Top Highlights

• The third period, from the seventeenth century to the present day, is dominated, more than either of its predecessors, by science; traditional religious beliefs remain important,
• in connection with mathematics the one-sidedness of the Greek genius appears: it reasoned deductively from what appeared self-evident, not inductively from what had been observed.
• Sophists, leading to a study of how we know rather than to the attempt to acquire fresh knowledge.
• with Plato, the rejection of the world of sense in favour of the self-created world of pure thought;
• In the first instance, it seems, they are to be chosen by the legislator; after that, they will usually succeed by heredity, but in exceptional cases a promising child may be promoted from one of the inferior classes, while among the children of guardians a child or young man who is unsatisfactory may be degraded.