"And beauty and goodness, also?"
"Surely."
"Did you ever see anything of the kind with your eyes?"
"Never," replied Simmias.
... "Then," continues Socrates, "whoever amongst us prepares, with the greatest caution and accuracy, to reflect upon that particular thing by itself upon which he is inquiring" and ... "using reflection alone, endeavors to investigate every reality by itself, ... abstaining as much as possible from the use of the eyes ... is not such an one, if any, likely to arrive at what really exists?"
"You speak, Socrates," answered Simmias, "with amazing truth."
It is curious to note in how many particulars this process of acquiring knowledge is opposed to that of the modern scientific man. Observe specially that Socrates wishes to investigate every reality by itself, while we, on the contrary, fly from nothing with so much vehemence as from an isolated fact; it maddens us until we can put it into relation with other facts, and delights us in proportion to the number of facts with which we can relate it. In that book of multitudinous suggestions which Novalis (Friedrich Von Hardenberg) calls The Pupil at Sais, one of the most modern sentences is that where, after describing many studies of his wondrous pupil, Novalis adds that "erelong he saw nothing alone."
Surely, one of the earliest and most delightful sensations one has in spiritual growth, after one has acquired the true synthetic habit which converts knowledge into wisdom, is that delicious, universal impulse which accompanies every new acquisition as it runs along like a warp across the woof of our existing acquisition, making a pleasant tang of contact, as it were, with each related fibre.
But Plato speaks even more directly upon our present point, in advocating a similar attitude towards physical science. In Book VII. of the Republic, he puts these words into the mouth of Socrates: "And whether a man gapes at the heavens, or blinks on the ground, seeking to learn some particular of sense, I would deny that he can learn, for nothing of that sort is matter of science."