down the Niagara of violent death, in the very next night after its launching on its unknown river of life."[1]
Plato's "Republic" is the first of a long series of ideal States;[2] and we find the original thought "Romanised" by Cicero, "Christianised" by St Augustine in his 'City of God,' and in more modern times reappearing in Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia,' and in Lord Bacon's 'New Atlantis,' with its wonderful anticipations of modern science. We have in our own day seen specimens of the same class of literature in works like 'Erewhon' and 'The Coming Race.'
THE LAWS.
This Dialogue is the last and the longest that Plato wrote, and bears traces of the hand of old age. The fire and spirit of his earlier works seems gone, while Plato himself is changed; he is not only older, but more conservative, more dogmatic, and—we must also say—more intolerant and narrower-minded than was his wont. Much had happened since he wrote the "Republic" to disenchant him of visionary politics. His mission to Syracuse had proved, as we have seen, a miserable failure, and his grand schemes of reform had sadly ended in the violent death of his friend Dion. And so the tone of the "Laws" is grave, prosaic, and even commonplace in its trivial details. The high aspirations of the "Republic" have sobered down into a tedious and minute legislation. The king-
- ↑ De Quincey, viii.
- ↑ An interesting account of these States may be found in Sir G. C. Lewis's Methods of Reasoning in Politics, II. ch. xxii.
