The invention of language

7 After the Fall

'Adam's one task in the Garden had been to invent language, to give each creature and thing its name. In that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to the quick of the world. His words had not been merely appended to the things he saw, they had revealed their essences, had literally brought them to life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After the fall, this was no longer true. Names became detached from things, words devolved into a collection of arbitrary signs; language had been severed fom God. The story of the Garden, therefore, records not only the fall of man, but the fall of language.' 

    Paul Auster

In, Robert C. Stalnaker (2008) Our Knowledge of the Internal World. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. hb. p.132.

Auster, P. (1985) The New York Trilogy (New York: Penguin Books). p.52.