230 



EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



But, in reality, it is not necessary to suppose the fathers of 

 our race as early attaining to great proficiency in language, 

 and, in the second, language itself seems to be amongst the 

 things least difficult to be acquired, if we can form any 

 judgment from what we see in children, most of whom have, 

 by three years of age, while their information and judgment 

 are still as nothing, mastered and familiarized themselves with 

 a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding in proportion what 

 they acquire in the course of any subsequent similar portion 

 of time. 



Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, 

 and the processes by which grammatical structure and inflec- 

 tions took their rise, appear in a great measure needless, after 

 the matter has been placed in this light. The mental powers 

 could readily connect particular arbitrary sounds with parti- 

 cular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or inter- 

 jections. As the words of all languages can be traced back 

 into roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these 

 sounds to have all been monosyllabic accordingly. The 

 clustering of two or more together to express a compound 

 idea, and the formation of inflections by additional syllables 

 expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and 

 to, are processes which would or might occur as matters 

 of course, being simple results of a mental power called into 

 action, and partly directed, by external necessities. This 

 power, however, as we find it in very different degrees of 

 endowment in individuals, so would it be in different degrees 

 of endowment in nations, or branches of the human family. 

 Hence we find the formation of words, and the process of their 

 composition and grammatical arrangement, in very different 

 stages of development in different races. The Chinese have 

 a language composed of a limited number of monosyllables, 

 which they multiply in use by mere variations of accent, and 

 which they have never yet attained the power of clustering 

 or inflecting ; the language of this immense nation the third 

 part of the human race may be said to be in the condition of 

 infancy. The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civiliza- 

 tion, have, on the other hand, a language of the most elabo- 



