136. Slowness of the Invention
The Greeks did not make these alterations of value all at once. The value of several of the letters fluctuated in the different parts of Greece for two or three centuries. In one city a certain value or form of a letter would come into usage; in another, the same letter would be shaped differently, or stand for a consonant instead of a vowel. Thus the character H was long read by some of the Greeks as H, by others as long E. This fact illustrates the principle that the Greek alphabet was not an invention which leaped, complete and perfect, out of the brain of an individual genius, as inventions do in film plays and romantic novels, and as the popular mind, with its instinct for the dramatic, likes to believe. One might imagine that with the basic plan of the alphabet, and the majority of its symbols, provided ready-made by the Phœnicians, it would have been a simple matter for a single Greek to add the finishing touches and so shape his national system of writing as it has come down to us. In fact, however, these little finishing touches were several centuries in the making; the final result was a compromise between all sorts of experiments and beginnings. One can picture an entire nationality literally groping for generation after generation, and only slowly settling on the ultimate system. There must have been dozens of innovators who tried their hand at a modification of the value or form of a letter.
Nor can it be denied that what was new in the Greek alphabet was a true invention. The step of introducing full vowel characters was as definitely original and almost as important as any new progress in the history of civilization. Yet it is not even known who the first individual was that tried to apply this idea. Tradition is silent on the point. It is quite conceivable that the first writing of vowels may have been independently attempted by a number of individuals in different parts of Greece.