eformed and sickly infants, and requires every citizen to be initiated
into every species of falsehood and fraud. Distinguishing between mere
social unions and true polities, and insisting that there should be an
analogy between the state and the soul as respects triple constitution,
he establishes a division of ruler, warriors, and labourers, preferring,
therefore, a monarchy reposing on aristocracy, particularly of talent.
Though he considers music essential to education, his opinion of the
fine arts is so low that he would admit into his state painters and
musicians only under severe restrictions, or not at all. It was for the
sake of having this chimerical republic realized in Sicily that he made
a journey to Dionysius; and it may be added that it was well for those
whom he hoped to have subjected to the experiment that his wild and
visionary scheme was never permitted to be carried into effect. In our
times extravagant social plans have been proposed, and some have been
attempted; but we have witnessed nothing so absurd as this vaunted
republic of Plato. It shows a surprising ignorance of the acts and wants
of man in his social condition.

Some of the more important doctrines of Plato are worthy of further
reflection. I shall therefore detain the reader a short time to offer a
few remarks upon them.

[Sidenote: Grandeur of Plato's conceptions of God]

It was a beautiful conception of this philosophy that ideas are
connected together by others of a higher order, and these, in their
turn, by others still higher, their generality and power increasing as
we ascend, until finally a culminating point is reached--a last, a
supreme, an all-ruling idea, which is God. Approaching in this elevated
manner to the doctrine of an Almighty Being, we are free from those
fallacies we are otherwise liable to fall into when we mingle notions
derived from time and space with the attributes of God; we also avoid
those obscurities necessarily encountered when we attempt the
consideration of the illimitable and eternal.

[Sidenote: and of the soul.]

[Sidenote: The sentiment of pre-existence.]

Plato's views of the immortality of the soul offer a striking contrast
to those of the popular philosophy and superstition of his time. They
recall, in many respects, the doctrines of India. In Greece, those who
held the most enlarged views entertained what might be termed a doctrine
of semi-immortality. They looked for a continuance of the s