The origins of human speech have long fascinated philologists and historians, but rarely has the subject been treated with such a wealth of literary reference as in the work Naming Day in Eden, by Noah J. Jacobs, from which some extracts are here presented, and which will be published by Macmillan this month. Mr. Jacobs is a linguist now resident in Israel who combines the erudition of the grammarian with the literary interests of the humanist scholar. The selections we give deal humorously with some aspects of the Biblical tradition, but are not to be regarded as an exercise in the Higher Criticism; it is solely Adam’s contribution to language that interests Mr. Jacobs.

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Philosophic minds have always speculated on the nature of human speech. Countless learned works have been written dealing with the structure and classification of languages, their connections and points of divergence, their morphology and changing phonetic systems. These volumes often appear on poor paper with narrow margins and what is worse, in German. They therefore cannot be recommended for continuous inspection by readers with weak eyes or wandering minds. Recent writers, guided by a positivistic bias, have attempted to disinfect language of its unpredictable elements and bring it close to logic and mathematics. We may secretly admire their erudition but the jargon of their joyless tomes is so alarming that only intrepid souls imbued with a reckless love of the subjects would venture beyond the opening lines. Yet no study is more rewarding or fascinating. Language touches on all subjects and overflows into every discipline. It exerts a direct and visible influence on our daily lives. The study of foreign tongues, the revival of ancient languages, the problems of translation, the adoption of a world language, the ethics of advertising, the ravages of propaganda and, above all, the vexing questions of correct speech—these are the subjects which fill the air with interminable quibbling, often breeding bad blood among the disputants. The great issues which perplex mankind, as well as its petty quarrels, revolve around words. The fate of many a man has been decided by a preposition or a conjunction. . . .

Of all the memorials of [Adam’s] genius none is more amazing than the gift of speech which he has bequeathed to us. We are in the dark concerning the nature of this miracle wrought by man’s spirit. The origin and embryology of human speech are wrapped in mystery. All we know is that the first feeble sounds which broke forth from Adam have come down to us from ear to ear, the open gateway to the soul, and that the fatal sequence of that inexhaustible voice reverberating down the ages is the bond of solidarity which unites us in one continuous humanity. Adam’s pioneering work in this field, his naming of the animals, has earned him a permanent niche in the science of linguistic investigation. In the symbolism of that mighty myth, as recorded in the second chapter of Genesis, we catch a glimpse of the grandeur of his creation and its significance in human history. . . .

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found an help meet for him. (Gen. 2:19-20)

How did it dawn on first man to use his invisible breath to express the ideas stirring within him? Spirit alone is formless and empty; language alone seduces us from the truth with its syntax and euphony. Which of the two mandates did Adam follow? The problem is how to introduce opaque language into spirit without obscuring it. How did the sounds Adam uttered capture the essence of the animals that passed before him in review? Was the conjunction of the airy concept and the palpable intuition fortuitous? Were the animal names invented for the occasion or were they stored up in some divine greenhouse waiting to be selected by Adam’s brooding mind? Did the bewildered beasts fall noiselessly into place when their master’s voice fell upon them and slip into their names as if into preexisting garments? And if Adam created these garments a priori, on what principles were the patterns cut? Would another man differently disposed have created other designs? Did man aim his arrowy words at the target’s center or was his bow struck at a venture? And if shot from his primal brain in happy ignorance, how did those random verbal darts find their fleshy marks to brand them forever?

But our Great Progenitor proceeded confidently and with an air of strong assurance. He himself seems to have set high store on his performance. After he had reviewed the Parade, we see him pacing to and fro, soliloquizing on the import of his linguistic feat, which he straightway made the subject of a panegyric:

I named them as they passed, and understood
Their nature; with such knowledge God
    endued
My sudden apprehension. . . .
    (Paradise Lost, Book VIII, II.352-354)

What was the nature of that “sudden apprehension”? Of the infinity of natural sounds ringing in his ears, which did Adam choose to render the essence of the tabanid horsefly, the piebald magpie, the aciculated hedgehog, the wanton lapwing, and all the animals which in that brief review frolicked before him on the green? Was the name he gave the elephant, for example, a faithful reproduction of its roaring (the bow-wow theory) or of some mystic harmony between it and the sound that its vast trunk emitted when struck (the ding-dong theory)? Was the name a rhythmic chant designed to raise its flagging spirit as man goaded it on to do his work (the yo-heave-ho theory) or a vocal reflex signifying his displeasure (the pooh-pooh theory)? It may be that Adam’s tongue unwittingly reproduced some typical elephantine gesture, an oral replica of the beast’s lithe proboscis, the texture of its wrinkled bulk or the swish of its flapping tail (the ta-ta or the wig-wag theory). Or, to take a more modest example, how did Adam name the bat? Which characteristic impressed him at the moment of naming? Did its blindness move him to call it murciélago (Sp.), its baldness chauve-souris (Fr.), its shyness pipistrello (It.), its leathery skin Laderlapp (Dan.) or böregér (Hung. from bör, leather; egér, mouse), its preference for the night nukteris (Gr.), its resemblance to the mouse Fledermaus (Ger.) or letutsaya mysh (Rus.), the sound of its flapping wings watwat (Arab.), its winglike hands chiroptera (Lat. from Gr. chir, hand, plus pteron, wing), its resemblance to a lily (!) liliac (Rum.), its reputed love of bacon bat (OE backe, bacon)? The Chinese have conferred a number of laudatory names on this mouse-like mammal, such as embracing wings, heavenly rat, fairy rat, night swallow, and use it as a symbol of happiness and long life because its name fu in Chinese happens to be a homonym which means both bat and prosperity. . . .

