speak, and every child learns the language in which he talks; but the child, the lone man, engineer, artist, speaker, are born with the enabling faculties.

Carry the investigation somewhat further.

Every division of the human race has been long enough in existence to form its speech-capacity into language. Should we, if a new race came into being, by whatever means, find it gifted with speech? Or would speech have to be wrought out in the manner work-tools are invented and improved? In one or the other of these ways must language have come. How is it with the lower animals? Not one of them originates civilisation, or culture-whether linguistic or artistic. Their utmost capacity only enabling them to receive training by a higher race in activities, which they themselves have no power to evoke; and the imitative gesture, or grimace, or tone, is never human, but parrot-like. Inward power fails, whatever the outward occasion, but man possesses inward power and outward opportunity.

A lone man, science says-" would not speak, nor initiate culture"-we do not admit either as more than hypothesis; but are certain that man would seek his like and find woman. This would be by cogitation of the individual, involving selfknowledge or personality; then by consciousness of other and separate existences; then by desire seeking for another ego. This process of instruction and education is visible behind the veil of Scripture words. The impelling energy leading man from solitude, where he might possibly have remained speechless as the lower animals, to pour himself forth in human intercourse and in Divine communion. It is easy to imagine how Adam's language grew out of the spiritual ground of his heart. Thoughts and emotions being rooted then, as now, in the spirit; planted there by manifold sensations, quickened in vivid and branched into distinct perceptions; bloomed and ripened into the flowers and fruits of words. Thus we have the basis of speech in the powers of man, the impelling cause in the soul of man-leading to consciousness of himself and of others, and the necessity for speech in the various wants of human nature.

We are told-"That is no acceptable explanation to a

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scientific man which calls for a special force at the beginning, to act like a deus ex machina, and then retire to act no more.' Keep the marvellous out of view, then, and say-" Man began as a learner, and continued a learner; " but before the training and shaping process, a mental equipment, however small, was necessary; those animals which are nearest to man in structural arrangement do not speak; only creatures, such as parrots, in whose vocal organs it is not easy to trace the cause of the power. For a man to see as if trees are walking, there must be a little vision; and the apparatus of speech would be of no use unless, in connection with consciousness, a definite reach and power of reflection grasped, handled, shaped, signs of conceptions and their relations in the different departments of mental action. In fact, the active and creative force of language resided in man as a marked and distinctive characteristic: possessing the physical and mental instrumentality, the need of expression produced speech.

It is not needful to adopt any theory as to the consonantal triple roots and internal inflexion of the Semitic speech or as to monosyllabic roots; nor to decide whether the first words were nouns or verbs; nor yet to account for the fact that clever people, like the Chinese, have a language which, in many respects, is structurally the lowest, and in resource the poorest; nor is any dogmatic statement warranted either as to unity or separateness at the beginning. Science inclines to take "formless roots" as the origin of all language, but what those roots precisely were can hardly be traced out. It may fairly be thought, that as a calf will run about and help itself even on the day of birth; so man, having the organs of speech, when the opportunity came would use them; application and development necessarily follows, not with words as parts of speech, to be put together in sentences, for no man though capable as Homer and Demosthenes, can speak any language until he has learned it; but possibly with comprehensive utterances, one word conveying a whole statement. Demonstration, one way or other, is impossible.

Take words to pieces, or put them together; compare modern with ancient, and rich languages with poor; yet neither philologically nor historically is there any warrant for saying that

former men worked on any other linguistic base than that now used. This is the more interesting, because there is not in any known language a word which can be said to exist, púσu, by nature. The cry of animals is instinctive, but human speech is conventional; and every word stands in its accepted use, féσEL, by an act of attribution, determined by men's circumstances, habits, and references. It is impossible to trace language even to human natural cries, brutal are out of the question, though many words in some languages are imitations-" cuckoo," for example; and no uttered sound, nor any combination of articulations come or came into existence as the natural sign of an intellectual conception. We may as hopefully look to the beasts for our language, as for the particular and definite beginnings of the arts which develop our clothes, our instruments, our buildings. The voice has been given to us for speech, but only as the hands are given to write with, and it is simply because they are most effective for speech and written word that they are the universal agents.

