radical sounds in father and mother come from some primary root to be found in Pa and Ma, it would prove nothing for the one theory more than the other, even if true. It is akin to what Max Müller calls the "bow-wow theory" of language, in which I have no faith whatever. Children are taught to say Pa and Ma in the nursery, and it is natural that they should imitate the Baa of the sheep, when they can do little else as babies. But, if that is a true theory for language beyond the nursery, how is it that in no language whatever, so far as I am aware, the sheep is, after all, called a Baa? It is not so in Latin, where we have ovis and agnus for what in English we call a sheep and a lamb. It is not so in Greek or in French, and perhaps not in any other tongue; and therefore the theory requires no other refutation: it is not founded on any facts. As regards the monogenist theory, on the other hand, you have not only the Holy Scriptures which give you the hypothesis, but you have those extraordinary coincidences of similarity in language which Dr. Thornton has so ably brought before us, in support of it. You have, also, the high perfection of the Sanskrit language, though one of the oldest ; and that is in accordance with the idea that God created man not only a perfect being, but with a perfect faculty of speech, or perfect instrument of thought. And, indeed, it could not have been otherwise, if you once admit the theory that God created man in a state of perfection. It will be my duty a fortnight hence to bring forward some arguments against the contrary notion that God might have created man imperfect. If, however, you adopt the Scriptural account, and admit that speech was a gift of God, there is still a question which perhaps may be raised, as to whether that gift was not at first limited to the power of giving things names. Dr. Thornton appears to lean to this view. To give names to objects would no doubt be naturally one of the first exercises of that power; but I can see no reason for believing that it had any such limitation. The idea of action or of motion is inseparable from the observance of living beings, and is as definite as the idea of the existence of things themselves; and therefore verbs to express such ideas are as essential to intelligent thought and intelligible speech as substantives. If there is any part of Dr. Thornton's valuable paper with which I did not go, it is what relates to this. But I do not agree with Mr. Warington that the learned Doctor overlooked the grammatical differences or agreements in language, to which Mr. Warington has called special attention. Mr. Crawfurd and other ethnologists I know are of opinion that grammatical inflection is a matter of the greatest importance in determining the family of a dialect. Granting that man was created a perfect being, he must have been endowed with the capacity of speaking what he was obliged to think. He would at the very first have to think of the power of God as his Creator, and of his own relative position upon earth. According to Revelation, he had to think, in his communications with the Deity himself; but that is beyond our present range of conception, as it relates to what is supernatural. But at all events, after the creation there is nothing in the Scriptural account to lead us to the conclusion that man had to invent his language. And, in point of fact, now, we never invent words: we either borrow them, or we modify them, to suit new ideas. And if we

were to attempt to describe any object by some inherent quality which it possessed, we should find it the most difficult thing imaginable. We fancy sometimes that words are thus expressive of ideas by their sound; but that is mostly imaginative. If we take, for instance, the words "rush" and "crush,”—the one signifying rapid motion, and the other arrested motion-which are almost quite opposite in idea; yet they both appear perfectly expressive, merely because, through the association of ideas, we are accustomed to connect the meanings of the words with their sound, and so we think that they are expressive. Again, bearing upon the question of change of dialect, we must all have observed what a difference exists amongst ourselves with regard to the pronunciation of the English language. If you go down to Whitechapel, you will not find the same dialect there as you will find in Belgrave Square. Language, as it were, develops and grows naturally, and as it grows it sometimes also tends to corrupt in its growth. The only thing which preserves it from more rapid alterations now, as formerly, is that it is written. In former days, when men had not the facilities for writing which they now so commonly possess, and when they wrote on stones or on tablets of wax, and when a still greater majority of the people than now were necessarily illiterate, language must have degenerated or altered very rapidly; and thus would be originated that great diversity of speech among mankind which we are now trying to account for. But, if anything is clear from the numerous philological differences and theories of language that exist, it is this,-namely, that there has been a "confusion of tongues" in the world. I do not think we can want any more absolute proof than we already have to be convinced of this. Professor BYRNE.-There is one principle in the law of Confucius which ought to be mentioned. He taught the Chinese that they should give attention to things and not to words. It is a part of their religious duty to carry out this principle.

Mr. REDDIE. I fancy they must have been very unsuccessful in doing so, for they have more words than any other nation in the world. (Laughter.)

Mr. WARINGTON.-I wish to state that in the observations which I made I was not criticising the paper; I was rather praising the author for not using an argument which he might have used.

The CHAIRMAN.-I may say that I did not understand the observations of Mr. Warington as criticisms upon the paper. I rather thought that he was calling attention to an argument which might have been used, but was not used by Dr. Thornton. I think the arguments in the paper have been very ably sustained in the discussion; and the views advanced by the author have been supported by the very interesting fact which has been mentioned by Captain Fishbourne with respect to the Chinese language. The variety of language spoken in China affords a remarkable confirmation of what Dr. Thornton has been maintaining in his paper. There is this remarkable distinction between the Chinese and every other language,-it is a language of ideographic symbols; all other languages are phonetic. The symbols used by the Chinese do not represent sounds; they represent things, as was stated by Professor Byrne. It is a very remarkable fact, that in a

nation like China, which is a very exclusive nation, and a nation possessing the power of writing, you need not travel out of it to look for an illustration of all the arguments which have been maintained in Dr. Thornton's paper. If you take one of the northern provinces in China, and compare the dialect spoken there with that spoken in one of the southern provinces

Captain FISHBOURNE. You might take the adjoining provinces.

