Hermotimus, or the Rival Philosophies (55)

Lycinus Upon my word, how confident you are in your faculty of divining the whole from the parts! and yet I remember being told just the opposite—that knowledge of the whole includes that of the parts, but not vice versa. Well, but tell me; when Phidias saw the claw, would he ever have known it for a lion’s, if he had never seen a lion? Could you have said the hand was a man’s, if you had never known or seen aman? Why are you dumb? Let me make the only possible answer for you—that you could not; I am afraid Phidias has modelled his lion all for — nothing; for it proves to be neither here nor there. What resemblance is there? What enabled you and Phidias to recognize the parts was just your knowledge of the wholes— the lion and the man. But in philosophy—the Stoic, for instance—how will the part reveal the other parts to you, or how can you conclude that they are beautiful? You do not know the whole to which the parts belong.