The Thinker 127
rearing, on the relations between the sexes, on the right kind of diet
and the best modes of exercise. He comments on the way to good
health. He’ll tell you almost as readily how to plant crops as how
the soul is composed. By the time his book is over he has thought
about the nature of the good and the true, the relation of immediate
experience to the forms that live on high, and what happens to us
after we die.
To be sure, there have been few who would willingly go off and
live in Plato’s state. There are no longer many who value precisely
what he values. True Platonists are rarely found in the current world,
and yet his infl uence is everywhere.
Plato’s achievement is to consider every signifi cant area of human
life, and do so wisely. There is not a consequential subject that he
does not talk about in his inimitable way— that is to say, both bril-
liantly and sensibly. He considers all the great matters, and every
time we do as much, we are following Plato’s path. What achieve-
ment could be grander?
Just one— the achievement of being right. For Plato did not want
his work to be merely provocative or intellectually distinguished or
superbly eloquent. Of course it is all of these. But Plato wanted to
disclose the Truth. He believed that he had ascended to the highest
level that the thinker can aspire to reach: the level where he receives
and reveals what is enduringly so. Plato believed he had achieved
contact with ultimate and absolute Truth. He did not think that his
fi ndings were good for himself and his circle only, or for Athenians,
or for Greeks, or even for all men and women living when he did.
He sought Truth that would last forever.
For Socrates it was enough not to lie. He sets forth an example of
a certain sort of thinker, one who always describes life precisely as
he sees it. When his fellow citizens seem to be deluding themselves,
he tells them so. When he is mystifi ed by some explanation they
give, he admits it. He is candid about his confusion. He never tries