They proceed to the house of Callias, where they find Protagoras surrounded by strangers from every city who listened spell-bound to his voice.

Protagoras readily promises that Hippocrates would be taught his system which offers "good counsel about his private affairs and power to transact and discuss political matters". Socrates' belief that politics cannot be taught provokes one of the long speeches to which Plato strongly objected because a fundamental fallacy could not be refuted at the outset, vitiating the whole of the subsequent argument. Protagoras recounted a myth, proving that shame and justice were given to every man; these are the basis of politics. Further, cities punish criminals, implying that men can learn politics, while virtue is taught by parents and tutors and the State. Socrates asks whether virtue is one or many. Protagoras replies that there are five main virtues, knowledge, justice, courage, temperance and piety, all distinct. A long rambling speech causes Socrates to protest; his method is the short one of question and answer. By using some very questionable reasoning he proves that all these five virtues are identical. Accordingly, if virtue is one it can be taught, not however, by a sophist or the State, but by a philosopher, for virtue is knowledge.

This conclusion is thoroughly in harmony with Socrates' system. Yet it is probably false. Virtue is not mere knowledge, nor vice ignorance. If they were, they would be intellectual qualities. They are rather moral attributes; experience soon proves that many enlightened persons are vicious and many ignorant people virtuous. The value of this dialogue is its insistence upon the unity of virtue. A good man is not a bundle of separate excellences; he is a whole. Possessing one virtue he potentially has them all.

The Gorgias is a refutation of three distinct and popular notions. Gorgias of Leontini used to invite young men to ask him questions, none of whom ever put to him a query absolutely new. It soon appears that he is quite unable to define Rhetoric, the art by which he lived. Socrates said it was a minister of persuasion, that it in the long run concerned itself with mere Opinion, which might be true or false, and could not claim scientific Knowledge. Further, it implied some morality in its devotees, for it dealt with what was just or unjust. Polus, a young and ardent sophist, was compelled to assent to two very famous doctrines, first that it is worse to do evil than to experience it, second, that to avoid punishment was the worst thing for an offender. But a more formidable adversary remained, one Callicles, the most shameless and unscrupulous figure perhaps in Plato's work. His creed is a flat denial of all authority, moral or intellectual. It teaches that Law is not natural, but conventional; that only a slave puts up with a wrong, and only weak men seek legal protection. Philosophy is fit only for youths, for philosophers are not men of the world. Natural life is unlimited self-indulgence and public opinion is the creation of those who are too poor to give rein to their appetites; the good is pleasure and infinite self-satisfaction is the ideal. Socrates in reply points out the difference between the kinds of pleasures, insists on the importance of Scientific knowledge of everything, and proves that order is requisite everywhere—its visible effects in the soul being Justice and Wisdom, not Riot. To prevent injustice some art is needed to make the subject as like as possible to the ruler; the type of life a man leads is far more important than length of days. The demagogue who like Callicles has no credentials makes the people morally worse, especially as they are unable to distinguish quacks from wise men. Nor need philosophers trouble much about men's opinions, for a mob always blames the physician who wishes to save it. A delightful piece of irony follows, in which Socrates twits Callicles for accusing his pupils of acting with injustice, the very quality he instils into them. Callicles, though refuted, advises Socrates to fawn on the city, for he is certain to be condemned sooner or later; the latter, however, does not fear death after living righteously.

Most men have held doctrines similar to those refuted here. There is an idea abroad that what is "natural" must be intrinsically good, if not godlike. But it is quite clear that "Nature" is a vague term meaning little or nothing—it is higher or lower and natural in both forms. Those who wish to know the lengths of impudence to which belief in the sacredness of "Nature" can bring human beings might do worse than read the Gorgias.

Plato's dramatic power and fertility of invention are displayed fully in the Symposium. Agathon had won the tragic prize and invited many friends to a wine-party. After a slight introduction a proposition was carried that all should speak in praise of Love. First a youth Phaedrus describes the antiquity of love and gives instances of the attachments between the sexes. Pausanias draws the famous distinction between the Heavenly and the Vulgar Aphrodite; the true test of love is its permanence. A doctor, Eryximachus, raises the tone of the discussion still further. To him Love is the foundation of Medicine, Music, Astronomy and Augury. Aristophanes tells a fable of the sexes in true comic style, making each of them run about seeking its other half. Agathon colours his account with a touch of tragic diction. At last it is Socrates' turn. He tells what he heard from a priestess called Diotima. Love is the son of Fulness and Want; he is the intermediary between gods and men, is active, not passive; he is desire for continuous possession of excellent things and for beautiful creation which means immortality, for all men desire perpetual fame which can come only through the science of the Beautiful. In contemplation and mystical union with the Divine the soul finds its true destiny, satisfying itself in perfect love.

At this moment Alcibiades arrives from another feast in a state of high intoxication. He gives a most marvellous account of Socrates' influence over him and likens him in a famous passage to an ugly little statue which when opened is all gold within. At the end of the dialogue one of the company tells how Socrates compelled Aristophanes and Agathon to admit that it was one and the same man's business to understand and write both tragedy and comedy—a doctrine which has been practised only in modern drama.

In this dialogue we first seem to catch the voice of Plato himself as distinct from that of Socrates. The latter was undoubtedly most keenly interested in the more human process of questioning and refuting, his object being the workmanlike creation of exact definitions. But Plato was of a different mould; his was the soaring spirit which felt its true home to be the supra-sensible world of Divine Beauty, Immortality, Absolute Truth and Existence. Starting with the fleshly conception of Love natural to a young man, he leads us step by step towards the great conclusion that Love is nothing less than an identification of the self with the thing loved. No man can do his work if he is not interested in it; he will hate it as his taskmaster. But when an object of pursuit enthrals him it will intoxicate him, will not leave him at peace till he joins his very soul with it in union indissoluble. This direct communication of Mind with the object of worship is Mysticism. It is the very core of the highest form of religious life; it purifies, ennobles, and above all it inspires. To the mystic the great prophet is the Athenian Plato, whose doctrine is that of the Christian "God is love" converted into "Love is God". It is not entirely fanciful to suggest that Plato, in saying farewell to the definitely Socratic type of philosophy, gave his master as his parting gift the greatest of ail tributes, a dialogue which is really the "praise of Socrates".

The intoxication of Plato's thought is evident in the Phaedrus. This splendid dialogue marks even more clearly the character of the new wine which was to be poured into the Socratic bottles. Phaedrus and Socrates recline in a spot of romantic beauty along the bank of the Ilissus. Phaedrus reads a paradoxical speech supposed to be written by Lysias, the famous orator, on Love; Socrates replies in a speech quite as unreal, praising as Lysias did him who does not love. But soon he recants—his real creed being the opposite. Frenzy is his subject—the ecstasy of prophecy, mysticism, poetry and the soul. This last is like a charioteer driving a pair of horses, one white, the other black. It soars upwards to the region of pure beauty, wisdom and goodness; but sometimes the white horse, the spirited quality of human nature, is pulled down by the black, which is sensual desire, so that the charioteer, Reason, cannot get a full vision of the ideal world beyond all heavens. Those souls which have partially seen the truth but have been dragged down by the black steed become, according to the amount of Beauty they have seen, philosophers, kings, economists, gymnasts, mystics, poets, journeymen, sophists or tyrants. The vision once seen is never quite forgotten, for it can be recovered by reminiscence, so that by exercise each man can recall some of its glories.

