that they are nevertheless participant of Being in so far as they represent to us the general terms after which they are named. Thus we can make no general assertion with regard to this or that concrete triangular thing: it is merely a passing sensation: but by abstraction we may rise from the concrete to the contemplation of the Ideal triangle, which is the object of science, and concerning which we may make universal and absolutely true predications. If we approach the Ideal from below, from the concrete particulars, it takes the form of the class, the common name, the definition, the concept, the Idea; but this is an incomplete view of it. The Ideal exists apart from, and prior to, all concrete embodiment. It is the eternal archetype of which the sensible objects are the copies. It is because the soul in its pre-existent state is already familiar with this archetype, that it is capable of being reminded of it when it sees its shadow in the phenomenal existences which make up the world of sense'. All learning is reminiscence. What 1 The reader will remember the magnificent ode in which Wordsworth has embodied Plato's sublime conception. The fact which underlies it was well illustrated by the late Prof. Sedgwick, commenting on Locke's saying that "the mind previous to experience is a sheet of white paper" (the old rasa tabula), “Naked he comes from his mother's womb, endowed with limbs and senses indeed, well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use: and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident, but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern." Discourse, p. 53. The Common-sense Philosophy of the Scotch and the à priori judgments of Kant are other forms of the same doctrine. 2 Cf. Meno, p. 81, and Grote's Plato 11. p. 7, ‘Socrates illustrates cannot be traced back to this intuitive consciousness in the soul itself is not knowledge, but mere opinion. Dialectic is the means by which the soul is enabled to recover the lost consciousness of the Ideal. The highest Ideal, which is the foundation of all existence and all knowledge, is the Ideal Good or Goodness ( idéa Tоû ayatov), personified in God. He, as the Creator or Demiurgus, formed the universe by imprinting the ideas on formless chaotic Matter. The process of creation is described in the Timaeus under the form of a myth, Plato holding, like Parmenides, that it was not possible to arrive at more than a symbolical adumbration of physical truth. The cause and ground of creation is the goodness of God, who seeks to extend his own blessedness as widely as possible. He begins his work by constructing the soul of the world out of the two elements before him, the immutable harmonious Ideals and changing discordant Matter. This soul he infuses into the mass of matter, which thereupon crystallizes into the geometrical forms of the four elements, and assumes the shape of a perfect sphere rotating on its axis. The Kosmos thus created is divine, imperishable and infinitely beautiful. Further, each the position, that in all our researches we are looking for what we have once known but have forgotten, by cross-examining Meno's slave; who, though wholly untaught, and never having heard any mention of geometry, is brought by a proper series of questions to give answers out of his own mind furnishing the solution of a geometrical problem. From the fact that the mind thus possesses the truth of things which it has not acquired in this life, Socrates infers that it must have gone through a pre-existence of indefinite duration.' The same argument is used in the Phaedo to prove the immortality of the soul. element is to have living creatures belonging to it. We have now to speak of his ethical doctrines, which were based upon the psychological views mentioned above. The soul is on a small scale what the State, or city, is on a large scale: it is a constitution which is in its right condition when its parts work harmoniously together, when the governing reason is warmly supported by its auxiliary the heart, and promptly and loyally obeyed by the appetites. Thus perfect virtue arises when wisdom, courage and temperance are bound together by justice. The highest good is the being made like to God; and this is effected by that yearning after the Ideal which we know by the name of Love. Thirty-five Dialogues have come down to us under the name of Plato, the greater number of which are all but universally acknowledged to be genuine. Five of these are classified as 'logical' in the catalogue of Thrasyllus; one, the Timaeus, as 'physical;' in the remainder the ostensible purpose commonly is to define the meaning of some ethical term, as the Laches turns on the definition of Courage, the Charmides on the definition of Temperance, the Republic on that of Justice. But, in a writer so discursive, and so little systematic as Plato, it is impossible to carry out any strict system of classification: all that can be done is to group different dialogues together from one or another point of view; as we may call the Apology, Crito, Euthyphro and Phaedo Socratic in a special sense, because they give the substance of discourses really held by the historic Socrates. Or again we may trace a gradual progress from the simpler and narrower doctrines of the Protagoras, the Lysis, the Charmides, the Laches, which hardly pass beyond the Socratic point of view, to the Phaedrus, the Gorgias, the Phaedo, the Symposium, in which the Ideal theory is developed along with the doctrines of pre-existence and immortality; until at length we arrive at the culminating point of the Platonic philosophy in the Republic, that unsurpassable monument of genius, which stands on the same level in the world of speculation, as the Agamemnon or the Parthenon in the world of Art. We may observe the growth of Pythagorean mysticism in the Timaeus; and finally, in the deeply-interesting dialogue of the Laws, we may listen to the sadder and sterner tones in which the aged Plato, summing up his life's experience, confesses that he had been too sanguine in his hopes as to what could be effected by philosophy, and avows his belief that the deep-rooted evil in nature and in man must be traced back to an evil spirit counterworking the action of the divine spirit in the universe'; and that the lessons of philosophy must be supplemented and enforced by religion, if they are to have a real practical power over the mass of men. In addition to the extant Dialogues, we find references to lectures of a more esoteric character upon the Chief Good, in which the theory of Ideas seems to have been mixed up with quasi-Pythagorean speculations on the symbolism of Number. Perhaps the best way in which I can employ the brief space at my disposal, in order to give some notion of Plato's manner of treating a subject, will be to append here an abstract of the Republic3, and then to illustrate, from that and from other dialogues, his three styles, dialectical, expository, and allegorical. In the 1st Book of the Republic we have an excellent example of a dialectical discussion, which will be given more in detail below; upon the nature of Justice or Righteousness. The conclusion arrived at is that Justice is in all respects superior to injustice, the opposite thesis having been maintained by Thrasymachus, and that the just man is happier than the unjust, not only because he is loved by the Gods and by all good men, but because Justice is that quality of the soul by which it is enabled to perform well its proper functions. Socrates however allows that the discussion had been too rapid, and that they ought to have determined the exact nature of justice before arguing as to its effects. Accordingly in the 2nd Book two of his disciples put forward the difficulties they 1 Cf. x. 896. "On the Republic see the interesting paper by Mr Nettleship in 'Hellenica,' and the translation by Davies and Vaughan. |