need of each other's assistance; when the same persons scarcely met
twice in their whole lives, and on meeting neither spoke to, or so
much as knew each other?

Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much
grammar exercises, and facilitates the operations of the mind; let us,
besides, reflect on the immense pains and time that the first
invention of languages must have required: Let us add these
reflections to the preceding; and then we may judge how many thousand
ages must have been requisite to develop successively the operations,
which the human mind is capable of producing.

I must now beg leave to stop one moment to consider the perplexities
attending the origin of languages. I might here barely cite or repeat
the researches made, in relation to this question, by the Abbe de
Condillac, which all fully confirm my system, and perhaps even
suggested to me the first idea of it. But, as the manner, in which the
philosopher resolves the difficulties of his own starting, concerning
the origin of arbitrary signs, shows that he supposes, what I doubt,
namely a kind of society already established among the inventors of
languages; I think it my duty, at the same time that I refer to his
reflections, to give my own, in order to expose the same difficulties
in a light suitable to my subject. The first that offers is how
languages could become necessary; for as there was no correspondence
between men, nor the least necessity for any, there is no conceiving
the necessity of this invention, nor the possibility of it, if it was
not indispensable. I might say, with many others, that languages are
the fruit of the domestic intercourse between fathers, mothers, and
children: but this, besides its not answering any difficulties, would
be committing the same fault with those, who reasoning on the state of