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muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or
Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own
idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part,
instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any punishment
which the state inflicts. There is surely a strange confusion of causes and
conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles
and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I
do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and
not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I
wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the
many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming. And
thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the heaven;
another gives the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough.
Any power which in arranging them as they are arranges them for the best
never enters into their minds; and instead of finding any superior strength in
it, they rather expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is stronger
and more everlasting and more containing than the good;—of the obligatory
and containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet this is the
principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me. But as I have
failed either to discover myself, or to learn of any one else, the nature of the
best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found to be the second best
mode of enquiring into the cause.
I should very much like to hear, he replied.
Socrates proceeded:—I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of
true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul; as
people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during
an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only looking at the image
reflected in the water, or in some similar medium. So in my own case, I was
afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my
eyes or tried to apprehend them by the help of the senses. And I thought that I
had better have recourse to the world of mind and seek there the truth of
existence. I dare say that the simile is not perfect— for I am very far from
admitting that he who contemplates existences through the medium of
thought, sees them only ‘through a glass darkly,’ any more than he who
considers them in action and operation. However, this was the method which I
adopted: I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest,
and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether
relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded
as untrue. But I should like to explain my meaning more clearly, as I do not
think that you as yet understand me.
479
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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