anner, therefore, as mere motion is from nature, but dancing
is something positive; and as wood exists in nature, but a door is
something positive; so is the mere utterance of vocal sound founded in
nature, but the signification of ideas by nouns or verbs is something
positive. And hence it is, that, as to the simple power of producing vocal
sound--which is as it were the organ or instrument of the soul's faculties
of knowledge or volition--as to this vocal power, I say, man seems to
possess it from nature, in like manner as irrational animals; but as to the
power of using significantly nouns or verbs, or sentences combining these,
(which are not natural but positive,) this he possesses by way of peculiar
eminence; because he alone of all mortal beings partakes of a soul which
can move itself, and operate to the production of arts. So that, even in
the utterance of sounds, the inventive power of the mind is discerned; as
the various elegant compositions, both in metre, and without metre,
abundantly prove."--_Ammon. de Interpr._, p. 51.[21]

9. Man was made for society; and from the first period of human existence
the race were social. Monkish seclusion is manifestly unnatural; and the
wild independence of the savage, is properly denominated a state of nature,
only in contradistinction to that state in which the arts are cultivated.
But to civilized life, or even to that which is in any degree social,
language is absolutely necessary. There is therefore no danger that the
language of any nation shall fall into disuse, till the people by whom it
is spoken, shall either adopt some other, or become themselves extinct.
When the latter event occurs, as is the case with the ancient Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin, the language, if preserved at all from oblivion, becomes
the more permanent; because the causes which are constantly tending to
improve or deteriorate every living language, have ceased to operate upon
those which are learned only from ancient books. The inflections which now
compose the declensions and conjugations of the dead languages, and which
indeed have ever constituted the peculiar characteristics of those forms of
speech, must remain forever as they are.

10. When a nation changes, its
language, as did our forefathers in Britain, producing by a gradual
amalgamation of materials drawn from various tongues a new one differing
from all, the first stages of its grammar will of course be chaotic and
rude. Uniformity spr