Mr. Chairman: There is a land in which there is no sickness, in which, eating, drinking, and sleeping are unnecessary. I am well aware that in argument so abstract in its nature as the present, we cannot go into such details as to make every topic perfectly apprehensible to all. We have been attending to a brief analysis of our external senses, and internal faculties. To aid the least accustomed to this kind of reasoning, we shall present the substance in a new form. Let us imagine that there are five worlds, and that we have a distinct organ calculated exclusively for the use of each distinct world--that there is a world of colors, cognizable by the eye; a world of sounds, cognizable by the ear; a world of odors, cognizable by the olfactory sense; a world of savors, cognizable by the taste; and a world of tacts, that is, of the tactile properties of bodies, all the ideas belonging to which world are cognizable only by the sense of feeling. Now these five worlds make up this one material world and all the properties which belong to it; and he that lacks one of these organs or senses, is forever debarred from that world of which it is the door.

      Sensation is the name which philosophers have given to the exercise of these senses, or rather to the operation by them which makes us acquainted with the material world. Perception is the name given to [160] those acts of the mind which discriminate the different sensations of impressions made upon our senses. It is called the faculty of perception to distinguish it from other faculties, such as memory or imagination. By this faculty we become acquainted with all things external; but to-morrow all the ideas of to-day derived through the faculty of perception become the objects of memory, that having respect exclusively to the past. Next comes consciousness, which is like an internal eye, enabling me to take cognizance of my recollections, reasonings, and all the operations of my intellect--such as reflecting, comparing, discriminating, and judging. These are the primary intellectual operations, and they are all necessary in order to arrive at certain conclusions on material things or the dominions of these five worlds. But then there is the world of spirits, which no man could imagine, and of which these five worlds do not afford an archetype, or sensation, or perception. Of this world we have many ideas, thoughts, terms, and conversations, and the question is, How did we come by them? No window or door has been opened to us in the department of sense. Where are the organs, the senses, the media, through which we have derived these ideas? Not by the eye, the ear, nor the taste; for these are our corporeal senses, and cannot take cognizance of spiritual existences. For all our ideas of spiritual and eternal things we must, therefore, be indebted to some other power.

      The human intellect has no creative power. It can only reason from the known to the unknown. We can augment almost ad infinitum, but we cannot create. And so it is in the material world. It is a law of physics that one new particle of matter cannot be created. We can change and modify; we can convert a fluid into a solid, a shapeless piece of wood into a polished piece of furniture; but we can neither create or destroy one particle of matter. And just so it is in the operations of our intellectual faculties upon sensible objects. Conceding to my friend that imagination ranges wildly through the intellectual world, yet all philosophic skeptics, and Christians, have admitted that although imagination may "body forth the forms of things unknown," it is only by analogy to things already known, that they can be "turned to shapes," and receive a "local habitation and a name." Imagination, is to the intellectual world, what mechanical ingenuity is to the natural world. In neither can any result be elaborated without a stock to begin upon. Our position is that imagination can do no more with ideas, than mechanical ingenuity can with metals, wood, and stone--that the intellectual as well as the mechanical artificer must have his subject before him. Hence it is utterly out of the power of [161] imagination to originate the idea of spiritual existences, or even to invent a name expressive of a spiritual idea.

