LANGUAGE, taken in its most general sense, may be defined as the means by which the thoughts of one mind are conveyed to another mind; and it may be assumed, as a self-evident proposition, that the channel must be one or more of the senses. Of these the most available are of course the sight and hearing, but not to the exclusion of the others. Thus the sense of smell is turned to account when the blood-hound is employed to track a fugitive, but the materials at hand for action on the nostrils, the copia variant, must needs be limited, nor would any reference to this sense, or that of taste, have been made on the present occasion but that it is always desirable in an inquiry, to cast a look, however transient, over the whole field. While visible language is employed chiefly for the purpose of recording knowledge, there are cases where it is needed for immediate use. Thus, to take the Rae of the deaf man in the farce of Boots at the Swan,' a series of Inefficient attempts on the part of a traveller to procure refreshments by verbal orders, when followed by a few movements of the hands, as of cutting food in a plate and conveying it to the lips. The captain again on the bridge of a steamboat, amid the noise of passengers and weather, by previously concerted movements, conveys his orders either to the boy above the engine or to the sailor at the helm. In those sad, but happily rare, cases, where the channels of the eye and ear are both closed, time was when the unhappy sufferer was left to a life of worse than brutal torpidity ; but by modern science the sense of touch alone has been made to supply in some measure the deficiency, as in the well-known ease of Laura Bridgman. The language then of the eye and the ear need alone claim our attention. Some remarks ou the comparative advantages of these two forms of language have already been given in a previous article [ALPHABET]. It may be sufficient on this head to notice the not unimportant fact, that it may often be advantageous to call the visible in aid of the oral language. Thus a shrug of the shoulders, a stamping of the foot, and movement of the hand in various ways, often add much to the intelligibility of a speaker.
In an endeavour to find out the origin of oral language, an inquirer is met by difficulties—some imaginary, some real. That the task is no easy one is seen at once in the fact that historical aid c in be of little value, inasmuch as, from the nature of the case, written language belongs to a much higher civilisation than that which was contented with the language of sounds. On the other hand, little weight need be
given to the doctrine occasionally put forward, that the attempt in itself savours of impiety, especially when the invention is ascribed to man's own efforts under the stimulus of the wants which social life brings with it. The Book of Genesis, it is now admitted by our best informed divines, was not written to form a code of science ; yet, taken in its most literal sense, the Mosaic account, instead of justifying the assertion of a living writer, that God gave man language, expressly ascribes the immediate invention to Adam. The most scrupulous theologian therefore, will have no reason to quarrel with the views about to be put forward. Others again treat the problem as one insoluble for us. "How this latent power evolved itself first," says the writer already alluded to, "how this spontaneous generation of language came to pass, is a mystery, and as a mystery all the deepest inquirers into the subject are content to leave it." Let us hope that an attempt to throw a wet blanket on the inquiry will not be successful. lu all departments of knowledge, " the impossible" has again and again been accomplished, and the solution has usually been effected by the establishment of principles not more remarkable for power than for simplicity. We think it the more important to urge this law of sim plicity, as marking all just explanations of natural phenomena, because a certain love of the mystical has induced some modern writers to shut their eyes to what is really most simple iu the present inquiry. The same writer, who has many claims on public attention, while he admits that man has adorned and enriched his life with various arts and inventions, objects to the theory that in like manner he invented language. To the doctrine, that from rude and imperfect beginnings, the inarticulate cries by which he expressed his natural wants, the sounds by which he sought to imitate the impression of natural objects upon him, man by little and little arrived at that wondrous organ of thought and feeling which he now possesses, he opposes the objection that language would then be an accident of human nature, forgetting that it is oue of those accidents which must have occurred, so that chance at once merges in certainty. Moreover, what valuable and permanent results may come out of mere accident, has been shown of late in the highly philosophical doctrine of " Natural Selection " in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.