hilosopher's interest. The philosopher is a lover, who like all lovers
longs for the beautiful. But he is the supreme lover, for he loves not
the individual beautiful object but the Absolute Beauty itself. He is a
lover too in that he does not possess, but somehow apprehends his object
from afar. Though imperfect, he seeks perfection; though standing like
all his fellows in the twilight of half-reality, he faces toward the
sun. Now it is the fundamental proposition of the Platonic philosophy
that reality is the sun itself, or the perfection whose possession every
wise thinker covets, whose presence would satisfy every longing of
experience. The real is that beloved object which is "truly beautiful,
delicate, perfect, and blessed." There is both a serious ground for such
an affirmation and an important truth in its meaning. The ground is the
evident incompleteness of every special judgment concerning experience.
We understand only in part, and we know that we understand only in part.
What we discover is real enough for practical purposes, but even
common-sense questions the true reality of its objects. Special
judgments seem to terminate our thought abruptly and arbitrarily. We
give "the best answer we can," but such answers do not come as the
completion of our thinking. Our thought is in some sense surely a
seeking, and it would appear that we are not permitted to rest and be
satisfied at any stage of it. If we do so we are like the
sophists--blind to our own ignorance. But it is equally true that our
thought is straightforward and progressive. We are not permitted to
return to earlier stages, but must push on to that which is not less,
but more, than what we have as yet found. There is good hope, then, of
understanding what the ideal may be from our knowledge of the direction
which it impels us to follow.

But to understand Plato's conception of the progression of experience we
must again catch up the Socratic strain which he weaves into every
theme. For Socrates, student of life and mankind, all objects were
objects of interest, and all interests practical interests. One is
ignorant when one does not know the good of things; opinionative when
one rates things by conventional standards; wise when one knows their
real good. In Platonism this practical interpretation of experience
appears in the principle that the object of perfect knowledge is _the
good_. The nature of things which one seeks to know better is the good
o