Such word-splitters were Stilpo
and Diodorus, the slayer and the slain. They were of the Megaran
school, and were named Dialectics; and also, with more truth, Eristics,
or quarrellers. Their clique had professed to follow Zeno and Socrates
in declaring the instability of sensible presumptions and conclusions,
in preaching an absolute and eternal Being. But there was this deep
gulf between them and Socrates; that while Socrates professed to be
seeking for the Absolute and Eternal, for that which is, they were
content with affirming that it exists. With him, as with the older
sages, philosophy was a search for truth. With them it was a scheme of
doctrines to be defended. And the dialectic on which they prided
themselves so much, differed from his accordingly. He used it
inductively, to seek out, under the notions and conceptions of the mind,
certain absolute truths and laws of which they were only the embodiment.
Words and thought were to him a field for careful and reverent
induction, as the phenomena of nature are to us the disciples of Bacon.
But with these hapless Megarans, who thought that they had found that
for which Socrates professed only to seek dimly and afar off, and had
got it safe in a dogma, preserved as it were in spirits, and put by in a
museum, the great use of dialectic was to confute opponents.
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