162 



EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



formed, and the processes by which grammatical struc- 

 ture and inflections took their rise, appear in a great meas- 

 ure needless, after the matter has been placed in this 

 light. The mental powers could readily connect par- 

 ticular arbitrary sounds with particular ideas, whether 

 those ideas were nouns, verbs, or interjections. As the 

 words of all languages can be traced back into roots which 

 are monosyllables, we may presume these sounds to have 

 all been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of 

 two or more together to express a compound idea, and 

 the formation of inflections by additional syllables ex- 

 pressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and 

 to, are processes which would or might occur as matters 

 of course, being simple results of a mental power called 

 into action, and partly directed, by external necessities. 

 This power, however, as we find it in very different de- 

 grees of endowment in individuals, so would it be in differ- 

 ent degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the 

 human family. Hence we find the formation of words, and 

 the process of their composition and grammatical arrange- 

 ment, in very different stages of development in different 

 races. The Chinese have a language composed of a 

 limited number of monosyllables, which they multiply in 

 use by mere variations of accent, and which they have 

 never yet attained the power of clustering or inflecting ; 

 the language of this immense nation — the third part of 

 the human race — may be said to be in the condition of in- 

 fancy. The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civiliza- 

 tion, have, on the other hand, a language of the most 

 elaborately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, in 

 this respect, the languages of the most refined European 

 nations. These are but a few out of many facts tending 

 to show that language is in a great measure independent 

 of civilization, as far as its advance and development are 

 concerned. Do they not also help to prove that cultivated 

 intellect is not necessary for the origination of language ? 



Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally 

 simple reasons for the almost infinite diversification of 

 language. It is invariably found that, wherever society 

 is at once dense and refined, language tends to be uni- 

 form throughout the whole population, and to undergo 

 few changes in the course of time. Wherever, on the 

 contrary, we have a scattered and barbarous people, we 

 have great diversities, and comparatively rapid alterations 



