Silence Is Better

From the Politics, my ‘final draft translation’:

Why man is a political animal rather than all bees and every animal
belonging to a herd is clear. For, as we say, nature does nothing in vain; and
of animals man alone holds speech. On the one hand, the vocal sound of
the painful and pleasant is a sign, and hence it also belongs to other animals
(for their nature has come as far as this: having perception of the painful
and pleasant and signalling these to others), but speech is for making visible
the beneficial and harmful, and consequently the just and unjust; for this
in relation to other animals is peculiar to men: alone having perception of
good and evil, of just and unjust, and of other things; the fellowship of these
makes a household and a city.