but to all the world. In the Politicus the paradox is carried further; the
mind or will of the king is preferred to the written law; he is supposed to
be the Law personified, the ideal made Life.

Yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may be
compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox, that
'knowledge cannot be taught.' Socrates means to say, that what is truly
written is written in the soul, just as what is truly taught grows up in
the soul from within and is not forced upon it from without. When planted
in a congenial soil the little seed becomes a tree, and 'the birds of the
air build their nests in the branches.' There is an echo of this in the
prayer at the end of the Dialogue, 'Give me beauty in the inward soul, and
may the inward and outward man be at one.' We may further compare the
words of St. Paul, 'Written not on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables
of the heart;' and again, 'Ye are my epistles known and read of all men.'
There may be a use in writing as a preservative against the forgetfulness
of old age, but to live is higher far, to be ourselves the book, or the
epistle, the truth embodied in a person, the Word made flesh. Something
like this we may believe to have passed before Plato's mind when he
affirmed that speech was superior to writing. So in other ages, weary of
literature and criticism, of making many books, of writing articles in
reviews, some have desired to live more closely in communion with their
fellow-men, to speak heart to heart, to speak and act only, and not to
write, following the example of Socrates and of Christ...

Some other touches of inimitable grace and art and of the deepest wisdom
may be also noted; such as the prayer or 'collect' which has just been
cited, 'Give me beauty,' etc.; or 'the great name which belongs to God
alone;' or 'the saying of wiser men than ourselves that a man of sense
should try to please not his fellow-servants, but his good and noble