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Initiation into Philosophy by Émile Faguet
page 20 of 144 (13%)
and Deals with Politics and Legislation.


PLATO A DISCIPLE OF SOCRATES.--Plato, like Xenophon, was a pupil of
Socrates, but Xenophon only wanted to be the clerk of Socrates; and Plato,
as an enthusiastic disciple, was at the same time very faithful and very
unfaithful to Socrates. He was a faithful disciple to Socrates in never
failing to place morality in the foremost rank of all philosophical
considerations; in that he never varied. He was an unfaithful disciple to
Socrates in that, imaginative and an admirable poet, he bore back
philosophy from earth to heaven; he did not forbid himself--quite the
contrary--to pile up great systems about all things and to envelop the
universe in his vast and daring conceptions. He invincibly established
morality, the science of virtue, as the final goal of human knowledge, in
his brilliant and charming _Socratic Dialogues_; he formed great
systems in all the works in which he introduces himself as speaking in his
own name. He was very learned, and acquainted with everything that had been
written by all the philosophers before Socrates, particularly Heraclitus,
Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras. He reconsidered all their teaching,
and he himself brought to consideration a force and a wealth of mind such
as appear to have had no parallel in the world.

THE "IDEAS."--Seeking, in his turn, what are the first causes of all
and what is eternally real behind the simulations of this transient world,
he believed in a single God, as had many before him; but in the bosom of
this God, so to speak, he placed, he seemed to see, _Ideas_--that is
to say, eternal types of all things which in this world are variable,
transient, and perishable. What he effected by such novel, original, and
powerful imagination is clear. He replaced the Olympus of the populace by a
spiritual Olympus; the material mythology by an idealistic mythology;
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