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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: England and Scotland when his popularity in Germany has departed, and he,
like the philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker
has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He
has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains
which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves not
only above the opinions of men but above their modes of thinking, is a
great height of philosophy. This dearly obtained freedom, however, we are
not disposed to part with, or to allow him to build up in a new form the
'beggarly elements' of scholastic logic which he has thrown down. So far
as they are aids to reflection and expression, forms of thought are useful,
but no further:--we may easily have too many of them.
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