of philosophy to achieve a healthy change in the Sicilian state constitution. His efforts were however fruitless; the circumstances were not propitious, and the character of the young Dionysius, who was one of those mediocre natures who strive after renown and distinction, but are capable of nothing profound and earnest, deceived the expectations concerning him which Plato, according to Dion's account, thought he had reason to entertain.

When we look at Plato's philosophical labors in the academy, we are struck with the different relations to public life which philosophy already assumes. Instead of carrying philosophy, like Socrates, into the streets and public places and making it there a subject of social conversation with any one who desired it, he lived and labored entirely withdrawn from the movements of the public, satisfied to influence the pupils who surrounded him. In precisely the measure in which philosophy becomes a system and the systematic form is seen to be essential, does it lose its popular character and begin to demand a scientific training, and to become a topic for the school, an esoteric affair. Yet such was the respect for the name of a philosopher, and especially for the name of Plato, that requests were made to him by different states to compose for them a book of laws, a work which in some instances it was said was actually performed. Attended by a retinue of devoted disciples, among whom were even women disguised as men, and receiving reiterated demonstrations of respect, he reached the age of eighty-one years, with his powers of mind unweakened to the latest moment.

The close of his life seems to have been clouded by disturbances and divisions which arose in his school under the lead of Aristotle. Engaged in writing, or as others state it at a marriage feast, death came upon him as a gentle sleep, 348 B. C. His remains were buried in the Ceramicus, not far from the academy.

II. THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND WRITINGS.-That the Platonic philosophy has a real development, that it should not be apprehended as a perfectly finished system to which the different writings stand related as constitu

ent elements, but that these are rather steps of this inner de velopment, as it were stages passed over in the philosophical journeyings of the philosopher-is a view of the highest importance for the true estimate of Plato's literary labors.

Plato's philosophical and literary labors may be divided into three periods, which we can characterize in different ways. Looking at them in a chronological or biographical respect, we might call them respectively the periods of his years of discipline, of travel, of instruction, or if we view them in reference to the prevailing external influence under which they were formed, they might be termed the Socratic, Heraclitic-Eleatic, and the Pythagorean; or if we looked at the content alone, we might term them the Anti-Sophistic-Ethic, the Dialectic or mediating, and the systematic or constructive periods.

THE FIRST PERIOD-the Socratic-is marked externally by the predominance of the dramatic element, and in reference to its philosophical stand-point, by an adherence to the method and the fundamental principles of the Socratic doctrine. Not yet accurately informed of the results of former inquiries, and rather repelled from the study of the history of philosophy than attracted to it by the character of the Socratic philosophizing, Plato confined himself to an analytical treatment of conceptions, particularly of the conception of virtue, and to a reproducing of his master, which, though something more than a mere recital of verbal recollections, had yet no philosophical independence. His Socrates exhibits the same view of life and the same scientific stand-point which the historical Socrates of Xenophon had had. His efforts were thus, like those of his contemporary fellow disciples, directed prominently toward practical wisdom. His conflicts however, like those of Socrates, had far more weight against the prevailing want of science and the shallow sophisms of the day than for the opposite scientific directions. The whole period bears an eclectic and hortatory character. The highest point in which the dialogues of this group culminate is the attempt which at the same time is found in the Socratic doctrine to determine

the certainty of an absolute content (of an objective reality) tc the good.

The history of the development of the Platcuic philosophy would assume a very different form if the view of some modern scholars respecting the date of the Phædrus were correct. If, as they claim, the Phædrus were Plato's earliest work, this circum. stance would betray from the outset an entirely different course of culture for him than we could suppose in a mere scholar of Socrates. The doctrine in this dialogue of the pre-existence of souls, and their periodical transmigrations, of the relation of earthly beauty with heavenly truth, of divine inspiration in contrast to human wisdom, the conception of love,-these and other Pythagorean ingredients are all so distinct from the original Socratic doctrine that we must transfer the most of that which Plato has creatively produced during his whole philosophical career, to the beginning of his philosophical development. The imprcbability of this, and numerous other grounds of objection, claim a far later composition for this dialogue. Setting aside for the present the Phædrus, the Platonic development assumes the following form:

Among the earliest works (if they are genuine) are the small dialogues which treat of Socratic questions and themes in a So cratic way. Of these e. g. the Charmides discusses temperance, the Lysis friendship, the Laches valor, the lesser Hippias knowing and wilful wrong-doing, the first Alcibiades, the moral and intellectual qualifications of a statesman, &c. The immaturity and the crudeness of these dialogues, the use of scenic means which have only an external relation to the content, the scantiness and want of independence in the content, the indirect mar. ner of investigation which lacks a satisfactory and positive result, the formal and analytical treatment of the conceptions discussed -all these features indicate the early character of these minor dialogues.

