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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tions reverence for the profundity of ancient writings by audacious announcements of anticipations of modern discoveries.i The candid student is quickly disabused; he learns that this profundity is indistinctness, the anticipation purely verbal. Interesting these ancient writings mnst ever be: not as surpassing, or even approaching, the depth and grandeur of some modern works; not as anticipating the results of modern labour; but as brilliant points in the dimness of the Past, by which the story of human development may be deciphered; and as lessons, wherein may be read the results of yielding to that natural impatience which urges us to outstrip by guesses the tardy conclusions of experience. The failure of ancient efforts thus assumes an impressive interest, far exceeding the interest excited by a discovery of accordance between the old thought and the new. It suddenly lights up the study of ancient writings, rescuing them from the dilettantism of scholarship, and placing them among the serious archives of progress. 89. There is tolerable unanimity as to the fact of the ancient failure, but uncertainty and indistinctness as to its cause. The failure is generally assigned to a complete disregard of Observation and Experiment, together with a fondness for abstract reasoning. The amount of truth in this charge depends upon the sense in which it is interpreted. Taken absolutely it might be impugned by a defender of the old philosophy on two different counts. He might reply that men may amass great wealth of observation, perform numerous experiments, and carefully abstain from abstract reasoning (if that be a merit), without reaching the explanation of a simple physical law. He might affirm, and affirm truly, that the ancients did observe, did perform experiments, and did...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217723909 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 021772390X |
| Weight | 1.13 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.78 In |
| List Price | $22.91 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 348 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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