Delight in
their own subtlety grew on them, the worship not of objective truth, but
of the forms of the intellect whereby it may be demonstrated; till they
became the veriest word-splitters, rivals of the old sophists whom their
master had attacked, and justified too often Aristophanes' calumny,
which confounded Socrates with his opponents, as a man whose aim was to
make the worse appear the better reason.
We have here, in both parties, all the marks of an age of exhaustion, of
scepticism, of despair about finding any real truth. No wonder that
they were superseded by the Pyrrhonists, who doubted all things, and by
the Academy, which prided itself on setting up each thing to knock it
down again; and so by prudent and well-bred and tolerant qualifying of
every assertion, neither affirming too much, nor denying too much, keep
their minds in a wholesome--or unwholesome--state of equilibrium, as
stagnant pools are kept, that everything may have free toleration to rot
undisturbed.
These hapless caricaturists of the dialectic of Plato, and the logic of
Aristotle, careless of any vital principles or real results, ready
enough to use fallacies each for their own party, and openly proud of
their success in doing so, were assisted by worthy compeers of an
outwardly opposite tone of thought, the Cyrenaics, Theodorus and
Hegesias.
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