382 
LANGUAGE. 
rules ; in fact, this remark seems to apply with the greatest 
force to the most debased races. The Australian savage 
who roams the forest, and solely seeks his support from 
the chase and indigenous produce of his country, seems to 
possess a tongue much superior in many respects to that 
of others far more advanced in civilization ; he has a kind 
of simple classification for the grand botanical and zoolo- 
gical divisions, which is very surprising ; the Australian 
has words to distinguish tuberous from climbing and other 
plants, the marsuopial, flying, predatory animals, and birds, 
he displays a knowledge of natural history, which shows 
what a close observer he has been of nature. Thus, as a 
writer remarks : “ It is to be observed that the usages of 
barbarous as well as civilized nations conform perfectly to 
grammatical rules, that the uneducated in all countries 
have certain laws of speech as much as Shakespear or 
Bacon.”* 
An admirable paper on this subject states : “ The Polyne- 
sian language is said by all who have studied it, to possess 
some particular points of beauty ; the words of this language 
are very simple ; the syllables are found by adding to a 
single vowel or consonant : all the words are fixed and 
unchangeable, and the same word becomes either a noun, 
an adjective, verb, or particle; the different relations of the 
parts of a subject which we express by declensions, conjuga- 
tions, and prepositions, are made by words which in this case 
may be called particles, although they are in reality perfect 
words, which in all other cases are substantives, adjectives, 
and verbs. It is by the aid of these particle-formed words, 
that they are able to express the different relations of the 
parts of a sentence with a precision and force, of which the 
more cultivated languages are not capable, because their 
terminations and particles are in general nothing more than 
signs, possessing no other value than that of which they are 
the indicators ; it is truly a living language ; our cultivated 
tongues when placed along side of it, are but old trees with 
Essays and Interpretation of Scripture, page 393. 
