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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: animated by a principle of motion, immanent in a principle of rest. He
would have tried to construct the universe on a quantitative principle,
seeming to find in endless combinations of geometrical figures or in the
infinite variety of their sizes a sufficient account of the multiplicity of
phenomena. To these a priori speculations he would add a rude conception
of matter and his own immediate experience of health and disease. His
cosmos would necessarily be imperfect and unequal, being the first attempt
to impress form and order on the primaeval chaos of human knowledge. He
would see all things as in a dream.
The ancient physical philosophers have been charged by Dr. Whewell and
others with wasting their fine intelligences in wrong methods of enquiry;
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