LANGUAGE AND LOGIC 493 



Heraclitus, who taught that all things are in a state of flux, and to that 

 of Protagoras in ethics who maintained that man is the measure of all 

 things. Plato doubtless carried his doctrine to an unwarranted ex- 

 treme, but that there is much truth in it will hardly be doubted. 

 Neither the mute man nor even the mute child is without ideas. The 

 ability to mould language so that it will fit thought closely is the high- 

 est human achievement, but it is not essential to thought. The thought- 

 processes of deaf-mutes are to some extent beyond our grasp, but not 

 wholly out of the range of the constructive imagination. It is well to 

 note, furthermore, that our word logic is the direct descendant of 

 Logos. Whatever technical or philosophical definition we may give to 

 logic, there is no doubt that speech and rational thought were closely 

 associated in the minds of the Greeks as the history of the term proves. 

 In their philosophical systems dialectic, discussion, question and 

 answer were so intimately connected and interwoven that they were 

 unable to think of them as separated. People who live in an age of 

 books can only realize with a mental effort conditions when they were 

 non-existent or rare. The poet-philosopher Euripides, who flourished 

 about the middle of the fifth century B.C., is said to have been the first 

 man to collect a library. In the nature of the case it must have con- 

 sisted at most of only a score or two of manuscripts. Besides, he lived 

 in Athens, the center of culture in the ancient world; elsewhere there 

 were strictly speaking no books at all. Our dictionaries designate what 

 they believe to be correct usage. At any rate, they do much to estab- 

 lish it by setting up a standard to which all educated persons endeavor 

 to conform. In this way a language becomes stereotyped to such an 

 extent that it changes very slowly. But dictionaries in the popular 

 sense are of comparatively recent date. The Greeks always felt justi- 

 fied in using any word or phrase they found in Homer, just as we do 

 with respect to biblical or Shakesperean phraseology. But these au- 

 thors did not get their vocabulary from books. Later writers, notably 

 Plato among the Greeks and Cicero among the Eomans, endowed with 

 the power of genius, may be said to have created a language; it was 

 subsequently imitated with more or less success by all who strove after 

 elegance of diction. But it is doubtful whether they formed a single 

 word in the sense in which a modem scientist may be said to do so. 

 Neither does a man who makes a machine make the materials that enter 

 into it. The influence of these two writers is still vibrant in all philo- 

 sophical and ethical discussion. The same may be said of Kant, another 

 of the world's great thinkers and one of its original geniuses, since he 

 was not much interested in ancient philosophy and preferred to grapple 

 with the problems he set out to solve without the intervention of prede- 

 cessors. While we can not tell how thought-processes are carried on 

 without words, that they are so carried on does not admit of doubt. 



