![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
348 causes which create a continual flux in all langua-ges ; and many of them would be so changed from their original forms as hardly to be recognized to have been once the same, or sprung from the same roots. Language would become as various as the tribes of men. And as these tribes would advance in the cultivation of the arts, their respective languages would constantly exhibit still less resem-blance to one another. They would commence the vast career of improvement, as we have seen, with few elements in common; and even these few would soon undergo material changes. And in the infinite multitude of words which civilization, sci-ence, and the arts add to language, no two nations, perhaps, have every agreed upon the same sounds to represent the same ideas. —— In the progress of time, indeed, the superior refinement of one nation above its neighbours may induce them to adopt many of its terms along with its arts; conquest may impose a language; extension of empire may contribute to melt down differen dialects into one mass; but in-dependent tribes naturally give rise to diversity of tongues. Hence, although the speech of men was origin-ally one, yet, as they separated themselves from one 349 another over the uncultivated face of the primitive world, and gave existence to various savage tribes, or tribes only in the first simple stages of society, they laid the foundation, at the same time, of an equal variety of dialects.—— Every argument, therefore, employed by his lordship fails to support the super-structure which he attempts to rest upon it, and this last, which he deemed the strongest of all, in-stantly falls to pieces under a fair and critical ex-amination. Such is the attack which is celebrated philo-sopher has made on the doctrine of the identity of the human species. In all the writings of this author there is no another example of so much weak and inconclusive reasoning. This ought in justice to be imputed rather to the indefensible nature of the cause which he has undertaken to maintain, than to any defect of talents in the writer. For, to him I may apply the lines which, on another occa-sion, he applies to Dr. Robertson; Si Pergama dextrâ Defendi possent, etiam hâc defensa fuissent.