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The great defect in the ancient Indian and medieval European writers on mysticism is that they failed to put their thoughts into the logical form of a scientific demonstration. They did not reason the matter out as the modern mind does, but began by taking a scriptural text and ended by writing a verse-by-verse commentary on that. And as scriptures themselves usually began and ended with a dogma, the modern reader does not know whether he is being led to truth or to its opposite. Philosophy fails if it fails to produce in us the powerful conviction that we are moving from fact to fact along a path of rigorous reasoned truth.

-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 2 : Its Contemporary Influence > # 269