such interpretation it is not necessary here to enter; it is sufficient to appreciate the difference and to point out Emerson's adherence to the older school of criticism.

In contrast to this idea of an ineffable unity of things Emerson places the conception of a dialectic, the aim of which is to give scientific knowledge; and this dialectic he maintains Plato elaborated. Thus his exposition goes on to say: "Having paid his homage, as for the human race, to the Illimitable, he (Plato) then stood erect, and for the human race affirmed, 'And yet things are knowable!' -that is, the Asia in his mind was first heartily honored the ocean of love and power, before form, before will, before knowledge, the Same, the Good, the One; and now, refreshed and empowered by this worship, the instinct of Europe, namely, culture, returns; and he cries, 'Yet things are knowable!' They are knowable, because being from one, things correspond. There is a scale; and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; a science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences-I call it

Dialectic-which is the Intellect discriminating the false and the true. It rests on the observation of identity and diversity; for to judge is to unite to an object the notion which belongs to it." 1

This is a doctrine of the Republic and truthfully reflects Plato's work. The Neo-Platonists of course accepted it and worked it into their mystical scheme although they held to the former idea of an ineffable One as the superior conception. That is, in Neo-Platonism one finds a mystical system arising out of an idealistic philosophy. The conception of a science based on the knowledge of ideas gave them idealism and truthfully reflected Plato. The conception of an ineffable unity of things above all knowledge necessitated a mysticism; and this they professed to find in Plato. Such criticism Emerson accepted and hence the strong Neo-Platonic strain in his appreciation of Platonism.

Emerson's Platonism is broad enough, too, to take in not only the Neo-Platonists but also the earlier thinkers of Greece from Thales on who antedate the appearance of Plato. In these thinkers he found a crude symbolical 1 Complete Works, IV., 62.

explanation of the absolute cause of things which Neo-Platonism had taught him to consider above all knowledge. "The baffled intellect," he says, "must still kneel before this cause, which refuses to be named-ineffable cause, which every fine genius has essayed to represent by some emphatic symbol, as, Thales by water, Anaximines by air, Anaxagoras by (Nous) thought, Zoroaster by fire, Jesus and the moderns by love; and the metaphor of each has become a national religion." 1

Plato when viewed in connection with these earlier Greek speculators is considered by Emerson as the perfect expression of that which they but inadequately stated; he gave a scientific account of what had before been uttered symbolically. "Before Pericles came the Seven Wise Masters," he writes, "and we have the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics and ethics; then the partialists-deducing the origin of things from flux or water, or from air, or from fire, or from mind. All mix with these causes mythologic pictures. At last comes Plato, the distributor, who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or whooping; for he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast 1 Complete Works, III., 72-73.

and superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. 'He shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define.'” 1

In thus estimating the place of this early speculation in the evolution of Greek thought Emerson was developing to its utmost a practice of Plato and the Platonists. In both are found open critiques of the earlier philosophers. In Plotinus there is frequent reference to the ancients and no opportunity is lost by Proclus to identify the teaching of the early schools with Platonism. And in Plato Emerson found a criticism that set the old thought in vivid contrast to Plato's own conceptions. In the Sophist the main speaker reviews the preceding philosophers and declares that "each of them has related a fable to us, as being boys." 2 This is the identical position that Emerson takes regarding the early Hellenic thinkers.

Into the thought of these Greek thinkers before Plato, Emerson was curious to inquire. In Plutarch's Morals he found a rich mine of quotation and comment in which the earlier Greek philosophers figure conspicuously.

1 Ibid., IV., 47.

2 The Works of Plato, translated by Thomas Taylor, III., 240.

"Plutarch occupies a unique place in literature," Emerson writes, "as an encyclopædia of Greek and Roman antiquity. Whatever is eminent in fact or in fiction, in opinion, in character, in institutions, in science-natural, moral or metaphysical-or in memorable sayings, drew his attention and came to his pen with more or less fulness of record. He is, among prose writers, what Chaucer is among English poets, a repertory for those who want the story without searching for it at first hand-a compend of all accepted traditions." 1 In the English Cudworth, too, Emerson found many fragments of ancient thought. The work of this Cambridge Platonist of the seventeenth century—The True Intellectual System of the Universe-was perhaps the first book to draw Emerson's attention to Platonism.2 He read it for the "citations from Plato and the philosophers,' but found the body of the work dull reading, relieved only by the "magazine of quotations, of extraordinary ethical sentences, the shining summits of ancient philosophy." Emerson 1 Complete Works, X., 297.

2 Ibid., IV., 294.

8 Ibid.

4 Ibid., X., 516.