Nor could the winsome wiles of the calm deep Lure men on treacherously with laughing waves, While reckless seamanship was yet unknown. Moreover lack of food would then consign Their fainting limbs to death: now rather plenty Sinks men to ruin. Often for themselves Would they pour poison out unwittingly: To others now with subtler skill they give it. Afterwards, when they had learnt the use of huts, And skins, and fire; when woman, joined with man In wedlock, dwelt apart in one abode, And they saw offspring born out of themselves, Then first the human race began to soften. For fire made their chilly bodies now Less able to endure the cold beneath The roof of heaven: Venus impaired their strength: And children easily by their blandishments Broke down the haughty temper of their parents. Then too neighbours began to join in bonds Of friendship, wishing neither to inflict Nor suffer violence: and for womankind And children they would claim kind treatment, pleading With cries and gestures inarticulately That all men ought to have pity on the weak. And though harmony could not everywhere Be established, yet the most part faithfully Observed their covenants, or man’s whole race Would even then have perished, nor till now Could propagation have preserved their kind. But it was Nature that constrained their tongues To utter various sounds; and need struck out The names of things, in the same way almost As impotence of tongue is itself seen To teach gesture to infants, prompting them To point at things around them. For all creatures Divine by instinct how far they can use Their natural powers. Thus before horns are born And stand out on the forehead of a calf, When he is angry, he butts and charges with it. Then panther cubs and lion whelps will fight With claws and feet and teeth, even at a time When teeth and claws have hardly yet been formed. Also we see how the whole race of birds Trusting their wings, will seek a fluttering succour From new-fledged pinions. Therefore to suppose That somebody once apportioned names to things, And that from him men learnt to use words first, Is mere folly. For why should this one man Be able to denote all things by words And with his tongue form varied sounds, yet others At the same time be deemed incapable To have done the like? Besides, if others too Had not made use of words among themselves, Whence was the preconception of their usefulness Implanted in this man, and whence was given him The primal power to know and comprehend What he desired to do? Again, one man Could not subdue by force the wills of many And compel them to learn the names of things. It is no easy labour to convince Deaf men, and teach them what they ought to do;