It is remarkable that Plato’s account of mind at the end of the Laws goes beyond Anaxagoras, and beyond himself in any of his previous writings.  Aristotle, in a well-known passage (Met.) which is an echo of the Phaedo, remarks on the inconsistency of Anaxagoras in introducing the agency of mind, and yet having recourse to other and inferior, probably material causes.  But Plato makes the further criticism, that the error of Anaxagoras consisted, not in denying the universal agency of mind, but in denying the priority, or, as we should say, the eternity of it.  Yet in the Timaeus he had himself allowed that God made the world out of pre-existing materials:  in the Statesman he says that there were seeds of evil in the world arising out of the remains of a former chaos which could not be got rid of; and even in the Tenth Book of the Laws he has admitted that there are two souls, a good and evil.  In the Meno, the Phaedrus, and the Phaedo, he had spoken of the recovery of ideas from a former state of existence.  But now he has attained to a clearer point of view:  he has discarded these fancies.  From meditating on the priority of the human soul to the body, he has learnt the nature of soul absolutely.  The power of the best, of which he gave an intimation in the Phaedo and in the Republic, now, as in the Philebus, takes the form of an intelligence or person.  He no longer, like Anaxagoras, supposes mind to be introduced at a certain time into the world and to give order to a pre-existing chaos, but to be prior to the chaos, everlasting and evermoving, and the source of order and intelligence in all things.  This appears to be the last form of Plato’s religious philosophy, which might almost be summed up in the words of Kant, ‘the starry heaven above and the moral law within.’  Or rather, perhaps, ‘the starry heaven above and mind prior to the world.’

IV.  The remarks about retail trade, about adulteration, and about mendicity, have a very modern character.  Greek social life was more like our own than we are apt to suppose.  There was the same division of ranks, the same aristocratic and democratic feeling, and, even in a democracy, the same preference for land and for agricultural pursuits.  Plato may be claimed as the first free trader, when he prohibits the imposition of customs on imports and exports, though he was clearly not aware of the importance of the principle which he enunciated.  The discredit of retail trade he attributes to the rogueries of traders, and is inclined to believe that if a nobleman would keep a shop, which heaven forbid! retail trade might become honourable.  He has hardly lighted upon the true reason, which appears to be the essential distinction between buyers and sellers, the one class being necessarily in some degree dependent on the other.  When he proposes to fix prices ‘which would allow a moderate gain,’ and to regulate trade in several minute particulars, we must remember that this is by no means so absurd in a city consisting of 5040