FROM SAVAGE TO CIVILIZED LIFE. 



human faculties are competent to the formation of a language, yet his purpose is 

 only to trace the steps which men, left entirely to themselves, would be likely to 

 follow, in then- first attempts to communicate their ideas to each other.* 



Now, if it has been ascertained beyond doubt that speech is purely imitative ; 

 if the cases of individuals who have been born deaf, and, in consequence of never 

 hearing articulate sounds, are themselves dumb, be taken into consideration, it does 

 not appear how mute savages could, in any length of time, learn the use of arti- 

 culate signs. And the cases Avhich have occurred of human beings, left at an 

 early age to their own resources, afford further evidence that the acquisition of 

 speech by individuals in that situation was hopeless, f 



It is certain, therefore, that the use of speech must have been an attribute of 

 the first pair ; and that, whatever was the future progress of language, its origin 

 cannot be referred to the untaught ingenuity of dumb savages, but must start at 

 a point when articulate speech was equal to all the physical and intellectual 

 wants and enjoyments of man. It has been observed by more than one author 

 of eminence, that the general analogy which runs through all the forms of human 

 speech is in favour of the idea of its being an original attribute of our first pa- 

 rents. "Whence has arisen that analogy," says Mr STEWART, "which runs 

 through the mixture of languages spoken by the most remote and unconnected 

 nations, and those peculiarities by which they are all distinguished from each 

 other ?"t "From the country of the Eskimoes to the banks of the Oroonoko," 

 says M. HUMBOLDT, " and again, from these torrid banks to the frozen climate of 

 the Straits of Magellan, mother tongues, entirely different with regard to roots, 

 have (if we may use the expression) the same physiognomy. "$ " With man," 

 observes Dr FERGUSON, who differs from most of the writers I have named on this 



* Lord MONBODDO sets out with the proposition, that articulation is altogether the work of art or 

 habit, and that ages must have elapsed before language was invented. Origin and Progress of Lan- 

 guage, i. 71. 



The result of an experiment made by one of our kings (JAMES IV.), and recorded by LINDSAY of 

 Pitscottie, of sending two children under the care of a dumb woman, to be reared on the island of Inch- 

 keith till they came of age, is not mentioned. But there can be no doubt of its termination. They were 

 expected to speak Hebrew. (Chronicles of Scotland, p. 250. By ROBERT LINDSAY of Pitscottie. Edin- 

 burgh, 1814.) 



" Were it possible," says Dr SMITH, "that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some so- 

 litary place, without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own cha- 

 racter, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his 

 own mind, than of the beauty or deformity of his own face." (Theory of Moral Sentiments, i. 277, 278.) 



f See account of Peter the Wild Boy, and other instances, in MONBODDO'S work on the Origin and 

 Progress of Language. Edinburgh, 1773> 



+ Life of ADAM SMITH, LL.D. p. 47. 4to> Edinburgh, 1811. 



Personal Narrative, iii. 245. 



VOL. XV. PART I. 3 D 



