PLATO, 57 



Phaedo ' might be sketched at Megara, it probably received touches 

 from the author's hand at a much more advanced stage of his life than 

 his residence in that state. 



We should be inclined to attribute to an early period of Plato's life The Alci- i 

 'The Alcibiades' (generally termed * The First Alcibiades'). It is biades * 

 written with much simplicity ; and, at the same time that it inculcates 

 the necessity of gaining thorough information of the details of public 

 affairs before a young man enters into political life, it intimates, in 

 many marked passages, the coincidence between true policy and 

 virtue, and may be read by the students of Plato's works with great 

 propriety, as introductory to and illustrative of the ' Books on the 

 Commonwealth.' The notion that virtue is the perfection of a state, 

 just in the same manner that it is the perfection of an individual, 

 is developed in those books at great length ; but the great principle, 

 that the duty of justice is invariable and eternal, and that whatever is 

 productive of disorder is as noxious to the exorbitant individual as it 

 is to society ; or, in the case of a state, equally prejudicial to itself as 

 it is encroaching on its neighbours, is glanced at in this dialogue in a 

 manner very forcible. The vanity of Alcibiades is pleasantly flattered 

 by Socrates in the beginning of the dialogue. His spirit and readiness 

 are very characteristic ; but his self-sufficiency gradually abates, and he 

 is, before the conclusion, in a manner, rebuked and abashed. But a 

 certain liveliness is preserved throughout, and the reader cannot help 

 feeling an interest for the frank and ingenuous youth in spite of all the 

 embarrassment into which he is thrown, and which is a just punish- 

 ment for his forwardness and self-complacency. 



From Megara, Plato proceeded on a course of travels ; and first he Plato visits 

 visited Italy : and perhaps we shall be excused if we premise here Italy ' 

 a brief sketch of the opinions which seem to have prevailed in Italy at 

 the time of Plato's visit. In his progress through life he introduced 

 and ingrafted on the doctrines of Socrates many notions, of which we 

 find no account in Xenophon, as having been entertained by that philo- 

 sopher ; and many of his dialogues, on the other hand, are occupied 

 in controverting other classes of opinions, the nature and bearings 

 of which cannot indeed be understood without particular examination. 



The philosophy of Italy seems to have been at this time divided The Phiio- 

 between the opposite schools of Heraclitus and Pythagoras. The S^ of 

 former, whilst they reduced all the operations of the mind ultimately Heraclitus. 

 to sense, and considered sense as produced by the impression of 

 external species on the animal frame, fixed their attention upon the 

 changes of external phenomena, and the fluctuations and alterations 

 taking place in the animal frame itself; and concluded that there was 

 nothing permanent or settled in nature; that abstract science was 

 a mere pretence, experimental philosophy an arrangement of dreams, 

 sensation itself an illusion ; for how could there be any reality when 

 the things which seemed to impress the body were but the exuviae or 

 fleeting shadows of objects which were themselves shadows equally 



