Man, too, would endeavour to take his part in the divine harmony; he would translate into living and intelligent utterances the dim and sublime music of this unconscious hymn.
Like most theories that have met with any amount of acceptance, this belief contains a germ of truth. It originated from the onomatopœic character of a large part of all languages. But we reject the conclusion drawn from this fact. That man produced a large or very large part of his vocabulary by an imitation of natural sounds is entirely true, but that the idea of speech was created in him by the hearing of those sounds we believe to be eminently false. This theory, however, found especial favour among the philosophers of the eighteenth century, except that with them a mysterious convention seemed not even to require this natural basis. Maupertuis, Condillac, Rousseau, Volney, Nodier, Herder, Monboddo, and Dr. Smith,[30] all seem to believe in an original time when a few intonations, joined to gesture and expression of the face, sufficed for the wants of nascent humanity, and formed, in fact, a natural language; but in course of time this was found inadequate, and so “on convint,[31] on s’arrangea à l’aimable, et ainsi fut établi le langage artificiel ou articulé.” According to Monboddo the steps of the process were briefly as follows:—1, Inarticulate cries; 2, Gestures; 3, Imitative sounds; 4, An artificial language, formed by convention, and resulting from the necessities of the race. This language was originally poor and defective, but developed into richness, just as (to quote the simile of Adelung) the canoe of the savage has grown into the floating city of modern nations. All other conjectures are, however, eclipsed by Dr. Murray’s derivation of all the languages of Europe from nine onomatopœic syllables. These wondrous vocables[32] were:—1, Ag; 2, Bag; 3, Dwag; 4, Cwag; 5, Lag; 6, Mag; 7, Nag; 8, Rag; 9, Swag!!! M. Renan (who believes that all the parts of speech existed implicitly in the primitive language) may well remark that of all theories this is “the most false, or rather the least rich in truth;” and it may be known by its fruits, for the natural inference from it is either “that[33] thought is merely an affection of perishable matter (materialism), or that both are indiscriminately accidents of the one divine substance of the universe (pantheism).” It is true that language, though not the result of convention, tends to become[34] conventional in the process of time, but this very tendency is often a mark of decay and ruin, and a language is a noble and powerful instrument of thought in proportion as it keeps in view the motives and principles which originated the words of which it is composed.
3. The third main theory, which has found numberless supporters, is, that language is due to direct revelation. The tenacity of this belief was mainly due to the violent reaction of the spiritualist school in the nineteenth century against the systematising scepticism of their predecessors. It was warmly adopted by MM. de Bonald, de Maistre, De Lammenais, and others, and was in one sense a step forwards, for it recognised at least that “divine[35] spark which glows in all idioms even the most imperfect and uncultivated.” But this theory must likewise be rejected. It raises[36] men to the level of gods, as much as the former theory had degraded them to the rank of beasts. “Spiritualism contradicts nature, as materialism contradicts mind. It has reality and history against it as much as its opposite.”
This view opens considerations of such importance that we must subject it to a still more careful discussion.
We object, in the first place, to the difficulty and obscurity of the phrase. In one sense,[37] indeed—if we take it metaphorically,—it is perhaps the most exact expression to describe the wonderful apparition of human speech, which it rightly withdraws from the sphere of vulgar inventions. Language, as an immediate product of human powers, might perhaps, with more safety, be attributed to the Universal Cause, than to the particular action of human liberty. If by revelation be intended the spontaneous play of the human faculties, in this sense, God, having endowed man with all things requisite for the discovery of language, may, with near approximation to truth, be called its Author; but then, why make use of an expression so indirect and liable to be misunderstood, when others more natural and more philosophical might have been found to indicate the same[38] fact?
But, unhappily, M. de Bonald and others who urged this view took the expression literally, and made it not scientific but theological; not a disinterested[39] and independent conclusion drawn from induction, but a mere dogma of faith to be forced (like so many other false excrescences of theological tradition) upon the conscience of all Christians. In general, those who maintain the literal revelation of language, and reject its human origin, are the direct successors of those theologians who have so long opposed every discovery in science, and rejected the plainest deductions of geometry and logic. They intrude into a sphere in which they have no knowledge and no place; their arguments are neither scientific nor reasonable; they are not reasons but assertions; not conclusions but idle and groundless prejudices. It has been well said that they pertain to an order of ideas and interests which science repudiates, and with which she has nothing to do. Ignorance has no claim to a hearing even when she speaks ex cathedrâ.
Now what is meant by such an expression as the revelation of language rigorously understood? If, for instance, we take it materially, if we understand it to mean that a voice from heaven dictated to men the names of things—such a conception is so grossly[40] anthropomorphic, it is so utterly at variance with all scientific explanation, it is so irreconcileably opposed to all our ideas of the laws of nature, that it needs no refutation for one who is in the least degree initiated into the methods of modern criticism. Besides, as M. Cousin[41] has remarked, “it only removes the difficulty a step backwards without resolving it. For signs divinely invented would for us not be signs but things, which we should have been subsequently obliged to elevate into signs by attaching to them certain significations.” The revealed “term” would be a useless encumbrance unless it corresponded with some well understood conception; and therefore if words were revealed, conceptions must also have been implanted; and we are thus driven to the absurdity of supposing that anterior to all experience, we knew that which experience (i.e. an[42] actual relation of intelligence with that which is the object of intelligence) alone could teach us.
We have already said that these modern spiritualists considered the revelation of language to be a truth involved by the narrative of Genesis. In this they were the slaves of a false and narrow exegesis, which had not even the poor excuse of being literal. What is the true meaning of the sacred writer we shall endeavour to show further on; but we cannot here abstain from again uttering a strong protest against the barrier placed in the way of all honest scientific inquiry by the timid prejudices of that class which tyrannises over public opinion. When shall we learn to acquiesce practically in the belief which theoretically the most orthodox have long expressed, that it is a needless incongruity to look in the Bible for scientific truths which it does not profess to reveal? “Such[43] an attempt,” it has been well said, “has been a perversion of the purpose of a divine revelation, and cannot lead to any physical truth.”
Honesty all the more imperiously demands this remark, because here, as in a thousand other places, perverted by system and ignorance, we believe that the Bible rightly understood contains (not precise dogmas, but) the general indications of a sublime truth; and because it may be shown that in this particular instance its records accurately agree with the results of careful and laborious inquiry. Here, as often, the Bible does not clash with the conclusions of science, if taken to imply no more than what it categorically asserts. But the Bible is not the only source of information open to us, and if we are ever in any way to fill up “the vast lacunas which characterise that gigantic and mysterious epitaph of humanity engraved in the first chapters of Genesis,” we must do so not by ignorant and dogmatic assertions, but by humble sincerity and patient research.
If, then, language were revealed, the Bible is not only silent on such a revelation, but distinctly implies the reverse. We shall examine the narrative of Genesis (ii. 19, 20) farther on; but we must here stop to observe that where the Deity is represented as talking to Adam and other patriarchs, such passages must not be supposed to have any bearing on the question, as it is quite clear that they are only intended for an expressive anthropomorphism.[44] Even Luther, in his Commentary on Genesis, goes out of his way to prove that nothing material is intended in such phrases as God’s “speaking to” Adam, and that it would be as strange to suppose that they imply any[45] revelation of language, as it would be to infer the revelation of writing from the mention of the stone tables “written by the finger of God.” Writing also has been attributed directly to God’s external gift, although, as in the case of language, there is the clearest proof of its human origin and gradual perfectionment.