I therefore think it proper rapidly to glance at many things remote indeed in time, yet nearer to my present purpose, and abundantly more worthy of the student's consideration, than a thousand matters which are taught for grammar by the authors of treatises professedly elementary.
11.

As we have already seen, some have supposed that the formation of the first language must have been very slow and gradual.

But of this they offer no proof, and from the pen of inspiration we seem to have testimony against it.

Did Adam give names to all the creatures about him, and then allow those names to be immediately forgotten?
Did not both he and his family continually use his original nouns in their social intercourse?
and how could they use them, without other parts of speech to form them into sentences?
Nay, do we not know from the Bible, that on several occasions our prime ancestor expressed himself like an intelligent man, and used all the parts of speech which are now considered _necessary_?
What did he say, when his fit partner, the fairest and loveliest work of God, was presented to him?
"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." And again: Had he not other words than nouns, when he made answer concerning his transgression: "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself ?" What is it, then, but a groundless assumption, to make him and his immediate descendants ignorant savages, and to affirm, with Dr.
Blair, that "their speech must have been poor and narrow ?" It is not possible now to ascertain what degree of perfection the oral communication of the first age exhibited.

But, as languages are now known to improve in proportion to the improvement of society in civilization and intelligence, and as we cannot reasonably suppose the first inhabitants of the earth to have been savages, it seems, I think, a plausible conjecture, that the primeval tongue was at least sufficient for all the ordinary intercourse of civilized men, living in the simple manner ascribed to our early ancestors in Scripture; and that, in many instances, human speech subsequently declined far below its original standard.
12.