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A Rabbinic legend which has come down to us represents the naming scene in the Garden as a verbal contest or spelling bee among Adam, the angels, and the Devil. The angels, of course, were the first to be eliminated, for angels are notoriously poor linguists. They are too conceited (that is conceptual), and since they speak to God face to face, their diaphanous words are defecated of all opaqueness. Their sensuous functions have been extinguished so that they have no idea of sensible images, metaphor, tones or gestures. They have no need in their noumenal sphere of these seductive and puzzling artifices. Their penchant for unashamed abstraction is the deepest strain in their makeup. The thick facts in the redundant realm of feeling are totally foreign to the angelic mood. Eliminated in the very first round, the angels retired behind the Lord to watch the principals from the background. On the other side, infant History, still unoccupied, was wistfully awaiting the incubation of the second creation. We now see Adam emerging from the wings of the green stage, skipping his way amid the fragrant foliage. The Devil then entered from the north on horseback, as is his custom. Adam, though chaste and vigorous, was no match for the Devil, whose impetuous mind, unburdened by moral scruples and sharpened in the struggle with virtue, was fit to rend into pieces the most recalcitrant material. He was even then an expert in language, a past master of polyptoton, epanados, opomnemonysis, anacoenosis and persiflage, and could quote Scripture by heart. He knew the hang of things in this hurly-burly world of illusion and deception. His aggressive mind hankered after concrete ideas in the world of flesh. He never lost sight of the innumerable portents of mortality in the stubborn world of sense, the material base that lies at the root of words—the eye in daisy (OE daeges éage, day’s eye), the ass in easel (Dut. ezel, ass), the groove in delirium (Lat. de plus lira, furrow, that is, not in the groove), the buttocks in recoil (Lat. re plus culus, the posteriors) and the testicles in orchid (Gr. orkhis, testicle). The Devil, unlike the angels, was at home in the world of phenomena. He knew how to combine pure concepts with empirical intuitions, the sound with the inner form, which is the basic principle of linguistic creation. No wonder he was self-assured and confident of victory.

The Lord then passed before the contestants the ox, the camel and the ass, in the order named. A Midrashic footnote informs us that only one animal, namely, the ox, was presented since the Hebrew text gives only the singular form: “And the Lord brought it to Adam to see what he would call it.” This, however, could only mean that Adam was still unfamiliar with the plural number. The dual number was first devised by Noah, according to the available linguistic data, when he reviewed the animals two by two as they embarked. To Adam, however, the animals were presented one by one until the zoological parade was completed, with the exception of the pig and the cat, which were created later in Noah’s Ark, the pig being formed from the elephant’s trunk in order to dispose of the accumulated garbage and the cat being sneezed forth by the lion so as to rid the boat of rats. In any case, the Devil, heckled by the unfriendly spectators, became rattled and failed to give the proper names to the first three animals presented. Thereupon Adam, without hesitation, pronounced the right names and was hailed victor. How did he contrive to win the contest against such superior odds?

At this point a rabbinic tradition comes to our rescue with an amazing particular not generally known; namely that this verbal duel had been previously “fixed” by the Lord, who deliberately revealed to Adam the proper answers by a mnemonic device concealed within the question; that is, the Divine Interlocutor framed the questions in such a manner that the first letter of the first word of the question was the same as the first letter of the name of the animal under consideration. The Devil had hoped for little sympathy but he was not prepared for this unscrupulous ruse. It turned his enthusiasm to bitterness. As soon as he detected the unethical stratagem, he retired to the shades vowing vengeance. . . .

