had done ill in killing of Claudius they doubted not but it was lawful to repel force by force Cicero to clear the innocence of the accused party made use of these two Propositions We may kill him that would murder us and therefore Milo might kill Claudius for seeking his life One of these Propositions is clear the other obscure One is granted on all hands the other uncertain yet they signifie but the same thing and by consequence one of them being incontestable the other must be so too It is the first part of Philosophy call'd Logick to give Rules of Argumentation and therefore it is not without reason that we have sayd in the beginning of this Discourse that to handle this Art of Perswasion in its full dimension we must treat of several other Arts which could not be done without Confusion The matter of the Art of Perswading is not limited This Art shows it self in the Pulpit at the Bar at all manner of business and conversation for in a word the whole end of Commerce and Conversation is to perswade those with whom we deal and reduce them to our Sentiments To be then a compleat Orator and speak well upon any thing that occurs as the Rhetoricians pretend their Disciples may we ought to be universally well-read and ignorant of nothing for a man indeed is not perfectly capable of Arguing but when he understands his Subject to the bottom when his mind is full of clear truths and undoubted Maxims from whence Consequences may be deduced to decide the Controversie in question For example a Divine argues rationally and well when to perswade an Adversary to his Opinion he produces Texts of Scripture the Fathers the Councils Tradition and the Testimony of the Church III. Of Common Places THere is no way of filling the mind with certain truths upon the matters of which we are to Treat like serious Meditation and long study of which few men are capable Knowledg is a Fruit environ'd with Thorns that keep most men at a distance so that if it were not lawful to speak of any thing but what we know the most part of those who make Oratory their Profession would be oblig'd to hold their peace To obviate so inevitable an inconvenience these Orators have sought out short and easy ways to supply themselves with matter of discourse even upon Subjects on which they are entirely ignorant They distribute these ways into several Classes which they call Common-Places because they are publickly expos'd and every man may take out freely what Arguments he pleases to prove what is in dispute though perhaps he be quite ignorant of the thing in Controversy himself The Logicians speak of these Common-places in their Topicks I shall explain in few words the use of these Common-places and afterwards show what judgment is to be made of them Common-places do properly contain nothing but general advice that remembers those who consult them of all the faces by which a subject may be considered and this may be convenient because viewing a Subject in that manner on all sides without doubt we may find with more ease what is most proper to be sayd on that subject A thing may be observ'd a hundred different ways yet it has pleased the Authors of those Topicks to establish only 16 Common-places The First of these Common-places is the Genus that is to say we must consider in every subject what it has in common with all other the like Subjects If we speak of the War with the Turks we may consider War in general and draw our Arguments from that Generality The Second place is call'd Difference by which we consider what-ever is peculiar to a Question The Third is Definition that is to say we must consider the whole nature of the Subject The Discourse which expresses the nature of a thing is the definition of that thing The Fourth place is Enumeration of the parts contain'd in the Subject of which we Treat The Fifth is the Etymologie of the Name of the Subject The Sixth is the Conjugates which are the Names which have connexion with the name of our Subject as the word love has connexion with all these other words to love loving friendship lovely friend c. We may likewise consider the similitude or dissimilitude in the things of which we treat which two Considerations make the Seventh and the Eighth places We may likewise make Comparison and in our comparison introduce every thing to which our subject is oppos'd and this Comparison and Opposition are the Ninth and Tenth places The Eleventh place is Repugnance that is to say in discoursing upon a Subject we must have an eye upon those things that are repugnant to it to discover the Proofs wherewith that Prospect may furnish us 'T is of importance to consider all the Circumstances of the matter propos'd but these Circumstances have either preceded or accompanyed or followed the thing in question so these Circumstances do make the Twelfth Thirteenth and Fourteenth places All the Circumstances that can accompany an action are commonly comprehended in this Verse Quis quid ubi quibus auxiliis cur quomodo quando That is to say we are to examin who is the Author of the Action what the action is where it was done by what means for what end how and when The Fifteenth place is the Effect and the Sixteenth the Cause that is to say we must have regard to the Effect of which the thing in dispute may be the cause and to the things of which it may be the effect These Common-places do without doubt supply us with ample matter for Discourse The different Considerations present us with several Arguments and are able questionless to furnish the most barren Invention I examine not now whether this supply be commendable or not According to this method if we be to speak against a Parricide we speak against Parricide in General and then bring it home to the person