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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: error is the most serious; for, if they remain unexamined, as in a
mathematical demonstration, all that flows from them is affected, and the
error pervades knowledge far and wide. In the beginning of philosophy this
correction of human ideas was even more necessary than in our own times,
because they were more bound up with words; and words when once presented
to the mind exercised a greater power over thought. There is a natural
realism which says, 'Can there be a word devoid of meaning, or an idea
which is an idea of nothing?' In modern times mankind have often given too
great importance to a word or idea. The philosophy of the ancients was
still more in slavery to them, because they had not the experience of
error, which would have placed them above the illusion.
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