We may add, the authority and dominion with which God invested Adam. This extended “over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over the earth, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.” God constituted him the ruler, under him, of all the inferior creatures. He probably inducted him into this office when he caused the creatures to pass in review before him. “And the Lord God brought every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, unto Adam to see what he would call them: and Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Man alone, says Smellie, enjoys the power of communicating and expressing his ideas by articulate and artificial language. This inestimable prerogative is a great source of improvement to the human intellect. Without artificial language, though the Author of nature has bestowed on every animal a mode of expressing its wants and desires, its pleasures and pains, what a humiliating figure would the human species exhibit?
Dr. Beattie, in defining the human voice, says, it is air sent out from the lungs, and so agitated, or modified, in its passage through the windpipe and larynx, as to become distinctly audible. The windpipe conveys air into the lungs for the purpose of respiration and speech; the top or upper part of which is called the larynx, consisting of four or five cartilages, that may be expanded or brought together, by the agency of certain muscles which operate all at the same time. In the middle of the larynx there is a small aperture, called the glottis, through which the breath and voice are conveyed, but which, when we swallow any thing, is covered by a lid called the epiglottis. Authors have determined that the voice is produced by two semi-circular membranes in the middle of the larynx, which form by their separation the aperture that is termed the glottis. The space between them is not wider than one-tenth of an inch; through which the breath transmitted from the lungs must pass with considerable velocity. In its passage it is supposed to give a brisk vibratory motion to the membranous lips of the glottis, and so to form the sound which we call voice: in order to the production of which, it, however, seems necessary, that, by an energy of the will, a certain degree of tenseness should be communicated to the larynx, or at least to the two membranes in the middle of it. The voice, thus formed, is strengthened and mellowed by a reverberation from the palate, and other hollow places in the inside of the mouth and nostrils; and as these are better or worse shaped for this reverberation, it is said to be more or less agreeable. The glottis is found to be narrower in women and young persons than in men; hence the voices of the latter are deeper, or more grave, than those of the former. We can at pleasure dilate or contract this aperture, so as to form the tones of the voice to every variety of the musical scale. If we consider the many variations of sound, which the same human voice is capable of uttering, together with the small diameter of the glottis; and reflect that the same diameter must always produce the same tone, and, consequently, that to every change of tone a correspondent change of diameter is necessary: we must be astonished at the mechanism of these parts and the fineness of the fibers, producing effects so minute, various, and uniform. For it admits of proof, that the glottis is capable of at least sixty distinct degrees of contraction and enlargement, by each of which a different note is produced.[204]
Concerning the origin of language, numerous conjectures have been formed. As an instance how far the human mind, unassisted by a Divine revelation, can go, Diodorus Siculus and Vitruvius have asserted, “that men at first lived like beasts in woods and caves, forming only strange and uncouth noises, till their fears caused them to associate together; and that on growing acquainted with each other, they came to correspond about things, first by signs, then to make names for them, and in time, to frame and perfect a language; and that the languages of the world are different, because different companies of men happening thus to come together in different places, would, of course, form different sounds or names of things; hence would arise the variety observable even in ancient languages.” Thus we perceive the necessity of the Scriptures relative even to this subject.
“The Mosaic History,” observes Dr. A. Clarke, “represents man as being immediately capable of conversing with his Maker: of giving names to the various tribes and classes of animals; and of reasoning consecutively, and in perfectly appropriate terms, concerning his own situation, and the relation he stood in to the creatures. As in man’s first attempt at speech, according to this account, there appear no crudeness of conception, no barrenness of ideas, and no inexpressive or unappropriate terms, it is most rational to conclude, that God who made and endued him with corporeal and mental powers, perfectly suited to his state and condition in life, endued him also, not only with the faculty of speech, but with speech or language itself; which latter was as necessary to his comfort, and, indeed, to the perfection and end of his being, as any other power or faculty which his Creator thought proper to bestow upon him.”
Some assert that Adam gave names, from an intimate knowledge of the nature and properties of each creature: that this shows the perfection of his knowledge, for the names affixed to the different animals in Scripture always express some prominent feature and essential characteristic of the creatures to which they are applied; and that had he not possessed an intuitive knowledge of the grand and distinguishing properties of those animals, he never could have given them such names. Dr. Leland states, that man was immediately endued with the gift of language, which necessarily supposes that he was furnished with a stock of ideas, a specimen of which he gave in giving names to the inferior animals, which were brought to him for that purpose. Dr. Johnson affirms, that the origin of language must have come by inspiration. But Bishop Warburton conjectures, that God, in this transaction with Adam, taught him language. Here, says he, by a common figure of speech, the historian, instead of directly relating the fact, that God taught man language, represents it, by showing God in the act of doing it, in a particular mode of information; and that the most apposite we can conceive in elementary instruction; namely, the giving of names to substances; things with which Adam was to be conversant, and which therefore had need of being distinguished each by its proper name. And what a familiar image do these words give one of a learner of his rudiments? And God brought every beast to Adam to see what he would call them. But though it appears that God taught man language, yet we cannot reasonably suppose it any other than what served his present occasions, he being now of himself able to improve and enlarge it, as his future necessities should require. The celebrated Cowper, touching this subject says:——
“One man alone, the father of us all,
Drew not his life from woman; never gaz’d,
With mute unconsciousness of what he saw,
On all around him: learn’d not by degrees,
Nor aw’d articulation to his ear;