ABSTRACT
‘And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will also understand me to speak of that knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of analysis [διαλεκτιλὴ], using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses—that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a region which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole; and holding to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, beginning and ending in ideas.’
