FORE:We are here in presence of a phenomenon like that to which attention was invited in an early chapter of this work.371 The belief in immortality, entertained under a gloomy and repulsive form by the uneducated, is taken up by the higher classes, brought into contact with their more generous ideas, broadened, deepened, purified, and finally made the basis of a new religion. Nevertheless, in the present instance at least, all was not clear gain; and the faith which smiles on us from storied sarcophagus and mural relief, or pleads for our sympathy in epitaphs more enduring than the hope which240 they enshrine, had also its grotesque and hideous side, for an expression of which we must turn to literature again.On the other hand, a theory of reasoning based on the relations of concepts, instead of on the relations of judgments, necessarily leaves out of account the whole doctrine of hypothetical and disjunctive propositions, together with that of the syllogisms based on them; since the elements of which they are composed are themselves propositions. And this inevitable omission is the more remarkable because alterna381tive and, to a less extent, hypothetical arguments form the staple of Aristotles own dialectic; while categorical reasoning never occurs in it at all. His constant method is to enumerate all possible views of a subject, and examine them one after the other, rejecting those which are untenable, and resting content with the remainder. In other words, he reaches his positive conclusions through a series of negative premises representing a process of gradual elimination. The First Analytics is itself an admirable instance of his favourite method. Every possible combination of terms is discussed, and the valid moods are sifted out from a much greater number of illegitimate syllogisms. The dialectic of Socrates and Plato followed the same procedure. It was essentially experimentala method of trial, elimination, and selection. On going back still further, we find that when there is any reasoning at all in Homer, it is conducted after the same fashion. Hector, in his soliloquy before the Scaean Gate, imagines three alternative courses, together exhausting the possibilities of the situation. He may either retreat within the walls, or offer terms of peace to Achilles, or fight. The first two alternatives being rejected, nothing remains but the third. This is the most elaborate example; but on many other occasions Homers actors are represented as hesitating between two courses, and finally deciding on one of them.
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FORE:
10, January, 2014
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14, January, 2014
10, January, 2014
10, January, 2014
10, January, 2014
FORE:"Thank you for that," Bruce said gratefully.Nevertheless, by dint of pertinacious repetition, the founder of Neo-Platonism has succeeded in making the main outlines, and to a great extent the details, of his system so perfectly clear that probably no philosophy is now better understood than his. In this respect, Plotinus offers a remarkable contrast to the two great thinkers from whom his ideas are principally derived. While Plato and Aristotle construct each particular sentence with masterly clearness, the general drift of their speculations is by no means easy to ascertain; and, even now, critics take diametrically opposite views of the interpretation which is to be put on their teaching with regard to several most important points. The expositors of Neo-Platonism, on the contrary, show a rare unanimity in their accounts of its constitutive principles. What they differ about is its origin and its historical significance. And these are points on which we too shall have to enter, since all the ancient systems are interesting to us chiefly as historical phenomena, and Neo-Platonism more so than any other. Plotinus285 effected a vast revolution in speculative opinion, but he effected it by seizing on the thoughts of others rather than by any new thoughts or even new developments or applications of his own.