EAELY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 247 



it was an addition of great importance, for, in comparison with 



it, the other natural modes of communicating ideas are insis;- 



r> 



mficant. Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon, lan- 

 guage, as the communication of ideas, was no new gift of the 

 Creator to man ; and in speech itself, when we judge of it as' 

 a natural fact, we see only a result of some of those superior 

 endowments of which so many others have fallen to our lot 

 through the medium of a superior organization. 



The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in 

 speech is that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and 

 mouth, which enables us to produce the various sounds re- 

 quired. Man started at first with this organization ready for 

 use, a constitution of the atmosphere adapted for the sounds 

 which that organization was calculated to produce, and, last, 

 but not least, a mental power prompting to, and giving direc- 

 tions for, the expression of ideas. Such an arrangement of 

 mutually adapted things was as likely to produce sounds as an 

 Eolian harp placed in a draught is to give forth tones. It was 

 unavoidable that human beings so organized, and in such a 

 relation to external nature, should utter sounds, and also come 

 to attach to these conventional meanings, thus forming the 

 elements of spoken language. The great difficulty which has 

 been felt, is to account for man going in this respect beyond 

 the inferior animals. There could have been no such difficulty, 

 if speculators in this class of subjects had looked into physio- 

 logy for an account of the superior vocal organization of man, 

 and had they obtained a true science of mind to show man 

 possessing a faculty for the expression of ideas which is only 

 rudimental in the lower animals. Another difficulty has been 

 in the consideration that, if men were at first utterly untutored 

 and barbarous, they could scarcely be in a condition to form 

 or employ language an instrument which it requires the 

 fullest powers of thought to analyze and speculate upon. This 

 difficulty comes strangely from those who can see none in the 

 miraculous imparting of a full vocabulary to beings as yet 

 possessing but a portion of the ideas which an entire language 

 represents. But, in reality, it is not necessary to suppose the 

 fathers of our race as early attaining to great proficiency in 

 language ; and, in the second, language itself seems to be 

 amongst the things least difficult to be acquired, if we can form 

 any judgment from what we see in children, most of whom 

 have, by three years of age, while their information and judg- 

 ment are still very imperfect, mastered and familiarized them- 