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Now, from this divine Intervention at the very dawn of human history we can gain a number of linguistic and pedagogical insights of prime importance. In the first place it is evident that Adam in naming the animals applied a priori principles not derived from his own meager experience. That is, the God-given rational pirnciple, which is the conditio sine qua non of all knowledge, was already part of man’s mind and operative in the spiritual activity of naming, else he would not have understood God’s promptings. Apravanel of Portugal, the last of the Jewish Aristotelians at the time of Columbus, formulated this principle as follows: “God created language according to nature; and when He created man, He created in him the principles of language.” This formulation is based on the phrase “and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7), which in the Aramaic translation, obviously influenced by the Stoics, is rendered “and the breath of life became in man a speaking spirit.” Corroboration for this rational conviction has been found by exegetes in the verb to see in our text (Genesis 2:19), from which they deduce that the Lord was watching Adam during the contest, just as a teacher watches his pupil, to see whether the lesson had been learned well. From this we learn that God is the Author of language, that He imparted it to Adam when He prompted him to name the animals He presented to his gaze, and that man “caught on” because God had condescended to breathe the breath of life into the dust he had formed so that He could speak to man on common ground. This divine Whispering holds things together in the perceptual world and is the guarantee of the validity of human communication. Prayer precedes speech, and words have meaning only in relation to the Word. The collaboration between the human and the divine gives language its substance. Adam thus becomes the Interpreter of the divine, which is the proper function of the prophet.

The Devil, with all his prodigious learning, could not withstand this sagacious division of labor. He knew the law, but Adam knew the Judge of whose protection he was assured: “And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth” (Isaiah 51:16). The animals could have been named by the Lord, but He relegated the task to Adam for pedagogical reasons, to summon him to use his reason, to make him responsible in a dialogic situation and to give him the opportunity for re-creation. Though God could have prompted Adam with the entire name of the animal in question, He preferred to give him only the first letter, a mere hint. For each man must appropriate the truth on his own as a free act of ethical choice. Repetition by rote deprives the student of the challenge to make decisions by increasing his dependence upon the teacher. A teacher’s precepts should be deliberately vague, since the circumstances in life are too varied and intricate for the arbitrary application of specific rules. The function of the teacher is to present problems, not solutions; to give yeast, not bread. Truth does not fall into the student’s mouth like a ripe apple. Thus did God convey His purposes to Adam in this first lesson. God was the coining master, but Adam had to learn the value of money through his own responsible labors. . . .

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Adam was a rationalist in Eden. His reason, anchored in the solid harbor of God’s Mind, was invulnerable to the insurrection of the flesh. His conquering cognition was not rooted to a particular time or place nor governed by subjective considerations of sect or party. He was born into the truth. He therefore had no need of images or metaphors, except as a supplementary aid to intensify or enhance the meaning of his words. The image was not part of the word’s meaning; the abstract was not derived from the concrete image nor did the latter precede the former, temporally or logically, in the development of language. That Adam saw the “red” sunset after he saw the “red” apple does not mean that the color of the latter was transferred by him to the former or that the first is prose and the second poetry. The color “red” is an equipollent quality indigenous to both objects. We may confidently assume that in Eden the abstract preceded the concrete. This can be seen from the German word Abend, which means both evening and west, that is, both the time and the place of the setting sun. Since the time of the setting sun can be conceived by itself without any reference to the place of its setting but not vice versa, it is natural that the word Abend should first be applied to the time when the sun’s rays cease to illuminate the horizon and only subsequently to the area in which it sinks. Language was thus evolved on logical principles inherent in the human mind.

All this was changed after the Fall. The mind’s original connection with God was broken and with it its rational frame. The Fall had deranged the intellect and made it subject to the distractions and irrelevant excitements of the sensible world. The thing-in-itself, the dark kernel of being, was now inaccessible to the “meddling intellect.” An alarming shift had taken place in the intellectual world, a shift from reason to imagination, from physics to biology, from propriety to sensibility—in short, a shift from the outer to the inner man. Things had fallen apart and could not be put together by reason. Adam could no longer confidently say that the apple was round, sweet and red, but only that its form was round, its taste sweet and its color red, the qualities of the apple being held together only by the agglutinative power of the imagination which is summoned to help piece together our abortive knowledge.

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In order to understand the world Adam now had to turn his eyes inward on himself and relate what he saw there to the ocean of matter without, hoping through this introspective detour to gain some assurance of reality. His starting point was his own body. He began to speak of the mouth of the river, the brow of the hill, the bosom of the sea and the eyelids of the dawn. He transposed his head to the cabbage, his foot to the mountain, his hand to the clock, his face to the world, his arms to the sea, his bowels to the earth, his belly to flasks and fiddles, his neck to bottles and woods, his ears to cups and walls and his tongue to shoes, bells and flames; his nose, rump and spine to the prow, stern and keel of a ship (Hung, orr, far, gerinc). His legs gave him gambol, gambit and the viola da gamba (held between the legs, Ital. gamba, leg plus viol), his toes acrobatic (Gr. akróbatos, walking on tiptoe). From his head he took chapel, cattle, capitalist, precipice (headlong), mischief (brought to a bad head) and biceps (Lat. bi plus ceps, two-headed, a muscle with two origins). The amazing versatility of the hand (Lat. manus), “man’s external brain,” furnished him with manners (a mode of handling), emancipate (transfer of ownership from one hand to another), mastiff (Lat. mansuetus, tame), a smooth-coated dog with drooping ears and pendulous lip, petted by the hand; maneuver (a handiwork) and its shortened form manure, which is dung spread by hand. From his hands man also derived the digits, the dual number and the complicated system of decimals. The hand and its parts are no longer felt, but lie concealed in the underlined words and parts of words of the following sentence: A well thumbed, second hand manual on chiropractics was adroitly palmed off on the dextrous surgeon’s gawky, sinister but handsome amanuensis.

