The first leader
who threw the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority
against it was Leibnitz. He declared, "There is as much reason
for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of
mankind as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who
published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the
language spoken in paradise." In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz
wrote, "To call Hebrew the primitive language is like calling the
branches of a tree primitive branches, or like imagining that in
some country hewn trunks could grow instead of trees." He also
asked, "If the primeval language existed even up to the time of
Moses, whence came the Egyptian language?"
But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere
suggestions. He applied the inductive method to linguistic study,
made great efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars
drawn up wherever missionaries and travellers came in contact
with new races, and thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse
to at least three notable collections--that of Catharine the
Great, of Russia; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas;
and, at a later period, the _Mithridates_ of Adelung.
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