“political craving ’—made three different attempts in Sicily, where, at that time, a united Mediterranean State of the Greeks seemed to be preparing. In this State and with its aid Plato intended to do for all the Greeks that which, in later years, Mahomet did for his Arabs: to prescribe greater and minor customs and especially to regulate every man’s daily mode of life. His ideas were practicable, as practicable as those of Mahomet proved to be: since others, by far more incredible, those of Christianity, were proved true. A few chances less and a few more—and the world would have lived to see the Platonisation of the South of Europe; and suppose this state had continued to our days, we should then probably be worshipping Plato as the “ good principle.” But he lacked success: wherefore his traditional character is that of a dreamer and Utopian—the stronger epithets passed away with ancient Athens.
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The purifying eye.—We have every reason to speak of ‘‘genius"’ in men—Plato, Spinoza and Goethe. for instance—whose intellects appear but loosely linked to their character and temper, like unto winged beings which are apt to separate from them and then soar aloft, far above them. On the other hand, those very men who were never able to shake themselves free from the trammels of their temper, and knew how to give it the most intellectual, lofty, universal, nay, occasionally
