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Such minds, crusted like Plato's Glaucus with the world, are yet pervious to appeals to the spirit that survives beneath the dry dust amid which they move; but only at rare intervals can they accompany the pure lyrist "singing as if he would never be old," and they are apt to turn with some impatience even from Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet and Macbeth.

Hence, as Plutarch says, when he speaks of Plato's dialogue on the Atlantic island: These preambles are superb gates and magnificent courts with which he purposely embellishes his great edifices, that nothing may be wanting to their beauty, and that all may be equally splendid.

There he explains that what he really meant was to set forth a principle recognised by Berkeley, Hume, Blackstone, and, especially, in Plato's Republic. Plato's treatise is a development of the principle that 'identity of interests affords the only security for good government. Without such identity of interest, said Plato, the guardians of the flock become wolves.

There is no way of getting the multitude to listen to Spinoza's Ethics or Plato's Dialectics but something is gained when a man of science like Dr.

And ease is no Athenian quality! It's Persian! Socrates was a stone-cutter, you know. And even in the real Athens, even that best Athens, the one in Plato's mind there was a whole class given over to doing the dirty work for the others.

Plato's moral standard of poetry is even better illustrated, perhaps, by the kind of poetry which he does not ban from his ideal commonwealth. "We must remain firm in our conviction," he says, "that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our state."

Plato's explanation, in the case of the poet, is simple enough: it is the direct inspiration of the divinity, the "god" takes possession of the poet. Perhaps this may be true, in a sense, and we shall revert to it later, but first let us look at some of the conditions for the exercise of the creative impulse, as contemporary theorists have endeavored to explain them.

When the company was broke up, he walked with his friends, as he used to do after supper, gave the necessary orders to the officers of the watch, and going into his chamber, he embraced his son and every one of his friends with more than usual warmth, which again renewed their suspicion of his design. Then laying himself down, he took into his hand Plato's dialogue concerning the soul.

To say nothing of Minos and Numa, both which ruled their foolish multitudes with fabulous inventions; with which kind of toys that great and powerful beast, the people, are led anyway. Again what city ever received Plato's or Aristotle's laws, or Socrates' precepts?

This hope is very like despair; but, such as it is, Plato's thought is always directed towards the city. No other form of social life ever tempts him away, and he anticipates no insuperable difficulty in keeping the city in the right path if once he can get it started right. The first step, the necessary revolution, is what makes the difficulty. And he sees only one way.