Here it
is: "But on that account, I say, we ought not to reject the ancient Art,
as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did
not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of
reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and
admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as
having been well and properly made, and not from chance."(1)
(1) The Works of Hippocrates, Adams, Vol. I, p. 168, London, 1849
(Sydenham Society).
I have tried to tell you what the best of these men in successive ages
knew, to show you their point of outlook on the things that interest
us. To understand the old writers one must see as they saw, feel as they
felt, believe as they believed--and this is hard, indeed impossible! We
may get near them by asking the Spirit of the Age in which they lived
to enter in and dwell with us, but it does not always come. Literary
criticism is not literary history--we have no use here for the former,
but to analyze his writings is to get as far as we can behind the
doors of a man's mind, to know and appraise his knowledge, not from our
standpoint, but from that of his contemporaries, his predecessors and
his immediate successors.
Pages:
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286