Again, Plato may be regarded as the "captain" ('arhchegoz') or leader
of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be found the
original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City of God, of
the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary
States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to which
Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
Politics has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more
necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle.
In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced, not only in
the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers
like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a
truth higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been
enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek
authors who at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato
has had the greatest influence. 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 second-hand" 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.
ARGUMENT