The idealism of Plato is founded upon this sentiment. He would maintain
that in some sense or other truth and right are alone to be sought, and
that all other goods are only desirable as means towards these. He is
thought to have erred in 'considering the agent only, and making no
reference to the happiness of others, as affected by him.' But the
happiness of others or of mankind, if regarded as an end, is really quite
as ideal and almost as paradoxical to the common understanding as Plato's
conception of happiness. For the greatest happiness of the greatest number
may mean also the greatest pain of the individual which will procure the
greatest pleasure of the greatest number. Ideas of utility, like those of
duty and right, may be pushed to unpleasant consequences. Nor can Plato in
the Gorgias be deemed purely self-regarding, considering that Socrates
expressly mentions the duty of imparting the truth when discovered to
others. Nor must we forget that the side of ethics which regards others is
by the ancients merged in politics. Both in Plato and Aristotle, as well
as in the Stoics, the social principle, though taking another form, is
really far more prominent than in most modern treatises on ethics.

The idealizing of suffering is one of the conceptions which have exercised
the greatest influence on mankind. Into the theological import of this, or
into the consideration of the errors to which the idea may have given rise,
we need not now enter. All will agree that the ideal of the Divine
Sufferer, whose words the world would not receive, the man of sorrows of
whom the Hebrew prophets spoke, has sunk deep into the heart of the human
race. It is a similar picture of suffering goodness which Plato desires to
pourtray, not without an allusion to the fate of his master Socrates. He
is convinced that, somehow or other, such an one must be happy in life or
after death. In the Republic, he endeavours to show that his happiness
would be assured here in a well-ordered state. But in the actual condition