THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
173 
reason have released man from their inflexible bonds, and given him 
over to the capricious and protean power of accident, fancy, and 
taste, that we must find the evidence which tradition has lost. All 
that lies without it belongs to the common history of man. It is here 
that we shall find the particular history of races. 
A more radical and comprehensive division would be into pure¬ 
ly psychological and ethnic facts,—the former being stripped of 
any peculiar form or colouring, common to all men and all nations, 
and those with which the moral philosopher concerns himself,—and 
the latter being those which, although often the same as the former, 
are invested with a peculiar intrinsic force, or manner of manifesta¬ 
tion, by the character of each people. 
It is because Man is essentially, even in his lowest or normal 
state, a shadow of the Divinity, and a mirror of all nature, capable of 
an infinite perception and reflection of the sensible, that he creates 
a language as spontaneously, variously and luxuriantly as the earth 
arrays itself in vegetation. Hence, to the deveiopement ol language 
great general mental and moral advancement is not requisite. A 
fine sensuous or perceptive organization, unaccompanied by any ex¬ 
ertion of the inventive scientific faculty in acquiring an increasing 
power of adapting physical forces to human purposes, is capable 
of evolving, or will necessarily evolve, a language as varied as exter¬ 
nal phenomena, tho sensible action of these on the race who possess 
such organization, and the action and reaction of their nature. But 
although the possession of a rich language by a rude tribe is no 
evidence of derivation from a higher civilization, the inflexions of 
which the voice is capable are so numerous, and the particular sounds 
which may be adopted into the language of a tribe must be so much 
a matter of accident or peculiar organization, that the language it¬ 
self may present the most important materials for ethnographical 
researches. It is true that the flexibility of the voice, as it so easily 
created one language, may as easily create another, and that, in some 
cases, the preservatives of a language may be so deficient as to allow 
of its undergoing successive changes, ending in an obliteration ot the 
original form. But this case, although it has sometimes happened, 
must be rare. The force of habit and imitation form a grand coun¬ 
terpoise to the fertility of human creativeness, and, while circum¬ 
stances remain the same ? man remains imprisoned in the network 
