2. Q. Who is foremost of Greek philosophical writers? A. Plato.
3. Q. What four works have been the fruit, direct or indirect, of Plato’s “Republic?” A. Cicero’s “De Republica,” St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” and Bacon’s “New Atlantis.”
4. Q. In any just representation of Plato, who could not but be a very conspicuous figure? A. Socrates.
5. Q. In the first extract given from Plato’s “Republic,” what does the speaker, Glaucon, undertake to set forth for Socrates to overthrow? A. A notion which he avers to be current and accepted among men, that injustice is better policy than justice.
6. Q. From the discussion of the nature of justice and injustice, to what does Plato make a very unexpected passage? A. To that form of discussion which has given its name to the “Republic”—the ideal state.
7. Q. Who has recently made a scholarly and adequate translation of Plato’s entire works into English? A. Mr. Jowett.
8. Q. How is the so-styled “Platonic love” defined in the “Republic?” A. “A friend should use no other familiarity to his love than a father would use to his son, and this only for a virtuous end, and he must first have the other’s consent.”
9. Q. What was the “Socratic dæmon” to which Plato alludes in his “Republic?” A. A benign and beneficent influence—a kind of divinity within him that governed the conduct of Socrates.
10. Q. How is the Timæus of Plato described? A. As of all the writings of Plato the most obscure and most repulsive to modern readers, while the most influential of all over the ancient and mediæval world.
11. Q. What are some of the other best known works of Plato? A. “The Laws,” the “Symposium,” the “Phædrus,” the “Gorgias,” and the “Parmenides.”