PART I. THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. CHAPTER I. THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. Thales-Anaximenes-Diogenes of Apollonia—Anaximander-Pythagoras. IN searching for the dawn of philosophy one becomes lost in the perspectives of the past. The comprehension of any study depends so largely upon what is brought to it by the student, upon the suggestions of his own knowledge, that in reading the myths and theories which have come down to us from the most ancient thinkers, it is natural to imagine them pregnant with the deepest meaning. We see in these early efforts to comprehend man and nature vague expressions of the very problems which occupy us to-day. Thus, owing to the plane of experience from which we regard ancient thought, we are apt to overestimate its significance. For us the difficulty is, to limit the meaning of the language of the ancients by the actual knowledge which they possessed. In this difficulty a knowledge of the nature of language comes to our assistance. Language itself is but a system of symbols representing ideas by virtue of an agreement which is the slow outgrowth of usage. The nicety of the adjustment of words to ideas is to be estimated by the precision with which the ideas are called up by the words. If, for instance, a certain combination of words leaves a choice or uncertainty as to the idea intended to be conveyed, the expression is imperfect in proportion to the extent of the uncertainty. In thinking, we are obliged to employ words, 3 for thought itself is partly the function of words: language is a part of the structure of which thought is the activity. This brings us to the great truth, that there is an interdependence between ideas and words, between thought and its expression; that order and success in the one imply symmetry and definiteness in the other. It follows, therefore, that in studying the history of philosophy we can estimate the quality of the thought of each age by the character as to directness or definiteness of the terms in which we find it expressed. We shall have no need of going beyond the history of Greece for a beginning of philosophy. The contributions to thought which come from other and earlier sources are all represented in the efforts of the early Greek thinkers. The degree of definiteness depends so largely, after all, upon the actual experience of the race (its progress as indicated by the spread of knowledge), that the higher generalizations can never far supersede that classified particular thought known as Science. Viewing intellect in its broadest light, as the logical or moral aspect of life, actions express thought with even greater precision than words. Valid comparisons between early races and nations in respect to this quality of definiteness as displayed in their general conceptions, must therefore be made to include more factors than those which are commonly called "intellectual." Such comparisons must be extended to their whole civilizations, including the phenomena of their arts and sciences, their religions and their morals. As a result of such a comparison, the Greek nation stands forward clearly as the progenitor of the higher types of European civilization and thought. In the history of Greek thought we find all the phases of speculative development which illustrate the inception and primary growth of the art of generalization; and as this is the whole field of philosophy, to extend our examples to those furnished by the Hindoos, Egyptians, Chinese, Persians, Hebrews, or any other nations, would be to needlessly lengthen what is at best a tedious story. Tedious by reason of its slowness, but it is deeply interesting when viewed as the explanation of what we are, and as giving us some idea of what we may become. Viewing thought as the perfecting process, or the purification of individual life, which is the most comprehensive theory of intellectual progress, the history of speculation becomes a matter of great practical interest. As we study the beginnings of human speculation and follow out its development we cannot but be impressed with the great logical possibilities which lie before us. Let us begin, therefore, this story of human speculation with the far-famed adventures of the Greek mind. Thales, who is supposed to have been the first Greek philosopher, was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. There are no means of determining the exact date of his birth, but the first year of the 36th Olympiad (B.C. 636) is generally accepted as correct. Like most of the prominent men of Greece, he seems to have taken an active interest in public affairs. Egypt is credited as the source of his learning, and, as he is said to have been a proficient in mathematics, there is little doubt that the famous Egyptian geometers were among his early instructors. The principal feature of his philosophy was the theory that water was the source of all things. In thus postulating a substance as a first cause, the battle of philosophy was begun. To the observing and thoughtful Greek, six hundred years before Christ, the universe was a chaos of unexplained and irreconcilable differences. The now familiar physical forces had not been disjoined in thought from the substances which manifested them. When, indeed, we consider the unquestioning belief in the absolute and ultimate character of these ideal separations which we may observe in the writings of Tyndall, Balfour Stewart, Tait, and other Physicists of our day, even the ancient Greeks might be regarded as having a logical advantage over modern science; yet the darkness in which the poverty of analysis, in the time of Thales, must have enshrouded all nature can hardly be overestimated. The pro |