ained
unshaken amid the questionings of philosophy. (2) The other is a
difficulty which is touched upon in the Republic as well as in the
Phaedo, and is common to modern and ancient philosophy. Plato is not
altogether satisfied with his safe and simple method of ideas. He wants
to have proved to him by facts that all things are for the best, and
that there is one mind or design which pervades them all. But this
'power of the best' he is unable to explain; and therefore takes refuge
in universal ideas. And are not we at this day seeking to discover that
which Socrates in a glass darkly foresaw?

Some resemblances to the Greek drama may be noted in all the Dialogues
of Plato. The Phaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the protagonist
and Simmias and Cebes the secondary performers, standing to them in the
same relation as to Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic. No Dialogue
has a greater unity of subject and feeling. Plato has certainly
fulfilled the condition of Greek, or rather of all art, which requires
that scenes of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The
gathering of the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the
dismissal of Xanthippe, whose presence would have been out of place at
a philosophical discussion, but who returns again with her children to
take a final farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary
overthrow of the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the
hair of Phaedo, the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his
composure--are masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have
interpreted the feeling of the play: 'There can no evil happen to a good
man in life or death.'

'The art of concealing art' is nowhere more perfect than in those
writings of Plato which describe the trial and death of Socrates. Their
charm is their simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude; and yet
they touch, as if incidentally, and because they were suitable to the
occasion, on some of the deepest truths of philosophy. There is nothing
in any tragedy, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with
one exception), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato. The master
could not be more fitly occupied at such a time than in discoursing of
immortality; nor the disciples more divinely consoled. The arguments,
taken in the spirit and not in the letter, are our arguments; and
Socrates by anticipation may be even thought to refute some 'eccentric
notions; current in