PROGUESS OK LANGUAGE. 157 



of the continent of America, as far as investigations have been made, 

 are found to behmg to one family. So also, in an equally satisiatory 

 manner, is explained the state of the languages of the Indian Archipelago. 

 Much, however, remains yet to be accomplished. The unity of the hu- 

 man race, and, by consequence, the unity of languages, is satisfactorily 

 shown from the investigations into the natural history of man, into 

 which we cannot now enter. 



The opinion held by many distinguished writers, and among the 

 rest by Dr. Blair, that the primary yuite of language was extremely de- 

 fective, and that, in the progress of many thousand years, it attained per- 

 fection by gradual development, as 1 have already stated, is not based 

 upon the history or nature of language. 



For, first, the experience of several thousand years does not afford a 

 single example of spontaneous development in any speech. Wherever 

 we meet language, we find it complete as to its essential and character- 

 istic qualities. If an alteration do take place, it is only by the springing 

 up of a new language, Phoenix-like, out of the ashes of another, as the 

 Jtalian out of the Latin, and the English out of the Anglo-Saxon. But 

 these languages are perfect and complete, and in nothing as to essentials 

 inferior to the most admired language ; and in some respects superior to 

 many others. So it is with the Hebrew. The essential structure oi' the 

 language is apparent in the earliest fragments, as well as the latest, and 

 is apparently incapable, though very imperfect, of any further improve- 

 ment. So it is with the Latin and Greek, as may be seen when you 

 compare the earliest with the latest productions in those languages. '■'•If 

 there be a gradual development in language, why, in the thousands of 

 years neighborhood with other languages, has not the Semitic family 

 formed for itself a present tense .' And why has not the Chinese lang- 

 uage, so devoid of grammatical structure that it seems the very copy of 

 the forms of thought expressed ui the signs of the deaf and dumb, con- 

 trived to frame, what we consider indispensible to the understanding of 

 speech." ''The ancient Egyptian, as wrillen in hieroglyphics upon the 

 oldest monuments and in the Coptic of the liturgy, after an interval of 

 liiree thousand years, you will see cttablislied by Lepsius to be identi- 

 cal." 



Indeed so far is language from developing itself in the progress of 

 time, that it is ascertained that the earliest stages of a language are often 

 the most perfect. Languages, in the woids of Wiseman, grow not up 

 Irom a seed or sprout. "-They are, by some mysterious process of na- 

 ture, cast in a living mould whence they come out in all their fair pro- 

 portions ; and tliat mould is the mind of man, variously modilied by the 



