BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON
THE illustration shows the eastern façade of Buckingham Palace, the residence of King George V when in London. It is taken from St. James' Park. The end of the lake, which is five acres in area, can be seen in the picture. The private gardens occupy fifty acres. The eastern wing of the palace, 360 feet long, was added by Blore in 1846, making the building a large quadrangle. Buckingham Palace was originally erected in 1703 by a Duke of Buckingham, on the site of Arlington House, where it is recorded that tea was first drunk in England. George III purchased it, and it was remodeled by Nash in 1825 for George IV. The exterior is generally condemned as an architectural failure, imposing only from its size, but the interior has some good features. The white marble staircase is considered very handsome. The palace contains a fine sculpture gallery, library, etc. The Throne Room is 66 feet long, the State Drawing Room 110 feet by 60. The Picture Gallery, which is 180 feet long, contains a very fine collection, chiefly Dutch pictures. There are excellent examples of Rembrandt (the great Adoration of the Magi—1667), Hals, Teniers, Rubens, Osrade, Van Dyck (Charles I on horseback), Cuyp, Potter, De Hooch, Titian, Carracci, Claude, etc. Permission for strangers to visit the gallery is difficult to obtain, but may sometimes be obtained when the court is not in residence. The new monument to Queen Victoria, just unveiled, stands in front of Buckingham Palace.
THE GOLDEN CHAIN OF PLATONIC SUCCESSION:
by F. S. Darrow, A. M., Ph. D. (Harv.)
A KEY to the interpretation of Greek philosophy, generally neglected except by Platonists and Theosophists, is given by the following statement of Proklos, the "Platonic Successor":
What Orpheus delivered in hidden allegories, Pythagoras learned when he was initiated into the Orphic Mysteries, in which Plato next received a perfect knowledge from the Orphic and Pythagorean writings.
In this connexion it was pointed out by H. P. Blavatsky, the foundress of the Theosophical Society (Isis Unveiled, vol. II, p. 39, Point Loma edition) that Plato himself in his Letters declares that his teachings were derived from ancient and sacred doctrines. In the Seventh Letter of the collection which has come down to us he says:
It is ever necessary to believe in the truth of the Sacred Accounts of the Olden Time, which inform us that the soul is immortal and has judges of its conduct and suffers the greatest punishments when it is liberated from the body. Hence it is requisite to regard it a lesser evil to suffer than to commit the greatest sins and injuries.
It is unjustifiable to assume as scholars usually do that we are in a position to judge correctly of all of Plato's thoughts because, most fortunately, it appears that all of his published works have been preserved. The last thirty-eight years of Plato's life were spent as Scholarch or Head of the Platonic School among the olive groves of the Academy where the philosopher dwelt with some of his principal students, namely, his successor and pupil Speusippos, Xenokrates, and others, teaching Divine Wisdom freely to those who were able to understand. The fact that Aristotle refers to various teachings of Plato not now extant in the Platonic works, as well as the request in the Second of our Platonic Letters that the letter be burned after its frequent reading so that it may not fall into improper hands, both afford corroborative evidence of the tradition that Plato refused to publish any of his numerous lectures and oral teachings. It is therefore a priori probable that Plato treated philosophy in two distinct ways, one treatment intended for public circulation and the other intended for School instruction. If this be true, presumably his published dialogs give mere indirect hints, illustrations, and applications of the central principles of his teachings, which were revealed only orally to a selected audience. Doubtless the character of his oral instructions also varied and certain teachings were given only to a few of his more advanced students, as even Grote admits. Therefore in seeking to understand Plato it is important to recollect that today "the Prince of Western Philosophers" is known only from his Dialogs, while his teachings as Scholarch are now unknown. It is, however, certain from the statement of Aristotle in regard to Plato's lectures "On the Supreme Good," that Plato in his oral instructions taught Pythagorean Doctrines, and dealt with the highest and most transcendental concepts in a mystical and enigmatical way.
In regard to this there are important declarations in the extant Letters of Plato, Letters which it is orthodox to declare to be apocryphal, but whose genuineness is rightly defended by Grote in his Plato and Other Companions of Socrates. In the Second Letter, which is addressed to Dionysios the Younger of Syracuse, Plato uses some very suggestive language in referring to the effect upon the newly fledged student of entering the School:
I must speak to you in enigmas that should this tablet meet with any accident by land or by sea, he, who might perchance read it, may not understand. This has not happened to you alone but in truth no one when he first hears me is otherwise affected. Some have greater troubles, others less but nearly every student has a struggle of no slight power from which in truth he is freed only with difficulty. Be careful, however, that these discussions do not become known by men devoid of knowledge—discussions which if continually heard for many years at length with great labor are purified like gold. Many persons apt at learning and remembering have heard them for not less than thirty years and after testing them in every way have recently declared that those things which formerly appeared to them to be least worthy of belief now appear to be most worthy of belief and perfectly clear. The most important protection is to learn but not to commit to writing because what is written will almost certainly become public knowledge. Therefore on this account I have never myself at any time written anything on these subjects. There neither is nor ever shall be any treatise of Plato. The opinions called by the name of Plato are those of Socrates in his days of youthful vigor and glory.
