brings it to the reader; and he abounds in the surprises of a literary master. He has that opulence which furnishes at every turn the precise weapon he needs. As the rich man wears no more garments, drives no more horses, sits in no more chambers than the poor; but has that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, which is fit for the hour and the need; so Plato, in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the fit word. There is, indeed, no weapon in all the armory of wit which he did not possess and use—epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, satire, irony, down to the customary and polite. His illustrations are poetry and his jests illustrations. Socrates' profession of obstetric art is good philosophy; and his finding of that word 'cookery,' and 'adulatory art,' for rhetoric, in the Gorgias, does us a substantial service still. No orator can measure in effect with him who can give good nicknames. * * *
"Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate himself on the earth, and cover his eyes, while he adored that which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named; that of which everything can be affirmed and denied; that 'which is entity and nonentity.' He called it surer-essential. He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demonstrate that it was so—that this Being exceeded the limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable. Having paid his homage, as for the human race, to the Illimitable, he then stood erect, and for the human race affirmed, 'And yet things are knowable!'
