Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

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FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
which he designed he should use as the names of things ;
God made Adam with the powers of a man ;
but
he had the use
of an understanding to form notions in his mind of the things
about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which should
be to himself the names of things according as he might think
fit to call them."
This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of
little avail. Historians of philosophy still began with Adam,
because only a philosopher could have named all created
things. There was, indeed, one difficulty which had much
troubled some theologians: this was, that fishes were not
specially mentioned among the animals brought by Jehovah
before Adam for naming. To meet this
difficulty there was
much argument, and some theologians laid stress on the difficulty
of bringing fishes from the sea to the Garden of Eden
to receive their names but ; naturally other theologians re-J
which created the fishes
plied that the almighty power
could have easily brought them into the garden, one by one,
even from the uttermost parts of the sea. This point, there-
fore, seems to have been left in abeyance,*
It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Churc
that the names of all created things, except possibly fishes,
were given by Adam and in Hebrew ;
but all this theory
was whelmed in ruin when it was found that there were
other and indeed earlier names for the same animals than
those in the Hebrew language ; and especially was this en-
forced on thinking men when the Egyptian discoveries began
to reveal the pictures
of animals with their names in
For the danger of " the little system of the history of the world," see Sayc,
as above. On Dugald Stewart's contention, see Max Miiller, Lectures on Langu^t^,
pp. 167, 168. For Sir William Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199.
For Schlegel, see Max Muller, as above. For an enormous list of great theo-
logians, from the fathers down, who dwelt on the divine inspiration and wonderfill
gifts of Adam on this subject, see Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The
citation from Clement of Alexandria is Strom., i, p. 335. See
Horn. XIV in Genesin also ; Eusebius, Pra:p. Evang. XI, p.
also Chrysostom,
6. For the two
quotations above given from Shuckford, see The Creation and Fall of Man, Loo*
don, 1763, preface, p. Ixxxiii ; also his Sacred and Profane History of thr fVorIi,
1753; revised edition by Wheeler, London, 1858. For the at^ment regarding
the difficulty of bringing the fishes to be named into the Garden of Eden, see
Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters, London, 1763, pp. 14-19.
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