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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: value. No metaphysical enquirer has ever fairly criticised his own
speculations; in his own judgment they have been above criticism; nor has
he understood that what to him seemed to be absolute truth may reappear in
the next generation as a form of logic or an instrument of thought. And
posterity have also sometimes equally misapprehended the real value of his
speculations. They appear to them to have contributed nothing to the stock
of human knowledge. The IDEA of good is apt to be regarded by the modern
thinker as an unmeaning abstraction; but he forgets that this abstraction
is waiting ready for use, and will hereafter be filled up by the divisions
of knowledge. When mankind do not as yet know that the world is subject to
law, the introduction of the mere conception of law or design or final
The Republic |
