The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: society, has a singular fascination for the minds of many. Too late we
learn that such ideals cannot be recalled, though the recollection of them
may have a humanizing influence on other times. But the abstractions of
philosophy are to most persons cold and vacant; they give light without
warmth; they are like the full moon in the heavens when there are no stars
appearing. Men cannot live by thought alone; the world of sense is always
breaking in upon them. They are for the most part confined to a corner of
earth, and see but a little way beyond their own home or place of abode;
they 'do not lift up their eyes to the hills'; they are not awake when the
dawn appears. But in Plato we have reached a height from which a man may
look into the distance and behold the future of the world and of
The Republic |