Note 345 — Chapter IX

[“Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the names of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by Mochus, the Phœnician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicurus; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.”—Encyclop. Brit., vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.—Editor.]