facts regarding the
inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, the
legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of China--where it was found in the
sacred books that the animals were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom
and insight that every name disclosed the nature of the corresponding
animal.

But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were still made
to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory of his Oxford
doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous onslaught, declaring the
new system of philology to be "degrading to our nature," and that the
theory of the natural development of language is simply due to the
beauty of Lucretius' poetry. But his main weapon was ridicule, and in
this he showed himself a master. He tells the world, "The following
paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems
to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":

"When men out of the earth of old A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, They tooth and nail, and helter
skelter, Fought fist to fist; then with a club Each learned his brother
brute to drub; Till, more experienced grown, these cattle Forged fit
accoutrements for battle. At last (Lucretius says and Creech) They set
their wits to work on SPEECH: And that their thoughts might all have
marks To make them known, these learned clerks Left off the trade of
cracking crowns, And manufactured verbs and nouns."

But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England to save
the sacred theory of language--Dr. Adam Clarke. He was no less severe
against Philology than against Geology. In 1804, as President of the
Manchester Philological Society, he delivered an address in which he
declared that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership,
"he who rejects the establishment of what we believe to be a divine
revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful
disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting, and
endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and rational
subordination, can have no seat among the members of this institution."
The first sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it
is the same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so much
interference of theology with science for the last two thousand years.
Adam Clarke speaks of those "who reject the establishment of what,
W