The dialogue then passes to a discussion of good and bad writing and speaking. The truth is the sole criterion of value, and this can be obtained only by definition; next there must be orderly arrangement, a beginning, a middle and an end. In rhetoric it is absolutely essential for a man to study human nature first; he cannot hope to persuade an audience if he is unaware of the laws of its psychology; not all speeches suit all audiences. Further, writing is inferior to speaking, for the written word is lifeless, the spoken is living and its author can be interrogated. It follows then that orators are of all men the most important because of the power they wield; they will be potent for destruction unless they love the truth and understand human nature; in short, they must be philosophers.

The like of this had nowhere been said before. It opened a new world to human speculation. First, the teaching about oratory is of the highest value. Plato's quarrel with the sophists was based on their total ignorance of the enormous power they exercised for evil, because they knew not what they were doing. They professed to teach men how to speak well, but had no conception of the science upon which the art of oratory rests. In short, they were sheer impostors. Even Aristotle had nothing to add to this doctrine in his treatise on Rhetoric, which contains a study of the effects which certain oratorical devices could be prophesied to produce, and provides the requisite scientific foundation. Again, the indifference to or the ridicule of truth shown by some sophists made them odious to Plato. He would have none of their doctrines of relativity or flux. Nothing short of the Absolute would satisfy his soaring spirit. He was sick of the change in phenomena, the tangible and material objects of sense. He found permanence in a world of eternal ideas. These ideas are the essence of Platonism. They are his term for universal concepts, classes; there are single tangible trees innumerable, but one Ideal Tree only in the Ideal world beyond the heavens. Nothing can possibly satisfy the soul but these unchanging and permanent concepts; it is among them that it finds its true home. Lastly, the tripartite division of the nature of the soul here first indicated is a permanent contribution to philosophy. Thus Plato's system is definitely launched in the Phaedrus. His subsequent dialogues show how he fitted out the hulk to sail on his voyages of discovery.

The Meno is a rediscussion on Platonic principles of the problem of the Protagoras: can virtue be taught? Meno, a general in the army of the famous Ten Thousand, attempts a definition of virtue itself, the principle that underlies specific kinds of virtues such as justice. After a cross-examination he confesses his helplessness in a famous simile: Socrates is like the torpedo-fish which benumbs all who touch it. Then the real business begins. How do we learn anything at all? Socrates says by Reminiscence, for the soul lived once in the presence of the ideal world; when it enters the flesh it loses its knowledge, but gradually regains it. This theory he dramatically illustrates by calling in a slave whom he proves by means of a diagram to know something of geometry, though he never learned it. Thus the great lesson of life is to practise the search for knowledge—and if virtue is knowledge it will be teachable.

But the puzzle is, who are the teachers? Not the sophists, a discredited class, nor the statesmen, who cannot teach their sons to follow them. Virtue then, not being teachable, is probably not the result of knowledge, but is imparted to men by a Divine Dispensation, just as poetry is. But the origin of virtue will always be mysterious till its nature is discovered beyond doubt. So Plato once more declares his dissatisfaction with a Socratic tenet which identified virtue with knowledge.

The Phaedo describes Socrates' discussion of the immortality of the soul on his last day on earth. Reminiscence of Ideas proves pre-existence, as in the Meno; the Ideas are similarly used to prove a continued existence after death, for the soul has in it an immortal principle which is the exact contrary of mortality; the Idea of Death cannot exist in a thing whose central Idea is life. Such in brief is Socrates' proof. To us it is singularly unconvincing, as it looks like a begging of the whole question. Yet Plato argues in his technical language as most men do concerning this all-important and difficult question. That which contains within itself the notion of immortality would seem to be too noble to have been created merely to die. The very presence of a desire to realise eternal truth is a strong presumption that there must be something to correspond with it. The most interesting portion of this well-known dialogue is that which teaches that life is really an exercise for death. All the base and low desires which haunt us should be gradually eliminated and replaced by a longing for better things. The true philosopher at any rate so trains himself that when his hour comes he greets death with a smile, the life on earth having lost its attractions.

Such is the connection between the Meno and the Phaedo; the life that was before and the life that shall be hereafter depend upon the Ideal world. That salvation is in this life and in the practical sphere of human government is possible only through a knowledge of these Ideas is the doctrine of the immortal Republic. This great work in ten books is well known, but its unique value is not always recognised. It starts with a discussion of Justice. Thrasymachus, a brazen fellow like Callicles in the Gorgias, argues that Justice is the interest of the stronger and that law and morality are mere conventions. The implications of this doctrine are of supreme importance. If Justice is frank despotism, then the Eastern type of civilisation is the best, wherein custom has once for all fixed the right of the despot to grind down the population, while the sole duty of the latter is to pay taxes. The moral reformation of law becomes impossible; no adjustment of an unchanging decree to the changing and advancing standard of public morality can be contemplated; constitutional development, legal reformation and the great process by which Western peoples have tried gradually to make positive law correspond with Ethical ideals are mere dreams.

But the verbal refutation of Thrasymachus does not satisfy Glaucus and Adeimantus who are among Socrates' audience. In order to explain the real nature of Justice, Socrates is compelled to trace from the very beginning the process by which states have come into existence. Economic and military needs are thoroughly discussed. The State cannot continue unless there is created in it a class whose sole business it is to govern. This class is to be produced by communistic methods; the best men and women are to be tested and chosen as parents, their children being taken and carefully trained apart for their high office. This training will be administered to the three component parts of the soul, the rational, the spirited and the appetitive, while the educational curriculum will be divided into two sections, Gymnastic for the body and Artistic for the mind—the latter including all scientific, mathematical and literary subjects. After a careful search, in this ideal state Justice, the principle of harmony which keeps all classes of the community coherent, will show itself in "doing one's own business".

Yet even this method of describing Justice is not satisfactory to Plato, who was not content unless he started from the universal concepts of the Ideal world. The second portion of the dialogue describes how knowledge is gained. The mind discards the sensible and material world, advancing to the Ideas themselves. Yet even these are insufficient, for they all are interconnected and united to one great and architectonic Idea, that of the Good; to this the soul must advance before its knowledge can be called perfect. This is the scheme of education for the Guardians; the philosophic contemplation of Ideas, however, should be deferred till they are of mature age, for philosophy is dangerous in young men. Having performed their warlike functions of defending the State, the Guardians are to be sifted, those most capable of philosophic speculation being employed as instructors of the others. Seen from the height of the Ideal world, Justice again turns out to be the performance of one's own particular duties.

This ideal society Plato admits to be a difficult aim for our weak human nature; he stoutly maintains, however, that "a pattern of it is laid up in heaven", man's true home. He mournfully grants that a declension from excellence is often possible and describes how this rule of philosophers, if established, would be expected to pass through oligarchy to democracy, the worst form of all government, peopled by the democratic man whose soul is at war with itself because it claims to do as it likes. The whole dialogue ends in an admirable vision in which he teaches that man chose his lot on earth in a preexisting state.

Such is a fragmentary description of this masterpiece. What is it all about? First it is necessary to point out a serious misconception. Plato is not here advocating universal communism; his state postulates a money-making class and a labouring class also. Apart from the fact that he explicitly mentions these and allows them private property, it would be difficult to imagine that they are not rendered necessary by his very description of Justice. Not all men are fit for government—and therefore those who are governed must "do their particular business" for which they are fitted; in some cases it is the rather mean business of piling up fortunes. Communism is advocated as the only means of creating first and then propagating the small Guardian caste. Nor again is the caste rigid, for some of the children born of communistic intercourse will be unfit for their position and will be degraded into the money-making or property owning section. Communism to Plato is a high creed, too high for everybody, fit only for the select and enlightened or teachable few.

