"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny," says Hitter, "that they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is the noble thought which inspired him to say, that God is the constant and immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be consummated. In his sublimer conception, he shows himself the worthy disciple of Socrates. His merit lies chiefly in having advanced certain distinct and precise rules for the Socratic method, and in insisting, with a perfect consciousness of its importance, upon the law of science, that to be able to descend from the higher to the lower ideas by a principle of the reason, and reciprocally from the multiplicity of the lower to the higher, is indispensable to the perfect possession of any knowledge. He thus imparted to this method a more liberal character. While he adopted many of the opinions of his predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the divine nature, an excellent road by which they may arrive at it." Plato is very much admired by the Germans, who look upon him as the incarnation of dialectical power; but it were to be hoped that, some day, these great metaphysicians may make a clearer exposition of his doctrines, and of his services to philosophy, than they have as yet done. To me, Ritter, Brandis, and all the great authorities, are obscure. But that Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world, there can be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that, as a dialectician, he has ever been surpassed; while his purity of life, and his lofty inquiries, and his belief in God and immortality, make him, in an ethical point of view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks what Kant was to the Germans, and these two great thinkers resemble each other in the structure of their minds and their relations to society.