The first leader who threw the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority against it was Leibnitz.

He declared, "There is as much reasonRosetta Stone languages
for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in paradise." In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz wrote, "To call Hebrew the primitive language is like calling the branches of a tree primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead of trees." He also asked, "If the primeval language existed even up to the time of Moses, whence came the Egyptian language?" But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere suggestions. He applied the inductive method to linguistic study, made great efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars drawn up wherever missionaries and travellers came in contact with new races, and thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse to at least three notable collections—that of Catharine the Great, of Russia; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas; and, at a later period, the Mithridates of Adelung. The interest of the Empress Catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that Washington, to please her, requested governors and generals to send in materials from various parts of the United States and the Territories. The work of Hervas extended over the period from 1735 to 1809: a missionary in America, he enlarged his catalogue of languages to six volumes, which were published in Spanish in 1800, and contained specimens of more than three hundred languages, with the grammars of more than forty. It should be said to his credit that Hervas dared point out with especial care the limits of the Semitic family of languages, and declared, as a result of his enormous studies, that the various languages of mankind could not have been derived from the Hebrew. While such work was done in Catholic Spain, Protestant Germany was honoured by the work of Adelung. It contained the Lord’s Prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the comparison of these, early in the nineteenth century, helped to end the sway of theological philology. But the period which intervened between Leibnitz and this modern development was a period of philological chaos. It began mainly with the doubts which Leibnitz had forced upon Europe, and ended only with the beginning of the study of Sanskrit in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and with the comparisons made by means of the collections of Rosetta Stone Arabic
Catharine, Hervas, and Adelung at the beginning of the nineteenth. The old theory that Hebrew was the original language had gone to pieces; but nothing had taken its place as a finality. Great authorities, like Buddeus, were still cited in behalf of the narrower belief; but everywhere researches, unorganized though they were, tended to destroy it. The story of Babel continued indeed throughout the whole eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investigation, and a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the book of Lord Nelme on The Origin and Elements of Language. He declares that connected with the confusion was the cleaving of America from Europe, and he regards the most terrible chapters in the book of Job as intended for a description of the Flood, which in all probability Job had from Noah himself. Again, Rowland Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue, and that it passed through Babel unharmed. Still another effect was made by a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise in the language of Brittany. All was chaos. There was much wrangling, but little earnest controversy. Here and there theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the Church to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of Scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted in the history of every science. But it was soon seen by thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians were sufficient. In the latter half of the century came the bloom period of the French philosophers and encyclopedists, of the English 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.[417] [417] For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicum Orientale, Frankfort, 1661. Rosetta Stone Spanish (Spain)
For Leibnitz, Catharine the Great, Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Muller, as above, from whom I have quoted very fully; see also Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269. Benfey declares that the Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist. For the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement of his importance in the history of languages, see Max Muller, as above, pp. 135, 136. For the third quotation, Leibnitz, Opera, Geneva, 1768, vi, part ii, p. 232. For Nelme, see his Origin and Elements of Language, London, 1772, pp. 85-100. For Rowland Jones, see The Origin of Language and Nations, London, 1764, and preface. For the origin of languages in Brittany, see Le Brigant, Paris, 1787. For Herder and Lessing, see Canon Farrar’s treatise; on Lessing, see Sayce, as above. As to Perrin, see his essay Sur l’Origine et l’Antiquite des Langues, London, 1767.