236 
Ms condition, at the present day, that would make him feel 
the want of articulate sounds, even if he were to lose the 
scanty vocabulary he now has —the language of gesture being 
still preserved? In Major Long’s expedition to the Kocky 
Mountains, there is an account of certain tribes of the aboriginal 
inhabitants of the country west of the Mississippi, who, though 
speaking different languages, readily communicate with one 
another in the common natural language of signs : many o 
these are described in Major Long’s volumes, and, as might 
be expected, they closely agree with those employed by the 
deaf and dumb. . . A 
It may be said, however, that man, evemn this primitive and 
barbarous condition, would instinctively know that the organs 
with which he was endowed all had their appropriate ofhces, 
and that he would not be man without an instinctive propen- 
sity to use them. This is true. But I submit, that previously 
to his having witnessed articulation in others, or exercised it 
himself, he would not be conscious that he possessed organs of 
speech, as such, at all. The larynx, the tongue, the palate, 
the teeth, and the lips, he would naturally employ for other 
and even more important purposes, at least for ^ more im- 
portunate purposes. How is he to know that m addition 
to those offices these parts of his frame can , by certain 
mechanical adjustments, convert mere voice into an artificial 
system of intelligible sounds, conventionally to be employed 
to express thoughts, and actions, and things . Bis 
throat is a channel for his food; his tongue and palate, - 
the organs by which he tastes it; his teeth, -the instru- 
ments by which he masticates it; while his lips he employs 
in the act of drinking. Who, or what is to tell him 
that these same organs could be employed, not only for t 
nourishment of his body, but also for the elevation and enlarge- 
ment of Ms mind ? Is it likely, in the primitive low condition 
we are here contemplating him, that he would ever think ot 
these ministers to his physical wants and enjoyments in con- 
nection with any intellectual or moral purposes ; or ot using 
them, with the view of supplanting his natural and s ?|“ ' 
cant language of signs by non-natural and non-sigmficant 
Ut There e can be no doubt, on the hypothesis that speech was 
the gift of God to man, that there would have been what may 
be called a pleasurable instinctive propensity to speak, but 
this is very different from an instinctive propensity to invent 
sueech -to invent that of which (if in his primitive condition 
he were without) he would neither have felt the want, nor 
have known tbe value. 
