252 The Origin of Language. [SEPT. 



we have no subject of complaint, other than that against the German mode 

 of analysis, argument, and illustration, of which these pages afford us so many 

 examples! Very many of these subordinate parts have our admiration ; 

 while, from others, we are turned away by what we describe as the national 

 difference of thinking and expression. 



It may be observed that the question proposed, at least as it is here given 

 in English, does not regard the actual fact of the " Origin of Language," but 

 only the hypothetical inquiry, " Whether, if man had been left to his 

 natural unassisted powers, he could have invented language for himself?" 

 For ourselves, we say, that man did invent language for himself, simply as 

 he invented walking for himself! He walked, because he had feet; and 

 he spoke, because he had a tongue. He walked, because he felt the im- 

 pulse or the inducement to walk ; and he spoke, because he felt the impulse 

 or the inducement to speak. God, when he gave man feet and a tongue, 

 and the motives to use both, sent man into the world fully qualified both to 

 walk and to speak. But man cultivates both his walk and his speech ; and 

 the cultivation of speech has produced that whole science and variety of 

 words to which we give the collective name of language, or the action or 

 produce of the tongue. 



M. Von Herder is of the same general opinion with ourselves ; but his 

 arguments and modes of expression are not always equally to our taste. 

 He calls language " a sense of the mind ;" while we should call it a 

 product consequent upon " sense" that is, we speak, because we feel or 

 think ; and, unless there is some error in. the translation, we think our 

 philosopher singularly unhappy and forced, both in his doctrine and in his 

 proof, when (p. 41) he tells us, that " man invented his own language 

 from the tones of living nature :" 



" I ask whether the following truth, viz. that the intelligence by which man 

 rules over nature, was the parent of a living language, which he abstracted as 

 distinguishing signs, from the tones of every creature which uttered sounds ? I 

 ask, whether in the oriental style, this dry proposition could have been more 

 nobly and beautifully expressed than ' God brought the beasts of the field to 

 Adam, to see what he would call them, and whatsoever he called them, that was. 

 the name thereof.' In the oriental style, it can scarcely be more precisely said, 

 ' man invented his own language from the tones of living nature, thus forming, 

 marks for his sovereign intellect.' And this is just what I endeavour to prove." 



This text and context of Genesis, indeed, plainly imply that God did 

 not teach man language, but absolutely called upon him to exercise a 

 faculty which he already enjoyed ; and, as to the names which Adam gave 

 to the " beasts of the field," they might, or might not, express his ideas 

 concerning them, either as to their figure, their size, their habits, their 

 tones, or any other characteristic ; and, by the way, there is, in this place, 

 some danger of confounding language with thought things which M. Von 

 Herder insists upon as naturally identical. If we were to say that God 

 invented the words or names which Adam proposed (a supposition contrary 

 to the text), and if Adam's names expressed his thoughts, then we must 

 attribute to the Divinity, first, the invention of the thought, and next, of 

 the word or name to convey it; or, if we suppose the thought arising natu- 

 rally in the mind of Adam that is, from the nature of the mind which 

 Cod had given him then all that remained was to invent the name or word 

 which should express the thought. 



Our author treats the " Confusion of Tongues," or, as it has otherwise 

 been translated, the Confusion of Lips." as " a poetical fragment for the 

 archaeology of the history of nations ;" but we cannot think him more 



