这段接着上段中的“the doctrine of Ideas”，讲研读它的难处。这句指出了原因及“受害者”。

But this famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and obscured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging maze to the modern student, and must have offered another severe test to the survivors of many siftings.
然而，柏拉图这个著名的“理念论”，因其丰富的想象与诗意的表达而被美化，也变得晦涩难懂。对现代学生来说，这是座令人却步的迷宫；对于那些经历了层层筛选的幸存者，这想必构成了另一严峻的考验。

细节解析

1、embellish: to make something more appealing or attracting; to decorate something by adding special details and features美化
The great thing with flowers, it will embellish all your dishes. 花的好处在于它能点缀你的所有的菜肴。《连线杂志》
2、obscure: 形容词动词化， to make something difficult to understand使晦涩
And the rhetorical battle obscures important areas of agreement.这场争论实际上模糊了双方共同观点中的重要领域。（杂志）
3、maze: a complicated and confusing system of connected passage迷宫
One test featured a maze that had both enclosed and open tunnels.一个测试是以封闭和敞开的隧道为特点。（杂志）
4、survivors：one who lives through affliction幸存者
There's a chief indicator there were no survivors.有一个主要迹象表明没有幸存者。（杂志）
5、sift : to go through (something) carefully in order to find something useful and valuable 细查；筛选
Search teams with cadaver dogs continue sifting through the ruins of Lahaina, a resort town devastated by the blaze. 搜索队带着寻尸犬继续在拉海纳镇的废墟中搜寻，这座度假小镇已被大火夷为平地。（杂志）

所在段落

The Story of Philosophy《哲学的故事》第1章Plato第7节VI. The Psychological Solution第14段第1句：

But this famous doctrine of Ideas, embellished and obscured by the fancy and poetry of Plato, is a discouraging maze to the modern student, and must have offered another severe test to the survivors of many siftings. The Idea of thing might be the "general idea" of the class to which it belongs (the Idea of John, or Dick, or Harry, is Man); or it might be the law or laws according to which the thing operates (the Idea of John would be the reduction of all his behavior to "natural laws"); or it might be the perfect purpose and ideal towards which the thing and its class may develop (the Idea of John is the John of Utopia). Very probably the Idea is all of these — idea， law and ideal. Behind the surface phenomena and particulars which greet our senses, are generalizations, regularities, and directions of development, unperceived by sensation but conceived by reason and thought. These ideas, laws and ideals are more permanent — and therefore more "real" — than the sense-perceived particular things through which we conceive and deduce them: Man is more permanent than Tom, or Dick, or Harry; this circle is born with the movement of my pencil and dies under the attrition of my eraser, but the conception Circle goes on forever. This tree stands, and that tree falls; but the laws which determine what bodies shall fall, and when, and how, were without beginning, are now, and ever shall be, without end. There is, as the gentle Spinoza would say, a world of things perceived by sense, and a world of laws inferred by thought; we do not see the law of inverse squares but it is there, and everywhere; it was before anything began, and will survive when all the world of things is a finished tale. Here is a bridge: the sense perceives concrete and iron to a hundred million tons; but the mathematician sees, with the mind's eye, the daring and delicate adjustment of all this mass of material to the laws of mechanics and mathematics and engineering, those laws according to which all good bridges that are made must be made; if the mathematician be also a poet, he will see these laws upholding the bridge; if the laws were violated the bridge would collapse into the stream beneath; the laws are the God that holds up the bridge in the hollow of his hand. Aristotle hints something of this when he says that by Ideas Plato meant what Pythagoras meant by "number" when he taught that this is a world of numbers (meaning presumably that the world is ruled by mathematical constancies and regularities). Plutarch tells us that according to Plato "God always geometries"; or, as Spinoza puts the same thought, God and the universal laws of structure and operation are one and the same reality. To Plato, as to Bertrand Russell, mathematics is therefore the indispensable prelude to philosophy, and its highest form; over the doors of his Academy Plato placed, Dantesquely, these words, "Let no man ignorant of geometry enter here."16
16The details of the argument for the interpretation here given of the doctrine of Ideas may be followed in D.G. Ritchie's Plato, Edinburgh, 1902, especially pp.49 and 85.
浙江大学译本： 然而，这个著名的“理念”学说由于柏拉图的猜想和诗歌包装而晦涩模糊，对于现当代的学生而言，又是一个令人沮丧的谜团，并且必然也给当时那些经历了层层筛选的幸存者一次严峻的考验。：

上句见：Day410