An essay on abstinence from animal food, as a moral duty / By Joseph Ritson.
- Q6286581
- Date:
- 1802
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An essay on abstinence from animal food, as a moral duty / By Joseph Ritson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
44/258 page 30
![© Of all rapacious animals, man is the moft | univerfal deftroyer. The deftruction of carni- have a very different meaning with the palatial retraction of the tongue. The noife made by the dental is exactly that which is fometimes ufe’d to expre({s itmpatience, and the pala- tial is much mote’ ful and fonorous, and not unlike the | clacking [clucking] of a hen that has young chickens. Alf languages in their infancy confifted, probablely, of fimple or mo- nofyllable founds; but as thefe could convey onely a very li- mited number of ideas, recourfe was had to inflexion of voice and compofition of the fimple founds to make the vocabulary more copious. ‘The divifion of fuch fimple founds-into their elements, and by the various combinations of thefe elements to form analmoft unlimited number of new founds, was one of the moft wonderful inventions in the hiftory of man, and much beyond the genius of a Hottentot. He has done, however, all that he found to be necesfary by a very few com- é pound words, and by the ¢ clucking’ with the tongue, In the firft formation of his language nature feems to have been his guide. The croaking of a frog is readily recognize’d in kraak or kraaic; the lowing of an ox, in ’mnoo; the mewling of a eat, in meau ; the neighing of a horfe, in ba ba; the breaking of the fea upon the fhore, in burroos all of which are corres fpondent words in the language of this people [and, with the flighteft variation, in our own, as croak, moo, mew, ha ba’! (which occurs in the book of Job), and Surra, or, as the Irifh pronounce it, burroo]. Many inftances, befides thefe, fuffi- ciently prove that the vocables [Scotic?] were adopted in imi- tation of the founds proceeding from the different obje&s they were meant to exprefs. In the origin they might probablely be. much clofeér imitations . . .The genius of a language is ge nerally discoverable in the application of new words to new ideas. The Hottentots, who had never feen nor hear’d the re= 9](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33088494_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
