unambiguous. Moreover, the conservatives might point out, with
telling effect, that the present alphabet has proved admirably
effective for about three thousand years. Yet the fact that our
dictionaries supply diacritical marks for some thirty vowels
sounds to indicate the pronunciation of the words of our
every-day speech, shows how we let memory and guessing do the
work that might reasonably be demanded of a really complete
alphabet. But, whatever its defects, the existing alphabet is a
marvellous piece of mechanism, the result of thousands of years
of intellectual effort. It is, perhaps without exception, the
most stupendous invention of the human intellect within
historical times--an achievement taking rank with such great
prehistoric discoveries as the use of articulate speech, the
making of a fire, and the invention of stone implements, of the
wheel and axle, and of picture-writing. It made possible for the
first time that education of the masses upon which all later
progress of civilization was so largely to depend.



V. THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE

Herodotus, the Father of History, tells us that once upon a
time--which time, as the modern computator shows us, was about
the year 590 B.C. --a war had risen between the Lydians and the
Medes and continued five years. "In these years the Medes often
discomfited the Lydians and the Lydians often discomfited the
Medes (and among other things they fought a battle by night); and
yet they still carried on the war with equally balanced
fortitude. In the sixth year a battle took place in which it