But, without dilating any more on the opinions of this philosopher, which he has considerably involved in mysticism, suffice it to say, that his doctrines on many points appeared so novel and so sublime, that during his life they procured him the epithet Divine, and after his death made him to be regarded almost as a god.

He died on his birthday, in the first year of the 108th Olympiad, aged eighty-one years.

or tenable doctrine,) Plato and his disciples allowed that it must perish, "Volt enim (Panatius scil.) quod nemo negat, quicquid natum sit, interire."-Tusc. Disput. lib. i. 32. The natural tendency of Plato's doctrine, then, is to prove the soul to be mortal, and the Deity mutable and perishable, by an indefinite number of emanations.-It is only by considering the acquisitions of the ancients that we can ascertain our own advantages; and in the case to which we have now been attending, we see how true it is, that even the wisest of them, "by wisdom knew not God;" and that their most laboured arguments to prove the immortality of the soul, went no farther than "a fond desire and longing after immortality.”

For a specimen of beautiful confusion, in explaining Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul, see CICERO's Somnium Scipionis; and, for a proof of its incapability to convince his own mind, see his Tusculan Questions, lib. i. sub. init.

A

CATALOGUE

OF THE WRITINGS OF

PLATO.

The First Alcibiades.

A Dialogue concerning the nature of Man. The most peculiar principle of all Plato's writings, and the whole theory of this philosopher, is the knowledge of our own nature; for, this being properly established as an hypothesis, we shall be able accurately to learn the good which is adapted to us, and the evil which opposes this good.

The Republic.

The Republic is the most important and the most carefully elaborate in the entire series of the Platonic dialogues, it being the summary of Plato's whole ethical system, and combining the results of most of the other treatises.

The Laws.

Plato having in his imaginary Republic delineated what he conceived to be the best form of government, and prescribed the course of instruction by which the people living under such a polity might be brought up and fitted for it, has in the Laws detailed some of the leading enactments which such a constitution would require. To carry out this idea, he supposes that three elderly statesmen come together, belonging respectively to Athens, Crete, and Lacedæmon; and that the first is requested by the second to lay down a code of laws, which the Cretan is desirous of submitting to his countrymen previous to their re-establishment of a city which had been depopulated. For Clinias had been appointed as one of the

ten commissioners of Cnossus, authorized to draw up a code, such as they might think of themselves, or obtain from any other quarter.

The Epinomis;

Or, The Philosopher. A Nocturnal Conversation. This dialogue is designed as a supplement to the Laws. Its authorship has been attributed to another, namely, Philip Opuntius, a contemporary of Plato. It is highly valuable for its antiquity as well as for its intrinsic merit.

The Timous.

A Dialogue concerning Nature. This dialogue comprises the full and almost sole development of his speculations on the formation of the universe and the organization of man.

The Critias;

Or, Atlanticus. The Critias can be considered only as an historical, or rather, mythical speculation on the Timæus; and it appears to have been left unfinished at the author's death.

Parmenides;

Or, On Idealities. Being a Dialogue concerning the Gods. Of all the dialogues of Plato, the Parmenides is one of the most remarkable. For not only does it turn upon questions relating to the most abstruse abstractions of metaphysics, but the manner too in which the subject is handled, affords the best illustration of that "sapientiæ insanien tis"-cleverness without sound sense-in the meshes of which Horace says he was at one time caught, and to which he might have fairly applied his own graphic verse. By a chain of reasoning, where subtleties assume the garb of truths, conclusions are arrived at, so as to fully justify the fear, which Socrates is here feigned to feel, that by pursuing metaphysical inquiries he would fall into the bottomless sea of trifling. Such, at least, seems to have been the fate of every commentator who has ventured to enter the maze of mind which Plato has with such art built up. For neither Proclus and Damascius of the olden time, nor more recently Ficinus; nor, within the last hundred years, Taylor, in England; Schleiermacher and others, in Germany; nor Cousin in France, have been able to understand thoroughly themselves, and to explain satisfactorily to others, what is likely to remain for ever an intellectual puzzle.

