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PLATO 271 devotedly attached to Socrates for 10 years. After the death of Socrates, he went to Megara, to hear Euclid; thence to Cyrene, and perhaps to Egypt and S. Italy. On his return he began to teach gratuitously at Athens, in the plane tree grove of the Academia; and had a great number of disciples. Among them was Aristotle, distinguished as the "Mind of the School," and perhaps Demosthenes. Women are said to have attended. In his 40th year, Plato visited Sicily, but he offended the tyrant Dionysius by the political opinions he uttered, and only escaped death through the influence of his friend, Dion. PLATTE PLATO Plato never married, took no active part in public affairs, lived absorbed in the pursuit of truth. His works have come down to us complete, and are chiefly in the form of dialogues. They are singular in their union of the philo- sophic and poetic spirit — the depth of the philosopher and the rigorous exacti- tude of the logician with the highest splendor of imagination of the poet. We owe to him the threefold division of philosophy into dialectics, physics, and ethics; the first sketch of the laws of thought; the doctrine of "ideas," as the eternal archetypes of all visible things; and the first attempt toward a demon- stration of the immortality of the soul. It is difficult to say what idea Plato had of the Deity. It seems, however, that his idea of the good and Him were identical. Plato distinguishes two com- ponents of the soul — the divine or ra- tional, that which partakes of a divim principle, and participates in the knowl- edge of the eternal; and the mortal or irrational, that which participates in the motions and changes of the body, and is perishable. The two are united by an intermediate link, which he calls thumos, or spirit. He believes in future retribu- tion; exonerates God from responsibility for sin and suffering, and sets forth in elaborate myths the blessedness of the virtuous and the punishments of the vicious. His birthday was long observed as a festival. He died in the act of writing, it is said, in May, 347 B. c. For biography see Adams' "Religious Teachers of Greece" (1909) and for doc- trine Fowler's "Loeb's Classical Li- brary" (1913). PLATT, THOMAS COLLIER, an American legislator; born in Owego, N. Y., July 15, 1833; prepared for college at Owego Academy; entered Yale Col- lege 1853, but ill-health forced him to leave. Engaged in mercantile life; was president of the Tioga National bank at its organization; interested in the lum- bering business in Michigan; was county clerk of the county of Tioga in 1859, 1860 and 1861; was elected to the 43d and 44th Congresses; was elected United States Senator Jan. 18, 1881, and re- signed that office May 16 of the same year, with Roscoe Conkling, both Sena- tors being offended because President Garfield made New York appointments without consulting them; was chosen secretary and director of the United States Express Co. in 1879, and in 1880 was elected president of the company; was member and president of the board of quarantine commissioners of New York from 1880 till 1888; was delegate to the National Republican conventions from 1876 to 1904 uninterruptedly; was president of the Southern Central rail- road; a member of the National Repub- lican committee; and United States Sen- ator from 1896. He died March 6, 1910. PLATTE (plat), a river in the United States, which rises in the Rocky Moun- tains by two branches, called respec- tively the North and South Forks of the Platte. The united stream falls into the Missouri after a course of about 1,900 miles. It is from 1 mile to 3 miles broad, shallow, encumbered with islands, has a rapid current, and therefore not navi- gable.