“As our Jewish Bible has implanted itself in the table talk and household life of every man and woman in the European and American nations, so the writings of Plato have preoccupied _every school of learning, every lover of thought, every church, every poet_,—making it impossible to think, _on certain levels, except through him_. He stands between the truth and every man’s mind, and has almost impressed language and the primary forms of thought with his name and seal.... Here is the germ of that Europe we know so well, in its long history of arts and arms; here are all its traits, already discernible in the mind of Plato.... How Plato came thus to be Europe, and philosophy, and almost literature, is the problem for us to solve.”[38] One ceases to wonder that, surrounded as was the Corinthian church by _this philosophy_ and in daily touch with these ideas which have swayed the world, Paul wrote to it against accepting the philosophy of men in place of that divine philosophy which he and other apostles were preaching through the cross of Christ. “When I came to you, brethren,” writes the apostle, “I came not proclaiming the testimony of God with _grand reasoning or philosophies_, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and He was crucified.... And my thought and my statement was not clothed in captivating _philosophical reasons_; but, in demonstrated spirit and power, so _that your trust might not be in human philosophy_, but in Divine power.”[39] “Beware lest any man spoil you _through philosophy_ and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements [margin] of the world, and not after Christ.”[40] [Sidenote: Evolution the basis of Platonism.] Seeing, then, that the Platonic system of education has exerted, and is still exerting, such an influence over the minds of men, it behooves us to ascertain the basic principles of his system. What did the man believe, and what did he teach? Quotations have already been given showing that he is the father of _modern philosophy_. Emerson defines this philosophy. He says: “_Philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world._” All attempts, then, to account for the constitution of the world when a “thus saith the Lord,” is refused, is philosophy. And philosophy is Plato.