Plato and Platonism

His devotion to the austere and abstract philosophy of Parmenides, its passivity or indifference, could not repress the opulent genius of Plato, or transform him into a cynic. Another ancient philosopher, Pythagoras, set the frozen waves in motion again, brought back to Plato’s recognition all that multiplicity in men’s experience to which Heraclitus had borne such emphatic witness; but as rhythm or melody now–in movement truly, but moving as disciplined sound and with the reasonable soul of music in it.