Professor Goodwin gave the first of his lectures on Plato, in the Fogg Art Museum last evening, before a large audience.

Plato, the son of Ariston, said Professor Goodwin, was born in Aegina about 427 B. C. He became a pupil of Socrates and, after the death of his instructor, opened an academy in an olive grove north of Athens, near which he owned a house and garden. Among his pupils were Demosthenes, Lycurgus and Aristotle.

Plato believed in one immutable being and self-existant ideas. His position is one of complete and extreme realism, wherein he differs from Socrates, whose standpoint was that of a nominalist, and from Aristotle who held views midway between realism and nominalism.

While Aristotle believed in one in the many, Plato believed in one besides the many. He considered each idea as one, although from its manifestation in various ways it might appear many.

The Platonic doctrine that some ideas are visible only to the soul and not to the body, is closely connected with the Platonic idea of the soul. Plato believed the soul to be immortal. He believed in an ideal world above the heavens which were the real home of souls, exiled and imprisoned on earth.

In the "Republic," Socrates states a belief in the future life. He says that everything has its natural enemy which tends to destroy it. If now, anything is found whose enemy can only corrupt it, we may consider that it cannot be destoryed. Since the soul can be corrupted but not destroyed, it must be immortal.