In the first case, the evidence would be immediate and most powerful in its inception. In the latter case, the power of the evidence would increase with time.
_Miracles and prophecy_, then, are the _only_ methods that we can conceive of that would, as our minds are now constituted, insure belief in revelations from the Creator.
But if every human being, in order to believe, must have miracles, there would result such an incessant violation of the laws of nature as to destroy them, and thus to destroy all possibility of miracles.
The only possible way, then, is to have miracles occur at certain periods of time, and then have them adequately recorded and preserved.
This method involves the necessity of interpreting written documents. If, then, the Creator has provided such revelations, the question occurs as to how far they may be accessible to all men. Are there revelations from the Creator in such a form that all men can gain access to them and interpret them for themselves, or are they so recorded that only a few can gain the knowledge they impart, while the many are helplessly dependent on the few?
It is with reference to this question that the interpretation of language becomes a subject of vital and infinite interest to every human being. This subject will therefore occupy the remaining portion of this volume.
The mind of man is confined in its operations by the material system it inhabits, and has no modes of communicating with other minds except through the medium of the eye and ear. It is by signs addressed to the eye and by sounds affecting the ear that ideas are communicated and received.
It is by the power of _association_, which enables us to recall certain ideas together which have been frequently united, that the use of language is gained. The infant finds certain states of mind produced by material objects invariably connected with certain sounds. This is done so often that whenever a certain perception occurs, the sound recurs which has been so often united with it.
If language is correctly defined as "any sound or sign which conveys the ideas of one mind to another," it is probable that children learn language at a much earlier period than is generally imagined. It is impossible to know how soon the infant notices the soft tones of its own voice when happy, or the moaning or shrill sound that expresses its own pain, and by comparing them with those of its mother, learns, through its little process of reasoning, that another spirit has emotions of pleasure and pain corresponding with its own. Nor can we determine how soon these pleasant sounds of the mother's voice begin to be associated with the benignant smile, or the tones of grief with the sorrowful expression, or the tones of anger with the frowning brow.