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3. The third main theory, which has found numberless supporters, is, that language is due to direct revelation. The tenacity of this belief was mainly due to the violent reaction of the spiritualist school in the nineteenth century against the systematising scepticism of their predecessors. It was warmly adopted by MM. de Bonald, de Maistre, De Lammenais, and others, and was in one sense a step forwards, for it recognised at least that “divine[35] spark which glows in all idioms even the most imperfect and uncultivated.” But this theory must likewise be rejected. It raises[36] men to the level of gods, as much as the former theory had degraded them to the rank of beasts. “Spiritualism contradicts nature, as materialism contradicts mind. It has reality and history against it as much as its opposite.”

This view opens considerations of such importance that we must subject it to a still more careful discussion.

We object, in the first place, to the difficulty and obscurity of the phrase. In one sense,[37] indeed—if we take it metaphorically,—it is perhaps the most exact expression to describe the wonderful apparition of human speech, which it rightly withdraws from the sphere of vulgar inventions. Language, as an immediate product of human powers, might perhaps, with more safety, be attributed to the Universal Cause, than to the particular action of human liberty. If by revelation be intended the spontaneous play of the human faculties, in this sense, God, having endowed man with all things requisite for the discovery of language, may, with near approximation to truth, be called its Author; but then, why make use of an expression so indirect and liable to be misunderstood, when others more natural and more philosophical might have been found to indicate the same[38] fact?