[52] The fact that man is a social animal (ζῶον πολιτικὸν) which has been so strangely urged by the advocates of a revealed language, from Lactantius down to M. de Bonald and the Abbé Combalot, in no way militates against this conclusion.
[53] Heyse, _System der Sprachwissenschaft_, § 50.
[58] The Revelation of Language is supported in a book by J. S. Süssmilch, Berlin, 1766. An excellent review of the main opinions is given by R. W. Zobel, _Gedanken über die verschiedenen_ _Meinungen der Gelehrnten von Ursprunge der Sprachen_. Magdeb. 1733.
[59] See Franck’s _Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques_, Art. _Signes_. I must here again caution the reader that the view here supported is _not_ the conventional theory of language condemned in the last chapter, although it might easily become so in the hands of a person inclined to look at the physiological rather than the psychological aspects of the question.
[60] This is an expression of F. Schlegel’s (_Philos. Vorlesungen_, p. 78-80). Renan also quotes the authority of Humboldt and Goethe.
[61] “Seht, es ist schwer zu denken auf welche Art man denkt.... Ich denke, und mit dem Zeuge, womit ich denke, soll ich denken wie dieses Zeug beschaffen sei,” &c.--Tieck, _Blaubart_, act. ii. sc. 1.
[62] We are, for instance, obliged entirely to pass over the question as to the Primum Cognitum, on which see Sir W. Hamilton’s _Lectures_, ii. 319-331.
[63] “One might be tempted to call Language a kind of Picture of the Universe, where the words are as the figures and images of all particulars.”--Harris’s _Hermes_, p. 330. This is something like Plato’s curious notion that words are a μίμησις of external things.--Heyse, _System_, s. 24. ἐοικέναι γὰρ τὰ ὀνόματα ... εἰκόσι τῶν ὁρατῶν.--Heraclitus, _ap. Ammonium ad Arist. de Interp._ p. 24. Democritus called them ἀγάλματα φωνήεντα.
[66] Grimm, 29-31. Compare Heyse, _System_, s. 28. “Nur was gedacht ist, kann gesprochen werden; und das klar gedachte ist nothwendig auch ansprechbar.” What St. Paul saw in his rapture was only unutterable because it recalled no human analogon. (2 Cor. xii. 4.)
[67] Manudscha, Goth. Manniska, Germ. Mensch; from the root man, “to think.” Compare φράζειν, “to speak,” and φράζεσθαι, “to think.”--Heyse, s. 40. Turner ad Herod, ii. 7.