which
unites the human with the divine. Beauty is not revealed by harmonious
outlines that appeal to the senses, but is _truth_; it is divinity.
Beauty, truth, love, these are God, whom it is the supreme desire of the
soul to comprehend, and by the contemplation of whom the mortal soul
sustains itself. Knowledge of God is the great end of life; and this
knowledge is effected by dialectics, for only out of dialectics can
correct knowledge come. But man, immersed in the flux of sensualities,
can never fully attain this knowledge of God, the object of all rational
inquiry. Hence the imperfection of all human knowledge. The supreme good
is attainable; it is not attained. God is the immutable good, and
justice the rule of the universe. "The vital principle of Plato's
philosophy," says Ritter, "is to show that true science is the knowledge
of the good, is the eternal contemplation of truth, or ideas; and though
man may not be able to apprehend it in its unity, because he is subject
to the restraints of the body, he is nevertheless permitted to recognize
it imperfectly by calling to mind the eternal measure of existence by
which he is in his origin connected." To quote from Ritter again:--

"When we review the doctrines of Plato, it is impossible to deny that
they are pervaded with a grand view of life and the universe. This is
the noble thought which inspired him to say that God is the constant and
immutable good; the world is good in a state of becoming, and the human
soul that in and through which the good in the world is to be
consummated. In his sublimer conception he shows himself the worthy
disciple of Socrates.... While he adopted many of the opinions of his
predecessors, and gave due consideration to the results of the earlier
philosophy, he did not allow himself to be disturbed by the mass of
conflicting theories, but breathed into them the life-giving breath of
unity. He may have erred in his attempts to determine the nature of
good; still he pointed out to all who aspire to a knowledge of the
divine nature an excellent road by which they may arrive at it."

That Plato was one of the greatest lights of the ancient world there can
be no reasonable doubt. Nor is it probable that as a dialectician he has
ever been surpassed, while his purity of life and his lofty inquiries
and his belief in God and immortality make him, in an ethical point of
view, the most worthy of the disciples of Socrates. He was to the Greeks
wh