9. As for as respects sensible objects and their connections, all scents very plain: in order to express objects which were not sensible, so as to convey to others the feelings which existed in the mind of the speaker, words were used which had pre viously been appropriated to objects, to which those objects of the mind's eye ap peared to have • some resemblance or other connection. This resemblance or connection was frequently forced, and to those whose situation was different would not be at all striking ; in other cases it was correct, and the justness of the ap plication is proved by a similar procedure of unconnected inventors. We may de rive great light here from the hiero glyphics : for there cannot be a doubt, that where the visible sign, which origi nally represented only a sensible object, was applied to denote some quality dis covered by reasoning and observation, that the audible sign or word was -applied in like manner. Several instances will be adduced when we come to consider the hieroglyphical mode of communica tion: at present we shall adduce one or two examples as illustrations of the prin ciples here stated. The term used to denote the mouth would also denote speech; this comseeted with the word dog, would signify the dog's voice ; and this com pound the Egyptians employed to signify lamentation, and the which pro duced it. In the uncultivated periods of society, grief is loud and clamorous; and we need not be surprised to find the term hose/ employed to denote the ex clamations of pain, and even of sorrow. By a similar, but more obvious procedure, the words dog, field, placed together, de noted hunting. Our readers will be able, even in the present refined period of our language, to trace numerous instances in which the names of intellectual things have been obviously transferred frcin sensible things; and to those who have attended to the subject it will not appear too much to affirm, that in every instance, where a word is not the name of a sensi ble object, it has acquired its present force by a gradual transition from its primary application to sensible objects. In every known language the transition has been begun ; but it is only among the more relined that it has been plete : in our own, we find abundance of insSances in almost every intermediate stage of the progress, as well as in its termination.
10. Language would proceed but awk wardly without those wheels which have been gradually made for it : but all which can be thought necessary for communica tion, are the noun and the verb; and even of the latter the necessity may be justly doubted. We think it next to certain, that the whole of what is now (by asso ciation) implied or denoted by the verb, beyond what is denoted by the acknow ledged noun, was originally mere infer ence from the juxtaposition of the verb nca m with another noun. Oren fight, are names, and are still acknowledged as such ; placed together, especially if ac companied by distinguishing tones of voice, it would be naturally inferred that the speaker intended to raise in his hear er's mind that belief which exists in his own ; in other words, to direct his hearer to make a connection which circumstan ces has formed in his own mind. By de grees, at least in some nations, some of those names which were frequently thus employed with the inference of affirma tion, became somewhat appropriated to convey this inference, and the inference would then be made whenever •such a word was employed ; but in the earliest stages of language, the great body of verbs must have been merely nouns, and In the more simple languages many of those words which are employed as verbs (i. e. conveying the inference of affirma
tion) are still immediately recognised as nouns. In the Chinese very few names are appropriated as verbs, hut are used indiscriminately, and without any change of form either as nouns or as verbs: in the Hebrew, the root (which does not, like every part of the indicative in the Greek and Latin verbs, include a pronoun) is a simple name, and is in many cases used as a noun ; and in our own language many names are used either as nouns or as verbs. When we have advanced to the frequent use and gradual appropriation of some names to convey the inference of affirmation, the rest is easy and almost certain. With respect to the simple af firmation, the subject of it would, in the case of the first and second persons, al ways be a pronoun, and, in the same dis trict, the same pronoun. This, where spoken language made material progress, would gradually coalesce with the verb ; and the word so formed would be com pletely invested with the verbal charac ter, and never he employed but with the inference of affirmation. The same might also be the case respecting the third per son ; but the coalescence would in this instance be more slowly formed, and in sonic languages, Where the coalescence took place in the other persons, it did not in this: it most however be admitted, that in others the contrary is the Let. But we have already enlarged on these points as much as our limits will permit; and we therefore beg our readers to refer to GRAMMAR, § 29, 33, for some additional remarks respecting those changes which the verb has undergone in order to make it more expressive.
11. We do not think it necessary to enter any farther into the subject of the origin of oral language. It can scarcely be doubted by those who have studied the nature of the other parts of speech, by means of the light which the re searches of Mr. Tooke have afforded, that all have been derived from the noun and the verb ; and admitting this, all that is incumbent upon those who profess to show the original causes of language is, to present a probable origin of those classes of words. In those procedures which have been here stated, there is nothing which supposes metaphysical research or much observation ; and to render any procedure probable, it must wear the marks of simplicity. In the present period of the language, we see the grammarian pointing out the analo gies which are found to exist in language, and thence proceeding to the formation of new words upon those analogies: this is art ; but the early formers of language, in their inventions, followed only the dic tates of circumstances, and whatever re gularity we may perceive in their inven tions, must be attributed to the similarity of those circumstances. We see the phi losopher inventing a new term, agreea bly to prevailing analogies, to express some power of the mind, or some emo tion which had not received any denomi nation; but those who originally gave names to mental feelings derived them simply from some analogy, fancied or real, between the internal and an exter nal object : and those names which now suggest to us ideas the most subtle and refined, were originally only the names of objects obvious to the senses. The reasoner, when he uses a word whose meaning has not been accurately ascen bitted, defines the ideas which he in tends to attach to it, and uses it accord ingly : in the early, and even in the more refined periods of language, the ideas connected with words have been the result of casual associations, produced by local circumstances, by the customs of the age, or the appearances of nature in particular situations.