and knowledge, and equally transcending the broader vision and the more penetrating insight of faith; for Christianity opens to philosophy a larger realm than it reveals, inasmuch as to the finite mind the unknown must always grow faster than the known. It is, therefore, only by philosophy that religion expands and exalts the souls under its nurture. Mere hard-and-fast dogma about the truths of religion is not to be despised; for though it has among those who never go beyond it not a few bigots, prigs, and hypocrites, it keeps many souls of limited capacity and culture loyal to duty, and furnishes the chart and compass for many a lifevoyage by the shoals and eddies of time into the clear waters of eternity. But the highest office, the noblest work, of Christianity is filled and wrought by the divine philosophy to which it opens a boundless range for reverent quest, for tentative theory, for adoring contemplation, in the God whose very self-revelations are selfhidings, in the Saviour, the mystery of whose divine humanity seems least penetrable to those who know Him most and love Him best, in the eternal life, whose possibilities of growth and strength, of duty and service, of attainment and fruition, tax and exceed the widest scope of fancy, the loftiest flight of hope and aspiration. I speak of this highest Christian type of philosophy in connection with Plato, because he no more truly lived when he was surrounded by pupils in the Academy than when, early in the seventeenth century, in the English University of Cambridge, he was again at the head of a school of disciples who saw in him the only valid interpreter of the Divine Word that had appeared before that "Word became flesh and dwelt among men." Of this school, not to mention lesser lights which, earlier or later, would not have been reckoned among the lesser, it may be enough to name Ralph Cudworth, whose treatise on the "Eternal and Immutable Morality" is still the feeding ground for ethical philosophers worthy of the name, and provided most abundantly the antidote, before the bane grew rife, for the morals of the utilitarian and positivist schools; Henry Moore, of whom it may be said more truly than of any other writer whom I know, that his philosophy is poetry, his poems divine philosophy, uniting even in single verses profound thought, ardent devotion, and imaginative power of the highest order; and John Smith, whose fame, had it not been smothered by his name, would have been fresh to-day, the only really great writer of the sixty-five John Smiths commemorated in Allibone's "Dictionary of Authors," whose "Dis courses" read as if the bees that alighted on his great master's lips had instilled the honey of Hymettus into his own heart and soul, as strong, too, as they are sweet, to borrow, in its genuine meaning, a figure of Holy Writ left unintelligible in our common version, "apples of gold in baskets of silver." - After this long, I trust not overlong preface, I will now give in brief what little is known or believed as to Plato's personal history. He was probably born in 428 B. C., the year in which Pericles died, in Athens, or, as some authorities say, in the neighboring island of Egina. His father and mother were said to be own cousins, a kindred from which, if not misreported, a birth with a robust bodily constitution as well as a great mind and soul is certainly exceptional. His father Ariston traced his descent from Codrus, king of Athens, who was a descendant in the fifth generation from Neleus, king of Pylos, who was said to be the son of Poseidon, — a genealogy in which the name of Codrus alone could have any interest for us, and not even his, when we consider that the story of his magnanimity and patriotism is semimythical, and that there were about twenty generations between him and Plato. It means much more to those who regard genius as a heritage, that Plato's mother, Perictione, though not descended from Solon, was a member of the family which in the preceding century had given birth to that philosopher, legislator, and statesman. Many of the greatest names of classic antiquity were given not in infancy by parents, but in more mature years by a public, smaller or larger, that assumed the office of godfather. Our philosopher in his childhood was Aristocles, so called for his grandfather. Plato is allied to the adjective #λarús, which means broad, and young Aristocles was called Plato, as the common tradition runs, on account of the breadth of his shoulders, or, as those say who prefer to find in the name of his boyhood the prophecy of his eminence, from the breadth of his intellect, as manifest in the fluent wealth of his utterance. Both of these endowments undoubtedly had their part in making his name illustrious; for no little breadth of back and shoulders was demanded for the fluent speech uttered and written from a fountain which the flow of fourscore years could not reduce below its summit-level. Retrospective myths are apt to form themselves about the infancy of men who attain preeminent honor; and it is by no means improbable that the story of the swarm of bees that rested on the infant philosopher's lips as he slept under a myrtle-tree was a posthumous invention. Yet I once knew of a similar event happening to twin brothers, who, though then promising little boys, and left unharmed by the bees, have not distinguished themselves in any way. Plato had in his youth what was then regarded as a liberal education, — a thorough gymnastic training, and instruction under the best masters in grammar, music, mathematics, the art of poetry, and the Pythagorean philosophy. In his boyhood he wrote tragedies, and tried his hand at lyric and epic poetry, with what success we know not; but he probably was not unwise in making a holocaust of his verse when he devoted himself to philosophy. Had his example in that respect been largely followed in more recent times, how many fair reputations might have been saved, which have been wrecked on the way from the press to the mill! Plato is said to have sought also in his youth the athletic honors of the Isthmian games; but his crown, if won, has left no record. paper His must have been a busy life, with brief rest or recreation, yet with no specific life-work in view, when, in his twenty-first year, his father placed him under the charge