Chap.V. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 345^ 



were not derived from one language, invented in one country; 

 though I had then diicovered, that all the languages of Euiope, an- 

 tient and modern, and the languages fpoken in the weftern parts of 

 Aha, and in a part of Africa, were all oi-iginallv the fame language, 

 and which was the antient language of Egypt*. But then I did 

 not know that this antient language was ftill preferved in India, and 

 that the Greek was a dialed of it, though 1 thought there was good 

 reaibu to believe that the Greeks had got from Egypt their language 

 as well as their other arts. Neither did I know any thing of the 

 Chinefe language, or that it was poffible to make out any connec- 

 tion betwixt it and the languages of Europe, or the oriental lan- 

 guages, fuch as the Hebrew and Greek. And as to the languages 

 of the new world, or the iflands lately difcovered in the South Sea, 

 I did not think it was pollible that there could be any refemblance 

 betwixt them and the languages of Europe, or thofe of the weftern 

 parts of Aha. But Mr Gebelin has now difcovered this connec- 

 tion. And as to languages fo barbarous as the hilling language of 

 Troglodytes in Abyffinia ; or the muttering jargon of thofe favao-es, 

 mentioned by Condamine, on the banks of the river Amazons, fpo- 

 ken, as he fays, by drawing in the breath ; or the language of the 

 Hottentots, and the people lately difcovered by a French traveller 

 to the weft of Mew Mexico, who fupply the defeds of their articu- 

 lation by fmacks; — I take the cafe to have been, as I have elfewhere 

 mentioned t, that they had had but very little intercourfe with the 

 people who fpoke the original language, only enough to form the 

 idea of articulation, and to learn, perhaps, fome few words of it. 

 It is therefore to M. Gebelin that I owe this great difcovery in the 

 hiftory of man ; and I am now fully convinced of the truth of 

 what Mofes has told us, that time was when there was only one 

 language and one fpeech upon the earth ; which I was difpofed to 

 Vol. IV. X x believe 



* See the three laft chapters of vol. ift, of Origin of Language, fecond edit, 

 t Vol, I. p. 66;^. lecond edition. 



