relied on inductive reasoning, and on definitions, as the two principles of investigation. Definitions form the basis of all philosophy. To know a thing, you must know what it is not. Plato added a more efficient process of analysis and synthesis, of generalization and classification." [Footnote: Lewes, _Biog. Hist. of Philos_.] "Analysis," continues the same author, "as insisted on by Plato, is the decomposition of the whole into its separate parts--is seeing the _one_ in many. Definitions were to Plato, what general or abstract ideas were to later metaphysicians. The individual thing was transitory; the abstract idea was eternal. Only concerning the latter could philosophy occupy itself. Socrates, insisting on proper definitions, had no conception of the classification of those definitions which must constitute philosophy. Plato, by the introduction of this process, shifted philosophy from the ground of inquiries into man and society, which exclusively occupied Socrates, to that of dialectics." Plato was also distinguished for skill in composition. Dionysius of Halicarnassus classes him with Herodotus and Demosthenes in the perfection of his style, which is characterized by great harmony and rhythm, as well as the variety of elegant figures. [Footnote: See Donaldson's quotations, _Hist. Lit. of Greece_, vol. ii. p. 257.] [Sidenote: His doctrines.] [Sidenote: The end of science is the contemplation of truth.] Plato made philosophy to consist in the discussion of general terms, or abstract ideas. General terms were synonymous with real existences, and these were the only objects of philosophy. These were called _Ideas_; and ideas are the basis of his system, or rather the subject matter of dialectics. He was a Realist, that is, he maintained that every general term, or abstract idea, has a real and independent existence. Here he probably was indebted to Pythagoras, for Plato was a master of the whole realm of philosophical speculation; but his conception of _ideas_ is a great advance on the conception of _numbers_. He was taught by Socrates that beyond this world of sense, there was the world of eternal truth, and that there were certain principles concerning which there could be no dispute. The soul apprehends the idea of goodness, greatness, etc. It is in the celestial world that we are to find the realm of ideas. Now God is the supreme idea. To know God should be the great aim of life. We know him by the desire which like feels for like. The divinity within feels for the divinity revealed in beauty, or any other abstract idea. The longing of the soul for beauty is _Love_. Love then is the bond which unites the human to the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious outlines which appeal to the senses, but is _Truth_. It is divinity. Beauty, truth, love, these are God, the supreme desire of the soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of which the mortal soul sustains