Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/476

 454 HISTORY OF GEEECE. verification which it afforded ; a feeling, of which abundant evi dence is to be found in the Platonic writings. 1 Such pleasure in the scientific operation, though not merely innocent, but valu- able both as a stimulant and as a guarantee against error, and though the corresponding taste among mathematicians is always treated with the sympathy which it deserves, incurs much un- aierited reprobation from modern historians of philosophy, under the name of love of disputation, cavilling, or skeptical subtlety. But over and above any love of the process, the subjects to which dialectics were applied, from Sokrates downwards, man and society, ethics, politics, metaphysics, etc., were such as par- ticularly called for this many-sided handling. On topics like these, relating to sequences of fact which depend upon a multi- tude of cooperating or conflicting causes, it is impossible to arrive, by any one thread of positive reasoning or induction, at absolute doctrine, which a man may reckon upon finding always true, whether he remembers the proof or not ; as is the case with mathematical, astronomical, or physical truth. The utmost which science can ascertain, on subjects thus complicated, is an aggregate, not of peremptory theorems and predictions, but of tendencies ; 2 by studying the action of each separate cause, and combining them together as vell as our means admit. The knowledge of tendencies thus obtained, though falling much short of certainty, is highly important for guidance : but it is plain that conclusions of this nature, resulting from multifarious threads of evidence, true only on a balance, and always liable to limitation, can never be safely detached from the proofs on which they rest, or taught as absolute and consecrated formulae. 3 They require to be kept 1 See particularly the remarkable passage in the Philebus. c. 18, p. 16, seq. of Logic, vol. ii, book vi, p. 565, 1st edition. 3 Lord Bacon remarks, in the Novum Organon (Aph. 71) : K Erat autem sapientia Graecorum professoria, et in disputationes effusa, quod genus inquisition! veritatis adversissimnm est. Itaque nomen illud Sophistarum quod per contemptum ab iis, qni se philosophos haberi voluerunt, in antiques rhetores rejectum et traductum est, Gorgiam, Prota- goram, Hippiam, Polum etiam universo generi c< mpetit, Platoni, Aris- toteli, Zenoni, Epicure, Theophrasto, et eorum successoribus Cbrysippc^ Caineadi, reliquis. :>
 * See this point instructively set forth in Mr. John Stuart Mill's Systerr