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Essay on the Origin of Languages In Which Melody and Musical Imitation are Treated By J. J. Rousseau1 [Draft Preface] The second piece2 was also at Wrst merely a fragment of the discourse on inequality which I omitted from it as too long and out of place.3 I took it up again on the occasion of the Errors by M. Rameau on music, a title which—after the two words I’ve omitted—is perfectly fulWlled by the work that bears it.4 In the mean time, held back by the absurdity of discoursing upon languages while hardly knowing one of them and, in addition, dissatisWed with this piece, I had resolved to suppress it as unworthy of the public’s attention. But an illustrious magistrate5 who cultivates and protects letters thought more favorably of it than I did. Thus, I am subordinating my judgment to his with pleasure, as can well be believed, and I am attempting to make this one, which I might perhaps not have risked alone, accepted under the aegis of the other two writings. Essay on the Origin of Languages CHAPTER I on the various means of communicating our thoughts6 Speech distinguishes man from the animals. Language distinguishes nations from each other; one does not know where a man is from until after he has spoken. Usage and need make each learn the language of his country; but what causes this language to be that of his country and not of another? In order to tell, one has to go back to some reason that pertains to locality, and precedes even morals:7 speech, being the Wrst social institution , owes its form only to natural causes. As soon as one man was recognized by another as a sentient, thinking Being and similar to himself,8 the desire or the need to communicate his 289 feelings and thoughts to him made him seek the means for doing so. These means can be derived only from the senses, the only instruments by which one man may act upon another. Hence the institution of perceptible signs to express thought. The inventors of language did not go through this reasoning , but instinct suggested the conclusion to them. The general means by which we can act upon the senses of others are limited to two: namely, movement and the voice. Movement is immediate through touch or is mediate through gesture; the Wrst, having an arm’s lengthforitslimit,cannotbetransmittedatadistance,buttheotherreaches as far as the line of sight. That leaves only sight and hearing as passive organs of language among dispersed men. Although the language of gesture and that of the voice are equally natural , nonetheless the Wrst is easier and depends less on conventions: for more objects strike our eyes than our ears and shapes are more varied than sounds; they are also more expressive and say more in less time. Love, it is said, was the inventor of drawing. It might also have invented speech, though less happily. Little contented with speech, love disdains it: it has livelier ways of expressing itself. What things she who traced the shadow of her lover with so much pleasure told him! What sounds could she have used to convey this movement of a stick?9 Our gestures signify nothing but our natural uneasiness; it is not about these that I want to speak. Only Europeans gesticulate while speaking. One would think that all the force of their speech was in their arms. They further add to this the force of their lungs, and all this is hardly of any use to them. When a Frenchman has quite strained himself, quite tormented his body to say a lot of words, a Turk removes his pipe from his mouth for a moment, softly speaks two words, and crushes him with one aphorism. Ever since we learned to gesticulate we have forgotten the art of pantomime , for the same reason that with so many Wne grammars we no longer understand the symbols of the Egyptians. What the ancients said most vividly they expressed not by words, but by signs; they did not say it, they showed it.10 Open ancient history; you will Wnd it full of those ways of presenting arguments to the eyes, and never did they fail to produce a more assured eVect than all the discourses that could have been put in their place. The object, presented before speaking, stirs the imagination, arouses curiosity, holds the mind in suspense and anticipation...

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