Chap. IV. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 315 



all, I meaa the Italian, but was learned by the Goths and Lombards 

 in the country itfelf), are fo much changed from the original. What 

 muft have been the cafe of the language of Egypt, which travelled 

 as far as India, and was imported among a people fo barbarous as 

 the Indians then were, very much more barbarous than thofe na- 

 tions who learned the Latin or the Gothic ? And, accordingly, the 

 Shanfcrit, which, I think, I may call the original language, is fo 

 much corrupted in the common dialeds of it fpoken in India, that 

 if it had not been preferved among the Bramins or Priefts, one of 

 the inftitutlons, which Ofiris brought with him, artiong many others, 

 from Egypt, it would have been entirely loft; but, as it is preferved 

 among them, it appears to be a more pure dialedl, of the antient E^ 

 gyptian, than even the Greek, 



Another obfervation, I liiake upon the trarifmiffion of languages 

 from one country to another, is, that the pronunciation muft needs 

 be very much altered, and particularly that of the vowels, which, as 

 they are nothing but the breath modified in a certain way, are very 

 liable to be changed in the fame language fpoken in the fame coun- 

 try, as is evident from innumerable examples that might be quoted 

 in Greek and Latin. The confonants, too, of the fame organ, afe 

 very apt to be changed into one another, even by the people of the 

 fame country, but much more by foreigners who learn the lano-uae-e 

 and whofe organs of pronunciation, if they live under a different 

 climate, muft, as I have obferved, be affedled by the climate and 

 therefore operate differently. Another obfervation I make is, that 

 fome words, in difterent languages, being of the fame found, will 

 not prove the language to have been originally the fame ; for that 

 may happen by accident, and even if fome words fhould be the fame 

 in fenfe as well as in found, neither will that prove the languao-es to 

 be of the fame origin; for it often happens, that one language borrows 

 words from another, though the one language be not the original 



of 



