Soc. Yes, indeed, and a fair and shady resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images, this must be a spot sacred to Ach-e-lo'us and the Nymphs; moreover, there is a sweet breeze, and the grasshoppers chirrup; and the greatest charm of all is the grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the head. My dear Phædrus, you have been an admirable guide.

Phædr. I always wonder at you, Socrates; for when you are in the country you really are like a stranger who is being led about by a guide. Do you ever cross the border? I rather think that you never venture even outside the gates.

Soc. Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees, or the country. Though I do, indeed, believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, as hungry cows are led by shaking before them a bait of leaves or fruit. For only hold up the bait of discourse, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world. And now, having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. Begin.

What could be more charming? Rural, but not rustic, is the grace with which Plato touches these things. The Gorgias is a noble dialogue. There is a good deal of quibbling in it; but it ends in the following truly lofty and pathetic passage. Socrates has been, with consummate art, made by Plato to foreshadow his own final doom of death; and then, framing a myth, he preaches from the myth a moral, for height of noble difficulty never perhaps equaled anywhere out of Scripture:

Socrates. Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only, but which, as I believe, is a true tale, for I mean, in what I am going to tell you, to speak the truth. Homer tells us how Zeus and Po-sei'don and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father. Now in the days of Cronos there was this law respecting the destiny of man, which has always existed and still continues in heaven, that he who has lived

all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he dies, to the islands of the blest, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the reach of evil, but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus. And in the time of Cronos, and even later in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die; the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and the consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the authorities from the islands of the blest came to Zeus, and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: "I shall put a stop to this; the judgments are not well given, and the reason is that the judged have their clothes on, for they are alive; and there are many having evil souls who are appareled in fair bodies, or wrapt round in wealth and rank, and when the day of judgment arrives many witnesses come forward and witness on their behalf, that they have lived righteously. The judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have their clothes on when judging, their eyes and ears and their whole bodies are interposed as a veil before their own souls. This all stands in the way; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes of the judged. What is to be done? I will tell you: In the first place, I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, which they at present possess; that is a commission, the execution of which I have already intrusted to Pro-me'theus: in the second place, they shall be entirely stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead; he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked soul as soon as each man dies, he knows not when, and is deprived of his kindred, and has left his brave attire in the world above, and then the judgment will be just. I knew all about this before you did, and therefore I have made my sons judges; two from Asia, Mi'nos and Rhad-a-man' thus, and one from Europe, Æ'a-cus. And these, when they are dead, shall judge in the meadow where three ways meet, and out of which two roads lead, one to the islands of the blessed, and the other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia, and Æacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two others are in doubt: in this way the judgment respecting the last journey of men will be as just as possible."

This is a tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, and from which I draw the following inferences: Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; this, and nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their

several characteristics, which are much the same as in life; the body has the same nature and ways and affections, all clearly discernible; for example, he who by nature or training or both was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on: and the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of the scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when he was alive the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And in a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great measure and for a time. And I should infer that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view. And when they come to the judge, as those from Asia came to Rhadamanthus, he places them near him and inspects them quite im-partially, not knowing whose the soul is perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints and scars of perjuries, and of wrongs which have been plastered into him by each action, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus beholds, full of deformity and disproportion, which is caused by license and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and dispatches him ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment which he deserves.

And, as I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of this kind, knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are; he knows only that he has got hold of a villain; and seeing this, he stamps him as curable or incurable, and sends him away to Tartarus, whither he goes and receives his recompense. Or, again, he looks with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in holiness and truth; he may have been a private man or not; and I should say, Callicles, that he is most likely to have been a philosopher who has done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings of other men in his life-time; him Rhadamanthus sends to the islands of the blest. Eacus does the same; and they both have sceptres, and judge; and Minos is seated, looking on, as Odysseus in Homer declares that he saw him

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Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead."

Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when the time comes, to die. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same. And, in return for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of E-gi'na, and when you are in the hands of justice you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon you every sort of insult. Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife's tale which you contemn. And there might be reason in your contemning such tales, if by searching we could find out any thing better or truer see that you and Polus and Gorgias, who are the three Greeks of our day, are not able to show that we ought to which does not profit in another world as well as in this. that has been said, nothing remains unshaken but the saying, that to do injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the reality and not the appearance of virtue is to be followed above all things, as well in public as in private life; and that when any one has been wrong in any thing, he is to be chastised, and that the next best thing to a man being just is that he should become just, and be chastised and punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of himself as well as of others; of the few as of the many and rhetoric and any other art should be used by him, and all his actions should be done, always with a view to justice.

but now you wisest of the

live any life And of all

Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as your own argument shows. And never mind if some one depises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practiced virtue in common, we will betake ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds; and what state of education does

that imply? Let us, then, take this discourse as our guide, which signifies to us that the best way of life is to practice justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go, and in this exhort all men to follow, not in that way in which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth.

We open the Parmenides and take at random a short section out of the conversation, to let our readers see for themselves what we have been meaning by our remarks on the barrenness of much that is encountered in Plato. The subject discussed is the idea of unity. Parmenides must needs have a respondent. "Shall I propose the youngest?" he asks. But we proceed now in the words of Plato; warning, meantime, the reader not curious to see how void of any thing to reward curiosity may be page after page of hard logic-chopping, that this next passage of quotation may safely be skipped. Parmenides speaks:

swer.

Shall I propose the youngest? He will be the most likely to say what he thinks, and not raise difficulties; and his answers will give me time to breathe. I am the one whom you mean, Parmenides, said Aristoteles; for I am the youngest, and at your service. Ask, and I will anParmenides proceeded: If one is, he said, the one cannot be many? Aris. Impossible. Par. Then the one cannot have parts, and cannot be a whole? Aris. How is that? Par. Why, the part would surely be the part of a whole? Aris. Yes. Par. And that of which no part is wanting, would be a whole? Aris. Certainly. Par. Then, in either case, one would be made up of parts; both as being a whole, and also as having parts? Aris. Certainly. Par. And in either case, the one would be many, and not one? Aris. True. Par. But surely one ought to be not many, but one? Aris. Surely. Par. Then, if one is to remain one, it will not be a whole, and will not have parts? Aris. No. Par. And if one has no parts, it will have neither beginning, middle, nor end; for these would be parts of one? Aris. Right. Par. But then, again, a beginning and an end are the limits of every thing? Aris. Certainly. Par. Then the one, neither having beginning nor end, is unlimited? Aris. Yes, unlimited. Par. And therefore formless, as not being able to partake either of round or straight. Aris. How is that? Par. Why, the round is that of which all the extreme points are equidistant from the centre? Aris. Yes. Par. And the straight is that of