Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

418 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDhe will take pleasure in seeing them springin g uptenderly : so when other men fall to other amusements,lubricating themselves at the banquet, orother such things, he will take his amusementhere. In this, Socrates, you would substitute avery seemly amusement for a bad one, when theman who can play with words sports upon thesubject of justice and suchlike. So it is, my dearPhaedrus, but it is, I take it, earnest in a far highersense, when one, using the art of dialectics, takeshold of a fitting soul, and lants and sows withtrue knowledge words able to help both themselvesand their planter, not fruitless, but havingseed, whence growing up in a succession of mindsthey will from age to age produce an immortalline,72 and will make their possessor happy as faras mancan be."In these words, put in his masters mouth,Plato, if I mistake not, has given us the wholepurpose of his life, and the manner in which hehoped to accomplish it. It was in the Academiathat he sought to establish that immortal line ofliving words, who should speak as the possessorsof real knowledge upon justice, truth, and goodness.He is describing a living culture by livingteachers, of whom he aspired to be himself thefirst and the written dialoues whih h has lefthis intention, and so f72 ffTTfp/J.0. &\\o i &\\ois