clean beaft by sevens, and of fowls of the air by fevens: and after the flood Noah built an altar, and took of every clean beast, and every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings. 4. The Chinese derive the name of Fohi from his oblation*, and Mofes gives Noah his name upon account of the grant of the creatures for the use of men, which he obtained by his offering. Laftly, the Chinese history supposes Fohi to have settled in the province of Xeufi, which is the northweft province of China, and near to Ararat where the ark rested: but, 6. the history we have of the world does necesfarily fuppofe, that these eastern parts were as foon peopled, and as populous, as the land of Shinaar; for in a few ages, in the days of Ninus and Semiramis, about three hundred years after the difperfion of mankind, the nations that came of that difperfion attacked the inhabitants of the East with their united force, but found the nations about Bactria, and the parts where we fuppofe Noah to fettle, fully able to refift and repel all their armies, as I fhall observe hereafter in its proper place. Noah therefore came out of the ark near Saga Scythia, on the hills beyond Bactria, north to India. Here he lived, and settled a numerous part of his pofterity, by his counfels and advice. He himself planted a vineyard, lived a life of retirement, and, after having feen his offspring spread around him, died in a good old age. It were much to be wished that we could attain a thorough infight into the antiquities and records of these nations, if there be any extant. As they spread down to India fouth, and farther eaft into China, so it is probable they alfo peopled Scythia, and afterwards the more northern continent; and if America be any where joined to it, perhaps all that part of the world came from these originals. But we must now speak of that part of Noah's defcendants which travelled from the East.

At what time these men left Noah, we are no where înformed, probably not till the number of mankind was increased. Seventy years might pass before they had any thought of leaving their great ancestor, and by that time mankind might be multiplied to hundreds, and they might

* Couplet's Confucius, Procem. p. 38, 76.

be

be too many to live together in one family, or to be united in any scheme of polity, which they were able to form or manage; and fo a number of them might have a mind to form a separate fociety, and to journey and fettle in some diftant country.

for

From Ararat to Shinaar is about twelve hundred miles. We must not therefore fuppofe them to have got thither in an inftant. The nature of the countries they paffed over, nay, I might fay the condition the earth itself must then be in, full of undrained marfhes and untracked mountains, overrun with trees and all forts of rubbish of seventy or eighty years growth, without curb or culture, could not afford room an open and easy paffage to a company of travellers; befides, fuch travellers as they were, were not likely to prefs forwards with any great expedition; an undetermined multitude, looking for no particular place of habitation, were likely to fix in many, and to remove as they found inconveniences. Let us therefore fuppofe their movements to be fuch as Abraham made afterwards, fhort journeys, and abodes here and there, till in ten or twelve years they might come to Shinaar, a place in all appearance likely to afford them an open and convenient country for their increasing families.

And thus about eighty years after the flood, according to the Hebrew computation, anno mundi 1736, they might come to the plain of Shinaar. They were now out of the narrow paffages and faftneffes of the mountains, had found an agreeable country to settle in, and thought here to fix themfelves and their posterity. Ambition is a paffion extremely incident to our first setting out in the world; no aims feem too great, no attempts above or beyond us. So it was with thefe unexperienced travellers, they had no fooner determined where to fettle, but they refolved to make the place remarkable to all ages, to build a tower, which should be the wonder of the world, and preserve their names to the end of

According to the fragment in Eufebius in Chron. they began to build their tower, Α. Μ. 1736; ἀρξάμενοι {he fays) βάλς ἔτω οἰκοδομειν τὸν πύργον

p. 11. in which number there is an evident miftake, & inftead of a, it fhould be gas.

it. They fet all hands to the work, and laboured in it, it is thought, for some years; but alas! the first attempt of their vanity and ambition became a monument of their folly and weakness; God confounded their language in the midst of their undertaking, and hereby obliged them to leave off their project, and to separate from one another. If we fuppose them to fpend nineteen or twenty years in fettling and building, before their language was confounded, the divifion of the earth must be placed anno mundi 1757, about one hundred and one years after the flood, when Peleg the fon of Eber was born; for the name Peleg was given him, because in bis time the earth was divided. And thus we have brought the hiftory of mankind to a fecond great and remarkable period. I fhall carry it no further in this book, but only add fome account of the nature and original of language in general, and of the confufion of it here spoken of. And,

1. It will, I think, be allowed me, that man is the only creature in the world that has the use of language. The fables we meet in fome ancient writers, of the languages of beafts and birds, and particularly of elephants, are but fables. The creatures are as much beneath speaking, as they are beneath reasoning. They may be able to make fome faint imperfect attempts towards both; they may have a few fimple ideas of the things that concern them; and they may be able to form a few founds, which they may repeat over and over, without variation, to fignify to one another what their natural inftincts prompt them to; but what they can do of this fort is not enough for us to fay they have the use of language. Man therefore is, properly speaking, the only converfible creature of the world. The next enquiry must be, how he came to have this ability.

