It would have told of a struggle for liberty (cp. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the wars of the Athenians against the island of Atlantis, is supposed to be founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have stood in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to the poems of Homer. The fragment of the “Critias” has given birth to a world-famous fiction, second only in importance to the tale of Troy and the legend of Arthur and is said as a fact to have inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth century. Neither must we forget that the “Republic” is but the third part of a still larger design which was to have included an ideal history of Athens, as well as a political and physical philosophy. But he does not bind up truth in logical formulas-logic is still veiled in metaphysics and the science which he imagines to “contemplate all truth and all existence” is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism which Aristotle claims to have discovered (Soph. “Rep.” 454 A “Polit.” 261 E “Cratyl.” 435, 436 ff.), although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own writings. The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and conditions also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary-these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found in the “Republic,” and were probably first invented by Plato. The sciences of logic and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments of thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates and Plato. He was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen and in him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the germs of future knowledge are contained.
Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge, although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or form from the substance of truth and both of them had to be content with an abstraction of science which was not yet realized. especially in Books V., VI., VII.) to which ancient thinkers ever attained. The “Republic” is the centre around which the other dialogues may be grouped here philosophy reaches the highest point (cp. Nor in any other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater wealth of humor or imagery, or more dramatic power. But no other dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same perfection of style no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only, but of all. There are nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the “Philebus” and in the “Sophist ” the “Politicus,” or “Statesman,” is more ideal the form and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the “Laws ” as works of art, the “Symposium” and the “Protagoras” are of higher excellence.
The “Republic” of Plato is the longest of his works, with the exception of the “Laws,” and is certainly the greatest of them.
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