■( ;52 ) 



worfhip Ceremonies which appear to have been co- 

 pied alter ours. 



The cafe is not the fame with refpect to languages. 

 I allow that a living language is fubjecl: to continual 

 chang s, and as all languages have been fo, we may 

 fay vwith truth, that none of them have preferved 

 their original purity. But k is no lefs true, that in 

 fpite of the changes, introduced by cuftom, they 

 have not loft every thing by which they are diftin- 

 guifhed from others, which is fufficient for our pre- 

 ient purpofe •, and that from the rivulets, arifing 

 from the principal fprings, 1 mean the dialects, we 

 may afcend to the mother- tongues themfelves ; and 

 that by attending to the obiervation of a learned 

 academician *, that mother- tongues are diftinguifhed 

 by being more nervous than thofe derived from 

 them, becaufe they are formed from nature ; that 

 they contain a greater number of words imitating 

 the things whereof they are the figns ; that they are 

 lefs indebted to chance or hazard, and that that 

 mixture which forms the dialects, always deprives 

 them of fome of that energy, which the natural 

 connection of their found with the things they re- 

 preftnt always give them. 



Hence, I conclude, that if thofe characteriftical 

 marks are found in the Americans languages, we 

 cannot reafonably doubt of their being truly origi- 

 nal and, consequently, that the people who fpeak 

 them have pa (Ted over into that hemifphere, a fhort 

 time after the ftrft difperfion of mankind ; efpeci- 

 ally, if they are entirely unknown in our Continent. 

 I have already obferved, that it is an arbitrary flip- 

 pofition that the great grandchildren of Noah were 



* M. F Abbe du Bos, Hifiory of Painting and Poetry. 



4 not 



