metaphorical conceptions of geometry and the other arts or sciences,
whichever is to be the name of them; and the latter conceptions you refuse
to make subjects of pure intellect, because they have no first principle,
although when resting on a first principle, they pass into the higher
sphere.' You understand me very well, I said. And now to those four
divisions of knowledge you may assign four corresponding faculties--pure
intelligence to the highest sphere; active intelligence to the second; to
the third, faith; to the fourth, the perception of shadows--and the
clearness of the several faculties will be in the same ratio as the truth
of the objects to which they are related...

Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philosopher. In
language which seems to reach beyond the horizon of that age and country,
he is described as 'the spectator of all time and all existence.' He has
the noblest gifts of nature, and makes the highest use of them. All his
desires are absorbed in the love of wisdom, which is the love of truth.
None of the graces of a beautiful soul are wanting in him; neither can he
fear death, or think much of human life. The ideal of modern times hardly
retains the simplicity of the antique; there is not the same originality
either in truth or error which characterized the Greeks. The philosopher
is no longer living in the unseen, nor is he sent by an oracle to convince
mankind of ignorance; nor does he regard knowledge as a system of ideas
leading upwards by regular stages to the idea of good. The eagerness of
the pursuit has abated; there is more division of labour and less of
comprehensive reflection upon nature and human life as a whole; more of
exact observation and less of anticipation and inspiration. Still, in the
altered conditions of knowledge, the parallel is not wholly lost; and there
may be a use in translating the conception of Plato into the language of
our own age. The philosopher in modern times is one who fixes his mind on
the laws of nature in their sequence and connexion, not on fragments or