The subject of this inquiry, tho’ of that importance as to demand the
care and attention of the ablest writers, is perhaps the least understood
of any branch of science. This being in a great measure owing to the
present corrupt state of languages, and the wrong course and direction of
lexicographers in the investigation of them, the Writer of this essay,
therefore, without presuming to instruct his readers in any common
track of literature, only submits to their perusal some discoveries,
which perhaps may be of service towards the restoration of language
and primitive knowledge, and excite the curiosity of those of greater
learning and penetration, and engage them, if possible, in a research
worthy of their contemplation, the restoration of the first universal
language of mankind. For although the ground-work, which chiefly depends
on the author’s own discoveries, may be sketched out by himself, without
the parts and learning of an Aristotle, yet it must be confessed that the
finishing strokes in any new abstruse branches of literature deserve a
more masterly hand. However, since we are here indiscriminately permitted
a decent exercise of our faculties upon the most serious subjects, it is
to be hoped no unpardonable offence has been committed, in submitting
the following sheets to the judgment and decision of men of candor and
learning. If they should in any degree approve of the writer’s labours,
he will then be justified this intrusion into the province of the
literati, with all his defects and inaccuracies. But should the contrary
happen after an impartial and candid examination, he must then acquiesce
with the common fate of his fellow-labourers, and impute his errors or
mistakes to the intensity of his zeal for the service of mankind, more
particularly Britons of all denominations. But to be condemned unheard,
in a country that boasts so much of its liberties, especially those of
the press, must be without a precedent.
However customary it has been for writers to take notice of the
performances of former authors upon the like subjects, in order to shew
the necessity or utility of their own; yet, as no person ever treated
this subject upon the present plan, and the author is not so vain as to
imagine that any thing he could have advanced might have been sufficient
to attract those that have been long accustomed to the clod-cutting
traces, and the voice of prejudice or mere sounds, and he presumes not
to teach any particular language or doctrine, it shall be declined as
useless in the present case; and we shall proceed here to what seems to
be more proper and necessary for the illustration of the subject in hand,
namely, to transcribe some notes taken in the course of these inquiries,
introductory to a rational grammar. And first of the nature and state of
man.
Man, in the sense of language, is to be considered as a compound of all
beings, a microcosm in his form, and a general intelligent echo of the
divine fiat by his speech; a vegetable, by his manner of growth and
nourishment; an animal by his motion, respiration, and feeling; and a
spiritual being from his thinking or intelligent faculties; his animal
part being probably formed with the other animals, out of the dust of
the earth, and his intelligence in its first state, that tree of life,
breath, or superaddition breathed into his nostrils by the creator,
by which he became a living soul. The essence of this celestial and
terrestrial system or compound being will probably remain indefinable,
until man shall recover his primitive existence, as the tree of life;
tho’ the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the mean time furnish him
with sufficient means for his happiness here, and existence hereafter as
the tree of life; for his organs of sensation, in contact with external
objects and impressions, form in the sensory the various modes of
feeling, and those images are perceived by the will; which has not only a
nilling power of permitting those images to remain without any additional
light, as the mere images of sensation fit only for the government of
animal bodies; but also of willing or presenting them to the reflecting
faculty of the soul for the formation of sentimental ideas, to be
registered in the memory, and employed by the mind in its intelligent,
rational, wise and virtuous operations, for the illumination and conduct
of a reasonable being, appointed by Providence lord of the creation.
The human will being the sole energy of all voluntary motions in man,
and motions continuing in direct lines or courses, if not diverted
therefrom, most probably would have continued its pure intuitive course
and direction towards goodness, virtue, and true happiness, without the
power of nilling or depravely contradicting its original nature, as the
tree of life, had not the serpent interposed and put the fruit of the
tree of knowledge of good and _evil_ in its way. And as man in his state
of innocence, before his fall, must, as the tree or breath of life, have
been furnished with the knowledge of good, so it seems probable that
Moses by the tree of knowledge of good and _evil_, meant the generative
powers, or certain characters or letters representing them, engraved on
the _bark_ of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, furnishing the
first pair, in their state of innocence, with two sorts of ideas or
knowledge, and the means of gratifying their lust, as well as pride or
curiosity of knowing good and evil, like their superiors; mankind before
their fall being probably capable of seeing each others ideas, without
the use of sounds; and of propagation after the manner of the second Adam.