These words of Plato, if admitted to be genuine, especially when linked with the following statements made in the Seventh of our Letters, show the futility of the current dogmatism of what purport to be correct and complete modern expositions and criticisms of Platonism, and ought to instil more humility in the orthodox dogmatists who strive to interpret the thoughts of the Master. The declarations referred to in the Seventh Letter are set forth as follows:
In regard to all who either have written or who shall write confidently stating that they know about what I am occupied, whether they claim to have heard it from me or from others or to have discovered it themselves, I can say that it is impossible for them to know anything as to my beliefs about these matters; for there is not and never will be any composition of mine about them. For a matter of this kind can not be expressed in words as other sciences are. But by a long acquaintance with the subject and by living with it suddenly a light is kindled in the mind, as from a fire bursting forth, which being engendered in the soul feeds itself upon itself.
He adds:
I should consider it the proudest accomplishment of my life, as well as of signal benefit to mankind, to bring forward an exposition of Nature luminous to all. But I think the attempt would be in nowise beneficial except to a few who require merely slight guidance to enable them to find it out for themselves; to most persons it would do no good but would only fill them with the empty conceit of knowledge and with contempt for others, as if they had learnt something solemn.
It may therefore be safely assumed that Plato intentionally refused to publish his views upon the most important subjects in a world of spite and puzzling contention. Note what he says in the Seventh Letter of the true disciple who is
in fact a lover of Wisdom, related to it and worthy of it by reason of his own inherent divinity. He thinks that he has been told of a wonderful Path, on which he ought forthwith to travel and that any other manner of life is unendurable. After this he does not torture both himself and his Leader by departing from the Path before he reaches the Goal, thereby obtaining the power of journeying without a Guide to point out the way before him. But they, who are not really lovers of Wisdom, but have only a coating of color like those whose bodies are sunburnt, when they perceive how many things are to be learnt and find out how great is the labor and what temperance in daily nourishment is requisite, they deem it too difficult and beyond their powers and become unable to attend to it at all and some of them persuade themselves that they have sufficiently heard the whole and do not wish further to exert themselves.
At Plato's death in 347 b. c. the house, the library, and the garden in the Academy, were bequeathed by the Master as the permanent property of the School, whose income in the course of the centuries was largely increased by endowments. For about three hundred years the grounds at the Academy remained uninterruptedly the Headquarters of the School, but during the Siege of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 87 b. c., the Teacher or Scholarch of that time was forced to retire within the city walls and gave his instruction in the Gymnasium, called Ptolemaeum, where Cicero heard the Scholarch Antiochos in 79 b. c. For more than six hundred years longer the grounds at the Academy remained in possession of the School, which however soon degenerated into a form of philosophical scepticism and eclecticism, from which it was later recalled by the so-called Neo- or New Platonists. Finally under the pressure of ecclesiastical bigotry and greed the Emperor Justinian confiscated the School property and forbade the last Scholarch Damascius to teach. Accordingly a little band of seven Platonic Pilgrim-sages, consisting of Damascius, Simplicius, Eulalius, Priscian, Hermeias, Diogenes, and Isidore, to avoid ecclesiastical persecution, were forced to wander away from the domains of Christendom over mountain and desert to the distant court of the Persian Emperor Chosroës, who four years later forced Justinian by treaty to let the last of the Neoplatonists return to their native land and die a natural death, guaranteeing them protection against further monkish persecution. It is a strange fact that as soon as the School grounds in the Academy were confiscated, a rumor, true or false, presently spread to the effect that the deserted property had become straightway unhealthy, a rumor which has persisted to this day, although it is impossible for one who has visited the spot to perceive any reason why it should not under proper cultivation re-become the healthful and beautiful garden it once was.
The following notice appeared in the Bibliotheca Platonica for November-December, 1889:
Secure the Academy! We desire to call the attention of Platonists throughout the world to the fact that the site of the Ancient Academy at Athens, Greece, could probably be secured by prompt and concerted action. Proper measures should be taken at once to organize an association having for its object the purchase, preservation and restoration of the place where Plato lived and taught and where his disciples continued his sublime and enlightening work for centuries. It should be rescued from the hands of the profane, and set aside for the perpetual use and benefit of all true followers of Divine Philosophy. There is no good reason, why, in due time, the Platonic School should not again become, as it once was, the nursery of Science and Wisdom for the whole World.
Note the significant words of Thomas Taylor, the great Platonist of a hundred years ago, who in the words of H. P. Blavatsky is "one of the very few commentators on old Greek and Latin authors who have given their just dues to the ancients for their mental development":
As to the philosophy (Platonism, as taught by Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato) by whose assistance these (the Eleusinian and Orphic) Mysteries are developed, it is coeval with the universe itself; and however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun himself shall continue to illuminate the world. It has been, indeed, and may hereafter be violently assaulted by delusive opinions; but the opposition will be just as imbecile as that of the waves of the sea against a temple, built on a rock, which majestically pours them back,
"Broken and vanquish'd foaming to the main."
Somewhat similar although less suggestive is the tribute of a recent writer upon Neoplatonism:
The Neoplatonist held that nothing perishes and Neoplatonism is still alive. Its mysticism has lived on. Its idealism can never die.