BOOK I. OF THE PRIMEVAL DEPOSIT AND ITS DISPERSION. HEAD II. OF THE ONE LANGUAGE, AND OF ITS CONFUSION.

×It were premature to attempt, under a head which is intended to serve rather as an introduction to the sixth thesis than as a proof of it, anything more than a statement of what the sacred text affirms respecting the language of the first men and the confusion which befell it, and of the points upon which the text is silent; for the sixth thesis, which affirms that language preserves the original names beneath their corruptions, presupposes both that there was an original language and that its corruption was of a certain kind, and it is necessary, before the proof by names is proposed, to ascertain how much of this presupposition the Scripture itself supplies.¹ I shall accordingly distinguish, in the first place, what is related of the one language from what has been inferred; in the second, what is related of its confusion from what has been inferred; and I shall conclude with the objections which may be urged against the use which I propose to make of both, deferring the greater part of the answer to the head in which the proof by names is conducted. NB-02-003 NB-02-009

×The sacred text affirms that "the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech," and that it so continued until the removal of those who journeyed from the east to the plain in the land of Shinar (Gen. xi. 1–4).² That is the whole of the affirmation; and it is to be observed that the text says nothing of the name of this language, nor of its words, nor of the manner in which it was acquired by those who spoke it. Whether it was given with the first man, or learned by him, and by his posterity from him, are questions which the place does not decide, and which it were, in the present stage of the inquiry, a departure from the method which I have proposed to answer by conjecture; I enter the question without an answer, and I enter it in the form in which it presents itself, as a question to which two answers are possible, of which the first, that the language was given, may seem to be favoured by the consideration that the first man is represented in the sacred history as capable of speech at the time of his creation, and the second, that it was learned, by the consideration that a speech which is common to a whole earth is more readily conceived as the acquisition of a family than as the endowment of a single person. Neither consideration, however, is of the nature of a testimony; and it is a rule which I have not found it safe to depart from, that a question which the text leaves open is to be treated as open by every inquirer who professes to rest upon the text. NB-02-003

×The confusion is ascribed in the sacred text to the act of the LORD, who is said to have come down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded, and to have determined to go down and there confound their language, that they might not understand one another's speech (Gen. xi. 5–7).³ The effect of the confusion is stated as a want of understanding between speakers; and whether the words were changed, or the power of receiving them, or both, the sacred text does not say, nor whether all the languages of the earth are the issue of this one event. These three questions are to be kept apart until the authors are read, and it is the more necessary to insist upon this, that they are commonly confounded in a single inquiry, as though the answer to the first must determine the answer to the other two. It would follow, if the words were changed, that a name preserved in one nation might have no resemblance to the same name preserved in another, and the proof by names would be, in the first instance, without a foundation; it would follow, if the power of receiving them was changed, that the names might be retained and not recognised, and the proof would be restored; and it would follow, if both, that the proof would be possible only in proportion as one change was less than the other. I do not undertake to say which of these suppositions is the true one; I observe only that the sixth thesis is not affected by the first of them, if, as I shall endeavour to shew, the testimony of the heathen themselves requires that some names should have survived the confusion, and that the argument, so far as it depends upon the Scripture, rests upon no more than that the confusion was of speakers and not of speech.⁴ NB-02-009 NB-02-003

×It may be objected, in the first place, that if the confusion was such as the text describes, the proof by names is a proof by what the Scripture itself declares to have been destroyed; to which I answer that the text declares a want of understanding and not an abolition, and that the want of understanding between those who spoke may very well coexist with the survival, in the mouths of both, of such words as were not the subject of the confusion. It may be objected, in the second place, that the question whether the language was given or learned is not one which can be left open, since the whole of the sixth thesis depends upon it; to which I answer that the thesis requires only that there was a language, and that it was common, and that the question of its origin, however interesting, may be reserved without detriment to the proof. It may be objected, lastly, that I have supposed throughout that the language of the first men was one language and not several dialects of a single speech; to which I answer that the text says of the earth that it was of one language and of one speech, and that I have not found any warrant in the place for the distinction. These objections, and others which may be urged with less force, will be considered at greater length under the next head, and in the head upon the proof by names. NB-02-003 NB-02-009