" Dialectic, however, or the vertex of the mathematical sciences, as it is called by Plato in his Republic, is that master discipline which particularly leads us up to an intelligible essence.

Suffice it therefore to observe in this place, that dialectic differs from mathematical science in this, that the latter flows from, and the former is void of hypothesis.

That dialectic has a power of knowing universals; that it ascends to good and the supreme cause of all; and, that it considers good as the end of its elevation; but that the mathematical science, which previously fabricates for itself definite principles, from which it evinces things consequent to such principles, does not tend to the principle, but to the conclusion.

Hence Plato does not expel mathematical knowledge from the number of the sciences, but asserts it to be the next in rank to that one science which is the summit of all; nor does he accuse it as ignorant of its own principles, but considers it as receiving these from the master science dialectic, and that possessing them without any demonstration, it demonstrates from these its consequent propositions.

Hence Socrates, in the Republic, speaking of the power of dialectic, says that it surrounds all disciplines like a defensive enclosure, and elevates those that use it to the good itself, and the first unities; that it purifies the eye of the soul; establishes itself in true beings, and, the one principle of all things, and ends at last in that which is no longer hypothetical.

The power of dialectic, therefore, being thus great, and the ends of this path so mighty, it must by no means be confounded with arguments which are alone conversant with opinion: for the former is the guardian of sciences, and the passage to it is through these, but the latter is perfectly destitute of disciplinative science.

To which we may add, that the method of reasoning which is founded in opinion, regards only that which is apparent; but the dialectic method endeavors to arrive at the one itself, always employing for this purpose steps of ascent, and at last beautifully ends in the nature of the good.

For the dialectic of Plato for the most part employs divisions and analyses as primary sciences, and as imitating the progression of beings from the one, and their conversion to it again.

The following is a specimen of the analytical method of Plato's dialectic.

It is necessary to observe that Plato in the Parmenides calls all that part of his Dialectic, which proceeds through opposite arguments, an exercise and wandering.

The argumentative or demonstrative method of teaching, used by Plato, proceeds in all the dialectic ways, dividing, defining, demonstrating, and analysing; and the object of it consists in exploring truth alone.

Hence, in the dialogues composed of these persons, naturally arises the justly argumentative or demonstrative genius; and this, as we have before observed, according to all the dialectic methods.

Adj. reasoning &c v.; rationalistic; argumentative, controversial, dialectic, polemical; discursory^, discursive; disputatious; Aristotelian^, eristic^, eristical^. debatable, controvertible. logical; relevant &c 23.

Adj. lingual, linguistic; dialectic; vernacular, current; bilingual; diglot^, hexaglot^, polyglot; literary.

'That it did not quite achieve that, though much of the light it gave me still remains, I owe to R.M., who, with no dialectic, but with one bald question, and the reading of one poem, robbed me of my fairy palace of Oriental speculation in the twinkling of an eye.

The eternal nature of the Qoran was a dogma entirely alien to the strict monotheism of Islam: but this fact was never realised, any more than the fact that the acceptance of the dogma was a triumph for Graeco-Christian dialectic.

In our review of these dogmatic questions, we have met with a novel tendency, that to metaphysical speculation and dialectic.

This was Scholasticism, which was the natural and inevitable consequence of the study of Greek dialectic and philosophy.

These new discoveries were the attainments of Greece in the natural sciences and in logic: they extended the scope of dialectic and stimulated the rise of metaphysical theory: the latter, in combination with ecclesiastical dogma and Greek science, became such a system of thought as that expounded in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas.

For an ideal truth, having its own evidence in itself, can neither be proved nor disproved by any thing out of itself; whatever, then, impresses the mind as truth, is truth until it can be shown to be false; and consequently, in the converse, whatever can be brought into the sphere of the understanding, as a dialectic subject, is not an Idea.

Is it the Dialectic, the Speculative, or the Imaginative?

The five articles which Madison wrote over the signature "Helvidius" do not proceed farther into the subject than a preliminary examination of executive authority, in which he laid down principles of strict construction of the Constitution which have never been adopted in practice and which are now interesting only as specimens of dialectic subtlety.

" Surely we all know men of this kind, and the consternationcomparable only to that of M. Jourdain under the impromptu carte-and-tierce of his servant-maidwhich their sturdy if informal dialectic will often spread among many kinds of "learned societies."

DIALECTIC, in the Hegelian philosophy the logic of thought, and, if of thought, the logic of being, of essential being.

Harvey himself tried to point out the unlikelihood of his being guilty; but he was not a man gifted with dialectic qualities, and his harangue fell pointless on the understandings of the twelve common-place individuals who sat in the jury-box.