God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.
A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling in not actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
