Editing Xenocrates (section)

===Epistemology===
Xenocrates made a more definite division between the three departments of philosophy, than [[Speusippus]],<ref>Sextus Empiricus, ''adv. Math.'' vii. 16</ref> but at the same time abandoned Plato's heuristic method of conducting through doubts ({{transliteration|grc|aporiai}}), and adopted instead a mode of bringing forward his doctrines in which they were developed dogmatically.<ref>{{harvnb|Laërtius|1925|loc=§ 11, 16}}</ref>

Xenocrates recognized three grades of cognition, each appropriated to a region of its own: knowledge, sensation, and opinion. He referred knowledge ({{transliteration|grc|episteme}}) to that essence which is the object of pure thought, and is not included in the phenomenal world; sensation ({{transliteration|grc|aisthesis}}) to that which passes into the world of phenomena; opinion ({{transliteration|grc|doxa}}) to that essence which is at once the object of sensuous perception, and, mathematically, of pure reason - the essence of [[heaven]] or the [[star]]s; so that he conceived of {{transliteration|grc|doxa}} in a higher sense, and endeavored, more definitely than Plato, to exhibit mathematics as mediating between knowledge and sensuous perception.<ref>Sextus Empiricus, ''adv. Math.'' vii. 147, etc.</ref> 

All three modes of apprehension partake of truth; but in what manner scientific perception ({{transliteration|grc|epistemonike aisthesis}}) did so, we unfortunately do not learn. Even here Xenocrates's preference for symbolic modes of sensualising or denoting appears: he connected the above three stages of knowledge with the three [[Moirai|Fates]]: [[Atropos]], [[Clotho]], and [[Lachesis (mythology)|Lachesis]]. We know nothing further about the mode in which Xenocrates carried out his [[dialectic]], as it is probable that what was peculiar to [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] logic did not remain unnoticed in it, for it can hardly be doubted that the division of the existent into the absolutely existent, and the relatively existent,<ref>Simplicius, ''in Arist. Categ.'' iii. f. 6, b</ref> attributed to Xenocrates, was opposed to the Aristotelian table of [[Categories (Aristotle)|categories]].