soning, and the articles of the Epicurean belief, concur, as I have already remarked, in deriving the race of man from the race of monkeys, and in exhibiting the ourang-outang, as his dignified prototype and original, whom they have hence denominated the satyr, or man of the woods. I shall not exhaust the time or insult the understanding of this auditory, by any detailed confutation of the new and adscititious matter contained in this modernized edition of the Epicurean theory; matter of which the Grecian sage himself would have been ashamed; and which is directly contradicted by the anatomical configuration of various and important parts of this animal itself: concerning which, it is scarcely necessary to recall to your recollection the remark we have just made-that while it approaches nearest to the form, it is farthest removed from the language of man of almost all quadrupeds whatever. I shall confine myself to the fair question, which the theory in its original shape involves;—is human speech, thus proved to be incapable of origin by any compact or settled system, more likely to have originated from a succession of accidents-from the casual but growing wants, or the casual but growing improvements of mankind? Now, admitting the affirmative of this question, we have a right to expect that the language of a people will always be found commensurate with their civilization; that it will hold an exact and equal pace with their degree of ignorance, as well as with their degree of improvement. It so happens, however, that although language, whatever be its origin, is the most difficult art or science in the world (if an art or science at all), it is the art or science in which savages of all kinds exhibit more proficiency than in any other. No circumnavigator has ever found them deficient in this respect, even where they have been wofully deficient in every thing else; and while they have betrayed the grossest ignorance in regard to the simplest toys, baubles, and implements of European manufacture, there has been no difficulty, as soon as their language has been, I will not say acquired, but even dipped into, of explaining to them the different uses and intentions of these articles in their own terms. Again: there is in all the languages of the earth a general unity of principle, which evidently bespeaks a general unity of origin; a family character and likeness which cannot possibly be the effect of accident. The common divisions and rules of one language are the common divisions and rules of the whole; and, hence, every national grammar is, in a certain sense, and to a certain extent, a universal grammar; and the man who has learned one foreign tongue, has imperceptibly made some progress towards a knowledge of other tongues. In all countries, and in all languages, there is only one and the same set of articulations, or at least the differences are so few, that they can scarcely interfere with the generality of the assertion; for diversities of language consist not in different sets of articulations, but only in a difference of their combinations and applications. No people have ever been found so barbarous as to be without articulate sounds, and no people so refined and fastidious as to have a desire of adding to the common stock. But, independently of a uniform circle of articulations, and a uniform system of grammar, there is also a uniform use of the very same terms, in a great variety of languages, to express the very same ideas; which, as it appears to me, cannot possibly be accounted for, except upon the principle of one common origin and mother-tongue; and I now allude more particularly to those kinds of terms, which, under every change of time, and every variety of climate, or of moral or political fortune, might be most readily expected to maintain an immutability; as those, for example, of family relationship and patriarchal respect; or descriptive of such other ideas as cannot but have occurred to the mind very generally, as those of earth, sky, death, Deity. I shall beg leave to detain you while I offer a few examples. In our own language we have two common etymons, or generic terms, by which to describe the paternal character, papa and father; both are as common to the Greek tongue as to our own, under the forns of rannas and warnp, אבת .pl אבא or אב and have probably alike issued from the Hebrew source And I may fearlessly venture to affirm that there is scarcely a language or dialect in the world, polished or barbarous, continental or insular, employed by blacks or whites, in which the same idea is not expressed by the radical of the one or the other of these terms; both of which have been employed from the beginning of time in the same quarter of the globe, and naturally direct us to one common spot, where man must first have existed, and whence alone he could have branched out. The term father is still to be found in the Sanscrit, and has descended to ourselves, as well as to almost every other nation in Europe, through the medium of the Greek, Gothic, and Latin. Papa is still more obviously a genuine Hebrew term; and while it maintains a range almost as extensive as the former throughout Europe, it has an incalculably wider spread over Asia, Africa, and the most barbarous islands of the Pacific, and extends from Egypt to Guinea, and from Bengal to Sumatra and New-Zealand. The etymons for son are somewhat more numerous than those