268 A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. Book. 11. 



iu a country where arts and fciences had made confiderableprogrefs. 

 Now, this could not have been without a language however imper- 

 feft : For, language is undoubtedly, as I have often faid in the 

 courfe of this work, the parent ;u-t of all other arts ; as it is by it, 

 (hat men have communication with one another, and, in that way, 

 have invented arts. It is, therefore, I think evident, that men muft 

 have had a language, however imperfeiS, by which they were enabled 

 to form a more perfedt language. And, this firft language, I think I 

 have iiiown, miift have been taught them by fuperior intelligences ; 

 and I alfo think it is very probable, that thefe fame intelligences 

 may have aflifted them in the formation of a language of art. 



Tat fonnal part of language confiders words as fignificant. And- 

 here the art, when it palTes from founds to things, enlarges itfelf 

 wonderfully, and is as extenfive as our ideas; for a perfect language 

 niuft exprefs by wotds every thing, of which men living in civil 

 fociety and cultivating arts and fciences, can have any idea. Now, 

 thefe are all the things in the heavens above, on the earth below, and 

 even the things under the earth and in the air or waters, which are 

 perceived by our fenfes : And befides thefe natural objedts, there 

 are all the artificial works of men, which, in their intercourfe in civil 

 fociety, muft likewife be expreffed by Avords. So that language muft 

 comprehend the two worlds, of which I have fpoken elfewhere *, 

 the world of nature and the world of art. And not only muft it 

 exprefs material things, but things immaterial, fuch as mind and the 

 feveral kinds of it, the intelle£lual, animal, and vegetable, and their 

 different qualities and operations. And at the fame time that it 

 expreffes the fubjlancts of the feveral kinds I have mentioned, it 

 muft alfo exprefs their accidcrJs^ and their relations and connexions 

 with one another. Now, to exprefs each individual of fuch an 

 infinity of things, by a diftinifl word, is a thing by nature impofli- 



ble, 



• Page i2. 



