represented the meaning of these authors to posterity." I introduced
Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them
better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a
genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all
patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented
them to him; and he asked them "whether the rest of the tribe were as
great dunces as themselves?"'). There is, however, a difference between
them: for whereas Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind,
which developes the stages of the idea in different countries or at
different times in the same country, with Plato these gradations are
regarded only as an order of thought or ideas; the history of the human
mind had not yet dawned upon him.

Many criticisms may be made on Plato's theory of education. While in
some respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others
he is in advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which
prevailed in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered
new ones. He does not see that education is relative to the characters
of individuals; he only desires to impress the same form of the state on
the minds of all. He has no sufficient idea of the effect of literature
on the formation of the mind, and greatly exaggerates that of
mathematics. His aim is above all things to train the reasoning
faculties; to implant in the mind the spirit and power of abstraction;
to explain and define general notions, and, if possible, to connect
them. No wonder that in the vacancy of actual knowledge his followers,
and at times even he himself, should have fallen away from the doctrine
of ideas, and have returned to that branch of knowledge in which alone
the relation of the one and many can be truly seen--the science of
number. In his views both of teaching and training he might be styled,
in modern language, a doctrinaire; after the Spartan fashion he would
have his citizens cast in one mould; he does not seem to consider that
some degree of freedom, 'a little wholesome neglect,' is necessary to
strengthen and develope the character and to give play to the individual
nature. His citizens would not have acquired that knowledge which in
the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the pilgrims from their
experience of evil.

On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and
theologians when he teac