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On Speech

God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be affirmed of speech and hearing: they have been given by the gods to the same end and for a like reason. For this is the principal end of speech, whereto it most contributes. (Plato, Timaeus 47 bc)

For, we assert, nature does nothing in vain; and man alone has speech. The voice indeed indicates the painful or pleasant, and hence is in other animals as well; for their nature has come this far, that they have a perception of the painful and the pleasant and signal these things to each other. But speech serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and hence also the just and the unjust. For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and the other things of this sort; and community in these things is what makes a household a city. (Aristotle Politics 1253A)

All who possess real insight agree that nature, the most loving mother and wise arranger of all that exists, has, among the various living creatures which she has brought forth, elevated man by the privilege of reason, and distinguished him by the faculty of speech. (John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I.1)