88 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



connected with political subjects, seem to us utterly incapable of solu- 

 tion. 



On his dialectics we have but one remark to make ; that the diffi- 

 culty experienced by Plato, whenever he has occasion to advert to the 

 mere arrangement of arguments and the process of reasoning, confirms 

 us in an old opinion, which indeed we never doubted, but which of 

 late years some attempts have been made to shake, that Aristotle was 

 strictly correct in announcing himself as the author of that logical 

 system which he afterwards communicated to his countrymen. The 

 same persons who are sagacious enough to discover the essences of 

 Plato in the reveries of Eastern sages, may be somewhat perplexed to 

 account why he did not at the same time borrow that logical system 

 which they will have it prevailed among the same sages, and why it 

 should be left to Aristotle to introduce that verbal machinery, of 

 which he forsooth falsely claimed the invention. 



Little known Such was the life, and such seem to have been the doctrines of 

 sonai hlS per " Plato : and we feel it a matter of sincere concern, that so little has 

 character, been handed down, that can be depended upon, relating to the per- 

 sonal character of so illustrious a man. The idlest inferences have 

 been drawn from misinterpretations of particular passages in his 

 works ; and tales of jealousy and rivalship have been invented by the 

 scandalmongers of antiquity, and retailed by the moderns. By some 

 writers he has been described as vain and ostentatious, and as one 

 who was bloated up to pride and arrogance by the attentions he re- 

 ceived at the court of Syracuse. By some he has been represented 

 as the tyrant's parasite; by others, as a political intriguer and fac- 

 tionary. That he was not a vain man, however, sufficiently appears 

 from the course of his writings ; where, with an amiable devotedness, 

 he attributes to Socrates not only the simple truths of that excellent 

 man's plain and sound morality, but all the rich and rare illustrations 

 which his own genius, and the amplitude of his research had dis- 

 covered, or the prodigality of his fancy bestowed. And this respect 

 for his master was, if we may place any faith in Plutarch, exemplified 

 also in his life, in an assimilation of manners, in his equanimity of 

 temper, and in that uniformity of character, which is the best proof of 

 sincerity and integrity. " Plato," says he, 1 " was the same person in 

 the Academy and at Syracuse, and exhibited the same character to- 

 wards Dionysius and towards Dion." 



His sue- The doctrines of Plato were, after his death, expounded in the 



cessors. Academy by his nephew Speusippus, who continued his duties as a 

 public professor for eight years, when he resigned in favour of Xeno- 

 crates, who had been one of Plato's most esteemed pupils. The inte- 

 grity of Xenocrates is well known, and his personal chastity has been 

 celebrated by the retailers of anecdotes 2 in a particular tale connected 



1 Oura xai HXeiruv iv 2v^a,xovtrxis oios \v KxaSvpiK xeti <ff(H>s Atovvffiov oios rt^o; 

 Aiuvx. Plutarch, in opp. vol. viii. p. 193. Ed. Reiske. 

 a Diogenes Laertius, Valerius Maximus, Bayle. 



