Philebus · Plato
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
Nor let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth at the 'blasphemy' of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the world; or the significance of the words 'those who said of old time that mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant observation that 'we are not always conscious of what we are doing or of what happens to us,' a chance expression to which if philosophers had attended they would have escaped many errors in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher point of view of abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner in which the question of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is regarded by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon), and the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of knowledge in the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks forward into the distance, the many questions of modern philosophy which are anticipated in his writings, may we not truly describe him in his own words as a 'spectator of all time and of all existence'?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.