There have been many writers who have attempted to account for the original of language: Diodorus Siculus and

z Gen. x. 25.

a The author of the latter Targum upon Efther reports, that Solomon understood the language of the birds, and fent a bird with a meffage to the

Queen of Sheba; and Mahomet was filly enough to believe it, for we have much the fame ftory in his Alcoran. See Walton. Prolegom. 1. §. 5.

b Lib. Hift. 1.

Vitruvius

с

Vitruvius imagined that men at firft lived like beafts, in woods and caves, forming only ftrange and uncouth noises, until their fears caused them to affociate together; and that upon growing acquainted with one another they came to correspond about things, firft by figns, then to make names for them, and in time to frame and perfect a language; and that the languages of the world are therefore diverfe, becaufe different companies of men happening thus together, would in different places form different founds or names for things, and thereby cause a different speech or language about them. It must be confeffed this is an ingenious conjecture, and might be received as probable, if we were to form our notions of the origin of mankind, as these men did, from our own or other people's fancies. But fince we have an hiftory which informs us, that the beginning both of mankind and conversation were in fact otherwise, and fince all that thefe writers have to offer about the origin of things are but very trifling and inconfiftent conjectures, we have great reason with Eufebius to reject this their notion of the origin of language, as a mere guess, that has no manner of authority to fupport it.

e

Other writers, who receive Mofes's hiftory, and would feem to follow him, imagine, that the first man was created not only a reasonable, but a speaking creature; and fo Onkelos paraphrafes the words, which we render, Man was made a living foul, and fays he was made ruah memallela, a fpeaking animal. And fome have carried this opinion fo far, as not only to think that Adam had a particular language, as innate to him as a power of thinking, or faculty of reafoning, but that all his defcendants have it too, and would of themfelves come to fpeak this very language, if they were not put out of it in their infancy by being taught another. We have no reason to think the first part of this opinion to be true: Adam had no need of an innate set of words, for he was capable of learning the names of things from his Cre

ator, or of making names for things by his own powers, for his own use. And as to the latter part of it, that children would of course speak an innate and original language, if not prevented by education, it is a very wild and extravagant fancy; an innate language would be common to all the world; we should have it over and above any adventitious language we could learn; no education could obliterate it; we could no more be without it, than without our natural fense or paffions. But we find nothing of this fort amongst men. We We may learn (perhaps with equal ease) any language which in our early years is put to us; or if we learn no one, we shall have no articulate way of speaking at all, as Pfammiticus, King of Egypt, and Melabdin Echbar, in the Indies, convinced themfelves by experiments upon infants, whom they took care to have brought up without being taught to speak, and found to be no better than mute creatures. For the found which Pfammiticus imagined to be a Phrygian word, and which the children he tried his experiment upon were supposed after two years nurfing to utter, was a mere found of no fignification, and no more a word than the noises are which " dumb people do often make, by a preffure and opening of their lips, and sometimes accidentally children make it of but three months old.

Other writers have come much nearer the truth, who say, that the first man was inftructed to speak by God, who made him, and that his defcendants learnt to speak by imitation from their predeceffors; and this I think is the very truth, if we do not take it too ftrictly. The original of our speaking was from God; not that God put into Adam's mouth the very founds which he defigned he should ufe as the names of things, but God made Adam with the powers of a man". He had the use of an understanding, to form notions in his mind of the things about him; and he had a power to utter

Franc. Valef. de Sacra Philof. c. 3. h See Mr. Locke's Effay, b. i. 1 Herod. l. ii.

k Purchaf. b. i. c. 8.

The found was Bec, fuppofed to be like the Phrygian word for bread.

m Poftellus de Origin. p. 2.

n In this fenfe the author of Ecclefiafticus conceived man to be endued with fpeech from God, chap. xvii. ver. 5.

founds,