Since those animals, which are endued with the organs of speech, are
incapable of articulating any conceptions, it is reasonable to suppose
that the animal part of man alone, without the assistance of the
intelligent or rational, must be so likewise. It is therefore probable
that the human will, agreeable to the notes or ideas impressed on the
memory, plays upon the fibres, the simple tones of articulation; which
in their passage, with respiration, thro’ the lungs, stomach, windpipe,
larynx, and mouth, are by the glotis, tongue, lips, muscles, and other
organical powers, which assume literal figures, modulated into articulate
sounds, both simple and compound, agreeable to the nature of things and
their ideas, as impressed in the human sensory. And as man is furnished
with ideas chiefly by the means of speech, the tree of knowledge of good
and evil seems to be no improper metaphor of the human voice or _person_,
or the Dryades and Hamadryades, nor the tree of life, of man’s intuitive
state of knowledge and virtue.
It is yet the general opinion that human speech derives its origin
solely from the arbitrary composition or invention of man, without any
connexion with nature or the intervention of Providence. However true
such bold and presumptuous doctrines may be with respect to some of the
corrupt compounded parts, which chiefly occasioned the great variety and
confusion of languages, yet articulate sounds, the materials of speech,
clearly appear to have been the gift of Providence, and always the same
in all countries; as for instance, an Indian, as well as an European, in
expressing the idea of length, will contract and lengthen the organs of
articulation, so as to form an acute sound, and the shape of the letter
i; and to express breadth they will alike extend them, like the letter o,
to express a broad or grave sound; and so in other cases, though they
differ as to the manner of compounding those sounds; more especially
on account of the great loss of primitives amongst the Indians. And
it cannot be otherwise, since the scripture proves that Adam named
things agreeable to their nature, under the inspection and direction of
Providence.
Again, to suppose man of himself, without the intervention of Providence,
capable of forming the materials of his own speech, must be as absurd
as to imagine that he formed the materials of his own ideas or himself,
since speech depends on the original frame of man, and the shape of
his organs, and abstract and complex ideas on names, as the means of
forming and registering them in the memory. Nor does it appear to be less
so, to imagine dumb men, without inspiration, capable of fixing upon
arbitrary signs of language, or advancing in knowledge, or at least, of
forming so perfect a system, without being previously taught the use of
letters and characters, the elements and principles of languages; more
especially such of the sounds and figures, as were not to be met with
in any other parts of nature, and the unintuitive, vicious, privative,
and negative parts both of knowledge and language, which depend on the
hieroglyfic, sacred, or _secret_ characters. And, whatever may be the
disguise of arbitrary or corrupt dialects, they will all appear upon due
examination to derive their origin from the original tree of knowledge;
and was it not for the difference of climates, constitutions, habits,
manners, and other accidents, which demand the aid of grammar, it seems
probable, since characters represent the figures of things, and letters,
or natural articulate sounds subsist in the very frame of man, the very
ideas causing vibrations in the speaker, are felt by the hearer, and
the elements of speech are universally the same, that languages would
naturally fall, or at least, like the English, incline to their primitive
universal state, and the same combination and construction of particles
into words and sentences, if the particles of all languages were
precisely defined according to their primitive meaning; there being in
man an innate potency of recurring to, as well as an impotency of erring
or deviating from the original modes of speech, as well as perceptions,
and of becoming virtuous and vicious by turns.
Languages, it is true, have been fluctuating, and in particular the
English; which was originally the Celtic or Phrygian, brought by our
ancestors, the Titans, in the first westward migration, from the lesser
Asia, thro’ Greece and Italy into ancient Celtica; and which on the
arrival of the Romans in Italy partook of the Greek dialects, and
furnished the Romans with a considerable part of the Latin tongue. Some
of the Aborigines of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, having afterwards fled
from the Roman yoke into Germany, without their priests and druids, who
had before retired into Britain, their language as well as knowledge
received an ebb, though no foreign admixture. But their priests and bards
denominated in the writings of the British poets, the Luchlin colony,
and in Germany and Italy, by the names of Longobards, and Lombards, _the
great bard nation_, and speaking the British language in Germany, being
drove by the Romans out of Britain, into Germany and Denmark, their
language as well as knowledge received some increase from the mother
tongue; which then in its turn began to sink in Britain. And thus all the
dialects of ancient Celtica are but different dialects of the old Celtic
language, which first made its way into Europe, and so they ought to be
deemed by lexicographers in their definition of vocables. But of all
those dialects, the English in respect to the copiousness, strength, and
simplicity both of its vocables and construction, seems to be the best
fund for an universal language of any upon earth.
