past. Having more leisure there than here for
reading, I amused myself with reading seriously Plato's Republic. I
am wrong, however, in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest
task-work I ever went through. I had occasionally before taken up some
of his other works, but scarcely ever had patience to go through a
whole dialogue. While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and
unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself,
how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to
give reputation to such nonsense as this. How the soi-disant Christian
world, indeed, should have done it, is a piece of historical curiosity.
But how could the Roman good sense do it? And particularly, how could
Cicero bestow such eulogies on Plato? Although Cicero did not wield
the dense logic of Demosthenes, yet he was able, learned, laborious,
practised in the business of the world and honest. He could not be the
dupe of mere style, of which he was himself the first master in the
world. With the moderns, I think, it is rather a matter of fashion and
authority. Education is chiefly in the hands of persons who, from their
profession, have an interest in the reputation and the dreams of Plato.
They give the tone while at school, and few in their after years have
occasion to revise their college opinions. But fashion and authority
apart, and bringing Plato to the test of reason, take from him, his
sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities, and what remains? In
truth, he is one of the race of genuine sophists, who has escaped the
oblivion of his brethren, first, by the elegance of his diction, but
chiefly by the adoption and incorporation of his whimsies into the body
of artificial Christianity. His foggy mind is for ever presenting the
semblances of objects which, half seen through a mist, can be defined
neither in form nor dimension. Yet this, which should have consigned
him to early oblivion, really procured him immortality of fame and
reverence. The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ
levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw
in the mysticisms of Plato materials with which they might build up
an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit
everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce
it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from
the lips of Jesus himself are within the co