Gliap. III. A N T I E N T METAPHYSICS. 4^ 



governed by laws. For that piirpofe it was neceflary that they fliould 

 have a fixed habitation, and live together, in confiderable numbers, 

 in one place, for which agriculture is abfolutely necefTdry ; and 

 therefore Ceres was very properly faid, not only to be the goddefs 

 of agriculture, but of laws j and for that reafon flie was called 

 Qicftiifcfci*. Without fuch a life, by which men have the clofeH: in- 

 tercourfe and communication, they could not have invented any arts 

 and fciences worth mentioning, and confequently could not have 

 made that progrefs in the recovery from their fallen (late, which, by 

 God and Nature, they are deftined to make even in this life. But 

 in order to qualify man to live in that Rate of fociety, the ufe of 

 language was abfolutely neceflary, an art, without which there cou'd 

 have been neither fciences nor arts of any value, nor civility or regu- 

 lar government among men. The pradice of this art belongs to 

 the fubje£t of which I am treating in this chapter; I mean the ufe of 

 the organs of the human body. But they are organs infinitely more 

 delicate than the arms and legs, which are .the only organs I have 

 hitherto mentioned, being very much fmaller, and concealed, for the 

 greater part, in the mouth; nor is the ufe of them prompted by nature 

 fo much as that of thofe other two. As Language is an art of the 

 greateft ufe, and which may be faid to have made man fuch as we 

 fee him, and as it is at the fame time of mod difficult invention 

 and yet muft have been the firft art of any confequence invented bv 

 man^ being, as I have faid, the foundation of all other arts, I think 

 k is not poffible that man, without fome fupernatural afliftance 

 could have invented an art, of which even the prad:ice, afce*- it is 

 invented, is very difficult to be learned, and can hardly be learned 

 Vol. IV. F at 



• Diodorus, lib. 5. cap. 68. and cap. 5. In which laft paflage he makes a very pro- 

 per eulogium upon her, where he fays, " that there could not be a greater benefac- 

 '' tion to men, than what {he beftowed upon them ; for fhe not only gave them the 

 ♦• means of life, but taught them how to live properly." 



