Page:The Republic by Plato.djvu/91

Rh to be a strictly polemical or controversial writer who makes the best of everything on one side and the worst of everything on the other. He has no sympathy with the old Roman life as Plato has with Greek life, nor has he any idea of the ecclesiastical kingdom which was to arise out of the ruins of the Roman Empire. He is not blind to the defects of the Christian Church, and looks forward to a time when Christian and pagan shall be alike brought before the judgment-seat, and the true City of God shall appear…. The work of St. Augustine is a curious repertory of antiquarian learning and quotations, deeply penetrated with Christian ethics, but showing little power of reasoning, and a slender knowledge of the Greek literature and language. He was a great genius and a noble character, yet hardly capable of feeling or understanding anything external to his own theology. Of all the ancient philosophers he is most attracted by Plato, though he is very slightly acquainted with his writings. He is inclined to believe that the idea of creation in the “Timæus” is derived from the narrative in Genesis; and he is strangely taken with the coincidence (?) of Plato’s saying that “the philosopher is the lover of God,” and the words of the book of Exodus in which God reveals himself to Moses (Exod. iii. 14). He dwells at length on miracles performed in his own day, of which the evidence is regarded by him as irresistible. He speaks in a very interesting manner of the beauty and utility of nature and of the human frame, which he conceives to afford a foretaste of the heavenly state and of the resurrection of the body. The book is not really what to most persons the title of it would imply, and belongs to an age which has passed away. But it contains many fine passages and thoughts which are for all time.

The short treatise “De Monarchia,” of Dante, is by far the most remarkable of mediæval ideals, and bears the impress of the great genius in whom Italy and the Middle Ages are so vividly reflected. It is the vision of a universal empire, which is supposed to be the natural and necessary government of the world, having a divine authority distinct from the papacy, yet coextensive with it. It is not “the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof,” but the legitimate heir and successor of it, justified by the ancient