[343] He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geological periods. See _Apophthegms_ (_Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ._, vol. li.) [344] Latham thus explains it: “This is because whilst A and B, in the way of stock-blood or pedigree, will give C a true _tertium quid_, or a near approach to it, and A and B, in the way of language, will only give themselves, _i. e._, they will give no true _tertium quid_, nor any very close approach to it.” _Celtic Nations_, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true _tertium quid_--this _real mean term_, is never produced as far as species. [345] [“Either language must have been originally revealed from heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who represents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the _names_ of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodorus Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, lived for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This opinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was framed by Mochus, the Phœnician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicurus; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, like trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the republic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.”--_Encyclop. Brit._, vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.--EDITOR.] [346] I do not here mention the opinions of the Swede (see Latham, _Celtic Nations_, p. 2), who thinks that important changes can be introduced into a language by certain customs of a people, who change, for instance, the lips for the nostrils, and thus substitute nasal for labial consonants. These facts are, perhaps, true in the detail, but they ought not to have much importance, as they do not alter the specific and personal character of the language, which is far from consisting in the relative number of one or two kinds of letters. [347] Bunsen (Eng. transl.), Niebuhr’s _Life and Letters_, vol. i, p. 39. [348] “Languages,” he says, “give but feeble probabilities in Anthropology.” _Voyage aux regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent_, vol. iii, p. 352. [349] See, in the _Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique_ (July 1843), a letter in which M. Vivien denies a first rank to language as a distinctive characteristic, and gives it to physical type. [350] See above, p. 32.