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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: within the limits of the mind itself. From the time of Descartes to Hume
and Kant it has had little or nothing to do with facts of science. On the
other hand, the ancient and mediaeval logic retained a continuous influence
over it, and a form like that of mathematics was easily impressed upon it;
the principle of ancient philosophy which is most apparent in it is
scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that
we may hold fast one or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal
form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from
this alone all other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure
presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The
Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new
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