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Updated: June 22, 2025
Plato regarded it as a patriotic duty to accept the public faith although he full well knew the absurdities of that faith. Today, there are many Platos that hold to the same conviction. The freethinkers hold to the view of Xenophanes who denounced the public faith as an ancient blunder which had been converted by time into a national imposture.
We, for instance I, Claude Vignon; you, Blondet; you, Lousteau; and you, Finot we are all Platos, Aristides, and Catos, Plutarch's men, in short; we are all immaculate; we may wash our hands of all iniquity.
The Pythagorases and the Platos, in order to acquire some futile attainments, were obliged to crawl to the feet of the priests, to become initiated into their mysteries, to submit to the tests which they desired to impose upon them; it is at this cost that they were permitted to draw from the fountain-head their exalted ideas, so seducing still to all those who admire what is unintelligible.
The campos along the banks of the River Amazon are equal to six times the size of France; and there is one great plain which lies between the Sierra Ibiapaba and the River Tocantins which is 600 miles long by 400 miles broad. There are very few lakes in Brazil, and only one worth speaking of the Lagoa dos Platos which is 150 miles long.
Human nature is wofully inflexible and obstinate, and not all the Menus, Zoroasters, Solomons, and Platos have taught it wisdom; wherefore it is not surprising that a caustic wit and savage cynic asserts, "The vices, it may be said, await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time."
This government, the glory of the earth, has ever been the desire of the wise and good of all nations. For this, the Platos of Greece, the Catos of Rome, the Tells of Switzerland, the Sidneys of England, and the Washingtons of America, have sighed and reasoned, have fought and died.
".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the Montaignes and Addisons, can we rank Emerson. No man could see this clearer than Emerson himself. 'Alas, my friend, he writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to creative work, 'Alas, my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say.
As Bradford said, and his comment is full of wisdom: The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of propertie, and bringing in communitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser then God.
As mankind in general have an interest in my subject, I shall endeavour to use a language suitable to all nations; or rather, forgetting the circumstances of time and place in order to think of nothing but the men I speak to, I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens, repeating the lessons of my masters before the Platos and the Xenocrates of that famous seat of philosophy as my judges, and in presence of the whole human species as my audience.
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