104

1908 Nov. 29
Logic
I.i. 7

me of how in my boyhood the great American people, and
the great West, I suppose, in more recent days used to speak of
'scientific' hair-cutting, and 'scientific' gambling; and the Greek equivalent
ἐπιστήμη was applied by Sophocles to archery. But long before Latin
literature began, the Greek word had been restricted so as to be a term
of science, and soon the Latin word exactly translated the Greek except that
it was also used of jurisprudence and by Quintillian [etc??], of rhetoric. As terms of science both words
were used in an abstract sense, and were also applied in the concrete to
such bodies of doctrine as possessed the character denoted
by the same words when used as abstract. The abstract meaning was sub-
stantially what we call 'comprehension', that is, not merely knowing a
thing to be a fact, but also knowing according to what general principle
it was a fact. Thus, Cicero speaks of habere scientiam magnarum