It may not perhaps seem improper here to explain some other abstruse
principles in physics and metaphysics, from the meaning of vocables, as
they too seem to explain the principles of rational grammar. There are,
it seems, in physics, discoverable by the signification of words, three
universal principles or genusses of things, namely, space, matter, and
motion; which, as to their essences, if essence, nature, and quality
differ in ought but form, are indefinable. But with respect to their
modes, properties, and forms, space is distance every way, whether
with or without body; with it, it is extension or capacity; without
it, a vacuum; quantity, mensuration, number, place or matter extended,
a continent, an island, length, breadth, figure, thickness, an inch,
a foot, a yard and such things being its modes. Matter, whatever its
essence may be, is an indivisible impenetrable atom or corpuscule; of
which two or more assembled or cohered, form a particle, and larger
cohesions or combinations of those form sensible bodies, which are
chiefly distinguishable in language by their forms; though they have such
properties and modes, as length, breadth, and thickness, or extension,
solidity, or an assemblage excluding all other bodies from its place,
divisibility or the separation of its quantity, mobility, passiveness,
and figure, or that length and breadth without thickness, which present
themselves to the eye. And as to the active qualities of matter, they
seem to be all intentional, as fluidity, softness, rarity, heat, and
other modes of motion; all the rest being passive, and arising merely
from the different texture, disposition, and combination of bodies; or
a privation of the former; as, firmness, hardness, density, coldness,
dryness, and rest. Motion is the successive passage or change from once
place or state to another. Of which there are three sorts expressible
by language, viz. the energic, generative, and local; which with their
various modes or actions are expressible by verbs.
The metaphysical part of man, which derives its origin from the Creator’s
impression, or the essence of the thinking soul, altho’ it has no more
consciousness or knowledge of its own essence, than those of other
beings; nor perhaps the means of its present modes of conception, without
the use of those bodily organs, to which the all-wise Creator was pleased
to confine it for a time, and the presence of internal objects, any
more than the organs of sensation feel the touch without the contact of
external objects, is still in the fool, as well as philosopher, when
furnished with proper organs, equally capable of that innate potency
of expressing its own qualities and actions, as is evident from our
universal acknowledgement of a creator, and the different powers of
those fools who are capable of lucid intervals. And however different
our reasonings may be concerning the attributes of the infinite Creator,
from the variousness of objects and different degrees of volition, there
can be nothing more absurd than to affirm that the human soul cannot be
impressed with the image of its Creator, because at times it expresses
or affects no consciousness of it; consciousness being rather an energic
affirmation or quality of the soul, than its essence, as an involuntary
animal or vegetable motion is an act, rather than the cause of motion.
Such perceptions however as it does express of spiritual beings, have
privative, energic, or moral names; which are formed by the symmetry,
and just measures and proportions of parts and modes of motion; from
whence moral notions also derive their origin, as shall be shewn in the
course of the following work, as shall also as to our mistaking infinite
duration for time.
Tho’ metaphysics aid the moral plan,
“The proper study of mankind is man;”
His language part we now presume to scan,
A mighty maze to be without a plan;
‘A _wild_ where weeds promiscuous shoot,
Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit;’
The tree of life, once, branches, stem, and root,
Of knowledge too, since _vices_ on it shoot.
The garden cleared of the tares and weeds,
Gives willing force, and cogitation speeds.
‘Then, as life can little more supply,
Than just to look about us, and to die;
Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man,
A mighty maze! yet not without a plan.’
Plain truth, not _person_, is my utmost hope,
I tell you truly in the sense of Pope.
_Wild_ signifies a wood, or the place of the higher growth, and is an
emblematical expression for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the
Υλη, matter or sound of human speech, as ειδος seems to be of its ideal
property.
_Person_ is a compound of pêr-son, _sweet sound_; pêr also signifies any
sweet ripe fruit, as figs or figes, according to the Welsh; which perhaps
resembles that which gave man the denomination of person, _the sound of
the apple or afal_, and to the _fallen_ angel that tempted Eve, the name
of di-afal or devil, _the apple God_; and figes and vices signify the
same thing; the v consonant and digamma being the same, and g being an
inflection of the radical c. See _person_, _wood_, &c. in the vocabulary.
The fall of man has laid us under a sort of charm, which nothing can
remove but a thorough taste of the tree of knowledge, and avoiding its
vicious branches as much as possible. Had that great reasoner Mr. Lock
been so happy as to attend a little more to the tree of knowledge,
instead of intirely rejecting the divine origin of human speech, and
innate principles of thinking, he might have reasoned well upon _right_
principles, instead of misleading and confirming us in our errors, as
without doubt was his intention.
The learned Hermes, the very best of modern grammarians, whose ingenious
performance, had it sooner come to my perusal, might have charmed me
out of my present labours, to acquiesce with his opinions, seems to be
a little affected by this fort of charm, and perhaps is as much deluded
from his subject by the language, learning, and beauties of the Greeks
and Romans, as the late author of the short introduction to the English
language, by some of our modern barbarisms, the very exceptionable parts
of our language.