Note C — BOOK I (continued 2)

"It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."