The Metaphysical Foundation of Buddhism and Modern Science

Section VIII. We have now reached the heart of our topic. What is the
store-house of that crude evidence on which philosophy should base its
discussion, and in what terms should its discussion be expressed?
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The main sources of evidence respecting this width of human experience
are language, social institutions, and action, including thereby the fusion
of the three which is language interpreting action and social institutions.
Language delivers its evidence in three chapters, one on the meanings of
words, another on the meanings enshrined in grammatical forms, and the
third on meanings enshrined in grammatical forms, and the third on
meanings beyond individual words and beyond grammatical forms,
meanings miraculously revealed in great literature.
Language is incomplete and fragmentary, and merely registers a stage in
the average advance beyond ape-mentality. But all men flashes of insight
beyond meanings already stabilized in etymology and grammar. Hence the
role of literature, the role of the special sciences, and the role of
philosophy: - in their various ways engaged in finding linguistic
expressions for meanings as yet unexpressed.
As a special example, consider the line and a half of poetry in which
Euripides [Trojan Women, 886-7] compresses the main philosophical
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