      But to give the argument its plain practical application, and greatest force, we must contemplate another endowment of man. I mean the faculty of speech. This topic is intimately connected with the preceding. What is this faculty? It is the power not only of giving utterance to our feelings, but of giving names to things. How did we come by the use of speech? is it natural to man to speak? or is not language rather, purely an imitative thing. I may show this tumbler to an infant, and thus afford matter for its perception, memory, and consciousness to operate upon; but will its perception, memory, or consciousness, enable it to give a name to this vessel? I may, perhaps, hazard the disapprobation of this audience, by asserting that speech is not natural to man. Groans and inarticulate enunciations, expressive of passion or feeling, are natural to almost all animals. But man differs from them all in the following respect: they all have a systematic expression uniformly the same; but man, without language, has such groans and sighs, and expressions of feeling without system. The speechless babes have no uniformity of this sort. But the horse, the ass, the cow, the sheep, the goat, the swallow, the sparrow, have, wherever found, the same language of passion and feeling. The nightingale and the lark sing the same song all the world over. But when we speak of language, we mean not enunciations indicative of feeling, but names for ideas or sentiments. But let us ask, How do infants learn to speak? Do they speak as naturally as they see or smell? Surely not. They sigh, groan, cry, and laugh naturally, but imitatively they speak. Speech is the result of education of training, and of the imitative faculty of man. It has been experimentally demonstrated that a man who has never heard the articulations of the human voice can never speak. A child may be born with the most perfect organs of speech, and yet be born dumb, and continue dumb through life, in consequence of the imperfection of its auricular organs. Dumbness is the necessary consequence, the inseparable adjunct of deafness from birth. If there be a language of nature, it is a language of inarticulate sounds, which all abandon as soon as they learn to speak. This is a fact of vast consequence in this argument. Admitting that there is a natural enunciation of feeling, and a language of pains and joys, this language is abandoned when what is now called human language is taught. All philosophers have been baffled in their attempts to account for the origin of language, and all nations have concurred in declaring that speech was the gift of the gods. The most [162] ancient of the Egyptian writers (and these are of higher antiquity than any other extant) concur in declaring that they are utterly unable to account for the origin of human speech without referring it to God. The impossibility of inventing a universal language is very obvious; because in order to invent a new language common to all, all must be congregated, and a conventional vocabulary must be adopted--for instance, they must agree unanimously that this glass shall be called tumbler. But how could they be congregated or enter upon this business without the possession of that identical universal language which the scheme contemplates? There is no speculation on the origin of language to be found in any of the schools, that warrants the conclusion that man, by the unaided exercise of this native, inherent powers, could have attained to the use of speech; or that language could have been communicated to man, in the first instance, by any but a divine instructor. Speech, like faith, comes by the ear; whatever comes by the ear is derived; therefore human language is derived. Whatever is derived is not natural; human language is derived; therefore human language is not natural. In proof of the syllogism, the deaf cannot speak. The idea of anything must necessarily be precedent and anterior to the invention of a name for it. All nations must have had an idea of Deity before the word God, in their respective languages, could have been invented. Fifty years ago there was not to be found in all the books and all the vocabularies in the world, such a word as steamboat; and why? Because at that period, the idea of steamboat had not been conceived, consequently no name could be annexed to an idea which had no existence. How then were the ideas and names of God, Spirit, Altar, Priest, Sacrifice, derived to man? The idea of these, and all positive acts of religious worship, must necessarily have existed antecedently to the invention of names to express them. The conclusion is irresistible, that the invention of the terms by which spiritual ideas are expressed, must have been posterior to the conception of the ideas themselves--that as these ideas could not have been derived through the media of the five senses, they must have been communicated in some other way, and that both the ideas and names of spiritual things must have been matter of divine revelation. By a reference to the Old Testament we shall find these facts fully established in evidence. And if the Bible facts did not support our reasoning, we would nevertheless be constrained to regard it as logical and demonstrative as any that can be brought to bear upon an abstract speculation. But I am not compelled to rest the truth of this reasoning upon metaphysical deductions. We have matters of fact to [163] go upon. The Bible tells us most emphatically that the first colloquies ever held upon this earth were between the great Creator and our first ancestors, viva voce. The book of Genesis tells us that the first pair talked with God; hence the inference from the fact, that God first taught man to speak, is, that the art of speaking is not native and inherent in the family of man. Newton has sagely observed that God has given us both reason and religion in the gift of speech; that the power of ratiocination is but an adjunct of the faculty of speech. There is no logical objection to the dictum of Newton, that God gave to man both reason and religion in the gift of speech. I presume that it would be very difficult to prove, by any process of philosophical reasoning, that man could correctly reason or have spiritual ideas without the use of speech. In truth, we think by words, and infants think by things; and let him who imagines he can think without terms make the experiment.

      But for these purposes it is not necessary that man should have an extensive vocabulary. He only requires two lessons--first, the elementary ideas; and, secondly, the elementary words significant to them: and then who shall prescribe limits to the range of his intellectual powers? He will soon multiply his conceptions and his terms beyond the powers of numbers to express. But he must have the data, or some stock, to trade upon.

      Moses tells us that God called the animals in Paradise around Adam, and that he tried Adam's skill in speech, by requiring him to give names to them. He gave them names; and we are told that Adam's nomenclature was correct. But we can trace the phenomenon of language up to the root, although we cannot, on philosophic principles, account for the origin of language. We find in Europe twenty-seven languages; and by tracing them up, we find that they are kindred branches from three roots; that these three roots of European languages are scions of one single stock is highly probable, and that this root was Hebrew. Whether this root was Hebrew, or some other eastern language, is more matter of philosophical curiosity than of importance to our argument. But there can be no question that all languages are traceable up to the same fountain.