Nor is the Republic an instance of Utopian theorising. It is a criticism of contemporary Greek civilisation, intended to remove the greatest practical difficulty in life. Man has tried all kinds of governments and found none satisfactory. All have proved selfish and faithless, governing for their own interests only. Kings, oligarchs, democrats and mob-leaders have without exception regarded power as the object to be attained because of the spoils of office. Political leadership is thus a direct means of self-advancement, a temptation too strong for weak human nature. As a well-known Labour leader hinted, five thousand a year does not often come in men's way. There is only one way of securing honest government and that is Plato's. A definite class must be created who will exercise political power only, economic inclinations of any sort disqualifying any of its members from taking office. The ruling class should rule only, the money-making class make money only. In this way no single section will tax the rest to fill its own pockets. The one requisite is that these Guardians should be recognised as the fittest to rule and receive the willing obedience of the rest. If any other sane plan is available for preserving the governed from the incessant and rapacious demands of tax-collectors, no record of it exists in literature. Practical statesmanship of a high and original order is manifest in the Republic; in England, where the official qualifications for governing are believed to be equally existent in everybody whether trained or untrained in the art of ruling, the Republic, if read at all, may be admired but is sure to be misunderstood.

It seems that Plato's teaching at the Academy raised formidable criticism. The next group of dialogues is marked by metaphysical teaching. The Parmenides is a searching examination of the Ideas. If these are in a world apart, they cannot easily be brought into connection with our world; a big thing on earth and the Idea of Big will need another Idea to comprehend both. Besides, Ideas in an independent existence will be beyond our ken and their study will be impossible. Socrates' system betrays lack of metaphysical practice; at most the Ideas should have been regarded as part of a theory whose value should have been tested by results. This process is exemplified by a discussion of the fundamental opposition between the One and the infinite Many which are instances of it.

This criticism shows the advantage Plato enjoyed in making Socrates the mouthpiece of his own speculations; he could criticise himself as it were from without. He has put his finger on his own weak spot, the question whether the Ideas are immanent or transcendent. The results of this examination were adopted by the Aristotelian school, who suggested another theory of Knowledge.

The Philebus discusses the question whether Pleasure or Knowledge is the chief good. A metaphysical argument which follows that of the Parmenides ends in the characteristic Greek distinction between the Finite and the Infinite. Pleasure is infinite, because it can exist in greater or less degree; there is a mixed life compounded of finite and infinite and there is a creative faculty to which mind belongs. Pleasure is of two kinds; it is sometimes mixed with pain, sometimes it is pure; the latter type alone is worth cultivating and includes the pleasures of knowledge. Yet pleasure is not an end, but only a means to it. It cannot therefore be the Good, which is an end. Knowledge is at its best when it is dealing with the eternal and immutable, but even then it is not self-sufficient—it exists for the sake of something else, the good. This latter is characterised by symmetry, proportion and truth. Knowledge resembles it far more than even pure pleasure.

The Theaetetus discusses more fully the theory of knowledge. It opens with a comparison of the Socratic method to midwifery; it delivers the mind of the thoughts with which it is in travail. The first tentative definition of knowledge is that it is sensation. This is in agreement with the Protagorean doctrine that man is the measure of all things. Yet sensation implies change, whereas we cannot help thinking that objects retain their identity; if knowledge is sensation a pig has as good a claim to be called the measure of all things as a man. Again, Protagoras has no right to teach others if each man's sensations are a law unto him. Nor is the Heracleitean doctrine much better which taught that all things are in a state of flux. If nothing retains the same quality for two consecutive moments it is impossible to have predication, and knowledge must be hopeless. In fact, sensation is not man's function as a reasoning being, but rather comparison. Neither is knowledge true opinion, for this at once demands the demarcation of false opinion or error; the latter is negative, and will be understood only when positive knowledge is determined. Perhaps knowledge is true opinion plus reason; but it is difficult to decide what is gained by adding "with reason", words which may mean either true opinion or knowledge itself, thus involving either tautology or a begging of the question. The dialogue at least has shown what knowledge is not.

Locke, Berkeley and Hume, the eighteenth century sensation philosophers, were similarly refuted by Kant. The mind by its mere ability to compare two things proves that it can have two concepts at least before it at the same time, and can retain them for a longer period than a mere passing sensation implies. Yet the problem of knowledge still remains as difficult as Plato knew it to be.

"Is the Sophist the same as the Statesman and the Philosopher?" Such is the question raised in the Sophist. Six definitions are suggested, all unsatisfactory. The fixed characteristic of the Sophist is his seeming to know everything without doing so; this definition leads straight to the concept of false opinion, a thing whose object both is and is not. "That which is not" provokes an inquiry into what is, Being. Dualism, Monism, Materialism and Idealism are all discussed, the conclusion being that the Sophist is a counterfeit of the Philosopher, a wilful impostor who makes people contradict themselves by quibbling.

The Politicus carries on the discussion. In this dialogue we may see the dying glories of Plato's genius. In his search for the true pastor or king he separates the divine from the human leader; the true king alone has scientific knowledge superior to law and written enactments which men use when they fail to discover the real monarch. This scientific knowledge of fixed and definite principles can come only from Education. A most remarkable myth follows, which is practically the Greek version of the Fall. The state of innocence is described as preceding a decline into barbarism; a restoration can be effected only by a divine interposition and by the growth of a study of art or by the influence of society. The arts themselves are the children of a supernatural revelation.

The Timaeus and the long treatise the Laws criticise the theories of the Republic. The former is full of world-speculations of a most difficult kind, the latter admits the weakness of the Ideal State, making concessions to inevitable human failings.

Though written in an early period, the Apology may form a fitting end to these dialogues. Socrates was condemned on the charge of corrupting the Athenian youth and for impiety. To most Athenians he must have been not only not different from the Sophists he was never weary of exposing, but the greatest Sophist of them all. He was unfortunate in his friends, among whom were Critias the infamous tyrant and Alcibiades who sold the great secret. The older men must have regarded with suspicion his influence over the youth in a city which seemed to be losing all its national virtues; many of them were personally aggrieved by his annoying habit of exposing their ignorance. He was given a chance of escape by acknowledging his fault and consenting to pay a small fine. Instead, he proposed for himself the greatest honour his city could give any of her benefactors, public maintenance in the town-hall.

His defence contains many superb passages and is a masterpiece of gentle irony and subtle exposure of error. Its conclusion is masterly.

"At point of death men often prophesy. My prophecy to you, my slayers, is that when I am gone you will have to face a far more serious penalty than mine. You have killed me because you wish to avoid giving an account of your lives. After me will come more accusers of you and more severe. You cannot stop criticism except by reforming yourselves. If death is a sleep, then to me it is gain; if in the next world a man is delivered from unjust judges and there meets with true judges, the journey is worth while. There will be found all the heroes of old, slain by wicked sentences; them I shall meet and compare my agonies with theirs. Best of all, I shall be able to carry out my search into true and false knowledge and shall find out the wise and the unwise. No evil can happen to a virtuous man in life or in death. If my sons when they grow up care about riches more than virtue, rebuke them for thinking they are something when they are naught. My time has come; we must separate. I go to death, you to life; which of the two is better only God knows."

Two lessons of supreme importance are to be learned from Plato. In the first place he insists on credentials from the accepted teachers of a nation. On examination most of them, like Gorgias, would be found incapable of defining the subjects for the teaching of which they receive money. The sole hope of a country is Education, for it alone can deliver from ignorance, a slavery worse than death; the uneducated person is the dupe of his own passions or prejudices and is the plaything of the horde of impostors who beg for his vote at elections or stampede him into strikes.

