Sayfa 7 / 1391

That there is a truth higher than experience, of which the mind

bears witness to herself, is a conviction which in our own

generation has been enthusiastically asserted, and is perhaps

gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who at the Renaissance

brought a new life into the world Plato has had the greatest

influence. The Republic of Plato is also the first treatise upon

education, of which the writings of Milton and Locke, Rousseau,

Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante

or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is

profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge; in the early

Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the

Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments of his

words when 'repeated at second-hand' (Symp. 215 D) have in all

ages ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them

their own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in

philosophy, in politics, in literature.