failings, silencing by his thunders and blinding by his lightnings the
orators of all ages. Yes, it would be easier to meet the
lightning-stroke with steady eye than to gaze unmoved when his
impassioned eloquence is sending out flash after flash.

[Footnote 1: _I.e._ Thucydides. See the passage of Dionysius quoted
in the Note.]


XXXV

But in the case of Plato and Lysias there is, as I said, a further
difference. Not only is Lysias vastly inferior to Plato in the degree of
his merits, but in their number as well; and at the same time he is as
far ahead of Plato in the number of his faults as he is behind in that
of his merits.

2
What truth, then, was it that was present to those mighty spirits of the
past, who, making whatever is greatest in writing their aim, thought it
beneath them to be exact in every detail? Among many others especially
this, that it was not in nature’s plan for us her chosen children to be
creatures base and ignoble,--no, she brought us into life, and into the
whole universe, as into some great field of contest, that we should be
at once spectators and ambitious rivals of her mighty deeds, and from
the first implanted in our souls an invincible yearning for all that is
great, all that is diviner than ourselves.

3
Therefore even the whole world is not wide enough for the soaring range