accus'd and to the rest of the Particulars then we proceed to the Circumstances of Parricide discovering the blackness of the Crime by Definitions Descriptions Enumerations Sometimes the Etymology of the Name of the thing upon which we are speaking and the other Names that have reference to it supply us with matter A long Discourse might be rais'd upon the Obligation which Christians have to live well by only remembring them of the Name that they bear Discourses are much inlarged by Similitudes Dissimilitudes and Comparisons that serve to remove a difficulty and illustrate an obscure truth In a word he who should Circumstantiate an action describe what was precedent concomitant and subsequent what was the cause and what was the Effect would sooner tire his Auditory than want matter for Discourse IV. Of Places proper to particular Subjects THe Places of which we have spoke are called common because they are exposed to all the world and because they furnish Arguments for all causes There are other places proper
proposing the Subject of it without an Exordium which is to be done so as the justice of the cause we defend may appear in the said Proposition that consists only in the declaration of what we are to say and by consequence admits no Rules for its length When we are to speak only of a question it suffices to propose it and that requires but few words When we are to speak of an action or rhing done we are to recite the whole action report all its circumstances and make a description of it that may lay it before the eyes of the Judges and enable them to determine as exactly as if they had been present when the action was done Some there are who to make an action appear as they would have it do not scruple to cloth it with circumstances favourable to their designs though contrary to the truth and they fancy they may do it because their pretence is to advance the truth by augmenting the goodness of their Cause It is not necessary I should confute the falseness of this perswasion for 't is clear that if it be contradictory to truth we make use of a lye it is an ill thing because we deviat from the end of Speech which was given us to express the truth of our Sentiments though against truth it self and when we equivocate for truth we do that which is displeasing to her because she needs not equivocation to defend her self We ought therefore to deliver things simply as they are and be cautious of inserting any thing that may dispose the Judges to give wrong Judgment There is no affair but has several faces some agreeable that please others disagreeable that discourage and disgust our hearers It is the part of a skilful Orator to propose nothing that may beget in the hearer a disadvantagious opinion of what is to follow An Orator is to select the circumstances of the action he proposes and not inlarge equally upon them all Some are to be pass'd in silence others to be touch'd by the by When we are to be oblig'd to report an ill circumstance that may discommend the action we would defend we are not to pass it over and proceed till we have apply'd some remedy to the evil impression that recitation may make for we must not leave our auditors in any ill opinion that they may conceive thereupon We must subjoyn some reason or circumstance to change the face of the former and present in less odious You must relate the particulars of his death who was kill'd to justify the person you would defend Being to speak only in the behalf of an innocent person at the same time when you relate the manner of the others death you must add the just causes of his death and make it appear that he who kill'd him did it by misfortune or accident without any design We must therefore prae-occupy the mind of the Judges and prepare them with all the reasons occasions and circumstances that may justify the action that when it is related they may be dispos'd to examine it and confess that there was only an appearance of Crime and that in effect it was just because accompanyed with all the Circumstances that render such actions innocent This Artifice is not only lawful but it would be a fault to omit it We must have a care of rendring verity odious by our imprudence and certainly it would be great imprudence to deliver things in such manner as may dispose our hearers to give rash judgment Men do take their impressions immediatly and pursue their first judgments and therefore it is of importance to prevent them Rhetoricians require three things in a Narration that it be short clear and probable It is short when we say all that is necessary and nothing more We are not to judg of the brevity of a Narration by the number of words but by the exactness in saying nothing superfluous Clearness follows this exactness impertinences do but stuff up a History and hinder the action from being exactly represented to the mind It is not hard for a good Orator to make what he says probable because nothing is so like the truth that he defends as truth it self and yet for this some Cunning is requir'd some Circumstances are of that nature that deliver'd nakedly and alone they would become suspected and would not be believ'd unless back'd and sustain'd by other circumstances Wherefore to make a Narration appear true as it is in effect those Circumstances are not to be forgot III. Of Confirmation or Establishment of Proofs and of Refutation THe Rules we are to follow to establish by solid Argument the truth we would defend and to subvert the fallacy oppos'd to that truth belong properly to Logick from thence it is we are to learn to argue Yet here we may give some Rules First we are to consider the Subject upon which we are to speak we are to mind and observe all its parts that we may find out