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THREE:To illustrate the relation in which Plato stood towards his own times, we have already had occasion to draw largely on the productions of his maturer manhood. We have now to take up the broken thread of our systematic exposition, and to trace the development of his philosophy through that wonderful series of compositions which entitle him to rank among the greatest writers, the most comprehensive thinkers, and the purest religious teachers of all ages. In the presence of such glory a mere divergence of opinion must not be permitted to influence our judgment. High above all particular truths stands the principle that truth itself exists, and it was for this that Plato fought. If there were others more completely emancipated from superstition, none so persistently appealed to the logic before which superstition must ultimately vanish. If his schemes for the reconstruction of society ignore many obvious facts, they assert with unrivalled force the necessary supremacy of public welfare over private pleasure; and their avowed utilitarianism offers a common ground to the rival reformers who will have nothing to do with the mysticism of their metaphysical foundation. Those, again, who hold, like the youthful Plato himself, that the203 ultimate interpretation of existence belongs to a science transcending human reason, will here find the doctrines of their religion anticipated as in a dream. And even those who, standing aloof both from theology and philosophy, live, as they imagine, for beauty alone, will observe with interest how the spirit of Greek art survived in the denunciation of its idolatry, and ‘the light that never was on sea or land,’ after fading away from the lower levels of Athenian fancy, came once more to suffuse the frozen steeps of dialectic with its latest and divinest rays.

THREE:“This letter starts off as if you were old friends,” Sandy had to admit.

THREE:"On no account let Countess leave house before midnight," it ran. "When she gets home keep her there till after twelve, at all costs."

THREE:Major and Commanding Officer."

THREE:Leona Lalage looked round her helplessly for the first time in her life. Maitrank stood there grinning like a hideous mask enjoying her confusion. He had come to enjoy this where a more sensitive man would have stayed away. Revenge to him was nothing unless he could feast his eyes upon it.If the soul served to connect the eternal realities with the fleeting appearances by which they were at once darkened, relieved, and shadowed forth, it was also a bond of union between the speculative and the practical philosophy of Plato; and in discussing his psychology we have already passed from the one to the other. The transition will become still easier if we remember that the question, ‘What is knowledge?’ was, according to our view, originally suggested by a theory reducing ethical science to a hedonistic calculus, and that along with it would arise another question, ‘What is pleasure?’ This latter enquiry, though incidentally touched on elsewhere, is not fully dealt with in any Dialogue except the Philêbus, which we agree with Prof. Jowett in referring to a very late period of Platonic authorship. But the line of argument which it pursues had probably been long familiar to our philosopher. At any rate, the Phaedo, the Republic, and perhaps the Gorgias, assume, as already proved, that pleasure is not the highest good. The question is one on which thinkers are still divided. It seems, indeed, to lie outside the range of reason, and the disputants are accordingly obliged to invoke the authority either of individual consciousness or of common consent on behalf of their respective opinions. We have, however, got so far beyond the ancients that the doctrine of egoistic hedonism has been abandoned by almost everybody. The substitution of another’s pleasure for our own as the object of pursuit was not a conception which presented itself to any Greek moralist,226 although the principle of self-sacrifice was maintained by some of them, and especially by Plato, to its fullest extent. Pleasure-seeking being inseparably associated with selfishness, the latter was best attacked through the former, and if Plato’s logic does not commend itself to our understanding, we must admit that it was employed in defence of a noble cause.