James F. Clarke said Platos were impossible now.
Margaret agreed, and said that the pride of knowledge which he would find in the world should he appear, would be a greater obstacle than superstition once was.
Did somebody say a little while ago that Will indomitable was born of obstacle?
Margaret told William White that Coleridge had once said that he could neither measure nor understand Plato’s ignorance! His mind had not reached that altitude!
Henry Hedge, not willing to forego the possible birth of Genius, asked if all the experience and discovery with which the world had been enriched since Plato’s time would not furnish enough for the new-comer to act upon?
Margaret replied that the mind could not receive unless excited. She must go through all the intellectual experience of a Plato, to be as great as he; but she might stand upon the general or even her own intuitive recognition of the truths he had advanced, and go forward to greater results,—but still that would not be to make herself greater.
But, said Mrs. Ripley, in the first case you would be nothing but Plato.
Margaret acceded, but begged not to be understood as doubting that the future would be capable of finer things than the past.