what course we are to stere for the discovery either of the truth or the fallacy This Rule is not to be practis'd but by those who have great latitude of understanding by those who are exercised in the solution of Problems and in penetrating the most occult things by those who are so well vers'd in affairs of that nature that as soon as a difficulty is propos'd to them though never so intricat they can immediatly find out the knot and having their minds full of light and of truth discover without trouble the incontestable Principles to prove the conceal'd verity of things and to convince those of fallacy that are false The Second Rule respects the clearness of the Principles upon which we ground our Argument The source of all false Arguments that are used by men is our easy and rash supposition that things doubtful are true We suffer our selves to be dazled by a false lustre that we perceive not till we find we are precipitated in great absurdities and oblig'd to consent to Propositions evidently false The Third Rule respects the Connexion of Principles examin'd with the Consequences drawn from them In an exact Argument the Principles and the Consequences are joyn'd so strictly that having granted the Principles we are oblig'd to consent to the Consequence because the Principles and the Consequence are the same thing so what we cannot reasonaby deny in the one what we have confess'd in the other If I grant it lawful to repel force by force and to take away the life of my Enemy when I find no other means of preserving my own when it is prov'd to me that Milo in killing Clodius did but repel force by force I am oblig'd to acknowledg that Milo is innocent because in effect allowing the Proposition That it is lawful to repel one force by another I confess that Milo is innocent of the death of Clodius who would have taken away the life Milo The Connexion betwixt that Principle and that
of themselves they have nothing resembling those Idea's do notwithstanding represent them are the material part and may be called the Body of our Words II. Before we speak we ought to form a Scheme in our Minds of what we desire to say A Painter will not lay on his Colours 'till he has formed in his imagination what he designs to draw Discourse is the Picture of our thoughts the Tongue is the Pencil which draws that Picture and Words are the Colours We ought therefore in the first place to range our Thoughts and put such things as we intend to represent by our Words into natural order disposing them so that the knowledge of some few of them may render the rest more easie and intelligible to the Reader The Natural Order to be observed in the ranging of our thoughts belongs properly to those that write of the Art of Thinking Every Art has its bounds which are not to be transgress'd For such things as reiate to the Matter of our Discourse my following Rules will not be I suppose unworthy of Consideration The first is That we meditate upon our Subject and make all reflexion necessary for the discovery of such means as may direct us to our proposed end We must forget nothing that may make that Subject perspicuous But it many times happens that endeavouring to clear and explain a thing we overcharge the attention of the Reader and render it more abstruse by our prolix explications Abundance is sometimes the cause of sterility The Husbandman fears the rankness of his Corn and feeds his Sheep with it to prevent it We cannot comprehend any Argument or Science unless our meditation supply us with things necessary and retrench what is superfluous which pains an Author is to spare to such persons as he undertakes to instruct A Man that writes by halves gives an imperfect account but a great book is a great evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We wander in it we lose our selves and have scarce patience to turn it over When therefore we have made an exact collection of all things relating to the matter of which we treat we must contract them reduce them to their just bounds and making a strict choice and selection of what are absolutely necessary reject the rest as superfluous We are to be continually intent upon the end to which we would arrive we are to take the shortest cut to it and avoid all manner of deviation Unless we slightly run over things of small importance not at all essential to our design our Reader will be weary and his application diverted from such as are This Brevity so necessary to make a Book neat and compact consists not only in the retrenchment of what is unnecessary but requires that we insert such circumstances as may illustrate our discourse and imply many things that are not expressed For this we are to imitate the address of Timanthes the famous Painter who being to represent the prodigious stature of a Giant in a small picture painted him lying along in the midst of a Troop of Satyrs one of which was measuring the Giants Thumb with his Thyrse intimating by that ingenious invention how vast his Body must needs be when so small a part of him was to be measured with a Launce These Inventions require much wit and application and therefore it was that Mons Pascal an Author very famous for his felicity in comprising much in few words excused himself wittily for the extravagant length of one of his Letters by saying he had not time to make it shorter III. To signifie the difference of our Thoughts we have need of Words of different Orders AS we cannot finish a Picture nor distinguish the different strokes of things to be represented therein with one single Colour so 't is impossible to express whatever occurs in our Mind with Words of one single Order Let Nature be Mistress in this case and teach us what this distinction ought to be