GENERAL INTRODUCTION generation. The rivalry of this private college with the professional school of Isocrates is discernibl in the subject and tone of the gorgias. Plato carried on the direction of the Academy till his ty-one, in 346; save that half-way through this period (367) he accepted the invitation of his friend Dion to undertake the instruction of th younger Dionysius at Syracuse. The elder tyrant had been annoyed by the Socratic freedom of Plato's talk: now it was a wayward you th who refused the roke of a systematic training. What that training was like we see in the Republic, where true political dom is approached by an arduous ascent through mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. Plato returned with less hopes of obtaining the ideal ruler, to make wonderful conquests in the realm of thought. The Meno and Gorgias set forth the doctrine that knowledge of right is latent in our minds: dialectic, not the rhetoric of the schools, is the means of eliciting it. The method, as Plato soon perceived must be long and difficult: but he felt a mystical rapture over its certainty, which led him to picture the immutable“ forms” as existing in a world of their own. This feeling, and the conviction whence it springs-that knowledge is somehow possible, had come to the front of his mind when he began to know Socrates. Two brilliant compositions, the gth of th onviction, and then, the noble fervour of the feeling. In the latter of these works, the highest Digitized by Microsoft (BGENERAL INTRODUCTION generation. The rivalry of this private college with the professional school of Isocrates is discernible in the subject and tone of the Gorgias. Plato carried on the direction of the Academy till his death, at eighty-one, in 346 ; save that half-way through this period (367) he accepted the invitation of his friend Dion to undertake the instruction of the younger Dionysius at Syracuse. The elder tyrant had been annoyed by the Socratic freedom of Plato's talk : now it was a wayward youth who refused the yoke of a systematic training. What that training was like we see in the Republic, where true political wisdom is approached by an arduous ascent through mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. Plato returned, with less hopes of obtaining the ideal ruler, to make wonderful conquests in the realm of thought. The Meno and Gorgias set forth the doctrine that knowledge of right is latent in our minds : dialectic, not the rhetoric of the schools, is the means of eliciting it. The method, as Plato soon perceived, must be long and difficult : but he felt a mystical rapture over its certainty, which led him to picture the immutable " forms ' as existing in a world of their own. This feeling, and the conviction whence it springs that knowledge is somehow possible, had come to the front of his mind when he began to know Socrates. Two brilliant compositions, the Cratylus and Symposium, display the strength of the conviction, and then, the noble fervour of the feeling. In the latter of these works, the highest xiv