NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 



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this organisation ready for use, a constitution of the 

 atmosphere adapted for tlie sounds wliich that orgfanisa- 

 tion was calculated to produce, and lastly, but not leastly, 

 as mil afterwards be more particularly shown, a mental 

 power within, prompting to, and giving directions foi-, 

 the expression of ideas. 8uch an arrangement of mu- 

 tually adajDted things was as likely to produce sounds as 

 an Eolian harp placed in a draught is to produce tones. 

 It was unavoidable that human beings so organised, 

 and in such a relation to external nature, should utter 

 sounds, and also come to attach to these conventional 

 meanings, thus forming the elements of spoken language. 

 The great difficulty which has been felt was to account 

 for man going in this respect beyond the inferior animals. 

 There could have been no such difficulty if speculators in 

 this class of subjects had looked into physiology for an 

 account of the superior vocal organisation of man, and 

 had they possessed a true science of mind to show man 

 possessing a faculty for the expression of ideas which is 

 only rudimental in the lower animals. Another difficulty 

 has been in the consideration that, if men were at first 

 utterly untutored and barbarous, they could scarcely be 

 in a condition to form or employ language — an instru- 

 ment wliich it requires the fullest powers of thought to 

 analyse and speculate upon. But tliis difficulty also 

 v'anishes upon reflection — for, in the first place, we are 

 not bound to suppose the fathers of our race early 

 attaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the 

 second, language itself seems to be amongst tlie things 

 least difficult to be acquu-ed, if we can form any judg- 

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

 by three years of age, while their information and judg- 

 ment are still as nothing, mastered and familiarised 

 themselves with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding 