Again, the possibility of knowledge depends upon accurate definition and the scientific comparisons of instances. These involve long and fatiguing thought and very often the reward is scanty enough; no conclusion is possible sometimes except that it is clear what a thing cannot be. The human intelligence has learned a most valuable lesson when it has recognised its own impotence at the outset of an inquiry and its own limitations at the end thereof. Knowledge, Good, Justice, Immortality are conceptions so mighty that our tiny minds have no compasses to set upon them. Better far a distrust in ourselves than the somewhat impudent and undoubtedly insistent claim to certitude advanced by the materialistic apostles of modern non-humanitarianism. When questioned about the ultimates all human knowledge must admit that it hangs upon the slender thread of a theory or postulate. The student of philosophy is more honest than others; he has the candour to confess the assumptions he makes before he tries to think at all.

At times it must be admitted that Plato sounds very unreal. His faults are clear enough. The dialogue form makes it very easy for him to invent questions of such a nature that the answer he wants is the only one possible. Again, his conclusions are often arrived at by methods or arguments which are frankly inadmissible; in the earlier dialogues are some very glaring instances of sheer logical worthlessness. Frequently the whole theme of discussion is such that no modern philosopher could be expected to approve of it. A supposed explanation of a difficulty is sometimes afforded by a myth, splendid and poetical but not logically valid. Inconsistencies can easily be pointed out in the vast compass of his speculations. It remained for Aristotle to invent a genuine method of sorting out a licit from an illicit type of argument.

These faults are serious. Against them must be placed some positive excellences. Plato was one of the first to point out that there is a problem; a question should be asked and an answer found if possible, for we have no right to take things for granted. More than this, he was everywhere searching for knowledge, ridding himself of prejudice, doing in perfect honesty the most difficult of all things, the duty of thinking clearly. These thoughts he has expressed in the greatest of all types of Greek prose, a blend of poetic beauty with the precision of prose.

But Plato's praise is not that he is a philosopher so much as Philosophy itself in poetic form. His great visions of the Eternal whence we spring, his awe for the real King, the real Virtue, the real State "laid up in Heaven" fill him with an inspired exaltation which lifts his readers to the Heaven whence Platonism has descended. There are two main types of men. One is content with the things of sense; using his powers of observation and performing experiments he will become a Scientist; using his powers of speculation he will become an Aristotelian philosopher; putting his thoughts into simple and logical order, he will write good prose. The other soars to the eternal principles behind this world, the deathless forms or the general concepts which give concrete things their existence. These perfect forms are the main study of the Artist, Poet, Sculptor, whose work it is to give us comfort and pleasure unspeakable. So long as man lives, he must have the perfection of beauty to gladden him, especially if Science is going to test everything by the ruler or balance or crucible. This love of Beauty is exactly Platonism. It has never died yet. From Athens it spread to Alexandria, there to start up into fresh life in the School of which Plotinus is the chief; its doctrines are described for the English reader in Kingsley's Hypatia. It planted its seed of mysticism in Christianity, with which it has most strange affinities. At the Renaissance this mystic element caught the imagination of northern Europe, notably Germany. Passing to England, it created at Cambridge a School of Platonists, the issue of whose thought is evident in the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Its last outburst has been the Transcendental teaching of the nineteenth century, so curiously Greek and non-Greek in its essence.

For there is in our nature that undying longing for communion with the Divine which the mere thought of God stirs within us. Our true home is in the great world where Truth is everything, that Truth which one day we, like Plato, shall see face to face without any quailing.

TRANSLATIONS:

The version in 4 volumes by Jowett (Oxford) is the standard. It contains good introductions.

The Republic has been translated by Davies and Vaughan.

Two volumes in the Loeb Series have appeared.

A new method of translation of Plato is needed. The text should be clearly divided into sections; the steps of the argument should be indicated in a skeleton outline. Until this is done study of Plato is likely to cause much bewilderment.

Plato and Platonism, by Pater, is still the best interpretation of the whole system.



DEMOSTHENES

One of the most disquieting facts that history teaches is the inability of the most enlightened and patriotic men to "discern the signs of the times". To us the collapse of the Greek city-states seems natural and inevitable. Their constant bickerings and petty jealousies justly drew down upon them the armed might of the ambitious and capable power which destroyed them. Their fate may fill us with pity and our admiration for those who fought in a losing cause may prejudice us against their enslavers. But just as the Norman Conquest in the long run brought more blessing than misery, so the downfall of the Greek commonwealths was the first step to the conquering progress of the Greek type of civilisation through the whole world. Our Harold, fighting manfully yet vainly against an irresistible tendency, has his counterpart in the last defender of the ancient liberties of Greece.

Demosthenes was born in 384 of a well-to-do business man who died eight years later. The guardians whom he appointed appropriated the estate, leaving Demosthenes and his sister in straitened circumstances. On coming of age the young man brought a suit against his trustees in 363, of whom Aphobus was the most fraudulent. Though he won the case, much of his property was irretrievably lost. Nor were his first efforts at public speaking prophetic of future greatness. His voice was thin, his demeanour awkward, his speech indistinct; his style was laboured, being an obvious blend of Thucydides with Isaeus, an old and practised pleader. Yet he was ambitious and determined; he longed to copy the career of Pericles, the noblest of Athenian statesmen. The stories of his self-imposed exercises and their happy issue are well known; his days he spent in declaiming on the sea-shore with pebbles in his mouth, his nights in copying and recopying Thucydides; the speeches which have come down to us show clearly the gradual evolution of the great style well worthy of the greatest of all themes, national salvation.

It will be necessary to explain a convention of the Athenian law courts. A litigant was obliged to plead his own case; if he was unable to compose his own speech, he applied to some professional retailer of orations who would write it for him. The art of these speech-writers was of varying excellence. A first-class practitioner would not only discover the real or the supposed facts of the dispute, he would divine the real character of his client, and write the particular type of speech which would seem most natural on such a person's lips. Considerable knowledge of human nature was required in such an exciting and delicate profession, although the author did not always succeed in concealing his identity. Demosthenes had his share of this experience; he wrote for various customers speeches on various subjects; one concerns a dowry dispute, another a claim for compensation for damage caused by a water-course, another deals with an adoption, another was written for a wealthy banker. Assault and battery, ship-scuttling, undue influence of attractive females on the weaker sex, maritime trickery of all kinds, citizen rights, are all treated in the so-called private speeches, of which some are of considerable value as illustrating legal or mercantile or social etiquette.

Public suits were of the same nature; the speeches were composed by one person and delivered by another. Such are the speech against Androtion for illegal practices, against Timocrates for embezzlement and the important speech against Aristocrates, in which for the first time Demosthenes seems to have become aware of the real designs of Macedonia. The speech against the law of Leptines, delivered in 354 by Demosthenes himself, is of value as displaying the gradual development of his characteristic style; in it we have the voice and the words of the same man, who is talking with a sense of responsibility about a constitutional anomaly.

But for us the real Demosthenes is he who spoke on questions of State policy. This subject alone can call out the best qualities in an orator as distinct from a rhetorician; the tricks and bad arguments which are so often employed to secure condemnation or acquittal in a law court are inapplicable or undignified in a matter of vital national import. But before the great enemy arose to threaten Greek liberty, it happened that Fortune was kind enough to afford Demosthenes excellent practice in a parliamentary discussion of two if not three questions of importance.

