ii6 A NTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book I[, 



got froai a people who had the ufe of language, with whom 

 they happened to have fome commtrnication. From them they 

 would learn to articulate fome words ; and by imitation they would 

 be naturally led to invent other articulate founds : For I do 

 not think, as I have faid, that from hearing only fuch birds as the 

 Cuckoo and Cockitoo, fuppofing them to be in their country, and 

 continuing long enough in it to enable them to imitate their voices, 

 the mod barbarous languages ever could have been formed. Now, 

 thofe articulate founds, which they had learned from nations that 

 had an art of language, they would very naturally lengthen, fo as^ 

 to make them refemble the animal cries, which they ufed before 

 they got articulate founds, and which have a certain length. But 

 when language was formed into an art, which could not have been 

 'among thofe barbarians, and when it was intirely removed from a- 

 nimal cries, and made to confift only of articulate founds put toge- 

 ther in a certain Older, it was natural, and, indeed, I think, necef- 

 fary, that men fhould begin with the mod fimple words, that is» 

 words of one fyllable, before they proceeded to compound thofe 

 monofyllables into words of many fyllables. This, as I have faid, 

 in the paflage above quoted *, adually happened. in Egypt, where 

 the iirft language of art was invented, as I fhall afterwards fhow. 

 And it was very natural that it fhould be fo in the firfl ftep in the 

 progrefs towards a language of art; for, if the firft words of fucb 

 a language had been words of feveral fyllables, the three great arts 

 of language, derivation, compofition, and Jlcdion, could not have 

 been pra£ticed without making the words of great length, as great 

 as the words of the barbarous languages. This monofyllahical lan- 

 guage came from Egypt to China, where it is the language at this 

 day ; and with it came alfo the written language, or Hieroglyphi- 

 cal charaders, which have fach a connexion with characters of that 



kind 



• Vol. VI. of Orgin of Language, p. 139. &c. 