let us see how Men would form their Language and make themselves intelligible one to another should they be brought together from strange and remote places Let us make use of the liberty of the Poets and fetch either out of the Earth or the Heavens a Troop of new Men altogether ignorant of the benefit of Words The sight must needs be agreeable because it is pleasant to fancy them speaking and conversing together with their Hands their Eyes gestures and contortions of their Bodies but it is plain it would not be long before they would be weary of these postures and either chance or discretion would show them the conveniency of Words We cannot discover what form they would give to their Language but by considering what we our selves should do in the same company Diversity of Words then being necessary only in respect of the different things which pass in our Mind and we are inclin'd to impart we must observe exactly all that so passes that we may be enabled thereby to find out what we are to do to paint the different Features of our Thoughts When our Organs of Sense are free and undisturbed we perceive what it is that strikes them and at the same time we have the Idea's of such things present to our Mind For which reason these Idea's are not improperly called The Objects of our Perceptions Besides these Idea's which result from our Senses there are others fundamentally inherent in our Natures and not falling that way into our Minds as those which represent to us Natural and Original Truths such as these That we are to give every man his due That it is impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time c. Doubtless if these new Men would make it their business to find out Words that might be signs of all these Idea's which are the Objects of our perception which according to the Philosophers is the first operation of the Mind in the infinite variety of Words it would not be difficult to find particular signs to mark every Idea and give it a particular Name In as much as we naturally make use of these primitive Notions we may believe that if other things should present themselves to their Minds bearing any resemblance or conformity to those things which they had denominated before they would not take the pains to invent new words but with some little variation make use of the first Names to denote the difference of the things to which they would apply them Experience perswades me that where a proper Word does not occur immediately to our Tongue we should make use of the Name of some other thing bearing some kind of resemblance to it In all Languages the Names of things almost alike have very little difference From one single Word many other are derived as is obvious in the Dictionaries of such Languages as we know The same Word may be diversified several ways by transposition retrenchment addition of Vowels or Consonants or by
Orator makes a Panegyrick upon some Prince the design is to magnifie and illustrate the actions of that Hero to advance him to such an Elevation of Glory that he may be looked upon as the most accomplished and most venerable person of his Sex An Advocate pleading the cause of a Pauper will be contented if he perswades his Auditory that the person whose defence he has undertaken is a good man an innocent man and one that behaves himself in his sphear like a very good Citizen That which I shall say of these three Characters relates to our prudence in carrying on our Work so as we never suffer the general Idea we have proposed to our selves to be out of sight II. Rules for the Lofty Style APelles being to draw the Picture of his Friend Antigonus who had lost his left eye in the Wars drew him in Porfile with the half-face that had no deformity We must imitate this Artifice Let the subject of which we design to give a lofty Idea be never so Noble its Nobleness will never be seen unless we have the skill to present it with the best of its faces the best of things have their imperfections and yet the least new blemish discovered in what we valued before abates our esteem and perhaps extinguishes it quite After we have spoke a thousand fine things if among them all we shuffle in but one Expression that is mean or impertinent some people and those Wits are so ill-natured as to regard nothing but that impertinence and to forget the rest We must likewise be careful not to say any thing in one place that may contradict or interfere with what we have sayd in another We have an Example of this Fault in Hesiod who in his Poem called the Buckler speaking of Proserpine says that she had a filthy humour running at her Nose Longinus observes well that Hesiod's design being to make her terrible this Expression did not suit but made her rather odious and contemptible We are likewise to imitate the address of another Painter no less famous than Apelles and that is Zeuxis who being to represent Helen as fair in colours as the Greek Poets had done in their Verse he took the natural touches of all the Beauties of the City where he drew it uniting in her Picture all the Graces that Nature had distributed in a great number of handsome Women When a Poet is Master of his Subject and can inlarge or retrench as he pleases if he designs a description as for example of a Tempest he is seriously to consider what happens in a Tempest and to examine all the Circumstances that he may select and make use of what he thinks most extraordinary and surprizing Comme l' on voit les flots soulevez par l' Orage Fondre sur un vaisseau qui s' oppose a leur rage Le vent avec fureur dans les voiles fremit Le mer blanchit d' ecume l' air auloin gemit Le matelot trouble que son art abandonne Croit voir dans chaque flot la mort qui l' environne As when by Storm