9. Perhaps we may often have a tendency to think more meanly than they deserve, of so-called barbarous tribes, and of those whose intellectual habits differ much from our own. We may be prone to regard ourselves as standing at the summit of civilization; and all other nations and ages, as not only occupying inferior positions, but positions on a slope which descends till it sinks into the nature of brutes. And yet how little does an examination of the history of mankind justify this view! The different stages of civilization, and of intellectual culture, which have prevailed among them, have had no appearance of belonging to one single series, in which the cases differed only as higher or lower. On the contrary, there have been many very different kinds of civilization, accompanied by different forms of art and of thought; showing how universally the human mind tends to such habits, and how rich it is in the modes of manifesting its innate powers. How different have been the forms of civilization among the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Mexicans, the Peruvians! Yet in all, how much was displayed of sagacity and skill, of perseverance and progress, of mental activity and grasp, of thoughtfulness and power. Are we, in thinking of these manifestations of human capacity, to think of them as only a stage between us and brutes? or are we to think so, even of the stoical Red Indians of North America, or the energetic New Zealanders, and Caffres? And if not, why of the African Negroes, or the Australians, or the Bushmen? We may call their Language a jargon. Very probable it would, in its present form, be unable to express a great deal of what we are in the habit of putting into language. But can we refuse to believe that, with regard to matters with which they are familiar, and on occasions where they are interested, they would be to each other intelligible and clear? And if we suppose cases in which their affections and emotions are strongly excited, (and affections and emotions at least we cannot deny them,) can we not believe that they would be eloquent and impressive? Do we not know, in fact, that almost all nations which we call savage, are, on such occasions, eloquent in their own language? And since this is so, must not their language, after all, be a wonderful instrument as well as ours? Since it can convey one man's thoughts and emotions to many, clothed in the form which they assume in his mind; giving to things, it may be, an aspect quite different from that which they would have if presented to their own senses; guiding their conviction, warming their hearts, impelling their purposes;--can language, even in such cases, be otherwise than a wonderful produce of man's internal, of his mental, that is, of his peculiarly _human_ faculties? And is not language, therefore, even in what we regard as its lowest forms, an endowment which completely separates man from animals