[115] Krohn, _Der Platonische Staat_, Halle 1876. [I know this work only through Chiapelli, _Della Interpretazione panteistica di Platone_, Florence, 1881.] [116] III., 418. [117] _Phaedr._, p. 274 B ff. [118] See Zeller’s note on the θεία μοῖρα, _op. cit._ p. 497. [119] The _Charmides_, _Laches_, _Euthyphro_, and _Lysis_. [120] P. 49, A ff. Zeller, 142. [121] _Charmides_, 161 E; _Lysis_, 212 C. [122] _Pensieri_, lxxxiv and lxxxv. [123] _Repub._, 586, A. Jowett, III, p. 481. [124] Zeller, _op. cit._, 777-8. [125] _Repub._, VIII. and IX. [126] Xenophon, _Mem._, III., v., 18. [127] _Gorgias_, 515, C., ff. Jowett, II., 396-400. [128] _Theaetêtus_, 173, A. Jowett, IV., 322. [129] The lecture on Plato in _Representative Man_. [130] _Legg._ 819, D. Jowett, V., 390. [131] _Theaet._, 144. Jowett’s Transl. [132] This expression is borrowed from Prof. Bain. See the chapter on Association by Resemblance in _The Senses and the Intellect_. [133] _Legg._ 716, C. CHAPTER V. PLATO AS A REFORMER. I. In the last chapter we considered the philosophy of Plato chiefly under its critical and negative aspects. We saw how it was exclusively from that side that he at first apprehended and enlarged the dialectic of Socrates, how deeply his scepticism was coloured by the religious reaction of the age, and how he attempted, out of his master’s mouth, to overturn the positive teaching of the master himself. We saw how, in the _Protagoras_, he sketched a theory of ethics, which was no sooner completed than it became the starting-point of a still more extended and arduous enquiry. We followed the widening horizon of his speculations until they embraced the whole contemporary life of Hellas, and involved it in a common condemnation as either hopelessly corrupt, or containing within itself the seeds of corruption. We then saw how, by a farther generalisation, he was led to look for the sources of error in the laws of man’s sensuous nature and of the phenomenal world with which it holds communion; how, moreover, under the guidance of suggestions coming both from within and from without, he reverted to the earlier schools of Greek thought, and brought their results into parallelism with the main lines of Socratic dialectic. And finally, we watched him planting a firm foothold on the basis of mathematical demonstration; seeking in the very constitution of the soul itself for a derivation of the truths which sensuous experience could not impart, and winning back from a more profoundly reasoned religion the hope, the self-confidence, the assurance of perfect knowledge, which had been formerly surrendered in deference to the demands of a merely external and traditional faith. That God alone is wise, and by consequence alone good, might still remain a fixed principle with Plato; but it ceased to operate as a restraint on human aspiration when he had come to recognise an essential unity among all forms of conscious life, which,