The CHAIRMAN.-You will find that if, as Captain Fishbourne states, you compare the dialects even of the adjoining provinces, the diversity between them is so great that the inhabitants cannot understand each other; yet they have no difficulty in communicating their thoughts in writing. It is also to be remembered that we possess exactly the same kind of thing in the language of our arithmetical calculations. If we write down an arithmetical calculation, or an equation in algebra, it can be read by a man in France or Germany who knows nothing about our language; and thus mathematicians write down their symbols, and can communicate their ideas, though they may not be able to speak the same language. With regard to the observations of Mr. Warington, I differ from him in thinking that Dr. Thornton has neglected the comparison of the different grammars as well as the words of languages. though I don't think so much can be made out of the argument from grammar. Nothing can be more unsettled than the grammar of our own language, I know some who state that we have no grammar at all; such is the delightful position in which we are placed. It must have been observed by every one, that our language has degenerated from the complex grammar of its supposed parent language. At any rate we have lost almost all our inflexions, and have nearly arrived again at what some might think the more primitive style of language.

Rev. Dr. THORNTON.-Allow me to say, before I allude to the remarks which have been made on my paper, that I thank you most heartily for the vote of thanks which you have passed to me. I can assure you that I had great pleasure in preparing the paper, and that pleasure has been very much enhanced by hearing the many valuable observations which it has called forth. With reference to the observations of Dr. Tregelles, they were so favourable, that any remark upon them would be presumptuous on my part; nor was there anything in those of Mr. Warington which calls for any particular remark; I think he appreciated my arguments very fairly. I argued that, putting Scripture entirely out of the question, there is no reason to believe, from the study of man's speech, that what we find stated historically in the Scripture is not true, or that it disagrees with the conclusions which we fairly derive from the facts obtained from other sources. Of course it is impossible to invent a theory which will square with facts in every particular, and my argument was that the apparent probability inclined in favour of Scripture. It is perfectly true that suffixes and prefixes are originally separate words attached to the inflected word, as, for instance, the verb "have" may be clearly traced as a suffix in the futures and conditionals of Romance verbs ; and the use of these attachments in so many different families of languages is a proof of their common origin. The choice of prefix by one family and of

suffix by another, is the result of that tendency to divergence which I hold to have been inflicted on mankind at Babel: the primæval tongue of the Noachida probably used both. With regard to the observations of Mr. Warington, as to the similarity, in all languages, of the words used for father and mother, there are certain radical sounds which are accepted as word-roots in nearly all tongues. One of the first of these is "P," and "M" is a modification of it, both implying" that which is near." We might add that the harder "P" is probably used to distinguish the sterner, and the softer "M" the gentler parent. "Ma" is used in the Sanskrit in the sense of bringing into the world, and “ Pa” in that of preserving or maintaining. It is certain that the radicals Pa and Ma exist in every language, however it may be accounted for. I come now to the question as to the probable meaning of a passage in Scripture. Of course my explanation is given, off-hand, with the greatest diffidence. But the way in which I understand it is that in a future state the curse of Babel is to be done away. Man then being unwilling to speak that which is wrong, will be privileged to communicate in “ pure language" with his Father. That language will not be the tongue of man, but what I will call the tongue of angels, which he shall use for glorifying God. (Hear.) As to the communications in Paradise, between the woman and the devil, and between man and the Deity, we cannot argue or deduce much from the little we know of what went on in the Garden of Eden. Man, in a state of innocence, which he lost by his fall, had very simple ideas, which did not require any extensive knowledge of language to express. The devil, in his conversation with Eve, had only to use a little persuasion in addition to the negative reasons which he gave to her; but to enlarge on this topic would lead us into metaphysical theology, which is beyond the range of our present debate. Captain Fishbourne said that without speech we cannot think; but I should modify this statement by saying that, granting that we think in words, we do not think in grammar. If you contrast a conversation which you hold with any one with a debate carried on in your own mind, you will find that the relations expressed by grammatical means in the former case are, in the latter, necessities of thought rather than mentally-conceived inflexions. Here, again, however, we are getting into metaphysics. A farther objection was started with which I cannot agree, that language came from God perfect-that it was given as a gift to man, and was not given imperfect. I think that argument cannot be sustained. "Whatever Adam called every living thing, that was the name thereof." There was a work which was left to man to do. His power to articulate was absolutely perfect, but it was given to him that he should develop it, and use it for something higher. I do not suppose that the power of speech can be called an imperfect gift, any more than a grain of wheat which has not been put into the ground is imperfect; but language, till developed, was so. I will only now refer to the observation of Mr. Reddie as to what I stated about the Greek language. As an Oxford man and a schoolmaster, I am not one who is likely to undervalue that language; and when I stated that the Greeks were slavish in their devotion to their own language, I did not mean to sneer at this, as Mr. Reddie appears to think, but to express an

opinion that they cultivated their own language so deeply and exclusively that it almost amounted to a fault. There is, for instance, in the Rhetoric of Aristotle an amusing passage, in which a person is introduced as contending, half in earnest, that if you predicate non-existence, you predicate a species of existence; as if not-being were a peculiar way of being. That is a confusion which would never occur to a man who had learned another language. I do not think I need now make any further observations upon the question, and I will conclude by again thanking you for the kind way in which you have heard me.

The Chairman then adjourned the meeting.