Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/452

436 deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Lessing; and while here and there some writer on the theological side, like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in this great chaos, all remained without form and void.

Nothing reveals to us better the darkness and duration of this chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on Philologygiven in the successive editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The first edition of that great mirror of British thought was printed in 1771; chaos reigns through the whole of its article on this subject. The writer divides languages into two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud. In the second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been made. The author states the sacred theory, and declares: "There are some divines who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which God talked with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it in heaven in those praises which they will eternally offer to the Almighty. These doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what is past as to what is to come."

This was evidently considered dangerous. It clearly outran the good sound belief of the average English Philistine; and accordingly we find in the third edition, published seventeen years later, a new article, in which, while the author gives, as he says, "the best arguments on both sides," he takes pains to adhere to a fairly orthodox theory.

This soothing dose is repeated in the fourth and fifth editions. In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions, and this deals with the facts so far as they are known. There is scarcely a reference to the biblical theory throughout the article; and the author refers rather contemptuously to it. Three years later comes another supplement. While this Chaos was fast becoming Cosmos in Germany, such a change had evidently not gone far in England, for from this edition of the Encyclopædia the subject of philology is omitted. In fact, Babel and Philology made nearly as much trouble to encyclopedists as