In 354 there was much talk of a possible war with Persia. Demosthenes first addresses the sword-rattlers. "To the braggarts and jingoes I say that it is not difficult—not even when we need sound advice—to win a reputation for courage and to appear a clever speaker when danger is very near. The really difficult duty is to show courage in danger and in the council-chamber to give sounder advice than anybody else." His belief was that war was not a certainty, but it would be better to revise the whole naval system. A detailed scheme to assure the requisite number of ships in fighting-trim follows, so sensible that it commands immediate respect. The speaker estimates the wealth of Attica, maps it out into divisions, each able to bear the expense of the warships assigned to it. To a possible objection that it would be better to raise the money by increased taxation he answers with the grim irony natural to him (he seems to be utterly devoid of humour).

"What you could raise at present is more ridiculous than if you raised nothing at all. A hundred and twenty talents? What are they to the twelve hundred camels which they say carry Persia's revenues?"

He refuses to believe that a Greek mercenary army would fight against its country, while the Thebans, who notoriously sided with Persia in 480, would give much for an opportunity of redeeming this old sin against Greece.

"The rest of the Greeks, as long as they considered the Persian their common enemy, had numerous blessings; but when they began to regard him as their friend they experienced such woes as no man could have invented for them even in his curses. Whom then Providence and Destiny have shown useless as a friend and most advantageous as a foe, shall we fear? Rather let us commit no injustice for our own sakes and save the rest from commotion and strife."

Such is the outline of the speech on the Navy-boards. Two years later he displayed qualities of no mean order. Sparta and Thebes were quarrelling for the leadership. Arcadia had revolted from Sparta, the centre of the disaffection being Megalopolis; ambassadors from the latter city and from Sparta begged Athenian aid. In the heat of the excitement men's judgments were not to be trusted. "The difficulty of giving sound advice is well known," says the orator.

"If a man tries to take a middle course and you have not the patience to hear, he will win the approval of neither party but will be maligned by both. If such a fate awaits me, I would rather appear to be talking nonsense than allow any party to deceive you into what I know is not your wisest policy."

The question was, should Athens join Thebes or Sparta, both ancient foes?

"I would like to ask those who say they hate either, whether they hate the one for the sake of the other or for your sake. If for the sake of the other party, then you can trust neither, for both are mad; if for your sake, why do they try to strengthen one of these two cities unduly? You can with perfect ease keep Thebes weak without making Sparta strong, as I will prove. You will find that the main cause of woe and ruin is unwillingness to act with simple honesty."

After a rapid calculation of possibilities he suggests the following plan.

"War between Thebes and Sparta is certain. If Thebes is beaten to the ground, as she deserves to be, Sparta will not be unduly powerful, for these Arcadian neighbours will restore the balance; if Thebes recovers and saves herself, she will still be weak if you ally yourselves with Arcadia and protect her. It is expedient then in every way neither to sacrifice Arcadia nor let that country imagine that it survives through its own power or through any other power than yours."

The calm voice of the cool-headed statesman is everywhere audible in this admirable little speech.

The power of discounting personal resentment and thinking soberly is apparent in the speech for the Freedom of Rhodes, delivered about this time. Rhodes had offended Athens by revolting in the Social war of 357-5 with the help of the well-known Carian king Mausolus. For a time that monarch had treated Rhodes well; later he overthrew the democracy and placed the power in the hands of the oligarchs. When Queen Artemisia succeeded to the throne of Caria the democrats begged Athens to aid them in recovering their liberty. Deprecating passion of any kind, Demosthenes points out the real question at issue. The record of the oligarchs is a bad one; to overthrow the democracy they had won over some of the leading citizens whom they banished when they had attained their object. Their faithless conduct promised no hope of a firm alliance with Athens. The Rhodian question was to be the acid test of her political creed.

"Look at this fact, gentlemen. You have fought many a war against both democracies and oligarchies, as you well know. But the real object of these wars perhaps none of you considers. Against democracies you fight for private grievances which cannot be settled in public, or for territory or boundaries or for domination. Against oligarchies you fight for none of these things, but for your constitution and freedom. I would not hesitate to say that I consider it more to your advantage should become democratic and fight you than turn oligarchic and be your friends. I am certain that it would not be difficult for you to make peace with freeconstitutions; with oligarchies your friendship would not even be secure, for it is impossible that they in their lust for power could cherish kindness for a State whose policy is based on freedom of speech."

"Even if we were to say that Rhodes richly deserves her sufferings, this is the wrong time to gloat. Prosperous cities ought always to show that they desire every good for the unfortunate, for the future is dark to us all."

His conclusion is this.

"Any person who abandons the post assigned to him by his commander you disfranchise and exclude from public life. Even so all who desert the political tradition bequeathed you by your ancestors and turn oligarchs you ought to banish from your Council. As it is you trust politicians who you know for certain side with your country's enemies."

These three speeches indicate plainly enough the kind of man who was soon to make himself heard in a more important question. Instead of a frothy and excitable harangue that might have been looked for in a warm-blooded Southern orator we find a dignified and apparently cool-headed type of speech based on sound sense, full of practical proposals, fearless, manly and above all noble because it relies on righteousness. An intelligence of no mean order has in each case discarded personal feeling and has pointed out the one bed-rock fact which ought to be the foundation of a sound policy. More than this; for the first time an Attic orator has deliberately set to work to create a new type of prose, based on a cadence and rhythm. This new language at times runs away with its inventor; experience was to show him that in this matter as in all others the consummate artist hides the art whereof he is master.

By 352 Greece had become aware that her liberties were to be threatened not from the East, but from Macedonia. Trained in the Greek practice of arms and diplomacy, her king Philip within seven years had created a powerful military system. His first object was to obtain control of a seaboard. In carrying out this policy he had to reduce Amphipolis on the Strymon in Thrace, Olynthus in Chalcidice, and Athenian power centralised in Potidaea, a little south of Olynthus, and on the other side of the Gulf of Therma in Pydna and Methone. Pydna he secured in 357 by trickery; Amphipolis had passed under his control through inexcusable Athenian slackness earlier in the same year. Potidaea fell in 356 and Methone, the last Athenian stronghold, in 353. Pagasae succumbed in 352; with it Philip obtained absolute command of the sea-coast.

In the same year a Macedonian attempt to pass Thermopylae was met by vigorous Athenian action; a strong force held the defile, preventing a further advance southward. In the next year the Athenian pacifist party was desirous of dropping further resistance. This policy caused the delivery of the First Philippic. It is a stirring appeal to the country to shake off its lethargy. Nothing but personal service would enable her to recover the lost strongholds. "In my opinion," it says, "the greatest compelling power that can move men is the disgrace of their condition. Do you desire to stroll about asking one another for news? What newer news do you want than that a Macedonian is warring down Athens? Philip sick or Philip dead makes no difference to you. If he died you would soon raise up for yourselves another Philip if you continue your present policy."

With statesmanlike care Demosthenes makes concrete proposals for the creation of a standing force of citizens ready to serve in the ranks; at present their generals and captains are puppets for the pretty march-past in the public square. He estimates the cost of upkeep and shows that it is possible to maintain a force in perfect efficiency; he lays particular stress on creating a base of operations in Macedonia itself, otherwise fleets sailing north might be checked by trade winds. "Too late" is the curse of Athenian action; a vacillating policy ruins every expedition.

"Such a system was possible earlier, but now we are on the razor's edge. In my opinion some god in utter shame at our history has inspired Philip with his restlessness. If he had been content with his conquests and annexations, some of you would be quite satisfied with a position which would have branded our name with infamy and cowardice; as it is, perhaps his unceasing aggressions and lust for extension might spur you—unless you are utterly past redemption."

He grimly refutes all those well-informed persons who "happen to know" Philip's object—we had scores of them in our own late war.

