262 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIT. 



been invented but by men who had the ufe of intelled in a very 

 great degree : And he will be furprifed when he confiders how man 

 has been able to ulc that dominion, which the Creator has beftowed 

 upon us, over this lower world. We have made the animal, the 

 vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, all fubfervient to our ufes ; 

 and have employed all the powers of nature, that can be employed 

 in this earth, firft the earth itfelf, then the air, the water, and the 

 lire, in forming this wonderful world of art. 



I will here give fome general account of the common arts of life 

 invented by man, which I hold to be a neceflary part of his hiflory, 

 as without thefe he could not have lived in civil fociety. 



The firft and nioft neceflary art, fo neceflary that without it no 

 other art could have been invented, is language, of which I have 

 faid a great deal in the courfe of this work * ; where I have fhown, 

 that, though it be the mofl: common art among men, it is a mofl: 

 wonderful art, (of which I think we need no other proof, than the 

 comparifon of it with our animal cries, from which it is formed f ), and 

 of fuch difficult invention, that it could not have been invented by 

 man without fupernatural aflliftance, which was given him by thofe 

 daemon kings of Egypt, who were beings of intelledl fuperior to 

 man ; for it was in Egypt that an art of language was fiift invented, 

 and it was from Egypt that other countries learned the art. By this 

 I would not be underftood to mean that, neither in other countries, 

 before the art was invented in Egypt, nor even there before its in- 

 vention, men had not the ufe of inarticulate cries, with a mixture of 

 fome articulate founds, which they may have formed by imitation 

 of certain birds, fuch as the cuckoo ; but I fay that in Egypt only 

 language was flrfl: formed into an art. How difficult it was to do 



that, 



* Vol. IV. p. 262, and p. 151 and following of this Vol- 



T Ibidem. 



