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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: He has annihilated the outward world, but it instantly reappears governed
by the same laws and described under the same names.
A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central
principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect. He would
deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but he
seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and does
not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he remark
that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language against the
most certain facts. And here, again, we may find a parallel with the
ancients. He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did in their
idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more important
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