Orientalism conquer Greece. Under Scholasti- cism it was the fate of great minds to retrace worn paths in the cage of a system of conclusions deter- mined by external authority; and the obligation to uphold the established precluded any practi- cal recognition of the reconstructive function of thought. With the Renaissance -- that Indian summer of Greek culture -- the dream of a re- moulded world found voice again. Campanella, through the darkness of his prison cell, achieved the vision of a communist utopia; and other stu- dents of the rediscovered Plato painted similar pictures. Indeed this reawakening of Plato's in- fluence gave to the men of the Renaissance an inspiriting sense of the wonders that lay potential in organized intelligence. Again men faced the task of replacing with a natural ethic the falling authoritarian sanctions of supernatural reli- gion; and for a time one might have hoped that the thought of Socrates was to find at last its due fruition. But again men lost themselves in the notion of a cultured class moving leisurely over the backs of slaves; and perhaps it was well that the whole movement was halted by the more Puritan but also more democratic outburst of the Reformation. What the world needed was a method which offered hope for the redemption not of a class, but of all. Galileo and Roger Bacon opened the way to meeting this need by their emphasis on the value of hypothesis and experi- ment, and the necessity of combining induction
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Publication Information: Book Title: Philosophy and the Social Problem. Contributors: Will Durant - author. Publisher: Macmillan. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1917. Page Number: 68.
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