COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



template the truth of things. Thus always ad- 

 ducing the reason which I judge to be strongest, 

 I pronounce that to be true which appears to 

 me to accord with it ; those which do not ac- 

 cord with it, I deny to be true/* And in the 

 " Republic," he tells us : " Whenever a person 

 strives by the help of dialectics to start in pur- 

 suit of every reality by a simple process of 

 reason independent of all sensuous information, 

 never flinching until by an act of pure intelli- 

 gence he has grasped the real nature of good, 

 he arrives at the very end of the intellectual 

 world." 



Plato furnishes an excellent illustration of 

 the statement above made, that a false method 

 leads to false doctrine, which, reacting on the 

 mind, confirms it in the employment of the false 

 method. From the fact that a comparatively 

 uninstructed mind can, with a little explanation, 

 be made to perceive the necessary truth of a few 

 simple geometrical axioms, and to follow the 

 steps of a demonstration founded thereon, — 

 Plato, in that charming dialogue, the " Meno,*' 

 infers that all knowledge is reminiscence. How 

 could the uneducated youth have come by that 

 knowledge which enables him to see at once 

 that when a square is divided by a line which 

 bisects the two opposite sides, the two portions 

 are equal? The naive reply is, that he must 

 have acquired it in a prior state of existence, 

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