The following we may regard as the humour of the subject:

66 Both you and Simmias appear to me to be childishly afraid, lest when the soul departs from the body, the wind should blow it away and disperse it, especially if one should happen to die not in a calm, but in some sort of violent storm. Whereupon said Cebes with a smile, Endeavour to give us conviction, as if we are afraid, or rather not as if we are afraid, but there be perchance in us some kind of a boy that is afraid of such things. Let us then endeavour to persuade him not to be afraid of death as if it were a hobgoblin.' 'But you must sing charms to him every day,' said Socrates, until you have charmed him away.' Whence then, O Socrates,' he rejoined, shall we get a good charmsinger for such a purpose, seeing that thou art leaving us?' Greece is wide, O Cebes,' he said, and therein are somewhere to be found good men, and there are many, too, of the races of the foreigners, all of which ye ought to search through in looking for such a charm-singer, sparing neither money nor toil, for there is nothing on which you could more reasonably spend your money. You ought, too, to seek him amongst one another, for maybe you will not easily find any better able to do this than yourselves."" (Phædo, xxiv., 58.)

The following is in the same key:

:

"Crito: In what manner are we to bury thee?' Socrates: 'Just as ye please, if only ye can catch me, and I do not give you the slip.' And at the same time smiling gently, and looking round

on us, he said, 'I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am that Socrates who is now conversing with you, but he thinks that I am he whom he will in but a little while behold dead, and inquires forsooth how he is to bury me. But that which I some while since argued at length, that after the poisondraught is drunken I shall abide with you no more, but shall be gone hence and depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I seem to have told to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to console both you and myself.

ye must be of good cheer then, and say that ye bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is pleasing to you, and as ye consider most consonant with our laws: '"' (Phædo, lxiv., 147, 149.)

Such as can enter the spiritual world through the gate of the poet and the prophet, are conscious of an angel's joy. It is earthly motives, and sensual retardations, which allow only the gate of the charnel-house to be seen, and make the road seem so drear.

"It does not appear to me that it is for grief that birds sing, or swans in their last song. But in my opinion it is because they belong to Apollo, and are prophetic, and presage the blessings that are in Hades, that they sing and revel in delight on that day more excellently than in the foregoing time. Now I too deem myself to be the fellow-servant of the swans, and votary of the same God, and possessed, at the hands of the master, of prophetic power no whit inferior to theirs, and no more down-hearted than they are at being set free from this life."* (Phædo, xxxv., 77,78.)

The following strikes a note more purposeful and and assured, manifesting an undisguisable elation, the joy as of one that is going home :

...

"Now I am going unto him that sent me. . . . Now I come to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves." (John Ivi. 5, xvii. 13.)

This is effortless, the joy of consciousness of the life eternal; the following manifests a victory after a struggle against fear:

"I have no longer a fear of death, but already even a desire, and that I too may say something expansive in imitation of the orators; and for a long time I have been thinking of things on high, and going through the eternal and divine course, for out of my weakness I have collected myself together, and am become a new man." (Axiochus, 370 e.)

The following manifests a very happy and desirable mean between Calvinistic gloom and the opposite pole of thoughtless frivolity:

"This is surely a proverb, bruited amongst all, that life is a kind of sojourn in a strange place, and that we reasonably ought to pass through it in a goodtempered way, all but singing glad songs on the road to fate. On the other hand, to conduct ourselves in a spiritless manner, and so that it is difficult for us to be torn away, is to exhibit, like a child, a period of life of a kind not overwise." (Axiochus, 365 b.)

Plato's conception of transmigration is not of an endless whirl; incarnation in his view finds its

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

own fit and orderly termination when its lesson is learned. The enfranchised spirit "should return to the habitation of his associate star, and lead a blessed and harmonious existence," or, if evil should still hold sway, the soul has to take some natural form corresponding thereto, and never cease from labour, until, "having dominated by reason its tumultuous and irrational part, it should arrive at the beautiful form of its first and best condition." (Timæus, 42 b.)

Plato, like other great teachers, must have felt keenly the pestilent stupidity of humanity on its lower planes :

"To find the Creator and Father of this universe is a task indeed, and having found him it is impossible to describe him to mankind at large." (Timæus, 28 c.)

