Sophist – Plato
2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is cer-promise him he will find realized in the great tainly the greatest critic of philosophy who ever German thinker, an emancipation nearly com-lived. No one else has equally mastered the opin-plete from the influences of the scholastic logic.
ions of his predecessors or traced the connexion 3. Many of those who are least disposed to become of them in the same manner. No one has equally the votaries of Hegelianism nevertheless recognize raised the human mind above the trivialities of in his system a new logic supplying a variety of in-the common logic and the unmeaningness of struments and methods hitherto unemployed. We
‘mere’ abstractions, and above imaginary pos-may not be able to agree with him in assimilating sibilities, which, as he truly says, have no place the natural order of human thought with the history in philosophy. No one has won so much for the of philosophy, and still less in identifying both with kingdom of ideas. Whatever may be thought of the divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge his own system it will hardly be denied that he that the great thinker has thrown a light on many has overthrown Locke, Kant, Hume, and the so-parts of human knowledge, and has solved many called philosophy of common sense. He shows difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of oppous that only by the study of metaphysics can we sites as the last word of philosophy, but still we may get rid of metaphysics, and that those who are regard it as a very important contribution to logic.
in theory most opposed to them are in fact most We cannot affirm that words have no meaning when entirely and hopelessly enslaved by them: ‘ D i e taken out of their connexion in the history of thought.
reinen Physiker sind nur die Thiere.’ The dis-But we recognize that their meaning is to a great ciple of Hegel will hardly become the slave of extent due to association, and to their correlation any other system-maker. What Bacon seems to with one another. We see the advantage of view-70
Sophist – Plato
ing in the concrete what mankind regard only in SOPHIST
the abstract. There is much to be said for his faith or conviction, that God is immanent in the world,—
within the sphere of the human mind, and not by
beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like a prophet of old, should regard the philosophy which he had invented as the voice of God in man. But Plato
this by no means implies that he conceived himself as creating God in thought. He was the servant of his own ideas and not the master of them.
Translated by Benjamin Jowett The philosophy of history and the history of philosophy may be almost said to have been discovered by him. He has done more to explain Greek PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
thought than all other writers put together. Many Theodorus, Theaetetus, Socrates.
ideas of development, evolution, reciprocity, which An Eleatic Stranger, whom Theodorus and have become the symbols of another school of Theaetetus bring with them.
thinkers may be traced to his speculations. In the The younger Socrates, who is a silent auditor.
theology and philosophy of England as well as of Germany, and also in the lighter literature of both THEODORUS: Here we are, Socrates, true to our countries, there are always appearing ‘fragments agreement of yesterday; and we bring with us a of the great banquet’ of Hegel.
stranger from Elea, who is a disciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher.