ARTIFICIAL AND ARTICULATE LANGUAGE:. 



among all nations. This, like the French regir, is derived from the Latin 

 rege ; which runs through all the southern dialects of Europe ; while in 

 Germany, and the north, the derivative recht is the common term for rule^ 

 law, authority. The Hebrew is ^Ni {raj), a conspicuous or illustrious 

 person ; the Sanscrit, raja ; the Greek, pet and pum ; of the same exact 

 import as the Hebrew ; and hence ra, or raia, imports the sun, the most 

 powerful and illustrious object in creation, among a multitude of barbarous 

 nations, and especially those Of the Sandwich Islands, and New Zealand ; 

 and ooraye and rayan-ai the day or light itself, in different parts of Su- 

 matra. Our own term ray, common indeed to almost all Europe, ancient 

 and modern, is obviously from the same source ; and hence the Arabic 

 (ray he), fragrancy, odour ; the poetic mind of the Arabians uniformly 

 applying this image to legitimate rule and government. 



The term name, in like manner, runs through all the leading languages 

 of ancient and modern ages, almost without a shade of difference, either 

 in its meaning or mode of spelling : for we thus meet with it in Hebrew, 

 Sanscrit, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Gothic, and Latin. 



The same theory might be exemphfied from many of the terms signifi- 

 cative of the most common animals. Our English word cow is of this 

 description, and may serve as a familiar example ; nu [gouah,) in Hebrew, 

 imports a herd (as of oxen) ; the very same word in Greek, yvtt, means a 

 yoke of oxen ; in both which cases the word is used in a collective sense. 

 In Sanscrit, gdva imports, as among ourselves, a single animal of the kind, 

 ex or cow; in Persian, and ancient Persian or Palavi, it is gow ; in Ger- 

 man, kuh ; and among the Hottentots, as an example of a savage tongue, 

 hoos and koose; while among the New Zealanders, who have no cows, 

 eu imports paps or breasts, the organ of milk. 



Mouse is in like manner r\wn {musheh) in Hebrew, hterally " a groper 

 in the dark:" in Sanscrit, mushica; in Persian and Palavi, /ww^A ; in 

 Greek, ftt;?, without the aspirate ; in German, mous; in English, mouse; 

 in Spanish, musgano ; all, as I have already observed, confederating in 

 proof that the various languages, and dialects of languages, that now are 

 or ever have been spoken, have originated from one common source ; 

 and that the various nations that now? exist or ever have existed have ori- 

 ginated from one common cradle or quarter of the world, and that quarter 

 an eastern region. 



Finally, and before I close this argument, and deduce from its fair and 

 legitimate result, let me pointedly call your attention to that most extraor- 

 dinary act of correspondence between all nations whatever, in all quarters 

 of the globe, wherever any trace of the art exists, which is to be found in 

 their employment of a decimal gradation of arithmetic ; an argument 

 which, though I do not know that it has ever been advanced before, is, I 

 freely confess to you, omnipotent of itself to my own mind. Let me, 

 however, repeat the limitation, wfterever any trace of this art is found to 

 exist; for in the miserable state to which some savage tribes are reduced, 

 without property to value, treasures to count over, or a multiphcity of ideas 

 to enumerate ; where the desires are few and sordid, and the fragments 

 of language that remain are limited to the narrow train of every-day ideas 

 and occurrences, it is possible that there may be some hordes who have 

 lost the art entirely ; as we are told by Crantz is the case with the wretched 

 natives of Greenland,* and by the Abbd Chappe with some families 



* Sect. i. %25, 



■/.• 



