palate. In a more general sense, the word language is sometimes used to denote all sounds by which animals of any kind express their particular feelings and impulses, in a manner that is intelligible to their own species. The Divine author of nature has endowed every animal with powers sufficient to make known all those of its sensations and desires, with which it is necessary for the preservation of the individual, or the continuance of the kind, that others of the same species should be acquainted. It is necessary for animals to know the voices of their enemies, as the voices of their friends, and the roaring of the lion is a sound, of which previous to experience, every beast of the forest is naturally afraid. Between these animal sounds and the language of men, there is however, very little analogy. Human language is capable of expressing ideas and notions, which there is every reason to believe that animal instinct cannot conceive.
Every human language is learned by imitation, and is intelligible only, to those who either inhabit the country where it is venacular, or have been taught by a master, or by books; but the voices of animals are not learned by imitation, and being wholly instinctive, they are intelligible to all the animals of that species by which they are uttered, though brought together from the remotest parts of the world. That the barkings or yelps of a Lapland dog would be instinctively understood by the dogs of Spain, Calabria, India, or any other country, — but there is no reason to imagine, that a man who had never heard any language spoken, would himself speak; and it is well known that the language spoken in one country is unintelligible to the natives of another, where a different language is spoken. Herodotus, indeed, records a fact, which, could it be depended upon, would tend to overturn the above reasoning; as it infers a natural relation between ideas and certain articulate sounds. He tells as, that a King of Egypt, in order to discover which was the oldest language, caused two children newly born of poor parents, to be brought up by a shepherd amongst his cattle, with a strict injunction that they should never hear a human voice, and that at the end of two years, they pronounced, at the same time, the word signifying bread. This is one of the many fables of that credulous historian.
The exercise of cultivated reason, and the arts of civil life, have, indeed, eradicated many of our (original instincts, but they have not eradicated them all. There are external indications, of the internal feelings and desires which appear in the most polished society, and which are confessedly instinctive. The passions, emotions, sensations, and appetites, are naturally expressed in the countenance, by characters which the savage and the courtier can read with equal readiness. The look serene, the smothered brow, the dimpled smile, and the glistening eye, denote equanimity and good will, in terms which no man mistakes. The contracted brow, the glaring eye, the sullen gloom, and the threatening air, denote rage, indignation, and defiance, as plainly and forcibly, as revilings or imprecations. To teach men to disguise their instinctive indications of their temper, and "to carry smiles and sunshine in their face, when discontent sits heavy at their heart," constitute a great part of modern and refined education.
The words of language are either proper names, or the signs of ideas or relations; but it cannot be supposed, that the Allwise instructor, would load the memories of men with words to denote things then unknown, or the signs of ideas which they had not then acquired. It was sufficient that a foundation was laid, of such a nature, as would support the largest superstruction which they might ever have occasion to raise upon it
