| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 7842 |
| QUOTATION: | Coleridge observes that all men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. The latter feel that classes, orders, and genres are realities; the former, that they are generalizations. For the latter, language is nothing but an approximative set of symbols; for the former, it is the map of the universe. The Platonist knows that the universe is somehow a cosmos, an order; that order, for the Aristotelian, can be an error or a fiction of our partial knowledge. Across the latitudes and the epochs, the two immortal antagonists change their name and language: one is Parmenides, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Francis Bradley; the other, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Argentinian author. “The Nightingale of Keats,” Other Inquisitions, University of Texas Press (1964). |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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