| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: was not your own business?
But they are the same as doing.
And the healing art, my friend, and building, and weaving, and doing
anything whatever which is done by art,--these all clearly come under the
head of doing?
Certainly.
And do you think that a state would be well ordered by a law which
compelled every man to weave and wash his own coat, and make his own shoes,
and his own flask and strigil, and other implements, on this principle of
every one doing and performing his own, and abstaining from what is not his
own?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: simultaneously,' or 'were intended to be studied in the order in which they
are here named (J. of Philol.) We have no right to connect statements
which are only accidentally similar. Nor is it safe for the author of a
theory about ancient philosophy to argue from what will happen if his
statements are rejected. For those consequences may never have entered
into the mind of the ancient writer himself; and they are very likely to be
modern consequences which would not have been understood by him. 'I cannot
think,' says Dr. Jackson, 'that Plato would have changed his opinions, but
have nowhere explained the nature of the change.' But is it not much more
improbable that he should have changed his opinions, and not stated in an
unmistakable manner that the most essential principle of his philosophy had
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