E. Cobham Brewer 18101897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
The philosophical system of Plato; dialectics. Locke maintains
that the mind is by nature a sheet of white paper, the five
senses being the doors of knowledge. Plato maintained the
opposite theory, drawing a strong line of demarcation between
the province of thought and that of sensations in the production
of ideas. (See DIALECTICS.) It is characterised by the doctrine
of pre-existing eternal ideas, and teaches the immortality and
pre-existence of the soul, the dependence of virtue upon
discipline, and the trust worthiness of cognition. In theology,
he taught that there are two eternal, primary, independent, and
incorruptible causes of material thingsGod the maker, and matter
the substance. In psychology, he maintained the ultimate unity
and mutual dependence of all knowledge. In physics, he said that
God is the measure of all things, and that from God, in whom
reason and being are one, proceed human reason and those ideas
or laws which constitu