The Republic · ¶414

There is a third ideal, not the same, but akin to these, which has a place in the home and heart of every believer in the religion of Christ, and in which men seem to find a nearer and more familiar truth, the Divine man, the Son of Man, the Saviour of mankind, Who is the first-born and head of the whole family in heaven and earth, in Whom the Divine and human, that which is without and that which is within the range of our earthly faculties, are indissolubly united. Neither is this divine form of goodness wholly separable from the ideal of the Christian Church, which is said in the New Testament to be ‘His body,’ or at variance with those other images of good which Plato sets before us. We see Him in a figure only, and of figures of speech we select but a few, and those the simplest, to be the expression of Him. We behold Him in a picture, but He is not there. We gather up the…

Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett · composite transcription based on the 1888 third edition
Benjamin Jowett, revised third edition (1888), with Stephanus numbering from the 1908 edition; composite transcription, Project Gutenberg #55201
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.