If he required any reminder of the ungrateful reception the highest efforts are likely to meet with, he had but to turn to his unextinguishable memory of the fate of his friend and master, Socrates. Speaking of persons unwilling through intemperance to relinquish a bad mode of life, he says: "Is not this pleasant of them, to deem him the most hateful of all men who tells the truth, namely that till one abandon drunkenness and gluttony and sexual excesses and idle neglect, neither drugs, nor caustics, nor surgery, nor charms, amulets, nor any other such things as these will be of any avail? That, replied he, is not very pleasant, for to be angry with one who speaks us well and fair has no pleasantness in it." (Rep. IV., 426 a.)

nor

Passage to India.

But, like a true philosopher, Plato shows no irritation of temper. He accepts grovelling and offensive men as subject to a retardation of the higher growth, a growth which is yet recoverable, though the "fellow-growth," or sensual half, may be dominant for a life

time :

"When the fellow-growth is large and overpowering to the soul, and becomes the lot of a small and weak intellectual disposition, in this case since there are two classes of desires naturally implanted in man, one of aliment on account of the body, the other of wisdom for the sake of the divinest part of what we are, the motions of the more powerful province prevail and enlarge their sway, and at the same time make the province of the soul deaf, indocile, and oblivious, and so induce stupidity, that greatest of diseases. There is one safety for both, neither to move the soul without the body, nor the body without the soul, in order that by a balance of repulsion they may come to be in equipoise and sound health." (Timæus, 88 a.)

In connection with the references to deafness of soul contained in the passage just quoted, we may remember the familiar expression as to " eyes that see not, and ears that hear not." "Which answer is more correct, that we see with or by our eyes, and hear with or by our ears? By which we receive each sensible impression, it seems to me, rather than with which.For surely it would be strange if many senses resided in us .

and they did not all tend to one certain archetypal principle (idea), whether it be soul or whatever it be right to call it, with which, by these as instruments, we are sensible of all objects of sense." (Theætetus, 184 c.)

The following is an instructive thought, the fact advanced being

as true in matters physical as no doubt it is in all things else:

"It would, perhaps, not be a difficult thing to prove how that the gods are not less careful for small things than for those of surpassing greatness." (Laws X., 900 c.)

The moral for ourselves we may find in the following:-" He that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If, therefore, ye were not faithful in the unjust Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true good?" (Luke xvi. 10.)

As to what is true gain and true life, Christianity and Platonism are clearly at one. The grain that, instead of being sown in good earth, fell among thorns, represents those that heard of spiritual things, but in whom the pursuit of them is choked by anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, so that no fruit comes to perfection. (Luke viii. 14.) And the warning runs: "See and keep yourselves from covetousness; for not because one has abundance does his life consist

in his possessions." (Luke xii. 15.)

With Plato we find a consciousness of the same fact of the evil of possessiveness:

"Through the love of wealth making the whole of time to be without any leisure for the care of anything other than private property, upon which every soul of a citizen is hanging, it can have no care for aught else than daily lucre; and whatever learning or pursuit leads to this, every one individually is most ready to learn and to practise, but he laughs down all the rest." (Laws VIII. 831 c.)

"Cares straightway steal upon him, and considerations as to what road of life he is to tread.

and old age stealthily and uncon

sciously comes on. wherefore even the gods release more quickly from life those on whom they set the greatest value. . . . Long would be the story of the poets, who with oracular utterance have told in holy hymns the things that belong to life, to follow them as they make lament on living." (Axiochus 367 a.)

"A man's soul is, after the gods, the most divine of all his possessions, a possession which is most his own. the third is the honour of the body according to nature." (Laws V. 726, 728 d.)

"What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and lose his soul? For what must a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark viii. 36.)

We borrow from nature portions of its elements only as things to be one day restored. And rightly we ought to have dominated them by our spiritual part as soon as maturity is reached. The great waves of nutrition, and the advance of external sensations, according to Plato, which constitute the bodily life of youth, disturb the resolutions of the soul, which consequently shows no intelligence of its own; "but when the stream of growth and nutrition invades it to a less degree, then once more the orbits of the soul restored to tranquillity resume their own path, with gradual increase of steadiness. . . . and agreeably with the orbits of nature." (Timæus, 44 a, b.) Neither orbit can be done away; our work is to harmonise them. Proper food and proper education are the necessaries for this combination which we call life; he who neglects this duty "will lamely traverse the life of this stage of existence, and again pass into Hades, ineffectual and without understanding." (Timæus, 44 c.)

