im, a work in
philosophy. Something of permanent value to all thinkers and students.
One needs but to read King's lecture on "Socrates" to understand
how rich and valuable such a work would have been. Indeed, here are
paragraphs that could have been written only by one of philosophic
mood and habit of mind. How much of modern "New Thought Philosophy" is
expressed in the following:

"Few acknowledge that thoughts are as substantial as things, that a
feeling is as real as a paving stone, that the soul is a congeries of
actual forces as truly as the body is, that a moral principle is as
persistent and fatal a thing as a chemical agent, and that, in the deeps
of the mind and of society, laws are at work as constant and stern
as those which spin the planets and heave the sea and poise the
firmaments."

Accepting as the ground work of his philosophy such principles as these
King tells us that "Socrates came to the conclusion that the stone which
his chisel chipped was less substantial than the soul in every human
form: and that the beauty which his cunning carved into the block was
less charming and permanent than the beauty of truth, temperance, and
holiness, which faith and culture could leave upon the invisible essence
of man. He therefore resolved to abandon the lower for the higher art of
Sculpture, and instead of being an artist in marble to be a fashioner of
men."

King's aptness for historical and philosophical generalization is quite
evident as we read:

"Socrates was the father of a new method of study. His thoughts were the
seed corn of systems. His pupils were the teachers of centuries. Each
bump of his brain was the nucleus of a philosophical school. Hardly
had he left the world, than the strong and simple light he shed was
scattered in various hues by the prismatic minds that had surrounded him
or that succeeded him; and in almost every case,--as so often happens
when the strands of the solar beam are brilliantly dishevelled,--the
actinic ray was lost."

In all our reading we have never met a description of the Grecian
philosopher so complete and accurate as one brief phrase in the lecture
from which these excerpts are taken, "Socrates, the slouchy ambassador
of reason." Or what could be truer of Socrates and Plato than to say
that "Arm in arm, the stately duke and the democrat of philosophy walk
down the lists of fame?"

Read and re-read the closing paragraph of King's "Socrates" impresses
the thoughtf