the Oriental,
and indeed from the spirit of Athenian law (compare Telfy,--dei kai
autous kai tous ek touton atimous einai), as the Hebrew in the age of
Ezekial is from the Jewish people of former ages.

Of all Plato's provisions the object is to bring the practice of the law
more into harmony with reason and philosophy; to secure impartiality,
and while acknowledging that every citizen has a right to share in the
administration of justice, to counteract the tendency of the courts to
become mere popular assemblies.

...

Thus we have arrived at the end of the writings of Plato, and at the
last stage of philosophy which was really his. For in what followed,
which we chiefly gather from the uncertain intimations of Aristotle, the
spirit of the master no longer survived. The doctrine of Ideas passed
into one of numbers; instead of advancing from the abstract to the
concrete, the theories of Plato were taken out of their context, and
either asserted or refuted with a provoking literalism; the Socratic or
Platonic element in his teaching was absorbed into the Pythagorean or
Megarian. His poetry was converted into mysticism; his unsubstantial
visions were assailed secundum artem by the rules of logic. His
political speculations lost their interest when the freedom of Hellas
had passed away. Of all his writings the Laws were the furthest removed
from the traditions of the Platonic school in the next generation. Both
his political and his metaphysical philosophy are for the most part
misinterpreted by Aristotle. The best of him--his love of truth, and
his 'contemplation of all time and all existence,' was soonest lost; and
some of his greatest thoughts have slept in the ear of mankind almost
ever since they were first uttered.

We have followed him during his forty or fifty years of authorship, from
the beginning when he first attempted to depict the teaching of Socrates
in a dramatic form, down to the time at which the character of Socrates
had disappeared, and we have the latest reflections of Plato's own mind
upon Hellas and upon philosophy. He, who was 'the last of the poets,' in
his book of Laws writes prose only; he has himself partly fallen
under the rhetorical influences which in his earlier dialogues he was
combating. The progress of his writings is also the history of his life;
we have no other authentic life of him. They are the true self of the
philosopher, stripped of the accidents of time and place. The great