m NATURAL OR INARTICULATE, ANi> 



as it appears to me, cannot possibly be accounted for, except upon the 

 principle of one common 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 

 earth, sky, death, deity. 1 shall beg leave to detain you while I otfer a 

 few examples. 



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

 by which to describe the paternal character, and /a^Aer ; both areas 

 common to the Greek tongue as to our own, under the forms of 'xtv/riem 

 and TeccTY,^^ and have probably alike issued from the Hebrew source 3K or 

 «3K pi. And I may fearlessly venture to affirm that there is scarcely 



a language or dialect in the world, polished or barbarous, continental or 

 insular, employed by blacks or whites, in which the same idea is not ex- 

 pressed by the radical of the one or the other of these terms ; both of which 

 have been employed from the beginning of time in the same quarter of the 

 globe, and naturally direct us to one common spot where man must first 

 have existed, and whence alone he could have branched out. The term 

 father is still to be found in the Sanscrit, and has descended to ourselves, 

 as well as to almost every other nation in Europe, through the medium of 

 the Greek, Gothic and Latin. Papa is still more obviously a genuine 

 Hebrew term ; and while it maintains a range almost as extensive as the 

 former throughout Europe, it has an incalculably wider spread over Asia, 

 Africa, and the most barbarous islands of the Pacific, and extends from 

 Egypt to Guinea, and from Bengal to Sumatra and New Zealand. The 

 etymons for son are somewhat more numerous than those ^or father^ but 

 the one or the otiier of them may be traced almost as extensively, as may 

 the words brother^ sister^ and even daughter ; which last branching out 

 like the iQvm father^ from the Sanscrit, extends northward as far as Scan- 

 dinavia. 



The generic terms for the Deity are chiefly the three following, Al or 

 Allah^ Theus or Deus^ and God. The first is Hebrew, the second 

 Sanscrit, the third Persian, and was probably Palavi or ancient Persian. 

 And besides these, there is scarcely a term of any kind by which the 

 Deity is designated in any part of the world, whether among civilized or 

 savage man. And yet these also proceed from the same common quarter 

 of the globe, and distinctly point out to us the same original cradle for the 

 human race as the preceding terms. Among the barbarians of the Philip- 

 pine Islands the word is Allatallah^ obviously " the God of Gods," or 

 Supreme God ; and it is the very same term, with the very same dupHcate, 

 m Sumatra. In the former islands, I will just observe also, as we proceed, 

 that we meet with the terms, malahet^ for a spirit^ which is both direct 

 Hebrew and Arabic ; is and dua^ one^ two^ which are Sanscrit and Greek \ 

 lambpr^ a drum, which is also Sanscrit ; and inferno, hell^ a Latin com- 

 pound, of Pelasgic or other oriental origin. In the Friendly and other 

 clusters of the Polynesian Islands, the term for God is Tooa, and in New 

 Guinea, or Papuan, Dewa, both obviously from the Sanscrit ; whence 

 Batooaa, among the former, is God the Spirit, or the Divine Spirit ; JSa, 

 meaning a spirit in these islands. And having thus appropriated the 

 Sanscrit radical to signify the Deity, they apply the Hebrew El, as the 

 Pelasgians and the Greeks did, to denote the sm. or the most glorious 



