ic irony, "and I will tell you why: I am not yet able,
according to the Delphic inscription, to _know myself_, and it seems to
me very ridiculous, while ignorant of myself, to inquire into what I am
not concerned in." Weary of disputes about the origin of the universe,
he turned to the one field in which the current method of abstract
reasoning could be fruitfully applied--the field of ethics.

Living in an age of wild sophistry, he endeavoured to steady and
enlighten the conscience of men by establishing right principles of
conduct. His method of proceeding by definitions and analogy has been
misapplied, but in his hands it was a powerful instrument in discovering
and marking out a new field of inquiry. His religious genius, the ideal
character of his ethics, and the heroic character of his life, have been
his great titles to fame, but it is his method which gives him his high
position in the history of philosophy.

The method of Socrates was adopted and enlarged by the most famous of
all ancient writers. Aristocles, surnamed Plato (the broad-browed), was
a brilliant young Athenian aristocrat who turned from poetry to
philosophy on meeting, in his twentieth year, with Socrates. After
travelling abroad in search of knowledge, he returned to Athens and
founded his world-renowned Academy there in 387 B.C. With vast learning
and puissant method, he created an influence which is not yet extinct
Plato was the culminating point of Greek philosophy.

In his works all the various and conflicting tendencies of preceding
eras were collected under one method. This method was doubtless the
method of Socrates, but much extended and improved. Socrates relied on
definitions and analogical reasoning as the principles of investigation.
Plato used these arts, but he added to them the more scientific
processes of analysis, generalisation, and classification.

In regard to his system of thought, Plato was a realist. He believed
that ideas have a real existence, and that material things are only
copies of the realities existing in the ideal world. He held that
beauty, goodness, and wisdom are spiritual realities, from which all
things beautiful, good, and wise derive their existence.

In his philosophy the universe is divided into the celestial region of
ideas and the mundane region of material phenomena, answering to the
modern conception of heaven and earth. As the phenomena of matter are
but copies of ideas (not, as some suppose, the