bears witness to itself, must ultimately prevail in the affairs of men. The idea of the good must take the place of the old mythology. Wisdom is virtue. The people are enemies of the truth and hate philosophy largely because they have never known “a human being who in word and work is perfectly moulded as far as he can be into the likeness of virtue--such a man ruling a city which bears the same image.” Of existing states, “not one of them is worthy of the philosophic nature.” “But no one is satisfied with the appearance of good,--the reality is what they seek; in the case of good, appearance is despised by everyone.” “Of this then, which every soul of man pursues and makes the end of all his actions, having a presentiment that there is such an end and yet hesitating because neither knowing the nature nor having the same assurance of this as of other things, and therefore losing whatever good there is in other things--of a principle such and so great as this ought the best men in our State, to whom everything is entrusted, to be in the darkness of ignorance?” Thus Plato’s greatest dialogue, “The Republic,” interweaves the speculative with the practical; it is at once a treatise on reality and appearance, an inquiry into the nature of the good, an elaboration of the abstract principle of justice into the constitution of an ideal aristocratic republic, and a philosophy of education. Jowett, in his introduction to the third edition to the English translation of this dialogue, says, “The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his words when ‘repeated at secondhand’ (Symp. 215 D) have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been anticipated in a dream by him.”