Seite - 477 - in The Complete Plato
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contracts, as some have said? Is the blood the element with which we think,
or the air, or the fire? or perhaps nothing of the kind— but the brain may be
the originating power of the perceptions of hearing and sight and smell, and
memory and opinion may come from them, and science may be based on
memory and opinion when they have attained fixity. And then I went on to
examine the corruption of them, and then to the things of heaven and earth,
and at last I concluded myself to be utterly and absolutely incapable of these
enquiries, as I will satisfactorily prove to you. For I was fascinated by them to
such a degree that my eyes grew blind to things which I had seemed to
myself, and also to others, to know quite well; I forgot what I had before
thought self-evident truths; e.g. such a fact as that the growth of man is the
result of eating and drinking; for when by the digestion of food flesh is added
to flesh and bone to bone, and whenever there is an aggregation of congenial
elements, the lesser bulk becomes larger and the small man great. Was not
that a reasonable notion?
Yes, said Cebes, I think so.
Well; but let me tell you something more. There was a time when I thought
that I understood the meaning of greater and less pretty well; and when I saw
a great man standing by a little one, I fancied that one was taller than the other
by a head; or one horse would appear to be greater than another horse: and
still more clearly did I seem to perceive that ten is two more than eight, and
that two cubits are more than one, because two is the double of one.
And what is now your notion of such matters? said Cebes.
I should be far enough from imagining, he replied, that I knew the cause of
any of them, by heaven I should; for I cannot satisfy myself that, when one is
added to one, the one to which the addition is made becomes two, or that the
two units added together make two by reason of the addition. I cannot
understand how, when separated from the other, each of them was one and not
two, and now, when they are brought together, the mere juxtaposition or
meeting of them should be the cause of their becoming two: neither can I
understand how the division of one is the way to make two; for then a
different cause would produce the same effect,—as in the former instance the
addition and juxtaposition of one to one was the cause of two, in this the
separation and subtraction of one from the other would be the cause. Nor am I
any longer satisfied that I understand the reason why one or anything else is
either generated or destroyed or is at all, but I have in my mind some
confused notion of a new method, and can never admit the other.
Then I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras, that
mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was delighted at this notion,
which appeared quite admirable, and I said to myself: If mind is the disposer,
477
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Buch The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Titel
- The Complete Plato
- Autor
- Plato
- Datum
- ~347 B.C.
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 1612
- Schlagwörter
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Kategorien
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International