ANCIENT SCIENCE. 



21 



FlG. 6. PLATO (from an antique gem}. 



It was the practice of Socrates to constantly seek for definitions of 

 justice, beauty, and so on, and this of course implied that he thought 

 that in some things at least there was something permanent. Plato 

 managed in his famous doctrine of Ideas to reconcile and combine the 

 conflicting views of Heraclitus and of Socrates. This doctrine gave 

 rise afterwards to endless disputations, which for the most part diverted 

 men's minds from the observation of nature. Although in the region 

 of strict physical science the Platonic doctrines, with all their attrac- 

 tive brightness, would have proved guides as misleading as igties fatui 

 playing over a marsh, yet Plato's search after the One and the Eternal 

 in the multiplicity and changefulness of things has not been without 

 fruit in scientific conceptions. Perhaps the highly imaginative nature 

 of Plato's philosophy appeals to some element in our mental constitu- 

 tion, which rigid science and the mere contemplation of phenomena 

 fail to satisfy. Certain it is that the soaring aspiration which distin- 

 guishes the philosophy of the great Academic sage has, irrespective of 

 creeds and systems, attracted to his pages the best minds of every 

 subsequent generation of men. 



Plato considered the objects perceived by the senses as mere chang- 



