Since those animals, which are endued with the organs of speech, are incapable of articulating any conceptions, it is reasonable to suppose that the animal part of man alone, without the assistance of the intelligent or rational, must be so likewise. It is therefore probable that the human will, agreeable to the notes or ideas impressed on the memory, plays upon the fibres, the simple tones of articulation; which in their passage, with respiration, thro’ the lungs, stomach, windpipe, larynx, and mouth, are by the glotis, tongue, lips, muscles, and other organical powers, which assume literal figures, modulated into articulate sounds, both simple and compound, agreeable to the nature of things and their ideas, as impressed in the human sensory. And as man is furnished with ideas chiefly by the means of speech, the tree of knowledge of good and evil seems to be no improper metaphor of the human voice or person, or the Dryades and Hamadryades, nor the tree of life, of man’s intuitive state of knowledge and virtue.
It is yet the general opinion that human speech derives its origin solely from the arbitrary composition or invention of man, without any connexion with nature or the intervention of Providence. However true such bold and presumptuous doctrines may be with respect to some of the corrupt compounded parts, which chiefly occasioned the great variety and confusion of languages, yet articulate sounds, the materials of speech, clearly appear to have been the gift of Providence, and always the same in all countries; as for instance, an Indian, as well as an European, in expressing the idea of length, will contract and lengthen the organs of articulation, so as to form an acute sound, and the shape of the letter i; and to express breadth they will alike extend them, like the letter o, to express a broad or grave sound; and so in other cases, though they differ as to the manner of compounding those sounds; more especially on account of the great loss of primitives amongst the Indians. And it cannot be otherwise, since the scripture proves that Adam named things agreeable to their nature, under the inspection and direction of Providence.
Again, to suppose man of himself, without the intervention of Providence, capable of forming the materials of his own speech, must be as absurd as to imagine that he formed the materials of his own ideas or himself, since speech depends on the original frame of man, and the shape of his organs, and abstract and complex ideas on names, as the means of forming and registering them in the memory. Nor does it appear to be less so, to imagine dumb men, without inspiration, capable of fixing upon arbitrary signs of language, or advancing in knowledge, or at least, of forming so perfect a system, without being previously taught the use of letters and characters, the elements and principles of languages; more especially such of the sounds and figures, as were not to be met with in any other parts of nature, and the unintuitive, vicious, privative, and negative parts both of knowledge and language, which depend on the hieroglyfic, sacred, or secret characters. And, whatever may be the disguise of arbitrary or corrupt dialects, they will all appear upon due examination to derive their origin from the original tree of knowledge; and was it not for the difference of climates, constitutions, habits, manners, and other accidents, which demand the aid of grammar, it seems probable, since characters represent the figures of things, and letters, or natural articulate sounds subsist in the very frame of man, the very ideas causing vibrations in the speaker, are felt by the hearer, and the elements of speech are universally the same, that languages would naturally fall, or at least, like the English, incline to their primitive universal state, and the same combination and construction of particles into words and sentences, if the particles of all languages were precisely defined according to their primitive meaning; there being in man an innate potency of recurring to, as well as an impotency of erring or deviating from the original modes of speech, as well as perceptions, and of becoming virtuous and vicious by turns.
Languages, it is true, have been fluctuating, and in particular the English; which was originally the Celtic or Phrygian, brought by our ancestors, the Titans, in the first westward migration, from the lesser Asia, thro’ Greece and Italy into ancient Celtica; and which on the arrival of the Romans in Italy partook of the Greek dialects, and furnished the Romans with a considerable part of the Latin tongue. Some of the Aborigines of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, having afterwards fled from the Roman yoke into Germany, without their priests and druids, who had before retired into Britain, their language as well as knowledge received an ebb, though no foreign admixture. But their priests and bards denominated in the writings of the British poets, the Luchlin colony, and in Germany and Italy, by the names of Longobards, and Lombards, the great bard nation, and speaking the British language in Germany, being drove by the Romans out of Britain, into Germany and Denmark, their language as well as knowledge received some increase from the mother tongue; which then in its turn began to sink in Britain. And thus all the dialects of ancient Celtica are but different dialects of the old Celtic language, which first made its way into Europe, and so they ought to be deemed by lexicographers in their definition of vocables. But of all those dialects, the English in respect to the copiousness, strength, and simplicity both of its vocables and construction, seems to be the best fund for an universal language of any upon earth.
It may not perhaps seem improper here to explain some other abstruse principles in physics and metaphysics, from the meaning of vocables, as they too seem to explain the principles of rational grammar. There are, it seems, in physics, discoverable by the signification of words, three universal principles or genusses of things, namely, space, matter, and motion; which, as to their essences, if essence, nature, and quality differ in ought but form, are indefinable. But with respect to their modes, properties, and forms, space is distance every way, whether with or without body; with it, it is extension or capacity; without it, a vacuum; quantity, mensuration, number, place or matter extended, a continent, an island, length, breadth, figure, thickness, an inch, a foot, a yard and such things being its modes. Matter, whatever its essence may be, is an indivisible impenetrable atom or corpuscule; of which two or more assembled or cohered, form a particle, and larger cohesions or combinations of those form sensible bodies, which are chiefly distinguishable in language by their forms; though they have such properties and modes, as length, breadth, and thickness, or extension, solidity, or an assemblage excluding all other bodies from its place, divisibility or the separation of its quantity, mobility, passiveness, and figure, or that length and breadth without thickness, which present themselves to the eye. And as to the active qualities of matter, they seem to be all intentional, as fluidity, softness, rarity, heat, and other modes of motion; all the rest being passive, and arising merely from the different texture, disposition, and combination of bodies; or a privation of the former; as, firmness, hardness, density, coldness, dryness, and rest. Motion is the successive passage or change from once place or state to another. Of which there are three sorts expressible by language, viz. the energic, generative, and local; which with their various modes or actions are expressible by verbs.
The metaphysical part of man, which derives its origin from the Creator’s impression, or the essence of the thinking soul, altho’ it has no more consciousness or knowledge of its own essence, than those of other beings; nor perhaps the means of its present modes of conception, without the use of those bodily organs, to which the all-wise Creator was pleased to confine it for a time, and the presence of internal objects, any more than the organs of sensation feel the touch without the contact of external objects, is still in the fool, as well as philosopher, when furnished with proper organs, equally capable of that innate potency of expressing its own qualities and actions, as is evident from our universal acknowledgement of a creator, and the different powers of those fools who are capable of lucid intervals. And however different our reasonings may be concerning the attributes of the infinite Creator, from the variousness of objects and different degrees of volition, there can be nothing more absurd than to affirm that the human soul cannot be impressed with the image of its Creator, because at times it expresses or affects no consciousness of it; consciousness being rather an energic affirmation or quality of the soul, than its essence, as an involuntary animal or vegetable motion is an act, rather than the cause of motion. Such perceptions however as it does express of spiritual beings, have privative, energic, or moral names; which are formed by the symmetry, and just measures and proportions of parts and modes of motion; from whence moral notions also derive their origin, as shall be shewn in the course of the following work, as shall also as to our mistaking infinite duration for time.
Tho’ metaphysics aid the moral plan,
“The proper study of mankind is man;”
His language part we now presume to scan,