INTRODUCTION.
ON THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE; AND THE MODES AND MATERIALS USED BY THE ANCIENTS FOR TRANSMITTING KNOWLEDGE BEFORE THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.
Useful inventions, that exalt our race;
Fixing by various stages from their source,
In new improvements, the progressive course,
On nice connexions man's high schemes depend;
Means must be found proportional to the end.
Slow they advance, who seek perfection's prize.
Or benefactors of the world would rise."
One of the most distinguished privileges which Providence has conferred upon mankind, is the power of communicating their thoughts one to another. Destitute of this power, reason would be a solitary, and, in some measure, an unavailable principle. Speech is the great instrument by which man becomes beneficial to man, and it is by the intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself. If we carry our thoughts back to the first dawn of language among men, and reflect upon the feeble beginnings from which it must have arisen, and upon the many, and great obstacles which it must have encountered in its progress, we shall find reason for the highest astonishment, on viewing the height which it has attained. We admire several of the inventions of art—we plume ourselves on many discoveries which have been made in latter ages, serving to advance knowledge, and to render life comfortable; we speak of them, as the boost of human reason, but, certainly, no invention is entitled to any such degree of admiration as that of Language;—if, indeed, it can be considered as a human invention at all.
Man is formed, as well internally as externally, for the communication of thoughts and feelings. He is urged to it, by the necessity of receiving, and by the desire of imparting whatever is useful or pleasant. His wants and his wishes cannot be supplied by individual power; his joys and his sorrows cannot be limited to individual sensation. The fountains of his wisdom, and of his love, spontaneously flow, not only to fertilize the neighbouring soil, but to augment the distant ocean. But the mind of man, which is within him, can only be communicated by objects which are without, by gestures, sounds, characters, more or less expressive, and permanent,—instruments, not merely useful, for this particular purpose, but many times pleasing in themselves, or rendered so by the long continued operation of habit. These, reason adopts,—she combines,—she arranges,—and the result is Language.
Speech, or the language of articulate sounds, is the most wonderful, the most delightful of the arts, thus taught by nature and reason. It is also the most perfect, it enables us, as-
