QjS natural and artificial LANGUAGjE. 



289 



gree of accuracy, that would certainly deceive us in the dark ; or if, by 

 any other means, the performer was concealed from us. While the only 

 point necessary to give the voice the semblance of issuing from a distant 

 or unusual object, is to take a nice measure of the distance itself, and of 

 the nature of the object from which it is to be presumed to issue, and so 

 to modulate, or inflect it as to produce the natural tone it may be supposed 

 to possess, if thrown from such a distance or from such a form. It must 

 be obvious, however, that the surprise resulting from the mystery of thus 

 imitating voices and distances, must be powerfully aided in ventriloquism 

 by the additional mystery of the artist's motionless mouth ; in consequence 

 of which we are totally incapable of referring it to himself. In hearing, 

 as in seeing, liabit is our only guide : — in both we only judge by accus- 

 tomed comparisons ; and we are exactly in the same manner deceived by 

 the painter, and even allow ourselves to be deceived, in regard to objects 

 of vision, as we are by the ventriloquist, and without such allowance, in 

 regard to objects of sound. In respect to both senses, indeed, we often 

 deceive ourselves in judging of the most common phaenomena : and hence 

 it is not at all to be wondered at that we should be completely imposed upon 

 by the nice delusions of art. Thus the evening sky, begirt with gold- 

 green clouds at the extremity of the horizon, is often mistaken for the 

 ocean, studded with islands ; and the rumbling of a cart over pavement, 

 or hard ground, is not unfrequently believed to be a thunder-clap in the 

 heavens ; and, under the influence of this last deception, we immediately 

 transfer all the awfulness and magnificence of the celestial meteor to this 

 clumsy piece of machinery, and are as alarmed as if the fiery bolt were 

 about to descend upon us. 



LECTURE IX. 



ON IJ^ATURAL OR INARTICULATE, AND ARTIFICIAL OR ARTICULATE 



LANGUAGE. 



Having, in our last lecture, examined into the seat and properties of the 

 natural voice, let us now proceed to notice the mode in which it is applied 

 to the formation, first, of natural language, and, next, of speech or artifi- 

 cial language. 



Natural language is the instinctive appropriation of certain tones of 

 the natural voice, to indicate certam feelings of the sensory : and with the 

 1 few '^xceptFons pointed out in our preceding lecture, every animal belong- 

 I ing to the three classes of ma'iiinals, birds, and amphlbials, every animal 

 1 poscsessed af lungs, is in some degree or other possessed of this kind of 

 langr Us scopy is, mdeed, often very liinited ; but always suflicient 



to :^'i5W6r the purposes of nature. The feiiiale of every species under- 

 stands 'he call of the -nale. ani replies to it as intelligibly : the young un- 

 derstands the mandates of the mother, an<^ the mother, the petitions of the 

 young. Thu« arnussng department of natural history was well knowr^ to 

 the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and attentively cultivated by them : 

 and Lucretius, in his Nature of Things, has pursued the subject not only 

 so correctly but so copiously, that it is almost impossible, even in the pre- 



37 ■ • ' . 



