Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time. He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high ideals. II.--SOCRATIC DIALECTIC. The highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by participating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the choice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands. And, for a beginning,--say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.[C] [Footnote C: "It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."] Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of metaphysic; "In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know thyself?'" _Alcibiades._ What meaning? what have you in your thoughts, Socrates, when you ask the question?