Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

44 HISTORY or THE
Here we are again introduced to a catalogue of
languages, many of them differing in nothing but
in name. The Shemetic and Japhetic, the one
called after Shem, and the other after his brother
Japhet, differed not even in name till within these
few centuries past. But why put the Shemetic
and Japhetic before the Noahtic? Was Noah
not the father of both ? Did he not teach them his
own language when infants? and had they any
other language in the Ark ? No. These men all
spoke the ante-diluvian — the primitive language
before and after the flood ; the only problem which
remains to be solved, therefore, is, were all these
engaged at the building of Babel after the flood,
and was their language, without exception, con-
founded, and to what extent? If in any one instance
the language of this family escaped the confusion —
granting the thing confounded to have been lan-
guage — we have an unbroken chain, and may add
upon the same principle of multiplying languages
the Methuselahmic and the Adamic ?
The cluster of languages here indicated " as not
now spoken," were, at one period, one and the
same — the names are expressive of the solar wor-
ship ; and the variety occasioned by the transposi-
tion of the Cabala, or sacred characters, of which
anon.