ur attention, such as few sciences can
rival or excel.

Having thus explained the manner in which I intend to treat the science of
language, I hope in my next lecture to examine the objections of those
philosophers who see in language nothing but a contrivance devised by
human skill for the more expeditious communication of our thoughts, and
who would wish to see it treated, not as a production of nature, but as a
work of human art.

LECTURE II. THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO THE HISTORY OF
LANGUAGE.

In claiming for the science of language a place among the physical
sciences, I was prepared to meet with many objections. The circle of the
physical sciences seemed closed, and it was not likely that a new claimant
should at once be welcomed among the established branches and scions of
the ancient aristocracy of learning.(13)

The first objection which was sure to be raised on the part of such
sciences as botany, geology, or physiology is this:--Language is the work
of man; it was invented by man as a means of communicating his thoughts,
when mere looks and gestures proved inefficient; and it was gradually, by
the combined efforts of succeeding generations, brought to that perfection
which we admire in the idiom of the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and in
the poetry of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. Now it is perfectly
true that if language be the work of man, in the same sense in which a
statue, or a temple, or a poem, or a law are properly called the works of
man, the science of language would have to be classed as an historical
science. We should have a history of language as we have a history of art,
of poetry, and of jurisprudence, but we could not claim for it a place
side by side with the various branches of Natural History. It is true,
also, that if you consult the works of the most distinguished modern
philosophers you will find that whenever they speak of language, they take
it for granted that language is a human invention, that words are
artificial signs, and that the varieties of human speech arose from
different nations agreeing on different sounds as the most appropriate
signs of their different ideas. This view of the origin of language was so
powerfully advocated by the leading philosophers of the last century, that
it has retained an undisputed currency even among those who, on almost
every other point, are strongly opposed to the teaching of that school. A
few voices,