What
chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue
he had in mind is past finding out. He comes out strongly in
defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and
insists that "by the symbolical expression `God said, Let us go
down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the
cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became
impossible--that is to say, through a new or not universal flood,
a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great
continents until the time of the rediscovery" By these words the
learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe
from America.
While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of
the origin and development of language was upon the continent
considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there
emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in
spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the
science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church and
sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroachments
of the science of language or in explaining them away.
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