and tuition of Socrates, who is related on the previous night to have dreamed that he held in his bosom a young swan, who, when his feathers were grown, spread his wings, and rose with a bold flight and a song of surpassing sweetness into the upper heavens, a dream which on the succeeding day he regarded as verified in his new pupil. For the ensuing nine years Plato was constantly with Socrates, listening earnestly to his teaching, beholding with unceasing admiration the simplicity, integrity, and beneficence of his daily conduct, and drinking in the hope full of immortality which made the last hours of the sage seem not death, but the passing into life. It was probably before this time that Plato had served as a soldier, as he is reported to have done in three campaigns. We have no details of his military service, which must have been for short periods, and probably not of his own choice, but by conscription, to which every citizen between the ages of eighteen and sixty was liable. As a friend of Socrates, Plato may have been in danger, and this is assigned as his reason for going to Megara, with his fellow-disciple from that city, Eucleides or Euclid, not the mathematician, but the founder of a school of philosophy that took its name from his and its birthplace. It must have been about this time that Plato visited Magna Græcia in Italy, where the Pythagorean philosophy still had its seat, and Egypt, revered less for what it then was than as the fountain of knowledge, science, and philosophy whence Greece had first filled her springs. He is said, also, though on insufficient authority, to have traveled in Palestine, Persia, and Babylonia in quest of knowledge. There are, however, few traces of his travels in his writings; for the fruits thus gathered in various climates were not so much garnered for later use, as digested and assimilated. After his more distant journeys, Plato went to Sicily, where he was received at first with favor by the elder Dionysius, and is reported to have made a strong, though brief impression on him in behalf of human freedom and merciful government. But the monarch soon quarreled with him. When on one occasion Dionysius quoted to him verses which may be rendered, — "At tyrants' courts the man who enters free Is all the same as were he born a slave," "At tyrants' courts the man who enters free, About Plato's return from Sicily a story is told in so many different forms that it must contain a kernel of fact, namely, that Dionysius sent him home in the same vessel with the Lacedæmonian ambassador Pollis, who promised to sell him as a slave. He was so sold in Ægina, and was bought by a Cyrenian, who at once emancipated him and sent him to Athens. Dionysius, affecting innocence of the plot of which Plato was the victim, wrote to him, begging him to say no ill of him to his pupils and hearers in the Academy, and Plato replied: "We are so busy in the Academy that we have no time to talk about Dionysius.” On his return, Plato, being now forty years of age, began to teach philosophy, principally in a gymnasium that had been the property of one Academus, whence the name, applied to several successive schools of philosophy that professed a more or less close allegiance to Plato as founder and head, and in these later centuries to a wide diversity of institutions of science and learning. He taught gratuitously, and in great part, in the way which had the sanction of Socrates, that of vivid and earnest dialogue or conversation, though on the more abstruse subjects it would appear that he delivered continuous lectures. It was after an interval of more than twenty years that Plato revisited Sicily. The younger Dionysius had succeeded his formed tastes and Dion, his near kins father, who had kept him in retirement, almost in confinement, in which condition he had acquired a love for philosophy and for liberal studies, and at the same time had habits at once luxurious and grossly vicious. man and, as long as he was permitted to be so, his good genins, persuaded him to send for Plato, hoping by his aid to reform both the tyrant and the state. Dionysius received Plato with such honors as would have been rendered to royalty, and held a public religious festival, with sacrifices to the gods in gratitude for his advent. Plato at the outset induced the tyrant to dismiss the ten thousand foreigners who had been his guard, and to bring his army and navy down to a reasonable peace-standard, also to lighten many of the burdens that had been laid upon the people by his father, and to establish equity in the administration of the law. But corrupt courtiers soon regained their influence, and though the tyrant professed the utmost reverence and affection for his guest, and was unwilling to part with him, Plato insisted on taking his leave, refusing splendid parting gifts, and accepting only a few books, probably the works of some of the renowned Syracusan physicists and philosophers, which in those slow days had not yet reached Athens. On his way home Plato took a route by Olympia, to attend the games, and there a story is told of him, probably the oldest of its kind, the like of which has been told of not a few eminent men since. He met at Olympia several distinguished strangers, sat or reclined at the same table with them, spent whole days with them, and they liked him so well that they begged him to be their companion on their journey to Athens, where he secured lodgings for them. On their arrival their first inquiry was where they should find the great philosopher whose fame had been foremost among their reasons for this journey. Plato then, in the common phrase, made himself known to them, which, in fact, was precisely what he had been doing at Olympia and on the road. Several years later Plato went to Sicily for the third time. His friend Dion had been banished, and had been living in retirement with him in Athens, but had every possible reason to desire restoration to his native soil. Dionysius wrote to Plato, urging him to revisit Sicily, promising to do all that he could wish for Dion, and threatening, in case of his refusal, to confiscate Dion's property, and to take such measures as would render his return impossible. The philosopher was received by the tyrant with every demonstration of gladness; but the promises that had been made |