for father, but the one or the other of them may be traced almost as extensively, as may the words, brother, sister, and even daughter; which last, branching out like the term father, from the Sanscrit, extends northward as far as Scandinavia. The generic terms for the Deity are chiefly the three following, Al or Allah, Theus or Deus, and God. The first is Hebrew, the second Sanscrit, the third Persian, and was probably Palavi or ancient Persian. And besides these there is scarcely a term of any kind by which the Deity is designated in any part of the world, whether among civilized or savage man. And yet these also proceed from the same common quarter of the globe, and distinctly point out to us the same original cradle for the human race as the preceding terms. Among the barbarians of the Philippine Islands the word is Allatallah, obviously "the God of gods," or Supreme God; and it is the very same term, with the very same duplicate, in Sumatra. In the former islands, I will just observe, also, as we proceed, that we meet with the terms, malahet, for a spirit, which is both direct Hebrew and Arabic; is and dua, one, two, which are Sanscrit and Greek; tambor, a drum, which is also Sanscrit: and inferno, hell, a Latin compound, of Pelasgic or other oriental origin. In the Friendly and other clusters of the Polynesian Islands, the term for God is Tooa, and in NewGuinea, or Papuan, Dewa, both obviously from the Sanscrit; whence Eatooaa, among the former, is God the Spirit, or the Divine Spirit; Ea, meaning a spirit in these islands. And having thus appropriated the Sanscrit radical to signify the Deity, they apply the Hebrew El, as the Pelasgians and the Greeks did, to denote the sun, or the most glorious image of the Deity; whence el-langee means the sky, or sun's residence, and papa ellangee, or papa langee, fathers of the sky, or 66 spirits." Allow me to offer you another instance or two. The more common etymon for death, among all nations is mor, mort, or mut; sometimes the r, and sometimes the t, being dropped in the carelessness of speech. It is mut in Hebrew and Phoenician; it is mor, or mort, in Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin; it is the same in almost all the languages of Europe; and it was with no small astonishment the learned lately found out that it is the same also in Otaheite, and some other of the Polynesian Islands, in which mor-ai, is well known to signify a sepulchre; literally, the place or region of the dead; ai meaning a place or region in Otaheitan, precisely as it does in Greek. An elegant and expressive compound, and which is perhaps only to be equalled by the Hebrew zalmut ( x), literally, death-shade, but which is uniformly rendered in the established copy of our Bibles, shadow of death. Sir, in our own language, is the common title of respect; and the same term is employed in the same sense throughout every quarter of the globe. In Hebrew its radical import is "a ruler or governor," sir, s-her, or sher, according as the h is suppressed, or slightly or strongly aspirated; in Sanscrit and Persian it means the organ of the head itself; in Greek it is used in a sense somewhat more dignified, and is synonymous with lord; in Arabia, Turkey, and among the Peruvians in South America, it is employed as in the Greek; and not essentially different in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France; the last country never using it, however, but with a personal pronoun prefixed; and it is the very same term in Germany, Holland, and the contiguous countries; the s being dropped in consequence of the h being aspirated more harshly whence the Hebrew s-her is converted into her, used also commonly, as the similar term is in France, with the prefix of a personal pronoun. The radical idea of the word MAN is that of a thinking or reasonable being, in contradistinction to the whole range of the irrational creation, by which the thinking being is surrounded. And here again I may boldly assert, that while in the primary sense of the word we have the most positive proof of the quarter of the globe from which it issued, and where mankind must first have existed, and from which he must have branched out into every other quarter, there is not a language to be met with, ancient or modern, insular or continental, civilized or savage, in use among blacks or whites, in which the same term, under some modification or other, is not to be traced, and in which it does not present the same general idea. MAN, in Hebrew, to which the term is possibly indebted for its earliest origin, occurs under the form (maneh), a verb directly importing "to discern or discriminate;" and which, hence, signifies, as a noun, "a discerning or discriminating being." In Sanscrit we have both these senses in the directest manner possible; for in this very ancient tongue, man is the verb, and can only be rendered " to think or reason;" while the substantive is mana, of precisely the same meaning as our own word man; and necessarily importing, as I have already observed, "a thinking or reasonable creature." Hence Menu, in both Sanscrit and ancient Egyptian, is synonymous with Adam, or the FIRST MAN, emphatically the man; hence, again, MENES, was the first king of Egypt; and Minos, the first or chief judge, discerner, or arbitrator among the Greeks. Hence, also, in Greek, men and menos (μev and μɛvos) ` signify mind, or, "the thinking faculty;" but