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In his Third Book of Dialectics, having said that
Plato, Aristotle, and those who came after them, even to
Polemon and Straton, but especially Socrates, diligently
studied dialectics, and having cried out that one would
even choose to err with such and so great men as these,
he brings in these words: ‘For if they had spoken of
these things cursorily, one might perhaps have cavilled at
this place; but having treated of dialectic skill as one of
the greatest and most necessary faculties, it is not probable
they should have been so much mistaken, having been
such in all the parts of philosophy as we esteem them.’
Why then (might some one say to him) do you never
cease to oppose and argue against such and so great men,
as if you thought them to err in the principal and greatest
matters? For it is not probable that they writ seriously
of dialectics, and only transitorily and in sport of the
beginning, end, Gods, and justice, in which you affirm
their discourse to be blind and contradictory to itself, and
to have a thousand other faults.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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