The circle that gathered round Isaiah and his household in these evil days, holding themselves apart from their countrymen, treasuring the word of revelation, and waiting for Jehovah, were indeed, as Isaiah describes them, "signs and tokens in Israel from Jehovah of hosts that dwelleth in Mount Zion." The formation of this little community was a new thing in the history of religion. Till then no one had dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all national forms, maintained without the exercise of ritual services, bound together by faith in the divine word alone. It was the birth of a new era in the Old Testament religion, for it was the birth of the conception of the _Church_, the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion from the forms of political life,--a step not less significant that all its consequences were not seen till centuries had passed away.--W. Robertson Smith, _Prophets of Israel_. Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.--Lowell. That which is to be known I shall declare, knowing which a man attains immortality--the beginningless Supreme Brahma that is said to be neither Aught nor Naught.--_Bhagavad Gîtâ._ The only Metaphysics which really and immediately sustains Ethics is one which is itself primarily ethical, and made of the staff of Ethics.--Schopenhauer. In answer to the burning question, How can Athens be brought back to moral life and strength? Socrates had answered, "By finding a new moral sanction." He had even gone further, and said: "This sanction is to be found in correct thinking, in thinking whole thoughts, which, because they are whole, are absolutely true, being the very principles according to which God governs the world." This is, obviously, a mere formal answer. If it was to be of any real service, three further questions had to be answered: (1) How can whole thoughts be reached? (2) What do they prove to be when they are reached? (3) How can they be applied to the moral reorganization of human life? Plato's philosophy is but an attempt to answer these questions. It therefore naturally falls into three divisions, (1) _Dialectics_, including Logic and Theory of Knowledge, (2) _Theoretics_, including Metaphysics and Physics, (3) _Practics_, including Ethics and Politics.