De peindre la parole et de parler aux yeux;

Et par des traits divers de figures tracées,

Donner de la couleur et du corps aux pensées."-BREBEUF.*

"Languages belong to the class of means. In preferring one to another, we should be guided by the principle of its utility: that language, in which most knowledge is contained, is the most useful."-G. COMBE.†

"Yes! Education reform will come, and conquer like every other."

CHAPTER I.

THOMAS WYSE.t

DIFFERENT SPECIES OF SIGNS.

SECT. I.-NATURAL SIGNS,-LANGUAGE OF ACTION.

A LANGUAGE is a system of signs which represent our thoughts and sentiments, and serve for the interchange of ideas in social intercourse.

God, having made man a social being, provided him with means of mental communication suited to his condition. The sensations which he receives through his physical faculties, convey, as we have seen (p. 16), impressions to the brain; this organ, in its turn, by an instantaneous reaction, prompts all the muscles of the human frame, and especially those of the face, to corresponding Lectures on Popular Education. Speech in the House of Commons, 19 May, 1835.

*Imitation de Lucain.

VOL. I.

H

actions which declare the existence of inward feelings, and which, by the force of sympathy, communicate these feelings to others. The looks, smiles, laughter, tears, sighs, groans, gesticulations, motions, inarticulate sounds or cries, which follow as the immediate consequences of received impressions, are the natural expressions, the necessary signs of his thoughts and emotions. This instinctive succession of impressions and expressions, this double faculty of receiving and communicating ideas, constitutes the language of action. Every tone of the voice, every change of the countenance, every movement of the limbs, every attitude of the body which bespeaks a desire, a feeling, or a thought, belongs to this language of nature.

Destitute of natural signs, neither man nor any of the gregarious species among the brute creation, could have conformed to the laws of their organisation. But with the language of action, sympathy awoke, and social communion began between our first parents from the moment they were placed by their Maker in one another's presence. Through its medium, men of all countries, civilised or uncivilised, can communicate with each other; the youngest child is made to understand those who approach him; the lower animals act under its influence in their mutual relations; they even readily obey the will of man which it conveys. Thus has the Almighty gifted his noblest creature with the means of exercising his sovereignty over the animal creation.

Man never entirely divests himself of this innate language, even in the highest state of civilisation, and in the possession of the most finished articulate idiom. It is especially when he is under the influence of the passions, that nature supplies the deficiencies of art, that tones, looks, gestures, and attitudes give energy to the articulate expression of thought which they accompany. This natural eloquence, so well calculated to move and excite public assemblies, imparts life and meaning to a discourse, when, from the poverty of articulate language, obscurity of the speaker's words or ignorance of his hearers, the oral expression would often prove ineffective. Of this fact we have a remarkable example in the extraordinary enthusiasm to which St. Bernard roused the German peasantry, by preaching the Crusades, although he addressed them in French, a language which they did not understand. Cicero informs us that it was a contest between him and Roscius, whether he could express a sentiment in a greater variety of phrases, or Roscius in a greater

The action by which Marc

variety of looks and gestures. Antony, in Shakspeare's play, uncovers and shows to the Roman people the bloody corpse of Cæsar, is not the least eloquent part

of his harangue.

This eloquence of the body, as it was called by the ancients, was well known to the orators of the republics of Rome and Athens. Demosthenes showed what importance he attached to the language of action, when, being asked what was the first, the second, and the third requisite of oratory, he answered each time, "action." Eschines, his opponent in the celebrated Crown cause, acknowledged also, although indirectly, the power of action. The Rhodians, among whom he had retired, one day applauding the speech of Demosthenes, which he was reading to them, he could not help exclaiming, "What would you have said if you had heard. Demosthenes himself?" Everybody will assent to Quinctilian's opinion, that an indifferent speech, accompanied with suitable tones and gestures, has more effect than the most elaborate discourse without them: many speeches and dramas are insipid in reading, which, at the bar and on the stage, raise the liveliest emotions.

The language of action, capable as it is of expressing all the emotions of the soul and various states of the mind, was doubtless confined to purely natural signs, when it served as a medium of communication to man as yet in the primitive state of simple nature. But it has, in civilised life, undergone great improvement from the use which is made of it, as a branch of oratory and dramatic performance, as a means of communication between the deaf and dumb, and in the mute scenes known under the name of pantomimes. Thus modified and instituted for particular purposes, it can no longer be considered as a system of natural signs.

SECT. II.-ARTIFICIAL OR CONVENTIONAL SIGNS,-PRIMITIVE

LANGUAGE.

However expressive the language of nature may be, it is yet very imperfect as a vehicle of thought. It does not provide expression for all the wants of intellectual and social life in an advanced state of civilisation, the true state for which man was created. Its deficiencies, and the increasing demands for intellectual communication, soon led to articulate language, which, although arising from the spontaneous action

of the human faculties, may be called artificial, being of human formation, and consisting, as it does, of conventional signs.

The primeval elements of this language of art had their origin in human consciousness: the perceptions of sounds left on the mind by all the objects which manifested their presence through the faculty of hearing, being remembered and associated with these objects, became their fixed and characteristic symbols. Every individual, being affected in the same manner, and anxious to communicate his impressions and feelings to his fellow-creatures, availed himself of his power of imitation to give external existence to these symbols, as required by the necessities of social intercourse. Articulate imitations were originally the words by which one man called the attention of another, and directed it to particular objects. Thus, assisted by a favourable organisation, he derived from nature speaking all around the first signs of articulate language. Intended as he is to accomplish his own development, he was able to extend this language with the aid of the language of action, which, by a wise provision of the Creator, is inherent in his being. In fact, without a natural, no artificial or conventional language could have been instituted; because a conventional mode of expression implies previous compact or agreement to attach certain meanings to certain signs; but compacts or agreements could not be entered into without some medium of communication. Hence there must have existed a natural previous to an artificial language.

The first man was, we presume, under the influence of the same laws which govern us as regards the innateness of the language of action and its subserviency to the formation of articulate signs: we are not informed that his organisation was different from ours; and the gift of speech, with which he is supposed by some to have been originally endowed, was, no doubt, simply the power and instinctive desire of making words concurrently with his wants, and in accordance with the laws of his physical and psychological constitution, as we have shown when speaking of the vocal organs. It is, in fact, in the nature of human reason, as created by God, to produce articulate language.

We are the more inclined to entertain this opinion as we are told that God brought the animals before Adam "to see what he would call them;" which clearly demonstrates that the primitive articulate language was of Adam's own formation; for had it been natural, that is, implanted in him as one of the essentials