Abstract

As ons of the great world-hooks, the Republic of Plato has throughout many ages of different activities, and interests, among scholars of widely diverse casts of mind, at all times claimed careful perusal and profound study. It represents the full bloom of the Greek genius for philosophy. To the Greeks, the possibility of a mortal acquiring a connected view of things which might explain all existence, presented a problem of intense interest, and it must be admitted that, as a people, they did more to advance toward such a view than: the members of any other single race. And in the theories of Plato we find the highest point to which Greek philosophy; attained. Leaving entirely the world of sense, he constructs a great overfloating Kingdom of Ideas of which ordinary so- called "objects" are really but images or adumbrations. [...]