inrag'd the Sea does beat And dash ' gainst th' Vessel that resists its heat The Wind begets a trembling in the Sails The Sea grows white with foam the Ayr rails The Sea-man troubled his Art lost each Wave That tumbles next he looks will be his Grave Our Expressions ought to be Noble and able to give that lofty Idea which we design as the end of what we say Though the matter be not equal in all its parts yet we are to observe a certain Uniformity in our Style In a Palace there are appartments for Inferior Officers as well as those who are near the King there are rooms of State and there are Stables the Stables are not built with the Magnificence of the rooms of State and yet there is a suitableness and proportion betwixt them and every part shows its relation to the whole In a lofty Style though the Expressions ought to correspond with the matter yet we must speak of indifferent things with an Ayre above their condition because our design being to give a high Idea of the thing 't is fit all that depend upon it should wear its Livery and do it honour An ambitious vain Writer to show the magnificence of his Style in all that he writes foists in great and prodigious things not considering whether the invention of his Prodigies be consistent with reason The Greeks call this vanity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Florus in his Abridgment of the Roman History furnishes us with a considerable example of this Teratologie His business was to have told us as Sextus Rufus has done That the Roman Empire was extended as far as the Sea by the Conquest which Decimus Brutus made of Spaine Hispanias per decimum Brutum obtinuimus usque ad Gades Oceanum pervenimus Florus goes higher and tells us Decimus Brutus aliquanto latius Gallaecos atque omnes Gallaeciae populos formidatumque militibus flumen oblivionis peregratoque victor Oceani littore non prius signa convertit quam cadentem in Maria solem obrutumque aquis ignem non sine quodam Sacrilegii metu horrore deprehendit stuffing up his Narration with Prodigies He fancies that the Romans having carryed their Conquests to the farthest parts of Spaine trembled at the sight of the Sea as if they had thought themselves criminal for beholding with presumptuous eyes the Sun when it was setting and as it were quenching its flames in the waters of the Ocean This Fault is called Inflation because the manner of speaking things in so incongruous and extravagant a way is like the false corpulency of a dropical Man who appears fat and in good-liking when he is only puffed up with Water and Wind. This sublime Character is hard to attain 't is not every one can raise himself above the common pitch at least continue his flight It is easy to fly out into great expressions but then if those great Expressions be not sustained by greatness of matter and replete with solid and serious things they are but like Stilts that show the smalness and defect of the Party at the same time they exalt him By the Engine of a Phrase we may hoist up a trifle and place it very high but it quickly relapses and by its elevation is exposed to their eyes who perhaps would never have considered it had it remained in its primitive obscurity This vanity of making every thing we mention seem great of cloathing our discourse in Magnificent Language makes it suspicious to persons of judgment that the Author has a mind to conceal the meanness of his thoughts under the vain pretension of Grandeur And Quintilian tells us there are others who by the creeping humility of their Style affect to he thought Copious and Lofty Little People to shew themselves with advantage delight to stand on tip-toe those who write most weakly use most
The Ornaments of a good Discourse are also inseparable Allusions and sporting with words Figurative repetition of certain Syllables and other Ornaments not altogether Essential can give but small satisfaction to those who consider them with the eye of Reason for in a word it is truth only that satisfies a rational man in Ornaments there is nothing of truth they do rather perplex and Embarass and render things more unconceivable than if our Discourse were simple and natural II. The false Idea that men have of Grandeur and their desire to speak nothing but Great things is the Cause of ill Ornaments THere are but few men that examine judiciously the things which present themselves We suffer our selves to be taken with Appearances because great things are rare and extraordinary Men do form to themselves such an Idea of Grandeur that whatever carries an extraordinary aire appears to them great They put no value upon any thing that is common They despise the manners of Speaking that are not natural for no other reason but because they are not extraordinary They affect big words and bombast phrases Sesquipedalia verba ampullas To dazle and amaze we need only cloth our Propositions in strange and magnificent Language They consider not whether under that dress there be any thing conceal'd that is effectually great and extraordinary That which makes their stupidity the more remarkable is that they admire what they do not understand Mirantur quae non intelligunt because obscurity has some appearance of Grandeur sublime and exalted things being for the most part obscure and difficult Men having then so false an Idea of Grandeur it is not to be admired if the Ornaments wherewith their works are adorn'd be false and numerous because as we have sayd before they desire to speak nothing but what is great But mens ambition carrying them beyond their pitch they miscarry in their slight and puff themselves up till they crack with the too great quantity of wind Copiousness is a mark of Grandeur our impatience to appear copious chokes