"Why, of course he is intoxicated at the magnitude of his successes and builds castles in the air; but I am quite sure that he will never choose a policy such that the most hopeless fools here are likely to know what it is, for gossipers are hopeless fools."

It should be remembered that these are the words of a young man of thirty-four, unconnected with any party, yet capable of forming a sane policy. That they are great words will be obvious to anyone who replaces the name of Philip by that of his country's enemy; the result is startling indeed.

The last and most formidable problem Philip had yet to solve, the destruction of Olynthus, the centre of a great confederation of thirty-two towns. Military work against it was begun in 349 and led at once to an appeal to Athens for assistance. The pacifists and traitors were busy intriguing for Philip; Demosthenes delivered three speeches for Olynthus. The First Olynthiac sounds the right note.

"The present crisis all but cries aloud saying that you must tackle the problem your own selves if you have any concern for salvation. The great privilege of a military autocrat, that he is his own Cabinet, Commander-in-Chief, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he is everywhere personally in service with his army, gives him an enormous advantage for the speedy and timely performance of military duties, but it makes him incapable of obtaining from Olynthus the truce he longs for. Olynthus now knows she is fighting not for glory or territory but to avoid ejection and slavery. She has before her eyes his treatment of Amphipolis and Pydna. In a word, despotism is a thing no free country can trust, especially if it is its neighbour."

He warns his hearers that once Olynthus falls, there is nothing to hinder Philip from marching straight on Athens.

A definite policy is then suggested.

"Carping criticism is easy; any person can indulge in it; but only a statesman can show what is to be done to meet a pressing difficulty. I know well enough that if anything goes wrong you lose your tempers not with the guilty persons, but with the last speaker. Yet for all that, no thought of private safety will make me conceal what I believe to be our soundest course of action."

By a perfectly scandalous abuse, the surplus funds of the State Treasury had been doled out to the poor to enable them to witness plays in the theatre, on the understanding that the doles should cease if war expenses had to be met. In time the lower orders came to consider the dole as their right, backed by the demagogues refused to surrender it. This theatre-fund Demosthenes did not yet venture to attack, for it was dangerous to do so. He had no alternative but to propose additional taxes on the rich. He concludes with an admirable peroration.

"You must all take a comprehensive view of these questions and bear a hand in staving off the war into Macedonia. The rich must spend a little of their possessions to enjoy the residue without fear; the men of military age must gain their experience of war in Philip's country and make themselves formidable defenders of their own soil; the speakers must facilitate an enquiry into their own conduct, that the citizen body may criticise their policy according to the political situation at the moment. May the result be good on every ground."

The Second Olynthiac strikes a higher note, that of indignant protest against the perfidy of Macedonian diplomacy.

"When a State is built on unanimity, when allies in a war find their interests identical, men gladly labour together, bearing their troubles and sticking to their task. But when a power like Philip's is strong through greed and villainy, on the first pretext or the slightest set-back the whole system is upset and dismembered. Injustice and perjury and lies cannot win a solid power; they survive for a brief and fleeting period and show many a blossom of promise perhaps, but time finds them out; their leaves soon wither away. Houses or ships need foundations of great strength; policies require truth and righteousness as their origin and first principles. Such are not to be found in Philip's career."

A history of Macedonian progress shows the weak places in the system.

"Success throws a veil over these at present, for prosperity shrouds many a scandal. If he makes one false step, all his vices will come into the clearest relief; this will soon become obvious under Heaven's guidance, if you will only show some energy. As long as a man is in health, he is unaware of his weaknesses, but when sickness overtakes him, his whole constitution is upset. Cities and despots are the same; while they are invading their neighbours their secret evils are invisible, but when they are in the grip of an internal war these weaknesses all become quite evident."

An exhortation to personal service is succeeded by a protest against a parochial view of politics which causes petty jealousies and paralyses joint action. The whole State should take its turn at doing some war duty.

In the Third Olynthiac Demosthenes takes the bull by the horns. The insane theatre-doles were sapping the revenues badly needed for financing the fight for existence. Olynthus at last was aware of her danger; she could be aided not by passing decrees, but by annulling some.

"I will tell you quite plainly I mean the laws about the theatre-fund. When you have done that and when you make it safe for your speakers to give you the best advice, then you may expect somebody to propose what you all know is to your interest. The men to repeal these laws are those who proposed them. It is unfair that they who passed them should be popular for damaging the State while a statesman who proposes a measure which would benefit us all should be rewarded with public hatred. Before you have set this matter right you cannot expect to find among you a superman who will violate these laws with impunity or a fool who will run his head into a manifest noose."

With the same superb courage he tackles the demagogues who are the cause of all the mischief.

"Ever since the present type of orator has appeared who asks anxiously, 'What do you want? What can I propose? What can I give you?' the city's prestige has melted in compliment; the net result is that these men have made their fortunes while the city is disgraced."

A bitter contrast shows how the earlier popular leaders made Athens wealthy, dominant and respected; the modern sort had lost territory, spent a mint of money on nothing, alienated good allies and raised up a trained enemy. But there is one thing to their credit, they had whitewashed the city walls, had repaired roads and fountains. And the trade of public speaking is profitable. Some of the demagogues' houses are more splendid than the public buildings; as individuals they have prospered in exact proportion as the State is reduced to impotence. In fact, they have secured control of the constitution; their system of bribery and spoon-feeding has tamed the democracy and made it obedient to the hand. "I should not be surprised," he continues,

"if my words bring me into greater trouble than the men who have started these abuses. Freedom of speech on every subject before you is not possible—I am surprised that you have not already howled me down."

The doles he compares to the snacks prescribed by doctors; they cannot help keep a patient properly alive and will not allow him to die. Personal service and an end of gratuities is insisted upon.

"Without adding or taking away, only slightly altering our present chaos, I have suggested a uniform scheme whereby each man can do the duties fitted to his years and his opportunities. I have nowhere proposed that you should divide the earnings of the workers among the unemployable, nor that you should slack and amuse yourselves and be reduced to beggary while somebody else is fighting for you—for that is what is happening now."

What a speech is here! Doles, interruptions of men who tell the truth, organised democratic corruption, waste of public money on whitewash are familiar to the unhappy British tax-payer. Where is our Demosthenes who dare appeal to the electorate to sweep the system and its prospering advocates back into the darkness?

Having captured Olynthus in 348 and razed it to the ground, Philip attacked Euboea. A further advance was checked by a disgraceful peace engineered by Philocrates and Aeschines in 346. The embassy which obtained it was dodged by Philip until he had made the maximum of conquest; he had excluded the Phocians from its scope, a people of primary importance because they controlled Thermopylae, but a week after signing the peace he had destroyed Phocian unity and usurped their place on the great Council which met at Delphi. This evident attack on the liberty of southern Greece raised a fever of excitement at Athens. The war-party clamoured for instant action; strangely enough Demosthenes advised his city to observe the peace. In contrast with his fiery audience he speaks with perfect coolness and calm. He reviews the immediate past, explains the shameful part played by an actor Neoptolemus who persuaded Athens to make the peace, then realised all his property and went to live in Macedon; he describes the good advice he gave them which they did not follow, and bases his claim to speak not on any cleverness but on his incorruptibility.

"Our true interest reveals itself to me in its real outlines as I judge the existing situation. But whenever a man throws a bribe into the opposite scale it drags the reason after it; the corrupt person will never afterwards have any true or sane judgment about anything."

