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expressed nothing beyond the number twenty. La Coadamine informs 

 us, in his narrative* that there are some who count only to three, and the 

 word they employ to express the number is so complicated, of a pronun- 

 ciation so long and difficult, that, as Condillac observed, it is not sur- 

 prising, that having begun with a method so inconvenient, they have not 

 been able to advance any farther. " Deny, (says this writer) to a superior 

 mind, the use of letters, how much of knowledge you put out of his 

 reach, which an ordinary capacity will attain to without difficulty. Go 

 on, and take from him the use of speech, the lot of the dumb will show 

 you, how narrow are the limits within which you confine him. Finally, 

 take from him the use of all sorts of signs, let him be unable to find the 

 least sign for the most ordinary thought, and you have an ideot*." 



We are made acquainted by travellers with certain tribes, so backward 

 in the art of expressing their ideas by signs, that they seem to serve as a 

 link between civilized nations and certain species of animals, whose in- 

 stinct has been perfected by education. One might even assert, that 

 there is less distance, in respect to intelligence, from a man in that ex- 

 treme abasement, to the higher animals, than there is to a man of supe- 

 rior genius, such as Bacon, Newton, or Voltaire. 



In another part of the same work, afier having demonstrated, that lan- 

 guages are real analytic methods, that the sciences may be reduced to 

 well constructed languages, he shows how powerful is their influence in 

 the cultivation of the mind. But he shall speak himself with that clear- 

 ness of expression, which is the characteristic and the charm of his 

 writings. " Languages are like the ciphers of the geometricians; they 

 present new views to the mind, and expand it as they are brought nearer 

 to perfection, The discoveries- of Newton had been prepared for him, 

 by the signs that had been already contrived, and the methods of calcu- 

 lation that had been invented. If he had arisen sooner, he might have 

 been a great man to his own age; but he would not have been the admi- 

 ration of ours. It is the same in other departments." 



The most scanty languages have been formed in the most barren coun- 

 tries. The savage who strays along- the desert shores of New Zealand, 

 needs but few signs to distinguish the small number of objects that ha- 

 bitually impress his senses: the sky, the earth, the sea, fire, shells, the 

 fish that form his chief food, the quadrupeds, and the vegetable, which 

 are but few in number, under this severe climate, are all that he has to 

 name and to know: accordingly, his vocabulary is very small; it has 

 been given to us by travellers in the compass of a few pages. A copious 

 language, one capable of expressing a great variety of objects, of sensa- 

 tions, and of ideas, supposes high civilization in the people among whom 

 it is spoken. You hear complaints of the perpetual recurrence of the 

 same expressions, the same thoughts, the same images, in the poetry of 

 Ossian: but living amidst the barren rocks of Scotland, the bards could 

 not speak of things, of which nothing, on the soil they inhabited, could 

 supply them with the idea. The monotony of their languages was in- 

 volved in that of their impressions, always produced by rocks, mists, 

 winds, the billows of the ireful ocean, the gloomy heath, and the silent 

 pine, Sec. The repetition of the same expressions, in the Scriptures, 

 shows that civilization had not made the same progress among the He- 



Kssai sur POrigine des Conuoissances Humaines, sec. 4. 



