lies belief in three things,
namely, (1) an absolute standard apprehended, however dimly, by man, (2)
a causal connexion between existence and perfection, and (3) a
persistent advance through time, then the Greeks held to the first two
and doubted, or even denied, the third. Their two great thinkers, Plato
and Aristotle, worked out systems based on the conviction that there
really was an absolute standard of perfection, that man could really
apprehend something of this perfection, and that the effort towards it
was essential to the very existence of the world, part of the stuff, as
it were, that made the universe. These systems have had an effect not to
be exaggerated on the whole movement of thought since their day.
Moreover, many of their fundamental conceptions are being revived in
modern science and metaphysics. And the convictions that underlie them
are calculated, one would say, to lead at once to a buoyant faith in
progress. But with Plato, and Aristotle, and the Greeks generally, they
did not so lead. The Greeks could not feel sure that this effort towards
perfection, though it is part of existence, is strong enough to deliver
man in this world from the web of evil in which also he is involved, nor
even that he makes any approach on the whole towards the loosening of
the toils. The spectre of world-destruction, as Whitman says of Carlyle,
was always before them. And I wish to ask later on if we may not surmise
definite reasons in their own history for this recurring note of
discouragement. But let us first look at the positive side, and first in
Plato. Plato came to his system by several lines of thought, and to
understand it we ought to take account of all.

1. In the first place no thinker, I suppose, ever felt more keenly than
he felt the desire for an absolute standard of truth, especially in
matters of right and wrong, if only to decide between the disputes of
men. And, in Greece men disputed so boldly and so incessantly that there
was no possibility of forgetting the clash of opinion in any 'dogmatic
slumber'. Thus Plato is always asking, like Robert Browning in 'Rabbi
Ben Ezra',--

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?

In one of his very earliest dialogues, the 'Euthyphro', Plato puts the
question almost i