18 



ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN EACE. 



those born deaf were always dumb, for without 

 the sense of hearing there would have been no 

 language at all. Among the unquestionable 

 proofs that language was not innate, was the 

 prodigious number of languages which existed, 

 some being of a very simple and others of a 

 very complex character. If additional evi- 

 dence were wanted that language was an ad- 

 ventitious acquirement, it was found in this 

 that a whole nation might lose its original 

 tongue, and in its stead adopt any foreign one. 

 The language that had been the vernacular of 

 the Jews for three thousand years had ceased 

 to be so for two thousand years, and the de- 

 scendants of those who spoke it were now 

 speaking an infinity of foreign tongues, European 

 or Asiatic. Languages which were derived 

 from a single tongue of, Italy had superseded 

 the many native languages which were once 

 spoken in Spain, in France, and in Italy itself. 

 A language of German origin had nearly dis- 

 placed, not only all the native languages of 

 England and Ireland, but the numerous ones 

 of a large portion of America. Some eight 

 millions of negroes were placed in the New 

 World whose forefathers spoke many African 

 tongues. It necessarily followed from this 

 argument that when man first appeared on the 

 earth he was destitute of language, and each 

 separate tribe of men framed a separate one ; 

 hence the multitude of tongues. That the 

 framers were arrant savages, was proved by 

 the fact that the rudest tribes ever discovered 

 had already completed the task of forming a 

 perfect language. The languages spoken by 

 the grovelling savages of Australia were so, 

 and were even more artificial and complex in 

 structure than those of many people more ad- 

 vanced. The first rudiments of language would 

 consist of a few articulate sounds by which to 

 make known their wants and wishes ; and be- 

 tween that time and their obtaining complete- 

 ness, probably countless ages had passed, even 

 among the rudest tribes. In every department 

 of language we find evidence of the great an- 

 tiquity of man. The Egyptians must have 

 attained a large measure of civilization before . 

 they had invented symbolic or phonetic writing, 

 and yet these were found on the most ancient 

 of their monuments. The invention of letters 

 had been made at many different points, ex- 

 tending from Italy to China a clear proof that 

 civilization had many independent sources; 

 but, such was everywhere the antiquity of the 

 invention, that we could hardly in any case tell 

 when or by whom it was made, though made 

 in a hundred separate places. Epochs or eras, 

 depending, as they must necessarily do, on the 

 art of writing, were, of course, of still later 

 origin. They were all, indeed, of compara- 

 tively recent origin. The Jews, Egyptians, 

 Assyrians, and Persians had none at all ; the 

 Greek epoch dated only 776 and the Koman 

 753 before Christ. The oldest epoch of the 

 Hindus, made the world, and of course man, 

 up to the present time, 3,872,960 years old. 



That was known to be a fable spun from faith- 

 less brains. The oldest era of the same people 

 that had an air of authority, that of the Buddha, 

 dates 544 years before Christ. The era of 

 Vikramaditza, of better authenticity, dates but 

 57 years before Christ ; and that of Saka, prob- 

 ably more authentic, only 79 years later than 

 our own. The Chinese mode of reckoning was 

 by cycles of sixty years, .making the first year 

 of the first cycle correspond with the year be- 

 fore Christ, 2397. Even this, if it could be 

 relied on, would only carry us back to the time 

 when the Chinese, a people placed, like the 

 Hindus, under very unfavorable circumstances 

 for development, had already attained a civiliza- 

 tion which gave them the power of recording 

 events, while it took no account of the long 

 ages which must have elapsed before. After 

 noticing the structure of various language?, and 

 observing that there were many languages of 

 simple structure, just as primitive as those of 

 complex formation, the writer observed, that it 

 appeared to him the structural character which 

 languages originally assumed, would, in a great 

 measure, be fortuitous, and depend on the whim 

 or fancy of the first rude founders. Adam 

 Smith, and he thought justly, supposed that the 

 first rude attempts would consist in giving 

 names to familiar objects, that is, in forming 

 nouns substantive. Adjectives, or words ex- 

 pressing quality, as of a more abstract nature, 

 would necessarily be of later invention ; but 

 verbs must have been nearly coeval with 

 nouns ; while pronouns he considered as terms 

 very abstract and metaphysical, and as such 

 not likely to have existed at all in the earlier 

 period of language. ' Number,' Adam Smith 

 said, ' considered in general, without any rela- 

 tion to any particular set of objects numbered, 

 is one of the most abstract and metaphysical 

 ideas which the mind of man is capable of form- 

 ing, and consequently is not an idea which 

 would readily occur to rude mortals who were 

 just beginning to form a language.' And the 

 truth of this view of the formation of numbers 

 was corroborated by our observation of rude 

 languages, in which the process seemed, as it 

 were, to be still going on under our eyes. 

 Among the Australian tribes, ' two,' or a pair, 

 made the extent of their numerals. Other 

 tribes had advanced to count as far as five and 

 ten. Malayan nations had native numerals ex- 

 tending to a thousand. The two hands and the 

 ten fingers seemed to have been the main aids 

 to the formation of the abstractions which 

 Adam Smith considered so subtle; and this 

 would account for our finding the numeral 

 scale sometimes binary, but generally decimal. 

 However great the difficulty of constructing 

 languages, there was no doubt they were all 

 conquered, and that by rude savages ; and the 

 Sanscrit language, in all its complexity and per- 

 fection of structure, was spoken and written at 

 least three thousand years ago, by men who, 

 compared with their posterity, were certainly 

 barbarians. The discovery of the art of writ- 



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