Obviously this Platonic principle is vastly deeper and truer than anything we have had before. The personality at which both Stoic and Epicurean aimed was highly abstract,--something to be gained by getting away from the tangle and complexity of life rather than by conquering and transforming the conditions of existence into expressions of ourselves. Epicurus makes a few sallies from his cosey comfortable camp, to forage for provender. The Stoic draws into the citadel of his own self-sufficiency; and from this fortified position defies attack. Plato comes out into the open field, and squarely gives battle to the hosts of appetite, passion, temptation, and corruption, of which the world outside, and our hearts inside are full. In this he is true to the moral experience of the race: and his trumpet-call to the higher departments of our nature to enter the "great combat of righteousness"; his demand of instantaneous and absolute surrender which he presents to everything low and sensual within us, are clear, strong notes which it is good for every one of us to hear and heed. To him as to Carlyle, "Life is not a May-game, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green flowery spaces waited on by the choral muses and the rosy hours; it is a stern pilgrimage through the rough, burning sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men, loves men with inexpressible soft pity, as they _cannot_ love him; but his soul dwells in solitude, in the uttermost parts of creation. All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort. The stars, keen glancing, from the immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead, from the eternities. Deep calls for him unto deep. "Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of Heaven; to thee it may be momentous, to thee it may be life or death; to him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. He wants none of thy rewards; behold also he fears none of thy penalties. Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets and law-penalties restrain him. Thou canst not forward him; thou canst not hinder him. Thy penalties, thy poverties, neglects, contumelies,--behold all these are good for him. To this man death is not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest and awful, and beautiful and terrible as death."