ities which the diseases of the body might produce
and accumulate. The intestines are coiled many times, in order that the
food may not pass too quickly through the body, and so occasion again an
immoderate desire for more; for such a constant appetite would render
the pursuit of philosophy impossible, and make man disobedient to the
commands of the divinity within him."

[Sidenote: His ethical ideas.]

The reader will gather from the preceding paragraph how much of wisdom
and of folly, of knowledge and of ignorance, the doctrines of Plato
present. I may be permitted to continue this analysis of his writings a
little farther, with the intention of exhibiting the manner in which he
carried his views into practice; for Plato asserted that, though the
supreme good is unattainable by our reason, we must try to resemble God
as far as it is possible for the changeable to copy the eternal;
remembering that pleasure is not the end of man, and, though the sensual
part of the soul dwells on eating and drinking, riches and pleasure, and
the spiritual on worldly honours and distinctions, the reason is devoted
to knowledge. Pleasure, therefore, cannot be attributed to the gods,
though knowledge may; pleasure, which is not a good in itself, but only
a means thereto. Each of the three parts of the soul has its own
appropriate virtue, that of reason being wisdom; that of the spirit,
courage; that of the appetite, temperance; and for the sake of
perfection, justice is added for the mutual regulation of the other
three.

[Sidenote: His proposed political institutions.]

[Sidenote: The Republic of Plato.]

In carrying his ethical conceptions into practice, Plato insists that
the state is everything, and that what is in opposition to it ought to
be destroyed. He denies the right of property; strikes at the very
existence of the family, pressing his doctrines to such an extreme as to
consider women as public property, to be used for the purposes of the
state; he teaches that education should be a governmental duty, and that
religion must be absolutely subjected to the politician; that children
do not belong to their parents, but to the state; that the aim of
government should not be the happiness of the individual, but that of
the whole; and that men are to be considered not as men, but as elements
of the state, a perfect subject differing from a slave only in this,
that he has the state for his master. He recommends the exposure of
d