|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: of no use in assisting the acquisition of it. This seems to be the natural
limit of logic and metaphysics; if they give us a more comprehensive or a
more definite view of the different spheres of knowledge they are to be
studied; if not, not. The better part of ancient logic appears hardly in
our own day to have a separate existence; it is absorbed in two other
sciences: (1) rhetoric, if indeed this ancient art be not also fading away
into literary criticism; (2) the science of language, under which all
questions relating to words and propositions and the combinations of them
may properly be included.
To continue dead or imaginary sciences, which make no signs of progress and
have no definite sphere, tends to interfere with the prosecution of living
|
