quoted on both sides of every great question from him.

These things we are forced to say, if we must consider the effort of
Plato, or of any philosopher, to dispose of Nature,--which will not
be disposed of. No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success
in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains. But there is an
injustice in assuming this ambition for Plato. Let us not seem to treat
with flippancy his venerable name. Men, in proportion to their
intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims. The way to know him,
is to compare him, not with nature, but with other men. How many ages
have gone by, and he remains unapproached! A chief structure of human
wit, like Karnac, or the mediaeval cathedrals, or the Etrurian remains,
it requires all the breadth of human faculty to know it. I think it
is truliest seen, when seen with the most respect. His sense deepens,
his merits multiply, with study. When we say, here is a fine collection
of fables; or, when we praise the style; or the common sense; or
arithmetic; we speak as boys, and much of our impatient criticism of
the dialectic, I suspect, is no better. The criticism is like our
impatience of miles when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that
a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards. The great-eyed
Plato proportioned the lights and shades after the genius of our life.



PLATO: NEW READINGS


The publication, in Mr. Bohn's "Serial Library," of the excellent
translations of Plato, which we esteem one of the chief benefits the
cheap press has yielded, gives us an occasion to take hastily a few