[44] St. Gregory of Nyssa has expressed himself on this subject with startling freedom of thought. He alludes with ironic pity to those who speak of the Deity as the fabricator of Adam’s language, an opinion which he expressly calls a sottish and ridiculous vanity, quite worthy of the extravagant presumption of the Jews. And on the subject of Babel, he says, “The confusion of tongues must be necessarily attributed to the will of God according to the theologic point of view, but according to the truth of history it is the work of man.”—Contra Eunomium, Or. xii. p. 782. Nodier, p. 56. St. Augustin distinctly implies the same thing.—De Ord. ii. 12.
[45] Since writing the above, I have met with another Biblical argument in favour of the Revelation of Language, drawn from Gen. i. 5. καὶ τὸ μὲν φῶς ἐκάλεσεν ὀ Θεὸς ἡμέραν, τὸ δὲ σκότος νύκτα· ἐπεί τοι γε ἄνθρωπος οὐκ ἂν ᾔδει καλεῖν τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν ἢ τὸ σκότος νύκτα. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ μὲν τὰ λοιπὰ, εἰ μὴ τὴν ὀνομασίαν εἰλήφει ἀπὸ τοῦ ποιήσαντος ἀυτὰ Θεοῦ.—Theophil. ad Autolyc. ii. 18. ed. Wolf. p. 140. I present this argument without reply to any one who is convinced by it.
[46] Stewart, Phil. of the Mind, iii. 1.
[47] “This method of referring words immediately to God as their framer, is a short cut to escape inquiry and explanation. It saves the philosopher much trouble, but leaves mankind in great ignorance, and leads to great error. Non dignus vindice nodus. God having furnished man with senses, and with organs of articulation, as he has also with water, lime, and sand, it should seem no more necessary to form the words for man, than to temper the mortar.”—Divers. of Purley, Pt. i. ch. 2.
[48] Gen. ii. 19, 20.
[49] e.g. There is no hint of grammar, the very blood of language. “Une Langue n’est pas une seule collection des mots.”—Cousin, Cours de 1829, iii. 212.
[50] Renan, p. 85. See an eloquent passage of Schlegel’s to the same effect, quoted in Wiseman’s Lect. i. 108. Pythagoras probably had some vague sentiment of the kind when he said that “the name-giver” was both the most ancient and the most rational of men. The Egyptians worshipped Theuth as the Regulator of Language; and the Chinese referred its origin to their great mysterious King Fohi. See Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 28. Lersch, die Sprachphilos. der Alten. Bonn, 1838, i. 23-29.
[51] Bunsen, i. 49.
[52] The fact that man is a social animal (ζῶον πολιτικὸν) which has been so strangely urged by the advocates of a revealed language, from Lactantius down to M. de Bonald and the Abbé Combalot, in no way militates against this conclusion.
[53] Heyse, System der Sprachwissenschaft, § 50.