joined with very conftant and affiduous practice; that being abfolutely neceffary for the acquiring of any art, in which-ever of the two ways it be learned.

And here we may observe, that it is a very false conclufion, to infer, from the facility of doing any thing, that it is a natural operation. For what is it that we do more easily and readily than speaking? and yet we see it is an art that is not to be taught without the greatest labour and difficulty, both on the part of the mafter and the scholar; nor to be learned by imitation, without continual practice, from our infancy upwards. For it is not to be learned, like other arts, fuch as dancing and finging, by practising an hour or two a-day, for a few years, or perhaps only fome months; but constant and uninterrupted practice is required for many years, and for every hour, I may fay, every minute of the day. And, even after it is learned with fo much trouble and pains, it may, like other acquired habits, be loft by disuse: Of which I mentioned a remarkable instance before, in a boy, who did not lose his hearing till he was after eight years old, and had learned, not only to speak

perfectly, but to read; and yet, when he came to be taught by Mr Braidwood, which was at the age of five and twenty, he had abfolutely loft the use of speech, and had it to learn as much as any of his scholars. So that we need not doubt of what we are told of Alexander Selkirk, who was but three years in the defert island of Juan Fernandez; and yet, during that short time, he had loft the use of speech fo much as to be hardly intelligible to those who found him there. Those therefore who, from the facility of a performance, conclude, that it is not a work of art, but of nature, do not fufficiently confider how much of artificial habit there is in our natures, in the state we are in at present, and that in this chiefly we differ from other animals, that the most of them, I mean fuch as are wild, are altogether creatures of nature, and even fuch of them as we have tamed, and affimilated in fome degree to ourfelves, have ftill much more of nature in them than of art; whereas a civilized man is fo much more a creature of art than of nature, that his natural habits are almoft loft in his artificial.

I will make another obfervation before I conclude this article. If it had not been for

this new-invented art of teaching deaf perfons to speak, hardly any body would have believed that the material or mechanical part of language was learned with so much difficulty. But, if we could get an Orang Outang, or a mute favage, fuch as he above mentioned, who was caught in the woods of Hanover, and would take the fame pains to teach him to think that Mr Braidwood takes to teach his scholars to speak, we should soon be convinced, that the formal part of language was as difficult to be learned as the material. For my own part, I am fully perfuaded, that the minds of men laboured as much at first, when they formed abftract ideas, as their organs of pronunciation did when they formed articulate founds; and, till the mind be stored with ideas, it is a perfect void, and in a kind of lethargy, out of which it is roufed, only by external objects of fenfe, or calls of appetite from within. It was this want of ideas which made the Hanoverian favage pass, in the opinion of many, for an idiot; and it accounts for that brutish insensibility in a nation of which Diodorus Siculus, in his third book *, has * Cap. 18. edit. Weffeling.

given us an account. They were fituated upon the coaft of the Indian ocean, near to the ftraits which join that ocean to the Arabian gulf. Ptolomy king of Egypt, the third of that name, having heard, he fays, much of their brutishness and ftupidity, had the curiofity to fend one of his friends to bring him an account of them; who accordingly went, properly attended, and brought back to the king a report, which in fubftance amounted to this: That they neither defired the company of ftrangers, nor fhunned it: That no appearance, however strange, feemed to move them; for they kept their eyes always fixt, and never altered their countenance: That, when any perfon advanced upon them with a drawn fword, they did not run away; and they bore all kinds of infults and injuries without fhewing the leaft fign of anger. Nor did thofe of them who were spectators of fuch injuries fhew any indignation at what they faw their countrymen suffer. He adds, That they carried their infenfibility fo far, that, when their wives and children were killed in their prefence, they were even then unmoved, fhewing no figns, either of pity or anger. In fhort, fays he, in the moft terrible fituations, they feemed perfect

ly tranquil, looking ftedfastly at what was doing, and, at every event that happened, giving a nod with their heads. Thus far Diodorus; and with this account many of the relations of our modern travellers, concerning people living in the lowest state of barbarity, agree. And I know a gentleman who saw in Batavia two favages brought from New Holland, that appeared to him to be perfectly stupid and idiotical, though he had no reafon to think that they were more fo than the other natives of that country.

That Language is not natural to Man, proved alfo from Arguments a posteriori,

HUS I have endeavoured to demon

ftrate, from the nature of language, confisting of ideas and the articulate sounds by which they are expreffed, that language is not from nature, but acquired habit. This kind of