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— in point of fact onr most skilful scientific men know very little about either 
as yet — you have only to discover that a current of electricity sent along a wire 
will turn a magnetic needle in one direction, and that another current, sent 
in an opposite direction, will turn it in another way ; these facts being- 
known, you can construct an electric telegraph. Why, an Indian, a Chinese, 
or a Japanese, who knows these things, is quite as capable of making 
telegraphic instruments as we are ourselves. We think we are so trans- 
cendantly superior to the men of the past in our civilization, but in all 
the true essentials of civilization, in all its highest fruits, go where you will 
into the Biblical record — take Abraham, and his wife and children, for 
instance — and you will find them as highly civilized as any people among 
ourselves. We find them far superior in their state of civilization even to 
the inhabitants of what is called the unchanging East. Although the 
East is called unchanging, its inhabitants have degenerated in civilization 
wherever Mahommedanism has obtained the ascendancy. We not only find 
that, but we find that, under the same circumstances, other portions of the 
human race would remain very much in the same condition. I was recently 
reading an account of China, written by a medical man, who describes the 
Tartar tribes coming into China from the steppes ; and as you read the 
description, the scene is one so familiar, that you can almost fancy 
you are reading an account of Abraham coming up into Egypt with 
all his camels. In Atkinson’s works you will find barbarism and civiliza- 
tion combined together ; nomadic races, possessing a high degree of 
civilization, and possessing a great deal of material wealth, but still 
living in that nomadic state in which Abraham lived when he went 
up into Egypt. — I do not think the difficulties which have been 
raised in this discussion with regard to language are so strong as 
might be supposed. Supposing we admit them to be objections, I think 
they still tend to favour the main argument of Mr. Titcomb’s paper. We 
are taught that our own language in its present state has been derived from 
the Sanskrit and other cognate languages. If we were to enter into modern 
theories as to the formation of language, we must admit that our language, 
powerful and useful as it is, capable of expressing the highest spiritual truths, 
capable of discussing all the philosophy of the * past in the strongest and 
clearest terms and all the achievements of modern science — instead of being 
improved has degenerated. We have lost all our inflexions : all the verbs have 
got into an antediluvian state, if I may so call it ; we have dropped all the 
suffixes of our verbs : we have not even approached the state of agglutination ! 
It may be that language has a tendency to pass through revolutions : I can 
hardly understand how any savage race, being in a state of barbarism, and 
supposing that race always was in a state of barbarism — for that is the point 
I want to fix your attention upon — I can hardly understand how any such 
race could evolve such a system of language as many barbarous races possess — 
a system such as we, with all our modern notions of the history and 
structure of language, could hardly elaborate in the study. The same sort of 
thing has been pointed out with regard to the Chinese language. Arch- 
