Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/618

602 602 I is one of those symbols which the Greeks employed differently from the Phoenicians. In Phoenician it denoted the palatal semi-vowel y, called in Hebrew yodh. The Greeks disliked this sound, and it vanished at an early time out of their language. Consequently they needed no symbol to represent it, and could use the Phoenician symbol to denote that for which the Phoenician alphabet gave them no help, namely, the vowel i. The symbol, however, had not at that time its present simple form, as may be seen by reference to the table at the end of the article ALPHABET. It was made up of several lines, and so it appears in the oldest Greek inscriptions, e.g., in those of Thera, about the 40th Olympiad, in which it is not unlike the later form of signia (2). In the old Corinthian alphabet it sometimes has this form ; sometimes the angles to the left are rounded, so that it resembles an e. Generally, however, we find it in Greek simplified into the single straight line with which we are familiar. It has no other form in the Latin alphabet. In the last century before Christ, the Komans sometimes lengthened the symbol to denote the long vowel, so that it reached above the top of the line, while the short vowel was expressed by a line of the usual length. This took the place of the older method by which the symbol was doubled to denote the long vowel ; as aa, ee, ii. But it never became universal, nor was the lengthened symbol always put to the same use ; for about the same time we find it used to denote the y sound in words like Maia, emus, where the Romans rightly thought it expedient to have a distinct mark for the semi-vowel. But this also was not permanent. The value of the symbol is generally constant in all European languages, ancient or modern, with the exception of English. It is the vowel sound produced by raising the front of the tongue towards the palate, as high as it can be raised without touching. The lips are not rounded ; by rounding them, when the tongue is in this position, we should produce the sound of the French u or the German u. The vowel may, however, be either open or close, and in either of these cases it may be short or long. Therefore we have four variations, of which, however, probably not more than two are found in any spoken language : (1) the short open i, heard in English &quot; sin &quot; ; (2) the long open i, which is not one of our spoken sounds, but can be produced in singing ; (3) the short close i, which again is not English, but is the Italian short i ; (4) the long close i, which is the Italian long i, and is also common in English ; but we denote the sound, not by I, but by ee, as in &quot;seen.&quot; It is generally supposed that the sound of ee stands to that of i in English as a long vowel to the corresponding short ; but this is not so ; there is a difference in quality as well ; ee denotes (as has been just explained) a close vowel, whereas i is open. It is true that in ordinary English the open vowel i only occurs short, and the close vowel long, therefore the confusion is natural. A Scotchman, however, finds no difficulty in pronouncing &quot; seen &quot; short. It is practically necessary in English to denote the simple long i sound by ee, because the English language has habitually altered the simple sound into a diphthong, and has retained for that diphthong the original spelling i. Thus in words like &quot;pride,&quot; &quot;mine,&quot; &quot;fire,&quot; &c., the vowel had once in England the same sound as it has on the Con tinent ; but now it is sounded as the diphthong ai, though the spelling has not been changed. It appears from Mr Alexander J. Ellis s investigations into the history of English pronunciation that i had become a diphthong in the 16th century; but the exact date of the change must remain uncertain. There can be little doubt that its nature has been correctly explained by the same philologist. It consists in pronouncing the long vowel without sufficiently raising the tongue at the beginning of the sound ; hence the sound is at first too open, and is modified into the proper i sound before it is terminated. Changes of this sort are natural in long vowels, because there is time to vary the original sound, either as a refinement, or, more probably, through mere inattention and laziness. IAMBLICHUS, the chief representative of Syrian Neo-Platonism, is only imperfectly known to us in the events of his life and the details of his creed. We learn, however, from Suidas, and from his biographer Eunapius, that he was born at Chalcis in Coele-Syria, the scion of a rich and illustrious family, that he studied under Anatolius and afterwards under Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus, that he himself gathered together a large number of disciples of different nations with whom he lived on terms of genial friendship, that he wrote &quot;various philosophical books,&quot; and that he died during the reign of Constantino, accord ing to Fabricius, before 333 A.D. His residence (probably) at his native town of Chalcis was varied by a yearly visit with his pupils to the baths of Gadara. Of the books referred to by Suidas only a fraction has been preserved. His commentaries on Plato and Aristotle, and works on the Chaldasan theology and on the soul, are lost. For our knowledge of his system we are indebted partly to the fragments of these writings preserved by Stobseus and others, and to the notices of his successors, especially Proclus, partly to his five extant books, the sections of a great work on the Pythagorean philosophy. Besides these, Proclus (412-485) seems to have ascribed to him 1 the authorship of the celebrated book On the Egyptian Mysteries (so-called), and although its differences in style and in some points of doctrine from the writings just mentioned make it improbable that the work was by lamblichus himself, it certainly emanated from his school, and in its systematic attempt to give a speculative justification of the polytheistic cultus of the day, marks the turning-point in the history of thought at which lamblichus stood. As a speculative theory Neo-Platonism had received its highest development from Plotinus. The modifications introduced by lamblichus were the elaboration in greater detail of its formal divisions, the more systematic application of the Pythagorean number-symbolism, and chiefiy, under the influence of Oriental systems, the thorough-going mythic interpretation of what the previous philosophy had still regarded as notional. It is on the last account, probably, that lamblichus was looked upon with such extravagant veneration. As a philosopher he had learning indeed, but little originality. But by using what he had to throw a haze of philosophy over the popular superstition, he acquired his fame. By his contemporaries he was accredited with miraculous powers (which he, however, disclaimed), and by his followers in the decline of Greek philosophy, and his admirers on its revival in the 15th and 16th centuries, his name was scarcely mentioned without the epithet &quot; divine &quot; or &quot;most divine,&quot; while, not content with the more modest eulogy of Eunapius that he was inferior to Porphyry only in style, the emperor Julian regarded him as not even 1 Besides the anonymous testimony prefixed to an ancient MS. of Proclus, De Myst. viii. 3 seems to be quoted l&amp;gt;y the latter as lambliehus s. Of. Meiners, &quot; Judicium de Libro qui de Myst. JEg. inscribitur, &quot; in Comment. Soc. Reg. Sci. Gott., vol. iv., 1781, p. 77.