up our thoughts with too great abundance of words When men are pleas'd with a thing they insist upon it too much and repeat it over and over Nesciunt quod bene cessit relinquere They are like young Hounds that worrey their Prey and are not easily got off Every thing is to be allowed its natural dimension A Statute whose parts are disproportionable whose leggs are great and arms small whose body is large and head small is monstrous and irregular The greatest art of Eloquence is to keep the hearers attentive and hinder them from loosing the prospect of the end to which we would conduct them But when we stop too long upon particular parts we are many times imploy'd so much upon them that we forget the principal Subject Copiousness therefore is not always good Repletion and emptiness are both Causes of Disease Amongst Learned men those are most esteem'd who are best read The difficulty of a Science advances its price we have a value for those who understand the Arabian and Persian Languages we never examine whether by those Languages they have acquir'd any knowledg that is not to be found in other Authors it is sufficient if the skilful in these Languages understand that which is hard te be understood and understood by few people Our ambition to be thought Learned and to intimate and ostentate our Erudition causes that either in Speaking or Writing we name continually our Authors though their authority be necessary no farther than to show we have read them and to make us pass for Learned men This humor St. Austin reproaches to Julian Quis haec audiat non ipso nominum sectarumque conglobatarum strepitu terreatur si est ineruditus qualis est hominum multitudo existimet te aliquem magnum qui haec scire potueris they heap Greek upon Latin and Hebrew upon Arabick A trifle delivered in Greek is well enough receiv'd An Italian phrase however apply'd in discourse makes the Author pass for a polite well-bred man Were it not customary and common we should be as much frighted at this wild way of speaking as at the discourse of a mad-man This is a fault that disgraces a style and hinders it from being natural and clear If it be to add weight to our words that we add the Names of our Authors we ought to do it only when necessity requires us to make use of the authority and reputation of an Author What need is there that we quote Euclid to prove that the whole is equal to all the parts Or cite Philosophers to perswade the World that Winter is cold I do not blame all these citations on the contrary they are commendable when the words are clear and convenient to awaken the mind of the Reader by variety It is only excess in this kind that is blameable Those who have read much are to imitate the Bee which digests what it has suck'd from the flowers and turns all into Honey Nature loves simplicity It is the sign of distemper to have the skin marked w th spots of several colours Too frequent sentences trouble also the uniformity of a style By the word Sentence is understood those exalted and abstracted thoughts that are to be express'd in a concise way and in few words and these Sentences are called points I speak not of those childish and false Sentences which have nothing in them but what is forced and unnatural The best expressions plac'd too thick do but perplex and incommode a Style and render it rugged and when they are separated from the rest of the discourse the Style may be sayd to be rough and unpleasing These abstracted thoughts are like patches sow'd together which being of a different colour from the rest of the stuff make the Garment ridiculous Curandum est ne sententiae emineant extra Corpus orationis expressae sed intexto vestibus colore niteant Some love to intersperse their discourses with these kind of Sentences supposing they add reputation to the Wit of the Author Facie ingenii blandiuntur The last fault into which they fall who are desirous to have the honour of doing something exactly proceeds from an extraordinary endeavour to make their Works excellent A man who writes with too much affectation is not capable of perceiving the obscurity of his words The darkest of them seem clear to him he discovers easily all the Idea's that his Expressions ought to awaken to be understood because those Idea's are present to him But it is not the same with those who read his Works whose imaginations are not so hot and who do not address themselves to penetrate the sense of his words with so great zeal and application as he who compos'd them When a man expresses himself with pain we labour with him and in some measure we participate of his pain If he expresses himself easily and naturally so as every word seems to
For in short words being nothing but sound we ought not to prefer their harmony to the solid knowledg of truth For my own part I value not the Art of Speaking but as it contributes to the discovery of truth as it forces it from the bottom of our thoughts where it lay conceal'd as it disintangles it and displays it to our eyes and indeed this is the true cause that has incouraged me to write of this Art as a thing not only useful but necessary IV. The former Table refuted and the true Original of Languages declared IF that which Diodorus Siculus has writ of the Original of Languages be true what we have fancy'd of our new men forming a Language to themselves would not be a Fable but a true Story That Author speaking of the opinion of the Greeks in relation to the beginning of the World tells us that after the Elements had taken their places in the Universe and the Waters were run down into the Sea the Earth being yet moist was chafed by the heat of the Sun became fruitful and produced man and the rest of the Creatures That these men being