f man, the most universal and most energetic of
all languages, in short, the only language he had occasion for, before
there was a necessity of persuading assembled multitudes, was the cry
of nature. As this cry was never extorted but by a kind of instinct in
the most urgent cases, to implore assistance in great danger, or
relief in great sufferings, it was of little use in the common
occurrences of life, where more moderate sentiments generally prevail.
When the ideas of men began to extend and multiply, and a closer
communication began to take place among them, they laboured to devise
more numerous signs, and a more extensive language: they multiplied
the inflections of the voice, and added to them gestures, which are,
in their own nature, more expressive, and whose meaning depends less
on any prior determination. They therefore expressed visible and
movable objects by gestures and those which strike the ear, by
imitative sounds: but as gestures scarcely indicate anything except
objects that are actually present or can be easily described, and
visible actions; as they are not of general use, since darkness or the
interposition of an opaque medium renders them useless; and as besides
they require attention rather than excite it: men at length bethought
themselves of substituting for them the articulations of voice, which,
without having the same relation to any determinate object, are, in
quality of instituted signs, fitter to represent all our ideas; a
substitution, which could only have been made by common consent, and
in a manner pretty difficult to practise by men, whose rude organs
were unimproved by exercise; a substitution, which is in itself more
difficult to be conceived, since the motives to this unanimous
agreement must have been somehow or another expressed, and speech
therefore appears to have been exceedingly requisite to establish the
use of speech.

We must allow that the words, first made use of by men, had in their
minds a much more extensive signification, than those employed in
languages of some standing, and that, considering how ignorant they
were of the division of speech into its constituent parts; they at
first gave every word the meaning of an entire proposition. When
afterwards they began to perceive the difference between the subject
and attribute, and between verb and noun, a distinction which required
no mean effort of genius, the substantives for a time were only so
many proper names, th