Note 103 — LECTURE VII. THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.

If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may read the Hippias of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The Phædrus, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in the Banquet (Ibid.), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the beauty of human language.