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There seem to be two great aims in the philosophy of

Plato,-first, to realize abstractions; secondly, to connect them.

According to him, the true education is that which draws men from

becoming to being, and to a comprehensive survey of all being. He

desires to develop in the human mind the faculty of seeing the

universal in all things; until at last the particulars of sense

drop away and the universal alone remains. He then seeks to

combine the universals which he has disengaged from sense, not

perceiving that the correlation of them has no other basis but

the common use of language. He never understands that

abstractions, as Hegel says, are 'mere abstractions'-of use when

employed in the arrangement of facts, but adding nothing to the

sum of knowledge when pursued apart from them, or with reference

to an imaginary idea of good. Still the exercise of the faculty

of abstraction apart from facts has enlarged the mind, and played

a great part in the education of the human race.