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Updated: May 21, 2025
So far from regretting his fate he rather congratulated himself that he would escape the decadence that attends upon old age; and he had, if we may trust Plato, a fair and confident assurance that a happy life awaited him beyond. He died, according to the merciful law of Athens, by drinking hemlock; "the wisest and justest and best," in Plato's judgment, "of all the men that I have ever known."
In Plato's Republic all the material goods are contemptuously thrown to the lower classes, all the mental and spiritual reserved for the higher. In Aristotle's ideal the bulk of the population are mere conditions, not integral parts of the state.
The "Chalcedonian giant," Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to Plato's conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus.
Intellectually, the average man may still be inferior to Plato, though even Plato did not understand the need for exact thought as modern philosophers do, but civilisation as a whole has produced a higher level of intellectual attainment than had been reached by Plato's world.
The high moral tone of Plato's conversation did not however prove so attractive to Dionysius as it had done to Dion; and the philosopher was not only dismissed with aversion and dislike, but even, it seems through the machinations of Dionysius, seized, bound, and sold for a slave in the island of AEgina. He was, however, repurchased by Anniceris of Cyrene, and sent back to Athens.
It was Proclus whom he was really reviling; Proclus as Plato's commentator and representative. The lion had for once got into the ass's skin, and was treated accordingly.
It will be well, therefore, to avoid hasty judgements on this point. It is at any rate easy to understand how the study of mathematics came to hold the preponderating place it did in the Platonic Academy. In accordance with the plan of this paper, something must now be said of Plato's attitude to the practical life, a point on which it is very easy to make mistakes.
Plato's political disillusionment and perversity are easy to understand. But it is curious and interesting to watch the clash between his political bitterness and his intellectual serenity.
And I come back to that sketch and idea of Plato's which I mentioned before; and although we do not see it, yet we can comprehend it in our mind.
Oftentimes have I heard Michelangelo discoursing and expounding on the theme of love, and have afterwards gathered from those who were present upon these occasions that he spoke precisely as Plato wrote, and as we may read in Plato's works upon this subject.
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