154 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book III. 



that is by imitation and habit. But the men who firft fpoke could 

 not learn It in that way ; for they were exadlly in the cafe of our 

 deaf and dumb men, who cannot learn by imitation, and thci-efore 

 muft be taught. Now, how difficult and how laborious a tafk that 

 is, I myfelf can witnefs, from the converfations I had with the Abbe 

 de I'Epee in France, who taught dumb men to fpeak, and from 

 what I myfelf faw of the operations of Mr Braidwood here in Scot- 

 land upon his dumb fcholars : For he laid hold of their mouths and 

 chins, and in that way made them move the organs properly for 

 pronounciation ; and as to the interior organs, fuch as the tongue 

 and the palate, he fliowed them, by opening his own mouth and 

 making them open theirs, how to ufc thcfe organs in pronouncia- 

 tion. It is this difficulty of forming the materials, that is articulate 

 founds, of which language is compofed, that has convinced me that 

 it could not have been invented without fupcrnatural affiftance. 



But though I think it impoffible that the fuft men who fpoke 

 could, any more than dumb men, have taught themfelves to articu- 

 late, I am of opinion, that after they had learned, by fupcrnatural 

 affiftance, to form articulate founds, they might, by their own na- 

 tural lagacity, of thefe articulate founds form fpeech : But even this 

 I hold to have been the greatefl: effort of the inventive genius of man 

 that he ever made. 



Of this we may judge by confiderlng the nature of a language 

 formed and compleat, fuch as the Greek. In fuch a language, all 

 ideas, that man can form, of what he perceives in the heavens above, 

 in the earth below, in the fea or waters of any kind, muft be ex- 

 prcfled with all their qualities, accidents, relations, and connedions 

 with one another, alio things immaterial as far as we can com- 

 prehend them, and likewife the adtions and operations of things 

 both material and immaterial: Aad not only muft we exprefs by 



words 



