory, and whose work, as containing the ablest and most laborious examination of the question, has been crowned with a prize by the academy of Berlin, and has been honoured with the general applause of the continental literati, has utterly failed, and is admitted to have failed, in that which is the grand difficulty of the question. For whilst he enlarges on the intelligent and social qualities of man, all fitting him for the use of language; the transition from that state which thus prepares man for language, to the actual exercise of the organs of speech, he is obliged to leave totally unexplained. (See the account given of the Essay of Herder on the origin of language, in Nouveaux Memoirs de l'Acad. Roy. &c. de Berlin, 1771-and again, an Analysis of that work by M. Merian, in the vol. of the same Memoirs for the year 1781.) Enough, perhaps more than enough, has been said, in answer to those theories and objections which have been raised in opposition to that, which scripture so obviously and unequivocally asserts, namely, the divine institution of language.

To these arguments of the learned Dr. Magee, we may add the following brief observations, which occur in a small pamphlet, presented to the Editor by his friend the late John Dickinson, Esq. the elegant author of the Pennsylvania Farmer's Letters.-With respect to the question, says he, whether articulate speech, and the method of rendering our ideas visible by symbols called letters, are immediate revelations or human inventions, these things are certain.

1st. That the five books of Moses are the most ancient compositions, and the most early specimens of alphabetical writing, if we except the book of Job, which, some contend, was written before the Pentateuch.