      In the nomenclature of animals, respect was had to the qualities of the animal, therefore the idea of the distinguishing characteristic of the animal must necessarily have existed before the animal itself could have been designated by any specific name. If the Hebrew was not the first language ever spoken, it has, nevertheless, internal evidences [164] of having been founded upon these primitive elementary principles as illustrated in the nomenclature of animals.

      In Hebrew the zoological nomenclature is always analogous to the characteristic quality of the animal. "Thus the original Hebrew names of many of the beasts and birds of that region are apparently formed by onomatopoeia, or in imitation of their natural cries or notes: so the general name given to the tamer animals, sheep and kine, was beme, in which sound the lowing of the one, and the bleating of the other, seems to be imitated; so the name of the common ass, ORUD, and of the wild ass, PRA, resembles their braying. The name of the raven, OREB, was doubtless taken from its hoarse croaking; of the sparrow, TSIPPOR, from its chirping; of the partridge, QUERA, from the note she uses in calling her young; and the murmur of the turtledove is exactly expressed by its Hebrew name TUR, and evidently gave rise to it. Many other instances of the kind might be produced; but these are sufficient to show, at least, the great probability, that some of the first names given to the several tribes of animals were derived from their respective notes."

      But the instances already adduced are sufficient to show, that, in the primitive formation of language, respect was had in the nomenclature of animals, to the analogies and accordance of articulate and inarticulate sounds. But this was not the only plan adopted in the primitive nomenclature of animals. The primeval nomenclators not only took cognizance of the vocal peculiarities of animals, but also of their characteristics. Hence the camel was called gimel because supposed to be of a vindictive temper. A sheep was called rachel, because of its meekness; a ram was called agil, because of its agility; in like manner a goat was called sair from its being hairy.

      Thus they took the vocal and other qualities of animals, and from their observation of these they formed their zoological nomenclature. Well, then, the analogical argument goes to prove, and, indeed compels us to conclude, that the annexation of the names of God, spirit, angel, altar, priest, sacrifice, etc., must have been posterior to the conception of the spiritual ideas which these terms express. The corollary to be derived from analyzing the five senses and this superadded gift of speech, is, that we can neither have ideas concerning spiritual things, nor names, without the aid of immediate and direct revelation; that, without revelation, we could no more conceive of these ideas than we could invent names for them. The child born in France, we know, by experience, will acquire the language of that country; the child born in Italy will speak Italian, because they are [165] artificially taught to speak the mother's language; but if language was natural to man, all children would speak the same language. On the hypothesis that the first pair were created in a state of infancy, or of adolescence, the difficulty concerning the origin of language remains equally inexplicable.

      Children at birth, it is said, have been excluded by circumstances from all access to the sound of the human voice; and after arriving at maturity, it has been discovered that they have no more of the gift of speech than brutes have; and from all the premises before us the conclusion follows out irresistibly that speech is as legitimately the subject of divine revelation as religion itself; or to express the conclusion in other words, the inevitable inference is, the idea of God, altar, priest, victim, etc., is older than the names. But two ways only can ideas be communicated: first, by presenting the archetype, or that which produces the idea to the external sense; or, secondly, by speech, describing the thing to be revealed or communicated by something already known. Now as the language of a people is the only infallible test of their improvement and civilization, so the name of God, altar, priest, victim, found among the most savage tribes of antiquity, incapable of abstract reason or sentimental refinement, is a positive proof that none of them did ever invent the idea. This would be as decisive proof, were all the premises, clearly understood, as the discovery of a gold or silver coin or medal found among a people ignorant of metals and their natures, would be, that they were not the makers, but the finders or borrowers of this coin. I boldly assert here, and I court objection to the assertion, that every principle of sound reasoning, and all facts and documents in the annals of time, compel us to the conclusion that the idea and name of God first entered the human family by revelation. No man ever uttered a sentence more unphilosophic, more contrary to human experience, observation, and right reason, than Mirabaud, when he declared that savages invented the idea and name of God and spiritual existences. He might as well have averred that savages, without fire, without a mould, and without metal, made the first gold coins.

[COD 160-166]