It is then a fortunate circumstance for such as may be still disposed to enter the labyrinth, that Stalbaum has furnished them with a clue, by prefixing to his edition of the Parmenides, published at Leipsic in 1848, four books of elaborate Prolegomena, running to 343 octavo pages. For the reader will find there an ample and generally satisfactory discussion on various points connected with the doctrines promulgated in the dialogue.

The Sophist.

A Dialogue on Being. After producing in the Euthdemus some specimens of the apparently clever, but really absurd subtleties of which the Sophists of Greece were wont to make a display, and to gain the admiration of those who could not detect a fallacy, and the contempt of those who could, Plato has in this dialogue pointed out in what class of persons those must be placed who profess to be on all questions of philosophy, politics, and science, equally competent to raise a doubt or to solve one.

The Phædrus.

A Dialogue concerning the Beautiful. Some say that this dialogue is concerning rhetoric, looking only to its beginning and end; others, that it is about the soul, since here especially Socrates demonstrates its immortality; and others, that it is about love, since the beginning and occasion of the dialogue originates from this. For Lysias had written an oration in order to prove that it is not proper to gratify a lover, but one who is not; he being vehemently in love with Phædrus, but pretending that he was not. Wishing, therefore, to withdraw from other lovers, he viciously composed an oration, the design of which was to show that it is requisite rather to gratify one who is not a lover, than one who is, which gave occasion to Socrates to discourse concerning this intemperate love, together with temperate, divine, and enthusiastic love, because it is a love of the latter kind which should be embraced and followed. Others again assert that the dialogue is theological, on account of what is said in the middle of it. But, according to others, its subject is the good, because Socrates says that the supercelestial place has never been celebrated according to its deserts, and that an uncolored and unfigured essence there subsists. And lastly, others assert that it is concerning the beautiful. All these, therefore, form their opinion of the whole scope of the dialogue, from a certain point of it; but which is in the right has never as yet been determined.

Hippias the Greater.

A Dialogue concerning the Beautiful, considered as subsisting in the Soul. Of all the dialogues of Plato, the Hippias Major is perhaps the one the best calculated to give a correct idea of the easy and playful manner in which Socrates, who confessed he knew nothing, was accustomed to confute those who pretend to know every thing.

The design of the dialogue is gradually to unfold the nature of the beautiful as subsisting in the soul. That this is the real design of it will be at once evident by considering that logical methods are adapted to whatever pertains to the soul, in consequence of its energies being naturally discursive, but do not accord with intellect, because its vision is simple, at once collected, and immediate. Hence the dialogue is replete with trials and confutations, definitions and demonstrations, divisions, compositions, and analysations; but that part of the Phædrus in which beauty according to its first substance is discussed, has none of these, because its character is enthusiastic.

The Banquet.

A Dialogue concerning Love. This dialogue is a discussion upon love, and it is supposed to have taken place at the house of Agathon, at one of a series of festivals given by the poet, on the occasion of his gaining the prize of tragedy at the Dionysion. The account of the debate on this occasion is supposed to have been given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many years after it had taken place, to a companion who was curious to hear it. This Apollodorus appears, both from the style in which he is represented in this piece, as well as from a passage in the Phædo, to have been a person of an impassioned and enthusiastic disposition; to borrow an image from the Italian painters, he seems to have been the St. John of the Socratic group.

Theœtetus.

A Dialogue on Science. Theodorus, a famous geometrician of Cyrene, and a follower of Protagoras, is represented to have met Socrates at Athens, and to have been asked by him whether among his pupils there were any who promised to become eminent. Theodorus particularized one above all the rest, who, while he is speaking, is seen approaching. His name is Theætetus. Socrates, having heard him so highly spoken of by Theodorus, at once opens