|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at
rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order
to express motion, just as by the letter iota he expresses the subtle
elements which pass through all things. This is why he uses the letter
iota as imitative of motion, ienai, iesthai. And there is another class of
letters, phi, psi, sigma, and xi, of which the pronunciation is accompanied
by great expenditure of breath; these are used in the imitation of such
notions as psuchron (shivering), xeon (seething), seiesthai, (to be
shaken), seismos (shock), and are always introduced by the giver of names
when he wants to imitate what is phusodes (windy). He seems to have
thought that the closing and pressure of the tongue in the utterance of
|