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'
(Symp.) 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.

The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice, the nature of
which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and blameless old man--then
discussed on the basis of proverbial morality by Socrates and Polemarchus--
then caricatured by Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates--
reduced to an abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become
invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal State which is
constructed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers is to be education,
of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenic model, providing only
for an improved religion and morality, and more simplicity in music and
gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry, and greater harmony of the
individual and the State. We are thus led on to the conception of a higher
State, in which 'no man calls anything his own,' and in which there is
neither 'marrying nor giving in marriage,' and 'kings are philosophers' and