Chap. I. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. -125 



Mexico, who fupply their want of articulation byfmacks*; — and from 

 a people in South America, whom I have not hitheito mentioned, 

 called Chiquites t, who fpeak fuch a jargon, that the Miffionarics 

 could not learn it, nor did they well underftand one another ; — 

 When, I fay, we obferve the progrefs of language from thofe fa- 

 vages to others more advanced in the arc, fuch as thofe I have 

 mentioned in chap. X. book 111. of vol. I. of Origin of Language ; 

 and, when from them we proceed up to fuch languages as the 

 Greek or Sanfcrit, we cannot doubt that language is an ait ia 

 Vvhich there has been the fame progrefs as in other arts. 



2^0, That ivriting, or the making founds vifible, is a great art, no 

 body can doubt ; and alfo a very ufeful art, as it connccfls the oral 

 language with the written in fuch a manner, that, if we know the 

 one, we alfo muft know the other : Whereas in China the two 

 languages are pcrfedly dilFerenc ; fo that fome nations in the 

 neighbourhood ufe the written charaders, or hieroglyphics as they 

 are called, of the Chinefe, though ihey know nothing of the Chi- 

 nefe oral language. But it v»-as a greater art, and of much more dlf-. 

 ficult invention, as it muft have been invented before the other, to 

 make ideas audib/e, that is, to make the operations of our intellect 

 perceptible by the fenle of hearing, which is done by Iangua<^e. It 

 is this that makes the difference betwixt language and animal cries 

 which exprefs our fenfations, appetites, and defires, but can com- 

 municate no ideas : And thus by art we fupply what is wantin-^ 

 in cur natural faculties. 



3//0, There is another thing v.-hich I have already mentioned', 

 but which 1 will mention again, as 1 think it more wonderful in 

 the art of language than any thing I have hitherto mentioned. And 

 it is this, that by means of dtrivaiion, compojition, and jlc^ion^ by 



which 

 • See what I have faid of thefe barbarous languages, in vol. I. of Origin of Language, 

 book III chap. VII. and IX. 



\ Memoires Geograjh. Phyfic. et Hiftoriq. Tom. 5. EJ. Yverdon, 1767, p. 122. 



