" Our
reconciler then asks for what other reason could God have kept
Moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach
him to write; and says, "It seems highly probable that the angel
gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown
to us became his guide."
But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the
other parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative
Philology, based upon researches in India, began to be reenforced
by facts regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform
inscriptions of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folklore
of China--where it was found in the sacred books that the animals
were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every
name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.
But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were
still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory
of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous
onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be "degrading
to our nature," and that the theory of the natural development of
language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' poetry.
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