Heraclitus

Two opposite attitudes towards the Greeks be common at the give way day. One, which was practically universal from the Renaissance until very recent times, views the Greeks with closely superstitious reverence, as the inventors of all that is best, and as men of godlike genius whom the moderns cannot hope to equal. The other attitude, inspired by the triumphs of apprehension and by an optimistic belief in progress, considers the authority of the ancients an incubus, and maintains that about of their contributions to thought are now best forgotten. I cannot myself final payment either of these extreme views; each, I should show, is part right and partly wrong. Before entering upon any detail, I shall try to say what sort of wisdom we can still derive from the drive of Greek thought.
As to the nature and structure of the world, various hypotheses are possible. Progress in metaphysics, so far as it has existed, has consisted in a gradual refinement of all these hypotheses, a increment of their implications, and a reformulation of each to meet the objections urged by adherents of rival hypotheses. To perk to conceive the universe according to each of these systems is an imaginative becharm and an antidote to dogmatism.



Moreover, even if no one of the hypotheses can be demonstrated, there is genuine knowledge in the discovery of what is pertain in making each of them consistent with itself and with known facts. straightaway almost all the hypotheses that have dominated modern ism were first thought of by the Greeks; their imaginative inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too exceedingly praised. What I shall have to say about the Greeks will be said mainly from this point of view; I shall move them as giving birth to theories which have had an Independent breeding and growth, and which, though at first somewhat infantile, have turn up capable of surviving and developing through more than 2 thousand years.
The Greeks contributed, it is true, something else which proved more...If you want to get a good essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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