the various equivocal senses of them, may be sufficiently expressed by the Philosophical Tables here proposed.
I begin with the first of these.
§. II.The design of this Treatise being an attempt towards a new kind of Character and Language, it cannot therefore be improper to premise somewhat concerning those already in being; the first Original of them, their several kinds, the various changes and corruptions to which they are lyable, together with the manifold defects belonging to them. This I shall endeavour to do in the former part of this Discourse.
There is scarce any subject that hath been more throughly scanned and debated amongst Learned men, than the Original of Languages and Letters. ’Tis evident enough that no one Language is natural to mankind, because the knowledge which is natural would generally remain amongst men, notwithstanding the superinduction of any other particular Tongue, wherein they might be by Art. Nor is it much to be wondred at, that the ancient Heathen, who knew nothing of Scripture-revelation, should be inclined to believe, that either Men and Languages were eternal or, that if there were any particular time when men did spring out of the Earth, and after inhabit alone and dispersedly in Woods and Caves, they had at first no Articulate voice, but only such rude sounds as Beasts have; till afterwards particular Families increasing, or several Families joyning together for mutual safety and defence, under Government and Societies, they began by degrees and long practice to consent in certain Articulate sounds, whereby to communicate their thoughts, which in several Countries made several Languages, according to that in the Poet,
Horat. lib. i. Sat. 3.
Mutum & turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter
Unguibus & pugnis, deinfustibus, atque ita porro
Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus,
Donec verba quibus voces sensusque notarent
Nominaque invenêre; dehinc absistere bello,
Oppida cæperunt munire, & ponere leges,
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter, &c.
But to us, who have the revelation of Scripture, these kind of scruples and conjectures are sufficiently states. And 'tis evident enough that the first Language was con-created with our first Parents, they immediately understanding the voice of God speaking to them in the Garden. And how Languages came to be multiplyed, is likewise manifested in the Gen. ii. i, 6.Story of the Confusion of Babel. How many Languages, and which they were that sprang up at that Confusion, is altogether uncertain; whether many of them that were then in being, be not now wholly lost; and many others, which had not the same original, have not since arisen in the World, is not (I think) to be doubted.
The most received Conjecture is, that the Languages of the Confusion were according to the several Families from Noah, which were 70 or 72 though there be very strong probabilities to prove that they were not so many, and that the first Dispersion did not divide mankind into so