dispers'd up and down in several places found by experience that to defend themselves against the Beasts it would be convenient to live together That at first their words were confused and gross which they polished afterwards and established such terms as were judged necessary for the explanation of their thoughts and that in time men being born in several corners of the Earth and by consequence divided into several Societies of which every one had form'd to it self a distinct Language it followed that all Nations did not make use of the same Language These are the conjectures of the Greeks who had no true knowledg of Antiquity Plato reproaches it to them in one of his Dialogues where he brings in Timaeus telling that the Egyptians commonly call'd the Greeks children because they understood no more than Children from whence they had their Original or what pass'd in the world before they were born so that we are not much to depend upon their Salvation All the antient monuments of Antiquity bear witness to the verity of what Moses relates in Genesis about the Creation of the World and the Original of man-kind We understand from thence that God formed Adam the first of his Sex and gave him a Language of which alone his Children made use till the building of the Tower of Bebel some time after the Deluge The design of building that Tower was to defend themselves against God himself If ever he should punish the world with another Deluge they hop'd by that Edifice to protect themselves against him and they were so insolent in their Enterprize that God Almighty finding them obstinate sent such Confusion into their Language and Words as disabled them from understanding one another by which means their design was frustrated and they forc'd to desist and separate into several Countries The common Opinion concerning this Confusion is that God did not so confound the Languages of these Undertakers as to make so many several Languages as there were men It is believed only that after this Confusion every Family made use of a particular Language from whence it followed that the Families being divided the men were distinguished as well by difference of Languages as the places to which they retir'd This Confusion consisted not alone in the Novelty of Words but in the alteration transposition addition or retrenchment of several Letters which compos'd their familiar words before that Confusion Hence it is that we easily deduce from the Hebrew Language which is rationally presumed to be that which was spoken by Adam and used a long time afterwards the Original of the antient Names of Towns and Provinces and their Inhabitants as has been prov'd by several Learned men and particularly by Samuel Bochart in his Sacred Geography The use of words then did not come by chance it was God who taught them at first and from the first Language that he gave to Adam all other Languages are deriv'd that being afterwards divided and multiplyed as aforesaid Yet this Confusion which God brought into the Languages of the Builders of the Tower of Babel was not the sole Cause of the great diversity and multiplicity of Languages Those in use at this time in the world are much more numerous than the Families of the children of Noah when they were separated and much different from their Languages As in all other things so in Languages there are insensible alterations that in time makes them all appear quite other than what they were at first It is not to be doubted but our present French is deriv'd from that which was spoken five hundred years since and yet we can scarce understand what was spoken but two hundred years ago It is not to be imagin'd that these alterations happen'd only to the French Tongue Quintilian tells us that the Language of the Romans in his time was so different from what it was at first that the Priests could scarce understand the old Hymns compos'd by their Primitive Priests to be Sung before their Idols The inconstancy of man is a principal cause of this alteration His love to Novelty makes him contrive new words instead of the old and introduce such ways of Pronunciation as in process of time changes entirely the old Language into new So that those who are inquisitive after the Etymology or Original of new Languages to discover how they are deriv'd from the Antients ought to consider what have been the different manners of pronunciation in different times and how by those different manners the words have been so chang'd that they appear quite different from what they were in their Original For example there is no great conformity betwixt Ecrire in French and Scribere in Latin betwixt Etabler and Stabilire In time it came to be the custom not to pronounce the Letter S after E at the beginning of a word and then they writ Ecribere Etabilere and at length abbreviating farther they came to write Ecrire Etabler Changes of this Nature have so disguiz'd the Latine words that they have made a new Language In all Languages it is the same with the French which with the Spanish and Italian proceeds from the Latin Latin comes from the Greek Greek from Hebrew as the Chaldee and Syriack It is the different manners of Pronunciation that have caus'd the great difference at present in all Languages We are much surpriz'd at first when from an antient Language we can derive any word of a new Language for example a Latin from an Hebrew word if their difference be considerable The surprize proceeds from this that no notice is taken that the Latin word before it received its present form pass'd through several Countries and Conditions that altered it These conditions are the different manners with which it has been pronounc'd People have particular inclinations for particular Letters