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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: the first growth of language and philosophy, and to the whole science of
man. There can be no truth or completeness in any study of the mind which
is confined to the individual. The nature of language, though not the
whole, is perhaps at present the most important element in our knowledge of
it. It is not impossible that some numerical laws may be found to have a
place in the relations of mind and matter, as in the rest of nature. The
old Pythagorean fancy that the soul 'is or has in it harmony' may in some
degree be realized. But the indications of such numerical harmonies are
faint; either the secret of them lies deeper than we can discover, or
nature may have rebelled against the use of them in the composition of men
and animals. It is with qualitative rather than with quantitative
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