230 VESTIGES OF THE 



regard to the providential arrangements for the creation 

 of our race. Here, as in many other cases, a little 

 observation of nature might have saved much vain dis- 

 cussion. The real character of language itself has not 

 been thoroughly understood. Language, in its most 

 comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas by 

 whatever means. Ideas can be communicated by looks, 

 gestures, and signs of various other kinds, as well as by 

 speech. The inferior animals possess some of those 

 means of communicating ideas, and they have likewise 

 a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature 

 of which is a complete mystery to us, though we are 

 asstired of its reality by its effects. Now, as the inferior 

 animals were all in being before man, there was lan- 

 guage upon earth long ere the history of our race com- 

 menced. The only additional fact in the history of lan- 

 guage, which was produced by our creation, was the rise 

 of a new mode of expression — namely, that by sound- 

 signs produced by the vocal organs. In other words, 

 speech was the only novelty in this respect attending 

 the creation of the human race. No doubt it was an 

 addition of great importance, for, in comparison with it, 

 the other natural modes of communicating ideas are 

 insignificant. Still, the main and fundamental phe- 

 nomenon, language, as the communication of ideas, was 

 no new gift of the Creator to man ; and in sjDeech itself, 

 when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a 

 result of some of those superior endowments of which so 

 many others have fallen to our lot through the medium 

 of a superior organisation. 



The first and most obvious natural endowment con- 

 cerned in speech is that peculiar organisation of the 

 larynx, trachea, and mouth, which enables us to produce 

 the various sounds required. Man started at first with 



