Socrates, a man of humble stem, and a personal homeliness so remarkable as to be a cause of wit in others, was a cool fellow, with a knowledge of his man, be he whom he might whom he talked with, which laid the companion open to certain defeat in debate; and in debate he immoderately delighted. He was what in our country people call "an old one." This hard-headed humorist, whose drollery diverted the young patricians, turns out in the sequel to have a probity as invincible as his logic, and to be, under cover of this play, enthusiastic in his religion. When accused before the judges, he affirmed the immortality of the soul and a future reward and punishment, and, refusing to recant, was condemned to die; he entered the prison and took away all ignominy from the place. The fame of this prison, the fame of the discourses there, and the drinking of the hemlock, are one of the most precious passages in the history of the world. The rare coincidence in one ugly body of the droll and the martyr, the keen street debater with the sweetest saint known to any history at that time, had forcibly struck the mind of Plato, and the figure of Socrates placed itself in the foreground of the scene as the fittest dispenser of the intellectual treasures he had to communicate. It remains to say that the defect of Plato is that he is literary, and never otherwise. His writings have not the vital authority which the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. And he had not a system. The acutest German, the lovingest disciple could never tell what Platonism was. No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains. _Montaigne_ The philosophers affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. To men of this world the man of ideas appears out of his reason. The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between the two, the sceptic. He labours to be the beam of the balance. There is so much to say on all sides. This is the position occupied by Montaigne. In 1571, on the death of his father, he retired from the practice of the law, at Bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate. Downright and plain dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity. In the civil wars of the League, which converted every house into a fort, Montaigne kept his gates open, and his house without defence. All parties freely came and went, his courage and honor being universally esteemed.