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THE MYSTERY L,ANGUAGE. 327
was known and made use of on the continent of North America,
even prior to
the knowledge of the same by the descending Semites
The peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained in another,
concealed and not to be perceived, save through the help of special instruction;
letters and syllabic signs possessing at the same time the powers or meanings
of numbers, of geometrical shapes, pictures, or ideographs and symbols,
the designed scope of which would be determinatively helped out by parables in
the shape of narratives or parts of narratives; while also it could be set forth
separately, independently, and variously, by pictures, in stone work, or in earth
constructions.
To clear up an ambiguity as to the term language:
Primarily the word means
the expression of ideas by human speech ; but, secondarily, it may mean the
expression of ideas by any other instrumentality. This old language is so composed
in the Hebrew text, that by the use of the written characters, which uttered
shall be the language first defined, a distinctly separated series of ideas may be intentionally
communicated, other than those ideas expressed by the reading of the
sound-signs. This secondary language sets forth, under a veil, series of ideas,
copies in imagination of things sensible, which may be pictured, and of things
which may be classed as real without being sensible: as, for instance, the number
9 may be taken as a reality, though it has no sensible existence, so also a revolution
of the moon, as separated from the moon itself by which that revolution has been
made, may be taken as giving rise to, or causing a real idea, though such a revolution
has.no substance. This idea-language may consist of symbols restricted to
arbitrary terms and signs, having a very limited range of conceptions, and quite
valueless, or it may be a reading of nature in some of her manifestations of a value
almost immeasurable, as regards human civilization. A picture of something
natural may give rise to ideas of coordinating subjects, radiating out in various
and even opposing directions, like
the spokes of a wheel, and producing natural
realities in departments very foreign to the apparent tendency of the reading of the
first or starting picture. Notion may give rise to connected notion, but if it does,
then, however apparently incongruous, all resulting ideas must spring from the
original picture and be harmonically connected, or related the one with the other.
Thus with a pictured idea radical enough, the imagination of the cosmos itself,
even in its details of construction, might result. Such a use of ordinary language is
now obsolete, but it has become a question with the writer whether at one time,
far back in the past, it, or such, was not the language of the world and of universal
use, possessed, however, as it became more and more moulded into its arcane forms,
by a select class or caste. By this I mean that the popular tongue or vernacular
commenced even in its origin to be made use of as the vehicle of this peculiar
mode of conveying ideas. Of this the evidences are very strong; and, indeed, it
would seem that in the history of the human race there happened, from causes
which at present, at any rate, we cannot trace, a lapse or loss from an original
perfect language and a perfect system of science—shall we say perfect because they
were of divine origin and importation *
• From an MS.