Evos, contracted, is mens, which, in the Latin language, imports the very same thing. In the Gothic, and all the northern dialects of Europe, man imports the very same idea as in our own tongue; the English, indeed, having descended from the same quarter. In Bengalee and Hindoostanee, it is manshu; in Malayan, manizu; in Japanese, manio; in Atooi, and the Sandwich Islands generally, tane, tanato, or tangi; while manawe, imports the mind or spirit; and in New-Guinea, or Papuan, it is sonaman, a compound evidently pronounced from man. In this utmost extremity, this Ultima Thule of the southern world, I will just observe, also, in passing, that we meet with the terms Sytan for Satan, or the Source of Evil; and Wath (Germ. Goth) for God. But it may, perhaps, be observed, that in all the southern dialects of Europe, the French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, we meet with no such term as man; nor in the Latin, from which all these are derived, in which last language the term for man is homo. Yet nothing is easier than to prove, that even homo itself, the source of all these secondary terms, is derived from the same common root. This is clear from its adjective, which is hu-man-us: while every school-boy knows that man or men, though not in the classical nominative case of the substantive, is included in every inflection below the nominative case: as ho-min-is, ho-min-i, ho-min-em, ho-min-e; and it was formerly included in the nominative itself, which was ho-men; whence nothing is clearer than that the particle ho is redundant, and did not originally belong to the word. And were any additional argument necessary, I might advert to the well-known fact, that this redundant particle is absolutely omitted in the negation of homo, which is not ne-homo, but nemo, and was at first ne-men; and which, like homo, or homen, runs, as every one knows ne-min-is, ne-min-i, &c. It is easy, however, to prove this redundancy of the ho, by showing the quarter from which it was derived. The old Latin term was ho-men, ho-min-is; which every one must perceive is literally the obsolete Greek Ev, with the article & added to it; μev or ho-men, emphatically the man. The ho is also omitted in the feminine of homo, which is fe-min-a, and was at first feo-min-a, from feo, to produce; literally, the producer, or bringer forth of man, or min. Nothing, as it appears to me, is clearer than this, though the etymologists have hitherto sought in vain for the origin of femina. From feomina, or, without the termination, feomin, we have derived our own and the common Saxon term, women; the f, and v or w, being cognate, or convertible letters in all languages; of which we have a familiar instance in the words vater and father, which, in German and English, mean precisely the same thing. But this subject would require a large volume instead of occupying the close of a single lecture. It is, however, as you will find, when we come to apply it, of great importance; and I must yet, therefore, trouble you with another example or two. Youth and young are as capable of as extensive a research, and are as com. mon to all languages, barbarous and civilized, as the word man. I will only at present remark, that we meet with it in Hebrew, where it is n (yuna); in Persia, and Palavi or ancient Persian, where it is juani; in Sanscrit, where it is yauvan; in Greek, vlov (yion), from vios, or vives; in Latin, where we find it juvenis; in Gothic and German, where it is jung; in Spanish, joven; in Italian, giovan; in French, jeune; and, as I have already observed, in our own dialect, young. The word regent, in like manner, is, and ever has been, in equal use among all nations. This, like the French regir, is derived from the Latin rege; which runs through all the southern dialects of Europe; while in Germany and the north, the derivative recht is the common term foule, law, authority. The Hebrew is (raj), a conspicuous or illustrious person; the Sanscrit, raja; the Greek, pa and sawv; of the same exact import as the Hebrew; and hence ra, or raia, imports the sun, the most powerful and illustrious object in creation, among a multitude of barbarous nations, and especially those of the Sandwich Islands and New-Zealand; and ooraye and rayan-ai, the day or light itself, in different parts of Sumatra. Our own term ray, common, indeed, to almost all Europe, ancient and modern, is obviously from the same source; and hence the Arabic (rayhe), fragrancy, odour; the poetic mind of the Arabians uniformly applying this image to legitimate rule and government. The term name, in like manner, runs through all the leading languages of ancient and modern ages, almost without a shade of difference, either in its meaning or mode of spelling: for we thus meet with it in Hebrew, Sanscrit, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Gothic, and Latin. The same theory might he exemplified from many of the terms significa tive of the most common animals. Our English word cow is of this description, and may serve as a familiar example; (gouah), in Hebrew, imports a herd (as of oxen); the very same word in Greek, yúa, means a yoke of oxen; in both which cases the word is used in a collective sense. In Sanscrit, gava imports, as among ourselves, a single animal of the kind, ox or cow; in Persian, and ancient Persian or Palavi, it is gow; in German, kuh; and among the Hottentots, as an example of a savage tongue, koos