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That such a conclusion,[58] however much it may seem to savour of a weak eclecticism by combining all former theories, is yet in profound accordance with all the ascertained facts of language we shall hope to prove in the following chapter.

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“Speech is morning to the mind;

It spreads the beauteous images abroad,

Which else lie dark and buried in the soul.”

From abstract and à priori considerations, we have arrived at the conclusion that language was achieved or created by the human race, by the unconscious or spontaneous exercise of divinely implanted powers; that it was a faculty analogous to and closely implicated with that of thought, and, like thought, developing itself with[59] the aid of time. The idea of speech was innate, and the evolution of that idea may be traced in the growth and history of language. It is most important to have a clear conception of the fact that this development did not result from an atomistic[60] reunion of parts, but from the vitality derived from an inward principle. Language was formed by a process not of crystalline accretion but of germinal development. Every essential part of language existed as completely (although only implicitly) in the primitive germ, as the petals of a flower exist in the bud before the mingled influences of the sun and the air have caused it to unfold.