[95] Xenophon, _Mem._, III., vii. We may incidentally notice that this passage is well worth the attention of those who look on the Athenian Dêmos as an idle and aristocratic body, supported by slave labour. [96] _Metaph._, XIII., iv. [97] _Mem._, I., iv. [98] ‘Il sait que, dans l’intérêt même du bien, il ne faut pas imposer le bien d’une manière trop absolue, le jeu libre de la liberté étant la condition de la vie humaine.... poursuite en toutes choses du bien public, non des applaudissements.’—Renan, _Marc-Aurèle_, pp. 18, 19. [99] _Il._, IX., 337. [100] _Ib._, XXI., 106. [101] In the preface to the _Data of Ethics_. [102] _Mem._, III., x. [103] Curtius, _Griechische Geschichte_, III., 526-30 (3rd ed.), where, however, the revolution in art is attributed to the influence of the Sophists. [104] Xenoph., _Oeconom._, iii., 12. [105] Mure, _History of Grecian Literature_, IV., 451. [106] _Mem._, III., xi. [107] _Oeconom._, vii., 4 ff. [108] _Mem._, II., i. [109] _Gesch. d. Ph._, II., 100 ff. [110] Written in the spring of 1880. The allusion is to Father Didon, who was at that time rusticated in Corsica. [111] _Ph. d. Gr._, II., a, 192. [112] In the _Apologia_, attributed to Xenophon. [113] _Hist. of Gr. Lit._, IV., App. A. CHAPTER IV. PLATO: HIS TEACHERS AND HIS TIMES. I. In studying the growth of philosophy as an historical evolution, repetitions and anticipations must necessarily be of frequent occurrence. Ideas meet us at every step which can only be appreciated when we trace out their later developments, or only understood when we refer them back to earlier and half-forgotten modes of thought. The speculative tissue is woven out of filaments so delicate and so complicated that it is almost impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. Even conceptions which seem to have been transmitted without alteration are constantly acquiring a new value according to the connexions into which they enter or the circumstances to which they are applied. But if the method of evolution, with its two great principles of continuity and relativity, substitutes a maze of intricate lines, often returning on themselves, for the straight path along which progress was once supposed to move, we are more than compensated by the new sense of coherence and rationality where illusion and extravagance once seemed to reign supreme. It teaches us that the dreams of a great intellect may be better worth our attention than the waking perceptions of ordinary men. Combining fragments of the old order with rudimentary outlines of the new, they lay open the secret laboratory of spiritual chemistry, and help to bridge over the interval separating the most widely contrasted phases of life and thought. Moreover, when we have once accustomed ourselves to break up past systems of philosophy into their component elements, when we see how heterogeneous and ill-cemented were the parts of this and that