Plato

The Apology of Plato may be compared generally with those speeches of Thucydides in which he has embodied his conception of the lofty character and policy of the great Pericles, and which at the same time furnish a commentary on the situation of affairs from the point of view of the historian.

The same recollection of his master may have been present to the mind of Plato when depicting the sufferings of the Just in the Republic.

But their fathers and brothers all appear in court (including 'this' Plato), to witness on his behalf; and if their relatives are corrupted, at least they are uncorrupted; 'and they are my witnesses.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly tending in the previous Dialogues.

But Plato certainly does not mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life.

Plato's Republic is obviously impracticable, for its author had turned away in despair from existing politics.

Aristotle has none of the high enthusiasm or poetic imagination of Plato. He is even unduly impatient of Plato's idealism, as is shown by the criticisms in the second book.

Whether such an incident ever really occurred as the visit of Crito and the proposal of escape is uncertain: Plato could easily have invented far more than that (Phaedr.); and in the selection of Crito, the aged friend, as the fittest person to make the proposal to Socrates, we seem to recognize the hand of the artist.

The personification of the Laws, and of their brethren the Laws in the world below, is one of the noblest and boldest figures of speech which occur in Plato.

The fact that Socrates precedes Plato is symbolized in English by the fact that the word "precedes" occurs between the words "Socrates" and "Plato." But we cannot symbolize the fact that Plato does not precede Socrates by not putting the word "precedes" between "Plato" and "Socrates." A negative fact is not sensible, and language, being intended for communication, has to be sensible.

For example, if the proposition is "Socrates precedes Plato," the objective which verifies it results from replacing the word "Socrates" by Socrates, the word "Plato" by Plato, and the word "precedes" by the relation of preceding between Socrates and Plato.

"There was Plato, too," continued his Majesty, modestly declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied - "there was Plato, too, for whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend.

"There was the soul of Cratinus - passable: Aristophanes - racy: Plato exquisite not your Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus - faugh!