3

We may trace many languages to one parent language; take the sentences, words, letters to pieces, dissolve them by crucial analysis into primitive forms, natural sounds, voluntary expressions; but what of that? We cannot by any possible synthesis form the primitive speech. Man, to be sure, is an imitative animal, but not unreasonably, nor instinctively, nor in a mechanical way; he imitates because he has the capacity, just as he is an artist. Take a mechanism to pieces; separate the brass, the iron, the wood, the leather, fuse and burn them; but, apart from the human intelligence adapting and constructing the materials, they are not the equivalent nor explanation of the machine. Animals make noises which men fashion into speech; birds have notes which men attune to song; in the woods and on the sea are heard those rustlings, breathings, roarings, which men combine in orchestral harmonies. Man is naturally that intelligent creature whose material frame and inward spirit, possessing many and various faculties and capacities, led inevitably to the production of speech, and to elaboration of language. These capacities and 1 "Life and Growth of Language," p. 282: Prof. Wm. Dwight Whitney. 2 Ibid. p. 288. 3 Ibid. p. 289.

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tendencies universally and inevitably worked out the Creator's foreseen and intended result; language becoming, in an especial manner, the incorporation of the acts of the soul-a living, breathing revelation of man to man, and of man to God.

"2

"Comparative Philology has now succeeded in assigning the dialects of mankind, with more or less precision, to three families of speech; the Turanian, the Semitic, and Aryan."1 The ancient languages are the most scientific, complex, and perfect in their structure; therefore, it is argued—“the forms and laws of structure, involved in the most perfect condition of language, were endowments of primeval man." Knowledge grew, the seeds of thought were sown, the experiences of individuals and of races became registered, the intelligence stored up in the brain obtained further expression in writing. Revelation was made permanent, Divine Truth was written in the Sacred Book, so soon as spiritual efficacy began language had birth. In the very threshold of our self-consciousness, when the external world was copied into the soul by psychical forms of perception, the representative images and ideas became efficient and were translated into speech-the effluent in which mind and matter reciprocate their respective properties. It is mind that imparts to modulations of sound their hundred thousand distinctions. When they rise to full utterance of soul they are a swelling harmony of many thoughts, of many desires, translating the heights and depths of human passions, the fervour of devotion, the refinements of metaphysical abstractions, into symbols of intellectual and moral wealth for augmentation of wisdom and virtue in the mass of mankind.

The vocabulary of a highly civilised people, as Greeks or Romans, English, German, French, or Italian, comprises many thousands of words, with various inflections, technical terms, proper names. "What proof is this of the grasp, of the elasticity of mind, that it can, with a sovereign ease, and just as a man lays down one tool and takes up another, so lay down and take up at pleasure this or that voluminous machinery of signs!" This wonderful apparatus, however, "Prehistoric Man," Daniel Wilson, LL.D. "Physical Theory of Another Life: " Isaac Taylor

1 Prof. Max Müller.

is but a material machinery; found scanty, inexact, feeble, and in no wise commensurate with mind. The mind, or vous, receives impulses from a world of thoughts which, for want of determination and fit symbols, are never born to augment the wisdom of man. Of what may the same mind be capable if furnished with a means of communication "homogeneous with itself; plastic in quality, and commensurate with its faculties!" If the light and power of sanctified minds could pervade us as sunlight the day, so that innermost thought and emotion were truly reflected; we should possess summative unity in speech, and that true reflection and communion of personal consciousness, whereby pure minds reciprocally satisfy and are satisfied. We may rationally expect that language will acquire greater depth and power than we are now wont to perceive or use; enabling the willing to reveal all their emotional and intellectual wealth; to express, in symmetry with the range of their mind, wonderful things concerning creation, and glorious truths as to the power, the wisdom, the love of God.

iii. Human Development was wrought by a process' of Civilisation.

True-but only in part. Real civilisation is not more a means of growth than proof of growth, and the benefits of civilisation are not unmixed with evil. The introduction of civilisation amongst a savage race generally proves their destruction, and manifests that progress is not something necessary and universal, but in an eminent degree contingent and partial. We say of all barbarian tribes-" They have no history;" that is, have made no appreciable progress. Moreover, as an unnatural parent, civilisation often destroys its own children: Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Athens, Rome, where are they? Was it not softness of manners, sensuality of life, want of high purpose, that slew them; rather than barbaric force? Or, if barbaric force, how came that to be the stronger? Those brilliant empires, so great in material attainments, have been swept away: only a few gigantic foundations, a few vast fragments of past grandeur, tell of their existence.

1 "Physical Theory of Another Life:" Isaac Taylor.