hes that education is to be continued through
life and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of
some kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of
Solon, 'I grow old learning many things,' cannot be applied literally.
Himself ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and
delighting in solid geometry (Rep.), he has no difficulty in imagining
that a lifetime might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know
how many more men of business there are in the world than real students
or thinkers, are not equally sanguine. The education which he proposes
for his citizens is really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of
genius, interrupted, but only for a time, by practical duties,--a life
not for the many, but for the few.

Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to
our own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be realized,
it may have a great effect in elevating the characters of mankind,
and raising them above the routine of their ordinary occupation or
profession. It is the best form under which we can conceive the whole
of life. Nevertheless the idea of Plato is not easily put into practice.
For the education of after life is necessarily the education which each
one gives himself. Men and women cannot be brought together in schools
or colleges at forty or fifty years of age; and if they could the result
would be disappointing. The destination of most men is what Plato would
call 'the Den' for the whole of life, and with that they are content.
Neither have they teachers or advisers with whom they can take counsel
in riper years. There is no 'schoolmaster abroad' who will tell them of
their faults, or inspire them with the higher sense of duty, or with the
ambition of a true success in life; no Socrates who will convict them
of ignorance; no Christ, or follower of Christ, who will reprove them
of sin. Hence they have a difficulty in receiving the first element of
improvement, which is self-knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir
them; they rather wish to rest than to pursue high objects. A few
only who have come across great men and women, or eminent teachers of
religion and morality, have received a second life from them, and have
lighted a candle from the fire of their genius.

The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons
continue to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not
know