ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 269 



soning, and the articles of the Epicurean belief, concur, as I have already re- 

 marked, in deriving- the race of man from the race of monkeys, and in exhibit- 

 ing the ourang-outang, as his dignified prototype and original, whom they 

 have hence denominated the satyr, or man of the woods. 



1 shall not exhaust the time or insult the understanding of this auditory, 

 by any detailed confutation of the new and adscititious matter contained in 

 this modernized edition of the Epicurean theory ; matter of which the Gre- 

 cian sage himself would have been ashamed ; and which is directly contra- 

 dicted by the anatomical configuration of various and important parts of this 

 animal itself : concerning which, it is scarcely necessary to recall to your 

 recollection the remark we have just made — that while it approaches nearest to 

 the form, it is farthest removed from the language of man of almost all quadrupeds 

 whatever. I shall confine myself to the fair question, which the theory in 

 its original shape involves ; — is human speech, thus proved to be incapable of 

 origin by any compact or settled system, more likely to have originated from 

 a succession of accidents — from the casual but growing wants, or the casual 

 but growing improvements of mankind ] 



Now, admitting the affirmative of this question, we have a right to expect 

 that the language of a people will always be found commensurate with their 

 civilization ; that it will hold an exact and equal pace with their degree of 

 ignorance, as well as with their degree of improvement. It so happens, 

 however, that although language, whatever be its origin, is the most difficult 

 art or science in the world (if an art or science at all), it is the art or science 

 in which savages of all kinds exhibit more proficiency than in any other. 

 No circumnavigator has ever found them deficient in this respect, even where 

 they have been wofuUy deficient in every thing else ; and while they have 

 betrayed the grossest ignorance in regard to the simplest toys, baubles, and 

 implements of European manufacture, there has been no difficulty, as soon 

 as their language has been, I will not say acquired, but even dipped into, of 

 explaining to them the different uses and intentions of these articles in their 

 own terms. 



Again : there is in all the languages of the earth a general unity of principle, 

 which evidently bespeaks a general unity of origin; a family character and 

 likeness which cannot possibly be the effect of accident. The common 

 divisions and rules of one language are the common divisions and rules of the 

 whole ; and, hence, every national grammar is, in a certain sense, and to a 

 certain extent, a universal grammar; and the man who has learned one 

 foreign tongue, has imperceptibly made some progress towards a knowledge 

 of other tongues. In all countries, and in all languages, there is only one 

 and the same set of articulations, or at least the differences are so few, that 

 they can scarcely interfere with the generality of the assertion ; for diversities 

 of language consist not in diff'erent sets of articulations, but only in a difference 

 of their combinations and applications. No people have ever been found so 

 barbarous as to be without articulate s-ounds, and no people so refined and 

 fastidious as to have a desire of adding to the common stock. 



But, independently of a uniform circle of articulations, and a uniform sys- 

 tem of grammar, there is also a uniform use of the very same terms, in a 

 great variety of languages, to express the very same ideas ; which, as it ap- 

 pears to me, cannot possibly be accounted for, except upon the principle of 

 onei^ommon origin and mother-tongue ; and I now allude more particularly 

 to those kinds of terms, which, under every change of time, and every variety 

 of climate, or of moral or political fortune, might be most readily expected to 

 maintain an immutability; as those, for example, of family relationship and 

 patriarchal respect ; or descriptive of such other ideas as cannot but have 

 occurred to the mind very generally, as those of eartli, sky, death, Deity. I 

 shall beg leave to detain you while I off'er a few examples. 



In our own language we have two common etymons, or generic terms, by 

 which to describe the paternal character, pa2m and father; both are as com- 

 mon to the Greek tongue as to our own, under the for.ns of TraTruas and -irarvpt 

 and have probably alike issued from the Hebrew source 3« or pl. n^K* 



