The Relation of Plato to our Age and to the Ages

Extract

A few great books, for those who know them well, make unnecessary a countless number of lesser books. From the higher point of view, all can be seen that is visible from the lower, and much more. To have carefully studied the works of one of the world's great men is to have immensely widened one's own life. To comprehend the scope of his thought and the variety and extent of his sympathies is to have an essential element of a liberal education. An enthusiastic and undiscriminating discipleship, at least at first, is not to be deplored, for a realization of the limitations of great men and the incompleteness of all systems is sure to come later; but no one understands any view of the world who has never been able to feel its plausibility. There is no delight in life like the companionship of a noble mind. A long comradeship with a great man, one in whom intellectual power, ethical elevation, all-inclusive sympathies, and wholeness and wholesomeness of view are united, is one of the greatest of our human privileges. To it we turn for consolation in our sorrows, for a refuge from the petty irritations and vexations that so constantly beset us, and for help to rise above them to serenity and peace. Through these great souls we are able in some measure to realize the Emersonian ideal of a life of activity and at the same time of poise and power, the hands being in the world of action while the head is above the storm. No service is more real or precious than that which such men have rendered to humanity. By living on the higher planes, they appeal to our latent instincts; they help us to understand our own best selves, and to be what without them we could never be.

Of those who have served our race in this way one of the greatest is Plato.