As man looked out on the natural world around him, his primitive imagination saw his head in capes (Lat. capo, headlands), his sides in coasts (Lat. costa, side), his bosom in gulf (Gr. kolpos, bosom; Ger. Meerbusen), his elbow in Ancona (Gr. angkón, elbow), his knee in Genoa (Lat. genu, knee), his mouth in Portsmouth, his nose in Lange ness, his ear in Helsingör, his eye in Engeddi and his sleeve in La Manche. He saw the human contour in cosmography: England looked to him like an old shoe, Mexico a cornucopia, Long Island a fish, Cuba a stocking, Italy a boot, India an udder, the United States a wisdom tooth, Silesia like the palm of the left hand with the Riesengebirge for thumb; his innocent imagination pictured Europe as a virgin, Germany forming the body, Bohemia the navel, Denmark the thigh, Sweden the knee, Russia the skirt, Portugal the cap, Spain the face, France the bosom, England the left arm and Italy the right holding Sicily like a fan and chasing the fly Malta from the face of Sardinia.

Primitive man’s vocabulary, although imperfectly recorded, must have been replete with body analogies from highbrow to heel. When he had exhausted these, he reversed the metaphorical process and took back from Nature what he had lent her. Thus he became aware of eardrums, windpipes, arteries, belly (OE belig, bellows), bowels (Lat. botellus, small sausage), the clavicle (Lat. clavicula, a small key that locks the chest), the jugular vein (Lat. jugum, yoke, which joins the body to the head), the uvula (diminutive of Lat. uva, grape), the thyroid (Gr. thryeoeides, shield-shaped), the tonsils (Lat. tonsillae, shaped like stakes) and a frog in his throat (Fr. un chat dans le gosier). By this method man was able not only to establish physical analogies but to capture the things of the spirit as well. The highest flights of his fancy and his loftiest abstractions had their roots in the sensible impressions of the material things about him. Words had to borrow their wings from sense. In the breath of his body man found inspiration, in his eyes vision, in his eyebrow superciliousness and within him courage and humor. From the physical act of throwing he derived the abstract notions of conjecture, subjective, abject and symbolic; from the derisive gesture of wiping his nose he took the verb to mock. . . .

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Man then left his body as the source of his analogies and sought his metaphorical fortunes wherever he could find them: he took milliners from Milan, argosy by metathesis from Ragusa, currants from Corinth, tangerines from Tangiers, fustian from Fostat near Cairo, scallions from Ascalon, calico from Calcutta, bronze from Brundisium in Italy, poplin from the papal town of Avignon, cantaloupe from the castle of Cantalupo near Rome where it was first grown, and mayonnaise from the town of Mahon in Minorca whence it was spread to all the world. These products have roamed far beyond the place of their origin, which is seldom remembered. Arcadia in the Peloponnesus has long since left its original precincts for an ideal state of rural felicity; Hesperides has found an abode in the West; Utopia (Gr. ou, no; topos, place), which is no place at all, has become a commonplace. A hall-mark was at first an official mark stamped on gold and silver articles at Goldsmith’s Hall in London to attest their purity, but now refers to any mark so used and figuratively to any evidence of genuineness or excellence. Billingsgate was originally the name of a gate in the vicinity of a London fish-market, but was later transferred to the fishwives and their husbands and then to their abusive language and finally to any foul-mouthed person or violent abuse in general.

Man even conceived analogies in terms of family relations: the lion is the father of roaring, the echo is the daughter of the voice, the arrow is the son of the bow, vinegar is the son of wine, a smile is the daughter of a laugh. These genealogical metaphors, known in Arabic as kunya, are not uncommon in the Western languages: “soot, brother of the flickering fire” (Aeschylus); “simony, the mother of whores” (Sotovagina); “coughing, stepmother of the chest” (Matthew of Vendôme); “I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister” (Job); “Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin-brother of annihilation” (Churchill); “Urine, the soft-flowing daughter of Fright” (Coleridge) and common proverbs, as: Necessity is the mother of invention, The wish is father to the thought, Money begets money, and so forth. . . .

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