|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: principle, and when the conclusion and intermediate steps are also
constructed out of he knows not what, how can he imagine that such a fabric
of convention can ever become science?
Impossible, he said.
Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle
and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make
her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an
outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upwards; and she uses as
handmaids and helpers in the work of conversion, the sciences which we have
been discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but they ought to have some
other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than
The Republic |