Plato's conception of righteousness is "that harmonious and pro

portional development of the inner man, by means of which each faculty of the soul performs its own functions without interfering with the others." He makes the fullest allowances for the state of darkness and imperfection in which the majority of mankind are floundering:

"When the soul supports itself upon that which truth and real being irradiate, it understands and knows it and appears to be possessed of intelligence; but when on the other hand it leans upon that which is blended with darkness, which is born and dies, it then has to do with mere opinion and becomes dim-sighted, changing about in ups and downs of opinion, and seems to be unpossessed of intelligence." (Rep. VI., 508 d.)

A reflection of Jesus is that "the sons of this world are wiser with respect to their own generation than the sons of the light with respect to theirs. And he advocates as busy an ardour in making friends outside the unrighteous Mammon, as its subjects manifest in its selfish service. Plato notices this staunchness in the pursuit of worldly interests, and converts the fact into a hope that the principle will remain when the pursuit is changed for a higher one:

Have you never yet noticed, in the case of those accounted wicked but wise, how keenly the little soul (psycharion, soullet) looks, and acutely perceives those things upon which it is turned, showing that it has no dulness in the power of vision, but is compelled to be so far the servant of vice, that the more acutely it perceives, so much the more evil it perpetrates.

"As regards this part of such a nature, if from childhood upwards it should be docked and stripped of the affinities of its birth as if they were plummets cut away from it, affinities which by

means of feastings and pleasures and lickerish things of this kind become second nature, and turn the vision of the soul to the things that are below; if from these the soul can free itself and turn itself toward truth, the very same principle in the same individuals would not less acutely see truth than it saw those things upon which it was but lately turned." (Rep. VII. 519 a.)

Holding a belief in a progress which may extend over an indefinite period, Plato must find support to that belief in the differences that exist between men in the present world:

"In the greatest dangers, when men are in peril, in wars, or diseases, or storms at sea, they behave towards those who have power in each several case as towards gods, looking up to them as their saviours, though these surpass them in nothing whatever but knowledge." (Theætetus, 180 b.)

With the belief in eternal progress must be held another without which that belief would be void:

"If the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, which we call life, but for all time." (Phædo lvii., 107 c.)

The metaphor of a race fits well the earthly career viewed in its immediate results: "Do not men who are both cunning and unrighteous act as those in the race who run well at the beginning but not at the end, for at the first they briskly leap forward, but end by becoming ridiculous. and run off without the crown. But such as are true runners reach the goal and receive the prizes and the crown." (Rep. X. 613 b.) With this we may compare the following variation on the same thought: "Ye were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?" (Gal. v.

7.) The spiritual sense of light and

darkness, expressed by symbolic use of the terms, is to be found alike in Plato and the gospels:

"The light shines in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." (John i. 5.)

"Let your light shine before men." (Matt. v. 16.)

"If one possess intelligence, one will bear in mind, that the eyes become subject to two disturbances from two causes; when we change our position and pass from light to darkness, or from darkness to light. And if one believes that the same thing as this takes place with regard to the soul, when he beholds it in perturbation and inability to discern anything, he will not be disposed to unreasoning laughter, but will rather reflect whether the soul has come from a brighter existence and been darkened by unaccustomedness, or whether it has come from a grosser ignorance to a brighter state, and has been confounded by a more resplendent flashing, a sparkle as of crystals." (Rep. VII. 518 a.)

66 Life is the outcome of fire and spirit." (Timæus, 77 a.)

"He will baptize you in holy spirit and fire." (Matt. iii. 11.)

The following affords a somewhat close and minute comparison:

"The mouth . . . . as Plato says, is the entrance of mortal things, and the way of exit of things immortal. For into it there enter food and drink, corruptible foods of a corruptible body. But out of it proceed expressions of thought, immortal laws of an immortal soul, by means whereof the rational life is regulated." (Philo de Mund. Opif. xl.)

Not that which enters into the mouth defiles the man, but that which goes out of the mouth, this it is defiles the man. . . . Everything that enters the mouth goes away into the belly and is cast out into a sewer. But the things that