The Protagoras may be taken as a proper type of the Socratic period. Since this dialogue, though directing its whole polemic against the Sophistic philosophy, confined itself almost exclusively

to the outward manifestation of this system, to its influence on its age and its method of instruction in opposition to that of Socrates, without entering into the ground and philosophical character of the doctrine itself, and, still farther, since, when it comes in a strict sense to philosophize, it confines itself, in an indirect investigation, to the Socratic conception of virtue according to its different sides (virtue as knowing, its unity and its teachableness, cf. § XII. 8),-it represents in the clearest manner the tendency, character and want of the first period of Plato's literary life.

The Gorgias, written soon after the death of Socrates, represents the third and highest stage of this period. Directed against the Sophistical identification of pleasure and virtue, of the good and of the agreeable, i. e. against the affirmation of an absolute moral relativity, this dialogue maintains the proof that the good, far from owing its origin only to the right of the stronger, and thus to the arbitrariness of the subject, has in itself an independent reality and objective validity, and, consequently, alone is truly useful, and thus, therefore, the measure of pleasure must follow the higher measure of the good. In this direct and positive polemic against the Sophistic doctrine of pleasure, in its tendency to a view of the good as something firm and abiding, and secure against all subjective arbitrariness, consists prominently the advance which the Gorgias makes over the Protagoras.

In the first Socratic period the Platonic philosophizing became ripe and ready for the reception of Eleatic and Pythagorean categories. To grapple by means of these categories with the higher questions of philosophy, and so to free the Socratic philosophy from its so close connection with practical life, was the task of the second period.

THE SECOND PERIOD-the dialectic or the Megaric-is marked externally, by a less prominence of form and poetic contempla. tion, and not unfrequently indeed, by obscurity and difficulties of style, and internally, by the attempt to give a satisfactory mediation for the Eleatic doctrine and a dialectic foundation for the doctrine of ideas.

By his exile at Megara, and his journeys to Italy, Plato be

came acquainted with other and opposing philosophical directions, from which he must now separate himself in order to elevate the Socratic doctrine to its true significance. It was now that he first learned to know the philosophic theories of the earlier sages, for whose study the necessary means could not at that period, so wanting in literary publicity, be found at Athens. By his separation from these varying stand-points, as his older fellow pupils had already striven to do, he attempted striding over the narrow limits of ethical philosophizing, to reach the final ground of knowing, and to carry out the art of forming conceptions as brought forward by Socrates, to a science of conceptions, i. e. to the doctrine of ideas. That all human acting depends upon knowing, and that all thinking depends upon the conception, were results to which Plato might already have attained through the scientific generalization of the Socratic doctrine itself, but now to bring this Socratic wisdom within the circle of speculative thinking, to establish dialectically that the conception in its simple unity is that which abides in the change of phenomena, to disclose the fundamental principles of knowledge which had been evaded by Socrates, to grasp the scientific theories of the opposers direct in their scientific grounds, and follow them out in all their ramifications, this is the problem which the Megaric family of dialogues attempts to solve.

The Theatætus stands at the head of this group. This is chiefly directed against the Protagorean theory of knowledge, against the identification of the thinking and the sensible perception, or against the claim of an objective relativity of all knowledge. As the Gorgias before it had sought to establish the independent being of the ethical, so does the Theatætus ascending from the ethical to the theoretical, endeavor to prove an indepen dent being and objective reality for the logical conceptions which lie at the ground of all representation and thinking, in a word, to prove the objectivity of truth, the fact that there lies a province of thought immanent in the thinking and independent of the per ceptions of the senses. These conceptions, whose objective reality.