Pantographia; containing accurate copies of all the known alphabets in the world; together with an English explanation of the peculiar force or power of each letter: to which are added, specimens of all well-authenticated oral languages. Forming a comprehensive digest of phonology / By Edmund Fry.

  • Fry, Edmund, 1754-1835.
Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pantographia; containing accurate copies of all the known alphabets in the world; together with an English explanation of the peculiar force or power of each letter: to which are added, specimens of all well-authenticated oral languages. Forming a comprehensive digest of phonology / By Edmund Fry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2. Supposing any individual in a state of improved society, such as has been represented, to have invented the manner, or rather observed the power of the human voice to articulate, how could he persuade the rest of the community to adopt so extraordinary an innovation ? If proposed to them on mere hu- man authority, would not the Elders reject it as a childifh sug- gestion, which they had neither motive nor power to adopt ? For we know that articulation cannot be learned after a certain age.—The inventor, if any, must have been young; and his youth would be an obstacle to his success in propagating his discovery on one hand ; and the immense labor and time necessary for old people to acquire eighteen or twenty articulations, and that merely on speculation, would effectually prevent it’s adoption on the other, as the importance of the invention could only be de- monstrated by learning and trial. 3. If every separate colony had invented it’s own articulations, inftead of that uniformity we every where find, infinite diversity muft have presented itself. 4. We do not admit that any imitation of animals could have taught the letters above mentioned, much less the N, M, R, F, L, the guttural CH, or Welch LL ; therefore this account of the origin of articulations cannot be admitted on mere conje&ure. * Those who are of opinion that language is of divine origin, consider this account of it’s being of human invention, as a series of mere suppositions, not founded on any fixed principle. The opinions of Diodorus, Vitruvius, Horace, Lucretius, and Cicero, frequently quoted in it’s support, are, in their eftimation, of no greater' authority, than those of other men : for, as lan- guage was formed, and brought to a great degree of perfection, long before the sera of any historian with whom we are ac- quainted, the antiquity of the Greek and Roman writers does not give them any advantage in this inquiry over modern philo- sophers. Aristotle has defined Man to be £vov jutjuqlixov: and the defini- tion is certainly so far just, that Man is much more remarkable for imitation than invention ; and therefore, say the reasoners on this * Warburton, Delaney, Johnfon, Beattie, Blair, &c.