370 



LANGUAGE. 



knowledge may be gained, though we must not ex- | 

 pect Uial we slmll ever be able to penetrate into the | 



- of Providence, which, it they were displayed 

 before us it is probable that our weak minds could 

 not ever comprehend. Philologists long bewildered 

 themselves in searcli of the primitive language. The 

 ^t number of the learned assigned that rank to 

 the Hebrew, it being the language of the holy writ- 

 M they have come down to us from the time of 

 K^li-is. Hut many solid objections have been made 

 to that hypothesis, and it seems now to be generally 

 abandoned. Others saw the primitive language in 

 tluit of their own country, or in some oilier idiom of 

 which they were particularly fond. Thus Van Gorp, 

 a Fleming, better known as Becan or Becanus, was 

 in favour of the Low Dutch, Webb was for the 

 Chine;*', Reading for the Abyssinian, Stiernhielm and 

 Rudbeckius for the Swedish, Salmasius, Boxhorn and 

 Anrelius for the Scythian, Erici for the Greek, Hugo 

 for the Latin, the Maronites for the Syriac. In our 

 day, don Juan Bautista de Erro y Azpiroz, who not 

 long since was one of the ministers of state to the 

 late king of Spain, in a work entitled El Mundo 

 primitive, o Examen Filosofico de la Antiguedad y 

 Cult ura de la Nation Bascongada (printed at Madrid, 

 in 1815), claims that honour for the Basque, which, 

 however, in a former work, entitled, Alfabeto de la 

 Lengua primitiva de Espanna (Madrid, 1806), he had 

 only, and with more reason, supposed to be the 

 primitive language of Spain. A partial translation 

 of these works was published at Boston, in 1829, by 

 a learned American, George W. Erving, esquire, 

 late minister of the United States to the court or 

 Spain, and will be read with interest, because, in the 

 midst of his national prejudices, the Spanish author 

 discovers a truly philosophic mind, particularly where 

 he maintains with great cogency of argument, that, 

 because men in the beginning had but few wants, it 

 does not follow that they had few ideas, and that their 

 language was destitute of form or method. (El Mundo 

 primitive, p. 37.) The admirable syntax of the 

 languages of the American Indians has sufficiently 

 proved the correctness of this proposition, which now 

 seems to be generally admitted, though it was at first 

 received with great distrust by the learned world. 

 We shall presently expatiate somewhat more at large 

 upon this subject. 



That there was a primitive language, which was 

 spoken by the first parents of mankind, is a fact 

 attested by our Holy Scriptures, and which philoso- 

 phy is not willing to deny. But what has become 

 of that language, and where is it now to be found ? 

 Grotius was of opinion, that though it exists at pre- 

 sent nowhere in its original form, yet that traces of it 

 may be found in all the languages now spoken. 

 This was a bold assertion, and which could not pro- 

 ceed from actual observation of facts ; for what man 

 ever did, what man ever could, compare all the lan- 

 guages of the earth, so as to ascertain whether or not 

 tliere are to be found in them traces of a primitive 

 idiom, and, what is still more difficult, to point out 

 what these traces are ? One man, however, was 

 found, a man of extensive learning and erudition, 

 and, at the same time, a pure and an elegant writer, 

 who thought he had discovered the primitive lan- 

 guage. This was the celebrated Count de Gebelin, 

 well known as the author of a large work, published 

 at Paris (from 1773 to 1784), containing nine quarto 

 volumes, entitled Le Monde prhnitif, analyse et com- 

 pare avec le Monde moderne. This curious work 

 contains etymological dictionaries of the Latin and 

 French languages, in which the author assumes to 

 derive all the words of those idioms from his pretend- 

 ed primitive tongue. He considered speech as an 

 instinct, and every language as a dialect of that 



which he called " primitive, inspired by God hint- 

 self natural, necessary, universal, and imperish- 

 able." bo far may a man be carried, by the spirit 

 of system, and enthusiasm for a favourite hypothesis 

 It needs not be said that Gebelin's imperishable Jan- 

 guage has perished with him ; yet his books may still 

 be read with advantage, because, like Don Quixote, 

 when he is not mounted on his hobby-horse, he shows 

 himself a man of judgment, and of profound thought. 

 Count Lanjuinais lias abridged and enriched with 

 notes one of his volumes, entitled Histoire natnrelle 

 de la Parole a valuable system of general grammar, 

 held in high esteem by philologists. What gave the 

 greatest appearance of probability to the proposition 

 advanced by Grotius, and many others after him 

 that the remains of the primitive tongue are to be 

 found and discerned in all existing languages is the 

 astonishing affinities which have been discovered 

 between the languages of Europe and those of West- 

 ern Asia, so that even the German and the Sanscrit 

 have been classed together under the generic name 

 Germane- Indian. These affinities really do exist, to 

 a degree that would hardly be believed, if the well- 

 ascertained fact were not too stubborn to be resisted. 

 But as soon as we have crossed the Ganges, and pro- 

 ceed towards China, these analogies vanish, and we 

 find languages entirely different from those of the 

 West, not only in etymology, but in their grammati- 

 cal forms. In the interior of Africa, in the Austra- 

 lian islands, and on the whole of the American 

 continent, we find idioms of different structures, 

 having characters of their own, and in which it would 

 be vain to seek for traces of the primitive tongue. 

 The late professor Barton, of Philadelphia, and after 

 him professor Vater, of Konigsberg, endeavoured to 

 find affinities between the American languages and 

 those of the Tartars and Samoieds; but their researches 

 produced no decisive results. Here and there they 

 found a few words, which seemed to sound alike, but 

 in such small numbers, and so scattered among the 

 numerous idioms of those nations, that it was not 

 possible to infer even the probability of a former 

 connexion between them ; and it is more natural to 

 suppose that chance produced those accidental simi- 

 larities. See New Views of the Origin of the Tribes 

 and Nations of America, by B. S. Barton, Philadel- 

 phia, 1797, 1798; and Untersuchungen liber Ameri- 

 kd's Bevolkerung, von J. S. Vater, Leipsic, 1810. 



If we were only to attend to the etymological part 

 of languages, that is to say, to the words of which 

 they are composed, considered merely in relation to 

 the sounds which they produce when uttered, we 

 might still doubt whether the primitive idiom might 

 not yet exist in all of them, corrupted and disguised 

 by time and a variety of accidents which may easily 

 be imagined; but we have at last turned our thoughts 

 to the internal structure of the various modes of 

 speech; and the immense differences which exist, and 

 appear to have existed from time immemorial, 

 between them, lead us irresistibly to inferences 

 which, at first view, would seem to contradict the 

 Mosaic account of the creation, but which, we think, 

 may still be reconciled with it on scriptural grounds. 

 Were it otherwise, we would not be deterred from our 

 philosophical investigations, convinced as we are 

 that religion and philosophy are sisters, and, though 

 at first they may appear to be opposed, they will, in 

 the end, be reconciled to each other. When we 

 consider the great variety which exists in the struc- 

 ture or organization if we may so express ourselves 

 of the different languages of the earth, and the 

 length of time that lias elapsed since that variety has 

 begun to exist, we are at a loss to comprehend lunv 

 they can all have been derived from one primitive 

 source. We see, in the first place, the Chinese and 



