2
Again, Plato may be regarded as the "captain" ('arhchegoz') or
leader of a goodly band of followers; for in the Republic is to be
found the original of Cicero's De Republica, of St. Augustine's City
of God, of the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and of the numerous other
imaginary States which are framed upon the same model. The extent to
which Aristotle or the Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the
Politics has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more
necessary because it is not made by Aristotle himself. The two
philosophers had more in common than they were conscious of; and
probably some elements of Plato remain still undetected in
Aristotle. In English philosophy too, many affinities may be traced,
not only in the works of the Cambridge Platonists, but in great
original writers like Berkeley or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas.
That there is a truth higher than experience, of which the mind
bears witness to herself, is a conviction which in our own
generation has been enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps
gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance brought
a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest influence. The
Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon education, of
which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and
Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has
a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed
with the un unity of knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a
real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on
politics. Even the fragments of his words when "repeated at
second-hand" have in all ages ravished the hearts of men, who have
seen reflected in them their own higher nature. He is the father of
idealism in philosophy, in politics, in literature. And many of the
latest conceptions of modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity
of knowledge, the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have
been anticipated in a dream by him.
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