disciples of Socrates--indeed, it may be said, his chief
disciple, Plato, was laying the foundation of another system, which,
though it contained much that was false and more that was vain,
contained also some things vigorous enough to descend to our times.

[Sidenote: Birth of Plato.]

Plato was born about B.C. 426. Antiquity has often delighted to cast a
halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works
of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal
honours. A legend, into the authenticity of which we will abstain from
inquiring, asserted that his mother Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered
an immaculate conception through the influences of Apollo. The god
declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage
of the child. The wisdom of this great writer may justify such a noble
descent, and, in some degree, excuse the credulity of his admiring and
affectionate disciples, who gave a ready ear to the impossible story.

[Sidenote: His education and teaching.]

To the knowledge acquired by Plato during the eight or ten years he had
spent with Socrates, he added all that could be obtained from the
philosophers of Egypt, Cyrene, Persia, and Tarentum. With every
advantage arising from wealth and an illustrious parentage, if even it
was only of an earthly kind, for he numbered Solon among his ancestors,
he availed himself of the teaching of the chief philosophers of the age,
and at length, returning to his native country, founded a school in the
grove of Hecademus. Thrice during his career as a teacher he visited
Sicily on each occasion returning to the retirement of his academy. He
attained the advanced age of eighty-three years. It has been given to
few men to exercise so profound an influence on the opinions of
posterity, and yet it is said that during his lifetime Plato had no
friends. He quarrelled with most of those who had been his
fellow-disciples of Socrates; and, as might be anticipated from the
venerable age to which he attained, and the uncertain foundation upon
which his doctrines reposed, his opinions were very often contradictory,
and his philosophy exhibited many variations. To his doctrines we must
now attend.

[Sidenote: The doctrines of Plato. The three primary principles.]

It was the belief of Plato that matter is coeternal with God, and that,
indeed, there are three primary principles--God, Matter, Ideas; all
animate and inanimate things