In the present case the real point at issue is clear enough. It is a question of fighting not Philip but the whole body of states who were represented at the Delphic Council, for they would fly to arms at once if Athens renounced the Peace; against such a combination she could not survive, just as the Phocians could not cope with the combined attack of Macedonia, Thessaly and Thebes, natural enemies united for a brief moment to achieve a common end. After all, a seat on the Delphic Council was a small matter; only fools would go to war for an unsubstantial shadow.

Firmly planted in Greece itself, Philip started intriguing in Peloponnesus, supporting Argos, Megalopolis and Messene against Sparta. An embassy to these three cities headed by Demosthenes warned them of the treacherous friendship. Returning to Athens in 344 he delivered his Second Philippi, which contains an account of the speeches of the recent tour. Philip acted while Athens talked.

"The result is inevitable and perhaps reasonable; each of you excels in that wherein you are most diligent—he in deeds, you in words."

Hence comes the intrigue against Sparta. He can dupe stupid people like the Thebans, or the Peloponnesians; warning therefore is necessary. To the latter he said:—

"You now stare at Philip offering and promising things; if you have any sense, pray you may never see him practising his tricks and evasions. Cities have invented all kinds of protections and safeguards such as stockades, walls, trenches—all of which are made by hand and expensive. But men of sense have inherited from Nature one defence, good and salutary—especially democrats against despots—namely, mistrust. If you hold fast to this, you will never come to serious harm. You hanker after liberty, I suppose. Cannot you see that Philip's very title is the exact negation of it? Every king or despot is a foe to freedom and an adversary of law. Beware lest while seeking to be quit of a war you find a master."

He then mentions the silly promises of advantages to come which induced Athens to make the infamous Peace, and quotes the famous remark whereby the traitor gang raised a laugh while in the act of selling their country. "Demosthenes is naturally a sour and peevish fellow, for he drinks water." Drawing their attention to this origin of all their trouble, he asks them to remember their names—at the same time remarking that even if a man deserved to die, punishment should be suspended if it meant loss and ruin to the State.

The next three years saw various Macedonian aggressions, especially in Thrace. That country on its eastern extremity formed the northern coast of the Dardanelles, named the Chersonese, important as safeguarding the corn supplies which passed through the Straits. It had been in the possession of Miltiades, was lost in the Peloponnesian war and was partly recovered by Timotheus in 863. Diopeithes had been sent there with a body of colonists in 346. Establishing himself in possession, he took toll of passing traders to safeguard them against pirates and had collided with the Macedonian troops as they slowly advanced to the Narrows. Philip sent a protest to Athens; in a lively debate on the Chersonese early in 341 Demosthenes delivered a great speech.

First of all he shows that Diopeithes is really the one guarantee that Philip will not attack Attica itself. In Thrace is a force which can do great damage to Macedonian territory.

"But if it is once disbanded, what shall we do if Philip attacks the Chersonese? Arraign Diopeithes, of course—but that will not improve matters. Well then, send reinforcements from here—if the winds allow us. Well, Philip will not attack—but there is nobody to guarantee that."

He suggests that Diopeithes should not be cast off but supported. Such a plan will cost money, but it will be well spent for the sake of future benefits.

"If some god were to guarantee that if Athens observes strict neutrality, abandoning all her possessions, Philip would not attack her, it would be a scandal, unworthy of you and your city's power and past history to sacrifice the rest of Greece. I would rather die than suggest such action."

He then turns to the pacifists, pointing out that it is useless to expect a peace if the enemy is bent on a war of extermination. None but fools would wait till a foe admits he is actually fighting if his actions are clearly hostile. The traitors who sell the city should be beaten to death, for no State can overcome the foe outside till it has chastised the enemy within. The record of Macedonian duplicity follows; the hectoring insolence of Philip is easily explained; Athens is the only place in the world in which freedom of speech exists; so prevalent is it that even slaves and aliens possess it. Accordingly Philip has to stop the mouths of other cities by giving them territory for a brief period, but Athens he can rob of her colonies and be sure of getting praise from the anti-national bribe-takers. He concludes with a striking and elevated passage describing the genuine statesman.

"Any man who to secure your real interests opposes your wishes and never speaks to get applause but deliberately chooses politics as his profession (a business in which chance exercises greater influence than human reason), being perfectly ready to answer for the caprices is a really brave and useful citizen. I have never had recourse to the popular arts of winning favour; I have never used low abuse or stooped to humour you or made rich men's money public; I continue to tell you what is bound to make me unpopular among you and yet advance your strength if only you will listen-so unenviable is the counsellor's lot."

A deep and splendid courage in hopelessness is here manifest.

A little later in the same year was delivered the last and greatest of all the patriotic speeches, the Third Philippic. Early in the speech the whole object of the Macedonian threat is made apparent—the jugular veins of Athens, her trade-routes.

"Any man who plots and intrigues to secure the means of my capture is at war with me, even if he has not fired a shot. In the last event, what are the danger-spots of Athens? The Hellespont, Megara and Euboea, the Peloponnese. Am I to say then that a man who has fired this train against Athens is at peace with her?"

Then the plot against all Greek liberty is explained.

"We all recognise the common danger, but we never send embassies to one another. We are in such a sorry plight, so great a gulf has been fixed between cities by intrigue that we are incapable of doing what is our duty and our interest; we cannot combine; we can make no confederation of mutual friendship and assistance; we stare at the man as he grows greater; each of us is determined to take advantage of the time during which another is being ruined, never considering or planning the salvation of Greece. Every one knows that Philip is like a recurring plague or a fit of some malevolent disease which attacks even those who seem to be out of his reach. Remember this; all the indignities put on Greece by Sparta or ourselves were at least the work of genuine sons of the land; they may be likened to the wild oats of some heir to a great estate—if they were the excesses of some slave or changeling we all would have considered them monstrous and scandalous. But that is not our attitude to Philip and his diplomacy, though he is not a Greek or a relation; rather he is not born even of decent barbarian parents—he is a cursed wretch from Macedonia which till recently could not supply even a respectable servant."

The bitterness of this is intense in a man who generally refrains from anything undignified in a public speech.

The cause of this disunion is bribery. In former times

"it was impossible to buy from orators or generals knowledge of the critical moment which fortune often gives to the careless against the industrious. But now all our national virtues have been sold out of the market; we have imported in their place the goods which have tainted Greek life to the very death. These are—envy for every bribe-taker, ridicule for any who confesses his guilt, hatred for every one who exposes him. We have far more warships and soldiers and revenue to-day, but they are all useless, unavailing and unprofitable owing to treason."

To punish these seems quite hopeless.

"You have sunk to the very depth of folly or craziness or I know not what. Often I cannot help dreading that some evil angel is persecuting us. For some ribaldry or petty spite or silly jest—in fact, for any reason whatsoever you invite hirelings to address you, and laugh at their scurrilities."

He points to the fate of all the cities whom Philip flattered.

"In all of them the patriots advised increased taxation—the traitors said it was not necessary. They advised war and distrust—the traitors preached peace, till they were caught in the trap. The traitors made speeches to get votes, the others spoke for national existence. In many cases the masses listened to the pro-Macedonians not through ignorance, but because their hearts failed them when they thought they were beaten to their knees."

The doom of these cities it was not worth while to describe overmuch.

"As long as the ship is safe, that is the time for every sailor and their captain to be keen on his duties and to take precautions against wilful or thoughtless upsetting of the craft. But once the sea is over the decks, all zeal is vain. We then who are Athenians, while we are safe with our great city, our enormous resources, our splendid reputation—what shall we do?"

