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It remains true that the objects toward which a man is ultimately moving cannot be discovered by external observation. For in the case of just these objects, which most define the man, the 'recession of the stimulus' has proceeded to infinity; and further, the 'stimulus'—these objects themselves—has become intangible in nature. Hence we cannot identify a man's major purposes in the manner suggested by Holt, that of exhibiting the objects (though we might attempt a metaphysical definition of them); nor can we discover them by Freud's method of uncovering repressed wishes. The best instrument which has so far been devised for discovering what these major wishes are is, I believe, an ancient one, the Platonic logic of the affections. It is the peculiar merit of the Socratic dialectic, as shaped by Plato, that it reveals precisely that part of the subconscious self (if we wish to describe in these terms that unanalyzed part of the self which Socrates, as midwife, undertook to deliver) which as censor of the individual is also the common sense, and so the common censor, of mankind.

The working part of the dialectic of Plato might be roughly described as a comparison of an experimental definition of a term (in connotation) with accepted cases of its denotation. If courage be defined as daring; and it is admitted that one who