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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: he has himself risen to a higher knowledge. He never reflects, how great a
thing it was to have formed a conception, however imperfect, either of the
human frame as a whole, or of the world as a whole. According to the view
taken in these volumes the errors of ancient physicists were not separable
from the intellectual conditions under which they lived. Their genius was
their own; and they were not the rash and hasty generalizers which, since
the days of Bacon, we have been apt to suppose them. The thoughts of men
widened to receive experience; at first they seemed to know all things as
in a dream: after a while they look at them closely and hold them in their
hands. They begin to arrange them in classes and to connect causes with
effects. General notions are necessary to the apprehension of particular
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