Weakness

Everything in the world is weak in some way. The great fear of mankind is that weaknesses will be exploited and give the advantage to hostile competitors. One can let this fear become part of them, or they can address their weaknesses and make them strong.

The difference between strengthening weakness and exploiting weakness, though, is the same as the difference between exercising the muscles in your arm and cutting each living muscle apart until it no longer functions, losing so much blood that it dies. 

A person who takes ideas apart until they are no longer useful, because they haven't been applied but dissected, is at fault for killing that idea, and it takes a fool's logic to conclude the idea must have been false because of its ability to be taken apart as thoroughly as it was. Like the wounds or frailty of living flesh, the weaknesses of living ideas can be and are to be strengthened and healed. Inversely, ideas non-living can't and won't strengthen or heal.

Therefore, you will not know the living works of an idea until you exercise its weakest points. Even if that idea turns out to be non-living, it just might become strong enough to safely hold the precious truths you find along the way until they come alive on their own.