The universal appeal of this white-hot speech is its most noteworthy feature. The next year the disgraceful peace was ended, the free theatre-tickets withdrawn. All was vain. In 338 Athens and Thebes were defeated at Chaeroneia; the Cassandra prophecies of the great patriot came true. In 330 one more triumph was allowed him. He was attacked by the traitor Aeschines and answered him so effectively in his speech on the Crown that his adversary was banished. A cloud settled over the orator's later life; he outlived Alexander by little more than a year, but when Antipater hopelessly defeated the allies at Crannon in 322 he poisoned himself rather than live in slavery.

Of all the orators of the ancient world none is more suitable for modern use than Demosthenes. It is true that he is guilty of gross bad taste in some of his speeches—but rarely in a parliamentary oration. Cicero is too verbose and often insincere. Demosthenes is as a rule short, terse and forcible. It is the undoubted justice of his cause which gives him his lofty and noble style. He lacks the gentler touch of humour—but a man cannot jest when he sees servitude before the country he loves. With a few necessary alterations a speech of Demosthenes could easily be delivered to-day, and it would be successful. Even Philip is said to have admitted that he would have voted for him after hearing him, and Aeschines after winning applause for declaiming part of Demosthenes' speech told his audience that they ought to have heard the beast.

Yet all this splendid eloquence seems to have been wasted. The orator could see much that was dark to his contemporaries, and spoke prophecies true though vain. But the greatest thing of all was concealed from his view. The inevitable day had dawned for the genuinely Greek type of city. It was brilliant but it was a source of eternal divisions in a world which had to be unified to be of any service. Its absurd factions and petty leagues were really a hindrance to political stability. Further, the essential vices of democracy cried aloud for a stern master, and found him. Treason, bribery, appeals to an unqualified voting class, theft of rich men's property under legal forms, free seats in the theatre, belittlement of a great empire, pacifism, love of every state but the right one—these are the open sores of popular control. For such a society only one choice is possible; it needs discipline either of national service or national extinction. Its crazy cranks will not disappear otherwise. Modern political life is democratic; those who imagine that the voice of the majority is the voice of Heaven should produce reasons for their belief. They will find it difficult to hold such a view if they will patiently consider the hard facts of history and the unceasing warnings of Demosthenes.

* * * * *

No account of Greek literature would be complete without a mention of the influence which has revolutionised human thought. It is a strange coincidence that Aristotle was born and died in the same years as Demosthenes. His native town was Stagira; he trained Alexander the Great, presided over the very famous Peripatetic School at Athens for thirteen years and found time to investigate practically every subject of which an ancient Greek could be expected to have any knowledge.

His method was the slow and very patient observation of individual facts. He is the complement of Plato, who tended to neglect the fact for the "idea" or general law or type behind it and logically prior to it. Deductive reasoning was Plato's method—that of the poet or great artist, who worships not what he sees but the unseen perfect form behind; inductive reasoning was Aristotle's method—that of the ordinary man, who respects what he sees that he may by patience find out what is the unseen class to which it belongs. This latter has been the foundation-stone of all modern science; in the main the resemblance between Aristotle's system of procedure and that of the greatest liberators of the human mind, Bacon and Descartes, are more valuable than the differences.

It would be difficult to mention any really great subject on which Aristotle has not left some work which is not to be lightly disregarded. His works are in the form of disjointed notes, taken down at his lectures by his disciples. As a rule they are dry and precise, though here and there rays of glory appear which prove that the master was capable of poetic expression even in prose. A rather fine hymn has been ascribed to him. As we might expect, he is weakest in scientific research, mainly because he could not command the use of instruments familiar to us. That a human being who possessed no microscope should have left such a detailed account of the most minute marks on the bodies of fish and animals is an absolute marvel; so perfect is his description that it cannot be bettered to-day. Cuvier and Linnaeus are great names in Botany; Darwin said that they were mere schoolboys compared with Aristotle—in other words, botanical research had progressed thewrong way.

Many works have appeared on Ethics and Philosophy; few of them are likely to survive as long as Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics Sometimes our modern philosophers seem to forget their obligation to resemble human beings in their writings. We hear so much of mist and transcendentalism, problems, theories, essays, critiques that a book of Aristotle's dry but exact definition seems like the words of soberness after some nightmare. The man is not assaulting the air; his feet are on firm ground. This is how he proceeds. "Virtue is a mean between excess and defect." In fact, his object appears to have been to teach something, not to mystify everybody and to cover the honourable name of philosophy with ridicule.

It is the same story everywhere. Do we want the best book on Rhetoric or Politics? Aristotle may supply it, mainly because he took the trouble to classify his instances and show the reason why things not only are of such a kind, but must inevitably be so. A course of Aristotelian study might profitably be prescribed to every person who thinks of talking in public; he would at least learn how to respect himself and his audience, however ignorant and powerful it may be; he would tend to use words in an exact sense instead of indulging in the wild vagueness of speech which is so common and so dangerous. This dry-as-dust philosopher who cut up animals and plants and wrote about public speeches and constitutions found time to give the world a book on Poetry. Modern scientists sometimes deny their belief in the existence of such a thing as poetry, or scoff at its value; no poetic treatise has yet appeared from them, for it seems difficult for modern science to keep alive in its devotees the weakest glimmerings of a sense of beauty. Herein their great founder and father shows himself to be more humane than his so-called progressive children. His Poetics was the foundation of literary criticism and shows no sign of being superseded.

Turning his eyes upwards, he gave the world a series of notes on what he saw there. Not possessing a telescope, he could but do his best with the methods available. Let us not jeer at his results; rather let us remember that this same astronomer found time to observe the heavens in addition to revolutionising thought in the brief compass of sixty-two years.

For the miracle of miracles is this man's universality of outlook. It makes us ashamed of our own pretentiousness and swollen-headed pride when we reflect what this great architectonic genius has performed. Just as our bodies have decreased in size with the progress of history, so our intelligences seem to have narrowed themselves since Aristotle's day. Great as our modern scientists are, there is not one of them who would be capable of writing an acknowledged masterpiece on Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetry, Metaphysics as well as on his own subject.

Nor have we yet mentioned this stupendous thinker's full claim to absolute predominance in intellectual effort. His works on Medicine were known to and appreciated by the Arabs, who translated them and brought them to Spain and Sicily when they conquered those countries. Averroes commented on them and added notes of his own which contributed not a little to the development of the healing art. More than this, and greatest of all, during the later Middle Ages Aristotle's system alone was recognised as possessing universal value; it was taken as the foundation on which the most famous and important Schoolmen erected their philosophies—Chaucer mentions a clerk who possessed twenty books, a treasure indeed in those days; it provided a European Church with a Theology and the cosmopolitan European Universities with a curriculum. Greater honour than this no man ever had or ever can have. Thus, although the Greek city-state seemed to perish in mockery with Demosthenes, yet the Greek spirit of free discussion which died in the great orator was set free in another form in that same year; leaving Aristotle's body, it ranged through the world conquering and civilising. If in our ignorance and bigotry we try to kill Greek literature, we shall find that, like the hero of the Bacchae, we are turning our blows against our own selves, to the delight of all who relish exhibitions of perfect folly.

TRANSLATIONS:

Kennedy's edition is the best. It is vigorous and reads almost like an English work.

Butcher's Demosthenes is the standard introduction to the speeches.

Many reminiscences of Demosthenes are to be found in the speeches of Lord Brougham.

ARISTOTLE

Politics. Jowett (Oxford). Welldon (Macmillan).

Poetics. Butcher (Macmillan). Bywater (Oxford).

Both contain excellent commentaries and notes.

Ethics. Welldon.

Rhetoric. Welldon. (Contains valuable analysis and notes.)

The article on Greek Science in the Legacy of Greece (Oxford) should not be omitted.

THE END