ABSTRACT
§ 1. Plato has given in his writings a full account of what he considers the ideal of knowledge. The ideal condition of man is one which unites complete scientific knowledge with complete insight. The work of science is to reconstruct the universe so that the eye of the mind may survey it as a whole and feel the beauty of its perfection. This was no vain imagining for Plato; it was a passion and a vision. It led him to wide study, anxious thought, and elaborate composition: only a consummate master of expression could so easily conceal the raw material of his discourses. In Plato we find the first conscious attempt to systematise the results of Greek speculation; no branch of learning was left out; every science contributed its doctrine or furnished an example of error; the universe was studied from every point of view as one might travel a wide country and talk to many men before constructing a final description of its character. The comprehensiveness of this survey is not yet fully grasped: new discoveries continually show that every page of Plato has its pointed references, and nowhere more than in the departmental sciences among which his psychology, in part at least, must be counted.
