IN order to show you that the most abject superstition pervaded every
department of human knowledge, or of ignorance rather, allow me to give
you a few of their ideas upon language. It was universally believed that
all languages could be traced back to the Hebrew; that the Hebrew was
the original language, and every fact inconsistent with that idea was
discarded. In consequence of this belief all efforts to investigate the
science of language were utterly fruitless. After a time, the Hebrew
idea falling into disrepute, other languages claimed the honor of being
the original ones.
Andre Kempe published a work in 1569, on the language of Paradise,
in which he maintained that God spoke to Adam in Swedish; that Adam
answered in Danish and that the serpent (which appears quite probable)
spoke to Eve in French. Erro, in a book published at Madrid, took the
ground that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden. But in
1580, Goropius published his celebrated work at Antwerp, in which he put
the whole matter at rest by proving that the language spoken in Paradise
was nothing more or less than plain Holland Dutch. The real founder of
the present science of language was a German, Leibnitz--a contemporary
of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea that all language could be
traced to an original one. That language was, so to speak, a natural
growth. Actual experience teaches us that this must be true. The ancient
sages of Egypt had a vocabulary, according to Bunsen, of only about six
hundred and eighty-five words, exclusive of proper names. The English
language has at least one hundred thousand.