Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 34 THE PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY AND VIRGIL. Book IV. the Platonic principle, according to which complete abstinence from worldly pursuits brings our nature most surely to perfection, it would not have been difficult for Lorenzo, who was already well acquainted with this doctrine, to show that a man who practically applied and followed this principle must necessarily be brought into contradiction with his duties as a citizen; whereas the two phases of our nature? the active and the contemplative life?not divided, but united and balancing each other, lead to the true fulfilment of the purpose of existence. From the objection put into the mouth of the young man and directed against Landino's own teaching, as well as from the piaises bestowed on Lorenzo's conduct, it is clear that the date of the conversation is shortly before the death of Piero de' Medici, when the Pitti transactions had given evidence of the prudence and talents of his son. The visit to Camaldoli may have taken place earlier, but the ' disputations, ' which are the actual conversations expanded and embellished, were certainly not composed before 1470. In the discourses of the three following days Alberti again took the lead, and expounded the connection of the ' .ZEneid' with Platonic philosophy. What is here said of the character of Virgil's poetry, of the ancient wisdom therein, which has become common property, of the poet's knowledge and reverence for antiquity, of the relation between the poetical garniture and the more solid contents of the work, was probably drawn from Landino's own Virgilian studies, for the author of the book speaks through the mouths of those to whom he attributes the conversations held in the woods of Camaldoli. He dedicated his work to Federigo of Monte- feltro. If, as it seems, this de..