and koose; while among the New-Zealanders, who have no cows, eu imports paps or breasts, the organ of milk. Mouse is in like manner (musheh) in Hebrew, literally "a groper in the dark;" in Sanscrit, mushica; in Persian and Palavi, mush; in Greek, μus, without the aspirate; in German, mous; in English, mouse; in Spanish, musgano: all, as I have already observed, confederating in proof that the various languages, and dialects of languages that now are or ever have been spoken, have originated from one common source; and that the various nations that now exist, or ever have existed, have originated from one common cradle or quarter of the world, and that quarter an eastern region. Finally, and before I close this argument, and deduce from it its fair and legitimate result, let me pointedly call your attention to that most extraordinary act of correspondence between all nations whatever, in all quarters of the globe, wherever any trace of the art exists, which is to be found in their employment of a decimal gradation of arithmetic; an argument which, though I do not know that it has ever been advanced before, is, I freely confess to you, omnipotent of itself to my own mind. Let me, however, repeat the limitation, wherever any trace of this art is found to exist; for in the miserable state to which some savage tribes are reduced, without property to value, treasures to count over, or a multiplicity of ideas to enumerate; where the desires are few and sordid, and the fragments of language that remain are limited to the narrow train of every-day ideas and occurrences, it is possible that there may be some hordes who have lost the art entirely; as we are told by Crantz is the case with the wretched natives of Greenland, and by the Abbé Chappé with some families among the Kamtschatkadales; while there are other barbarian tribes, and especially among those of America,‡ who cannot mount higher in the scale of numeration than five, ten, or a hundred: and for all beyond this point to the hair of their head, as a sign that the sum is innumerable. But, putting by these abject and degenerated specimens of our own species who have lost the general knowledge of their forefathers, whence comes it to pass, that blacks and whites in every other quarter, the savage and the civilized, wherever a human community has been found, have never either stopped short of nor exceeded a series of ten in their numerical calculations; and that as soon as they have reached this number, they have uniformly commenced a second series with the first unit in the scale, one-ten, two-ten, three-ten, four-ten, till they have reached the end of the second series; and have then commenced a third, with the next unit in rotation; and so on, as far as they have had occasion to compute? Why have not some nations broken off at the number five, and others proceeded to fifteen before they have commenced a second series? Or why have the generality of them had any thing more than one single and infinitesimal series, and, consequently, a new name and a new number for every ascending unit? Such a universality cannot possibly have resulted except from a like universality of cause; and we have, in this single instance alone, a proof equal to mathematical demonstration, that the different languages into which it enters, and of which it forms so prominent a feature, must assuredly have originated, not from accident, at different times and in different places, but from direct determination and design, at the same time and in the same place; that it must be the result of one grand, comprehensive, and original system. We have already proved, however, that such system could not be of human invention; and what, then, remains for us but to confess peremptorily, and ex necessitate rei, as the fair conclusion of the general argument, that it must have been of divine and supernatural communication? It may be observed, I well know, and I am prepared to admit the fact, that the examples of verbal concordance in languages radically distinct, and not mere dialects of the same language, are, after all, but few, and do not occur, perhaps, once in five hundred instances. But I still contend that the examples, few as they are, are abundant, and even superabundant, to establish the conclusion; and the fact on which the objection is founded, instead of disturbing such conclusion, only leads us to, and completely establishes, a second and catenating fact: namely, that by some means or other the primary and original language of man, that divinely and supernaturally communicated to him in the first age of the world, has been broken up and confounded, and scattered in various fragments over every part of the globe: that the same sort of disruption which has rent asunder the solid ball of the earth; that has swept away whole species and kinds, and perhaps orders of animals, and vegetables, and minerals, and given us new species, and kinds, and orders in their stead; that has confounded continents and oceans, the surface and the abyss, and intermingled the natural productions of the different hemispheres; that the same sort of disruption has assaulted the world's primeval tongue, has for ever overwhelmed a great part of it, wrecked the remainder on distant and opposite shores, and turned up new materials out of the general chaos. And if it were possible for us to meet with an ancient historical ↑ Sect. ill. 17. Sect. i. 225. S |