Page:A Day in Athens with Socrates (1884).djvu/11



These dialogues have been brought together, not with the idea that they will afford any adequate conception of Plato’s philosophy, — the outgrowth of the teachings of Socrates, — but because they embody one of the most vivid pictures which have come down to us of the age in which these men lived and taught. It would be hard, indeed, to find a more perfect illustration of the distinctive characteristics of any age than is contained in the dialogues of Plato. Painter and poet no less than philosopher, he borrows colour from the scenes which surround him, and finds voice for his loftiest theories in the conversations of the men with whom he is in daily intercourse. As we follow the drama enacting before us, we feel that the lapse of centuries forms no barrier between that age and our own. Only when the action is set aside for the extended consideration of some abstract theme, are we made aware that our want of familiarity with the intellectual standpoint of that day too often proves an obstacle to a clear apprehension of the argument. Some of these difficulties may perhaps best be met by a glance at the position occupied by the newer schools of philosophy in relation to those that had gone before. In earlier ages, intent upon examining “things under the earth and in the heavens,” philosophers seem habitually to have withdrawn themselves to solitary heights of specula-