440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ters were also a divine gift given to Adam ; "but as we go on in 

 the eighteenth century we find theological opinion inclining to 

 the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses. This, as we 

 have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom ; and an eminent 

 English divine early in the eighteenth century, John Johnson, 

 Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning the alphabet, 

 that " Moses first learned it from God by means of the lettering 

 on the tables of the law." But here a difficulty arose : the biblical 

 statement that God commanded Moses to " write in a book as de- 

 creed concerning Amalek " before he went up into Sinai. With 

 this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes that God had 

 previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount Horeb, and that 

 Moses, " when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout, had free access 

 to these tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not 

 permitted to carry them down with him." Our author then asks 

 for what other reason could God have kept Moses up in the 

 mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to write ; and 

 says, "It seems highly probable that the angel gave him the 

 alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown to us be- 

 came his guide." 



But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other 

 parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology 

 based upon researches in India, began to be re-enforced by facts 

 regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions 

 of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folk-lore of China, 

 where it was found in their sacred books that the animals were 

 named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every 

 name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal. 



But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were 

 still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory 

 of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a tremendous 

 onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be " degrad- 

 ing to our nature." He says that the theory of the natural devel- 

 opment of language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' 

 poetry. But his main weapon is ridicule, and in this he shows 

 himself a master. He tells the world, " The following paraphrase 

 has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to 

 have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves " : 



" When men out of the earth of old 

 A dumh and beastly vermin crawled ; 

 For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, 

 They tooth and nail, and helter skelter, 

 Fought fiot to fist ; then with a club 

 Each learned his brother brute to drub ; 

 Till, more experienced grown, these cattle 

 Forged fit accoutrements for battle. 



