f Socrates which follows afterwards, 'I am a diviner, but a
poor one.'

The tale of the grasshoppers is naturally suggested by the surrounding
scene. They are also the representatives of the Athenians as children
of the soil. Under the image of the lively chirruping grasshoppers who
inform the Muses in heaven about those who honour them on earth, Plato
intends to represent an Athenian audience (tettigessin eoikotes). The
story is introduced, apparently, to mark a change of subject, and also,
like several other allusions which occur in the course of the Dialogue,
in order to preserve the scene in the recollection of the reader.

*****

No one can duly appreciate the dialogues of Plato, especially the
Phaedrus, Symposium, and portions of the Republic, who has not a
sympathy with mysticism. To the uninitiated, as he would himself
have acknowledged, they will appear to be the dreams of a poet who
is disguised as a philosopher. There is a twofold difficulty in
apprehending this aspect of the Platonic writings. First, we do not
immediately realize that under the marble exterior of Greek literature
was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion. Secondly, the
forms or figures which the Platonic philosophy assumes, are not like the
images of the prophet Isaiah, or of the Apocalypse, familiar to us in
the days of our youth. By mysticism we mean, not the extravagance of
an erring fancy, but the concentration of reason in feeling, the
enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the
infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties. When
feeding upon such thoughts the 'wing of the soul' is renewed and
gains strength; she is raised above 'the manikins of earth' and their
opinions, waiting in wonder to know, and working with reverence to find
out what God in this or in another life may reveal to her.

ON THE DECLINE OF GREEK LITERATURE.

One of the main purposes of Plato in the Phaedrus is to satirize
Rhetoric, or rather the Professors of Rhetoric who swarmed at Athens in
the fourth century before Christ. As in the opening of the Dialogue he
ridicules the interpreters of mythology; as in the Protagoras he mocks
at the Sophists; as in the Euthydemus he makes fun of the word-splitting
Eristics; as in the Cratylus he ridicules the fancies of Etymologers;
as in the Meno and Gorgias and some other dialogues he makes reflections
and casts sly imputation upon the higher classes at Athens; so in