…time and we're still very much where we were. I mean, come back to the Greeks, which did more good? Did the preaching of Plato and Aristotle do more good than the Choribantic dances, I mean, which were sacred to the Great Mother? I would think that on…

…descriptions of the other world. And it's most striking to see. I mean, I was amazed, for example, to find this in Plato. There's a description, it's in the Phaedrus, where Socrates says, they're talking about the ideal world, and Socrates says, the very…

…state. And it's very curious to see, as I suddenly, this was another great insight which I hadn't realized, that the ideal world of Plato was not merely an abstract thought world. It was also a sense. world. I mean, where he says that the stones of the…

…two cultures. But to me, the interesting problem is this. I don't think you can mitigate scientific specialization with courses in Plato and in literature. For this reason that both these forms of education are education on the symbolic and verbal level.…

…time and we're still very much where we were. I mean, come back to the Greeks, which did more good? Did the preaching of Plato and Aristotle do more good than the Choribantic dances, I mean, which were sacred to the Great Mother? I would think that on…

…ultimate degree, which then results in really, I should think, 75% of utopias in the description of a totalitarian regime. From Plato onwards, virtually all utopias have been horribly dictatorial. And this is a real problem, to use this utopian form without…

…of in classical literature where any ecological problem is mentioned is a very short passage in one of the dialogues of Plato in the Critiasse, which is a curious dialogue because it contains the unfinished romance about Atlantis. But here Plato speaks in…

…dialogues of Plato in the Critiasse, which is a curious dialogue because it contains the unfinished romance about Atlantis. But here Plato speaks in a very scientific way about the dangers of deforestation and erosion, and speaks about the fact that in his…

…which came from trees, the like of which had long ceased to grow in the mountains of Attica. And I sometimes wonder whether Plato wouldn't have done a great deal more good to humanity if he'd spent more time in talking about erosion and less time in…

…effective devices for dealing with this problem of aggression and hate and frustration and fear. They did both things. Of course, Plato and Aristotle preached to them a great deal. But I often think that the effect of their preaching was probably a…

…choribantic dancing and the Dionysian orgies. I mean, I think if one had to ask who did more good to keep the Greeks sane, Plato and Aristotle on the one hand, or the Corribents and the Menedes and the Menedism and the Dionysiac Orders on the other, I…

…think there are other compelling psychological reasons why we value precious stones as we do. I'm going to quote a passage from Plato, which I think throws a lot of light on this subject. It comes from the Phaidon, the dialogue. Here, Socrates is talking…

…But this is, it seems to me, a very interesting passage in as much as it makes perfectly clear that the ideal world of Plato is not a mere metaphysical construction, a kind of inference from the facts of our present world and its imperfection. It is a…

…neoplatonic philosophers, Plotinus, who says that everything in the intelligible world, which is much the same as the ideal world of Plato, everything there shines. And he says that for this reason, the most beautiful thing in this world is fire, which is…

…often encrusted with gems and the landscapes too are frequently recorded as encrusted with gems which again throws a light on what Plato was saying in his dialogue and the reason for our high estimation of precious stones because we see these things in…

…at all All this can be fitted into this same picture which we found at the beginning of this lecture in the description of Plato of the ideal world. That this is part of the natural history of the mind, that we have these kind of experiences, that…

…the reasons, the basic reason, I think, for our interest in precious stones is given, curiously enough, in one of the dialogues of Plato in the Phaedo, I think it is, where Socrates is speaking about the ideal world. After all, this is one of the basic…

…Phaedo, I think it is, where Socrates is speaking about the ideal world. After all, this is one of the basic metaphysical ideas of Plato, that there is an ideal world of which our world is in a sense a rather bad copy. And Socrates, when he's talking…

…of these stones above. In the other earth there is no stone but is precious. and equals in beauty every gem of ours. And Plato adds, the view of this earth, this other earth, is a vision of blessed beholders. Well, this is a very curious remark because…

…other earth, is a vision of blessed beholders. Well, this is a very curious remark because it makes quite clear that when Plato speaks about the ideal world, he isn't speaking merely of a metaphysical idea. It becomes a metaphysical idea. But this other…

…And curiously enough, he uses a phrase which is very brief, but which sums up, from his own experience, much of what Plato had said 500 years earlier. in regard to the ideal world. Plotinus says, everything shines in the world of pure intelligence. In…

…of preternatural luminosity of the visionary world in the external world. It is as though some of this... of this brightness of what Plato calls the ideal world spilled over into the normal world so that the external world is seen as being in some way…

…forms which are presented on a large scale. In the classical period, this formal approach was represented in different ways by Plato and by Aristotle, and in modern science, we see it in taxonomy, in comparative anatomy, in morphology, and incidentally, the…

…madness brought about by arte or by one of the gods who wishes to bring us down or else the helpful madness which Plato divides into four categories the prophetic madness such as is illustrated by the Oracle of Delphi the Dionysian ritual madness of the…

…about 800 BC. But about 400 years later, we find that the current notion is entirely different. We find in Socrates and Plato that it's completely self-evident that man has a unitary soul and that this soul is detachable and can survive the death of…

…the question of course arises what was the reason for this profound change which took place in these four centuries between Homer and Plato. In the past it was fashionable to say that there were, there may be, there had been influences from the Far East,…

…was just part of the personality. But the result is that with the sort of canonization of these ideas by Socrates and Plato, we get a the beginnings of this dualism which then becomes systematized and made scientific very late on by Descartes which has…

…Christian tradition, and the Greek side often predominates, this dualistic and puritanical side, which springs from the Orphics and goes on through Plato. It's worth spending a moment or two to discuss the Hebrew point of view in regard to the soul. In the…

…this personality which hasn't got a single controlling soul. We pass then to this idea of a detachable soul, as was developed by Plato. And then in recent years, we seem to have come round again to a position which, so to speak, is above the Homeric…

…committing these crimes against nature for a very long time. Curiously enough, one of the best descriptions of erosion is given by Plato in his dialogue, the Critias, where he speaks of his own native country of Attica. And it's worth reading this thing…

…as I say, intensely to the scholastics, and even, I think, in a rather unjust way, he was exceedingly hostile both to Plato and even to Aristotle, who after all was a rather important scientific observer. And there are a number of very remarkable passages…

…a number of very remarkable passages in Bacon where he talks about the real wickedness of these philosophers. He speaks of Plato and Aristotle as guilty men. And there's a famous passage in the Advancement of Learning where he speaks about the scholastics…

…of saying knowledge without love can be profoundly corrupt and even evil and it was for this that he blamed philosophers like Plato and Aristotle who had pursued knowledge for the sake purely of intellectual satisfaction and not for the sake not with a…