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THE ART OF CONTROVERSY. PRELIMINARY: LOGIC AND DIALECTIC. By the ancients, Logic and Dialectic were used as synonymous terms; although [Greek: logizesthai], "to think over, to consider, to calculate," and [Greek: dialegesthai], "to converse," are two very different things. The name Dialectic was, as we are informed by Diogenes Laertius, first used by Plato; and in the Phaedrus, Sophist, Republic, bk. vii., and elsewhere, we find that by... more...

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but... more...

HUMAN NATURE. Truths of the physical order may possess much external significance, but internal significance they have none. The latter is the privilege of intellectual and moral truths, which are concerned with the objectivation of the will in its highest stages, whereas physical truths are concerned with it in its lowest. For example, if we could establish the truth of what up till now is only a conjecture, namely, that it is the action of... more...

CHAPTER I. GENERAL RULES.—SECTION 1. The first and foremost rule for the wise conduct of life seems to me to be contained in a view to which Aristotle parenthetically refers in the Nichomachean Ethics:[1] [Greek: o phronimoz to alupon dioke e ou to aedu] or, as it may be rendered, not pleasure, but freedom from pain, is what the wise man will aim at. [Footnote 1: vii. (12) 12.] The truth of this remark turns upon the negative character... more...