friend, who denies abstract beauty and justice, and affirms a many
beautiful and a many just, whether everything he sees is not in some point
of view different--the beautiful ugly, the pious impious, the just unjust?
Is not the double also the half, and are not heavy and light relative terms
which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the old
riddle--'A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird
with a stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either
alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted
objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and
not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are
the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the world of sense,
and has only this uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but
a lover of opinion only...

The fifth book is the new beginning of the Republic, in which the community
of property and of family are first maintained, and the transition is made
to the kingdom of philosophers. For both of these Plato, after his manner,
has been preparing in some chance words of Book IV, which fall unperceived
on the reader's mind, as they are supposed at first to have fallen on the
ear of Glaucon and Adeimantus. The 'paradoxes,' as Morgenstern terms them,
of this book of the Republic will be reserved for another place; a few
remarks on the style, and some explanations of difficulties, may be briefly
added.

First, there is the image of the waves, which serves for a sort of scheme
or plan of the book. The first wave, the second wave, the third and
greatest wave come rolling in, and we hear the roar of them. All that can
be said of the extravagance of Plato's proposals is anticipated by himself.
Nothing is more admirable than the hesitation with which he proposes the
solemn text, 'Until kings are philosophers,' etc.; or the reaction from the