Note 55 — Chapter III

For example, Isidore evidently had a theory as to the origin and value of language, but he does not state it anywhere, although innumerable times he approaches the subject in an oblique sort of way. See p. 99. Again, he never tells us whether he believed the earth to be flat or spherical; he uses at one time language that belongs to the spherical earth, and at another, language that can have sense only if he believed the earth to be flat. Here we have not only no definite statement of the conception—although it must have existed in his mind, considering the frequency of his writings on the physical universe—but we have in addition the puzzle of deciding which set of expressions used in this connection was meaningless to him. See pp. 50–54 and Appendix.