reek omitted] ("Iliad", i. 185.)

For in it there is pronoun, participle, noun, preposition, article,
conjunction, adverb, and verb, the particle--[Greek omitted] being put
instead of the preposition [Greek omitted]; for [Greek omitted], TO THE
TENT, is said in the same sense as [Greek omitted], TO ATHENS. What then
shall we say for Plato?

Is it that at first the ancients called that [Greek omitted], or
speech, which once was called protasis and now is called axiom or
proposition,--which as soon as a man speaks, he speaks either true
or false? This consists of a noun and verb, which logicians call
the subject and predicate. For when we hear this said, "Socrates
philosphizeth" or "Socrates is changed," requiring nothing more, we say
the one is true, the other false. For very likely in the beginning men
wanted speech and articulate voice, to enable them to express clearly
at once the passions and the patients, the actions and the agents. Now,
since actions and affections are adequately expressed by verbs, and they
that act and are affected by nouns, as he says, these seem to signify.
And one may say, the rest signify not. For instance, the groans and
shrieks of stage players, and even their smiles and silence, make their
discourse more emphatic. But they have no absolute power to signify
anything, as a noun and verb have, but only an ascititious power to vary
speech; just as they vary letters who mark spirits and quantities upon
letters, these being the accidents and differences of letters. This the
ancients have made manifest, whom sixteen letters sufficed to speak and
write anything.

Besides, we must not fail to observe, that Plato says that speech is
composed OF these, not BY these; nor must we find fault with Plato for
omitting conjunctions, prepositions, and the rest, any more than we
should criticise a man who should say such a medicine is composed of wax
and galbanum, because fire and utensils are omitted, without which it
cannot be produced. For speech is not composed of these; yet by their
means, and not without them, speech must be composed. As, if a man says
BEATS or IS BEATEN, and adds Socrates and Pythagoras to the same, he
gives us something to conceive and understand. But if a man pronounce
INDEED or FOR or ABOUT and no more, none can conceive any notion of a
body or matter; and unless such words as these be uttered with verbs and
nouns, they are but empty noise and chattering. For neither alone nor
jo