262 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book. II. 



knowledge in this life is derived ; for they furnifh the materials of 

 which our ideas are compofed. But, as of our ideas no art or fci- 

 encc could have been formed without the communication of thofe 

 ideas to one another, our fenfes have likewife furnifhed the Aans 

 of that communication ; firft by language, by which our ideas are 

 made audible ; and fecondly by wiitlng, by which they are at firft 

 made vifible by pidlures and fymbols ; and then by that wonderful 

 art, by which the founds of the words expreffing the ideas, are made 

 vifible ; and fo the ideas are conveyed, not only to the abfent, at the 

 greateft diilance, but to the lateft pofterity, and with the ideas the 

 language in which they are exprefled. And in this way the pro- 

 grefs of man in this life towards a better, has been wonderfully pro- 

 moted ; and to this progrefs, as we have feen, both his intelle(3: and 

 his fenfes have concurred, and affifted one another. — But to return 

 to the writing art. 



That this wonderful art of alphabetical writing, by which not 

 ideas only were made vifible, which is the cafe of hieroglyphical 

 writing, but, what is much more wonderful, the founds by which 

 ideas are exprefled, were invented in Egypt, I think there can be no 

 doubt, if Plato had not told us fo in more than one place *. Be- 

 fore an alphabet could be invented, the language muft have been 

 analyfed into its elemental founds. Now, analyils is a great work 

 of fcience, and indeed the foundation of all fcience ; fo that this 

 analyfis could not have been made, but in a country where arts and 

 fciences were cultivated, which, in thofe antient times, was only in 

 Egypt. Plato, in the firfl paffage above quoted, tells us, that an 

 Egyptian, he calls Theuth, was the inventor of letters: But I beUeve 

 it was of letters only ; for I am perfuaded, that before his time, the 

 art of language in Egypt was perfedted, at leaft fo far, that the words 

 were analyfed into their elemental founds : For as no arts or fcien- 

 ces 

 * Sec vol. IT. of Origin of Language, p. 24. and 229. 



