Both in politics and in art Plato seems to have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a step backwards.

Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived, had a sacredness and authority for him: the men of a former age were supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among his contemporaries.

He could imagine the early stages of civilization; he never thought of what the future might bring forth.

His experience is confined to two or three centuries, to a few Greek states, and to an uncertain report of Egypt and the East.

There are many ways in which the limitations of their knowledge affected the genius of the Greeks.
In criticism they were like children, having an acute vision of things which were near to them, blind to possibilities which were in the distance.
The colony is to receive from the mother-country her original constitution, and some of the first guardians of the law.