this sort is a good and useful thing. They like to sit in the shady groves of the Academy and listen to Plato or walk with Aristotle in the environs of the Gymnasium. The mighty minds of the past have marked out the broad outlines of truth; it is our work to fill in, to correct. The ethical conceptions were furnished by the ancients. The modern world has merely made them richer in content and broader in application. The deeper meaning of any philosophy or science is learned by the historic method, which gives us the trend of events.
The closing words of the "Republic" are an appropriate ending to the discussion of Plato: "And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and may be our salvation, if we are obedient to the spoken word; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been reciting."
"Plato, thou reasonest well!—
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man."
