Solved Exercise for Precis writing with Title “Gospel of Love” Precis for Class 9, 10, 11, 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Passages with Solved Precis

However near to despair, this supremely endowed philosopher came, he never for an instant lost sight of the end to which human life should be directed. He remained in doubt only as to the means by which this end should be attained. Perhaps, he hit the nail on the head most surely in a passage which occurs towards the end of The Laws, where he states the problem that in later ages was to become the chief pre-occupation of all men of good will.

“In no very long period of time”, he observed, “An autocrat, if he wishes, can change tree manners of a State; he has only to go in the direction of virtue or of vice, whichever he prefers, he himself indicating by his example the lines of conduct, praising and rewarding those who disobey. The quickest and easiest way for a State to change its laws is through the leadership of its masters: such changes never and never will come to pass in any other way.”

So far as good; but, he continues, “the real impossibility or difficulty, is of another sort and is rarely surmounted in the course of ages; but when once it is surmounted, every kind of blessing follows. The difficulty is to find a divine passion for rational and just institutions.”

That indeed was the purpose of his life; and if he failed to achieve it, his failure was touched with sublimity. From Socrates he had learnt that virtue was a child of true knowledge, and for himself arrived at the idea that true knowledge issued from communion with Supreme Good. The crucial question was whether mankind, left to itself and in the absence of some prolonged emotional stimulus, could ever be brought to desire this supreme communion for its own sake. The same question was later tackled by the Christian philosophers with an insight that Plato could not have possessed. But those later philosophers in turn looked back to him as the most inspired of the thinkers of the old dispensation, whose doctrine of the love of Good was the nearest approach to the Christian gospel of Love.

Precis

Gospel of Love

Plato even in despondency never forgot the true purpose of human life, although, he half realized its method of attainment. He mentioned this as a political objective in The laws, holding it as a universal principle that a ruler could make or mar the national character by laying down right or wrong standards and punishing those who did not abide by them as well as praising and giving prizes to those who followed them faithfully. But he realized that the greatest progress can only to make when people come to have a divine understanding of social institution. He learnt this from Socrates and self-knowledge; but it came to its perfect fruition in .he Christian doctrine of universal good. The Christian philosophers, however, looked to Plato for substance of their views.