_A._ No thinker’s thoughts give me so much pleasure as my own: this, of course, proves nothing in favour of their value; but I should be foolish to neglect fruits which are tasteful to me only because they happen to grow on my own tree!—and I was once such a fool.
_B._ Others have the contrary feeling: which likewise proves nothing in favour of their thoughts, nor yet is it any argument against their value.
THE LAST ARGUMENT OF THE BRAVE MAN.—There are snakes in this little clump of trees.—Very well, I will rush into the thicket and kill them.—But by doing that you will run the risk of falling a victim to them, and not they to you.—But what do I matter?
OUR TEACHERS.—During our period of youth we select our teachers and guides from our own times, and from those circles which we happen to meet with: we have the thoughtless conviction that the present age must have teachers who will suit us better than any others, and that we are sure to find them without having to look very far. Later on we find that we have to pay a heavy penalty for this childishness: we have to expiate our teachers in ourselves, and then perhaps we begin to look for the proper guides. We look for them throughout the whole world, including even present and past ages—but perhaps it may be too late, and at the worst we discover that they lived when we were young—and that at that time we lost our opportunity.
THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.—Plato has marvellously described how the philosophic thinker must necessarily be regarded as the essence of depravity in the midst of every existing society: for as the critic of all its morals he is naturally the antagonist of the moral man, and, unless he succeeds in becoming the legislator of new morals, he lives long in the memory of men as an instance of the “evil principle.” From this we may judge to how great an extent the city of Athens, although fairly liberal and fond of innovations, abused the reputation of Plato during his lifetime. What wonder then that he—who, as he has himself recorded, had the “political instinct” in his body—made three different attempts in Sicily, where at that time a united Mediterranean Greek State appeared to be in process of formation?
It was in this State, and with its assistance, that Plato thought he could do for the Greeks what Mohammed did for the Arabs several centuries later: viz. establishing both minor and more important customs, and especially regulating the daily life of every man. His ideas were quite practicable just as certainly as those of Mohammed were practicable; for even much more incredible ideas, those of Christianity, proved themselves to be practicable! a few hazards less and a few hazards more—and then the world would have witnessed the Platonisation of Southern Europe; and, if we suppose that this state of things had continued to our own days, we should probably be worshipping Plato now as the “good principle.” But he was unsuccessful, and so his traditional character remains that of a dreamer and a Utopian—stronger epithets than these passed away with ancient Athens.