But surely a man may be
fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and,
moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work
would bear fruit.
`You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of
other men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we
know nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and
never looking into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to
take a place, there is no time for anything of that sort.'
Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language,
as they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of
philosophers--Plato; on the greatest of all minds, that of
Aristotle, are boyish. Again `I speak but brotherly,' remembering
an old St. Leonard's essay in which Virgil was called `the furtive
Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule of Euripides. But Plato
and Aristotle we never blasphemed.
Murray adds that he thinks, next year, of taking the highest Greek
Class, and English Literature. In the latter, under Mr. Baynes, he
took the first place, which he mentions casually to Mrs.
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