274 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, 



record, which professed to contain a plain and simple statement of such 

 supernatural communication, and such subsequent confusion of tongues, it 

 would be a book that, independently of any other information, would be 

 amply entitled to our attention, for it would bear an index of commanding^ 

 authority on its own forehead. 



To pursue this argument would be to weaken it. Such a book is in our 

 hands — let us prize it. It must be the word of God, for it has the direct 

 stamp and testimony of his works. 



LECTURE X. 



ON LEGIBLE LANGUAGE, IMITATIVE AND SYMBOLICAL. 



The subject of the vocal organs, and the scale of tones and terms to which 

 they give rise, which have just passed under review, led us progressively into 

 an inquiry concerning the nature of the voice itself ; and the origin of sys- 

 tematic or articulate language. 



Systematic or articulate language, however, as we have already observed, 

 is of two kinds, oral and legible; the one spoken and addressed to the ear, 

 the other penned or printed, and addressed to the eye. It is this last which 

 constitutes the wonderful and important art of writing, and distinguishes 

 civilized man from savage man, as the first distinguishes man in general from 

 the brute creation. The connexion between the two is so close, that although 

 both subjects might, with the most perfect order, find a place in some subse- 

 quent part of that comprehensive course of stud)'- upon which we have even 

 now but barely entered, I shall immediately follow up the latter for the very 

 reason that I have already touched upon the former. It will, moreover, if I 

 mistake not, afibrd an agreeable variety to our, philosophical pursuits; a 

 point which ought no more to be lost sight of in the midst of instruction than 

 in the midst of amusement; and will form an extensive subject for useful 

 reflection when the present series of our labours shall have reached its close. 



Written language is of so high an antiquity, that, like the language of the 

 voice, it has been supposed, by a multitude of wise and good men in all ages, 

 to have been a supernatural gift, communicated either at the creation, or upon 

 some special occasion not long afterward. Yet there seems no satisfactory 

 ground for either of these opinions. That it was not communicated like 

 oral language at the creation of mankind, appears highly probable, because, 

 first, it by no means possesses the universality which, under such circum- 

 stances, we should have reason to expect, and which oral language displays. 

 No tribe or people have ever been found without a tongue; but multitudes 

 without legible characters. Secondly, among the different tribes and nations 

 that do possess it, it is far from evincing that unity or similarity in the struc- 

 ture of its elements which, I have already observed, is to be traced in the ele- 

 ments of speech, and which must be the natural result of an origin from one 

 common source. The system of writing among some nations consists in 

 pictures, or marks representative of things ; among others in letters or marks 

 symbolical of sounds ; while, not unfrequently, the two systems are found in 

 a state of combination, and the characters are partly imitative and partly 

 arbitrary. And, thirdly, there does not seem to be the same necessity for a 

 divine interposition in the formation of written characters as in that of oral 

 language. The latter existing, the former might be expected to follow 

 naturally in some shape or other, from that imitative and inventive genius 

 which belongs to the nature of man, and especially in a civilized state. And, 

 as we endeavour to penetrate the obscurity of past ages, we meet with a few 

 occasional beacons which point out to us something of the means by which 

 this M'onderful art appears to have been first devised, and something of the 

 countries where it appears to have been first practised. 



