Seeking illustrations at large, we find this change typified in Hebrew
history in the growing importance of the prophet over the judge, in
the transition from a justification of conduct through bringing
particular cases into conformity with existent laws, into that
effected by personal right-mindedness enabling the individual to see
the law in each case for himself. Profoundly as this changed
conception of the relation between law and particular case affected
moral life, it did not, among Semites, directly influence the logical
sphere. With the Greeks, however, we find a continuous and marked
departure from positive declaration of custom. We have assemblies
meeting to discuss and dispute, and finally, upon the basis of the
considerations thus brought to view, to decide. The man of counsel is
set side by side with the man of deed. Odysseus was much experienced,
not only because he knew the customs and ways of old, but even more
because from the richness of his experience he could make the pregnant
suggestion to meet the new crisis. It is hardly too much to say that
it was the emphasis put by the Greek mind upon discussion--at first as
preliminary to decision, and afterward to legislation--which generated
logical theory.
Discussion is thus an apt name for this attitude of thought. It is
bringing various beliefs together; shaking one against another and
tearing down their rigidity. It is conversation of thoughts; it is
dialogue--the mother of dialectic in more than the etymological sense.
No process is more recurrent in history than the transfer of
operations carried on between different persons into the arena of the
individual's own consciousness. The discussion which at first took
place by bringing ideas from different persons into contact, by
introducing them into the forum of competition, and by subjecting them
to critical comparison and selective decision, finally became a habit
of the individual with himself. He became a miniature social
assemblage, in which pros and cons were brought into play struggling
for the mastery--for final conclusion. In some such way we conceive
reflection to be born.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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