It has attempted to leave the earth and soar heav-which is attributed to them in the Timaeus, the enwards, but soon has found that only in experi-logical character which they assume in the Soph-ence could any solid foundation of knowledge be ist and Philebus, and the allusion to them in the laid. It has degenerated into pantheism, but has Laws. In the Cratylus they dawn upon him with again emerged. No other knowledge has given the freshness of a newly-discovered thought.
an equal stimulus to the mind. It is the science The Meno goes back to a former state of exist-of sciences, which are also ideas, and under ei-ence, in which men did and suffered good and ther aspect require to be defined. They can only evil, and received the reward or punishment of be thought of in due proportion when conceived them until their sin was purged away and they in relation to one another. They are the glasses were allowed to return to earth. This is a tradi-through which the kingdoms of science are seen, tion of the olden time, to which priests and po-but at a distance. All the greatest minds, except ets bear witness. The souls of men returning to when living in an age of reaction against them, earth bring back a latent memory of ideas, which have unconsciously fallen under their power.
were known to them in a former state. The recol-The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno lection is awakened into life and consciousness is the simplest and clearest, and we shall best by the sight of the things which resemble them illustrate their nature by giving this first and then on earth. The soul evidently possesses such in-comparing the manner in which they are de-nate ideas before she has had time to acquire scribed elsewhere, e.g. in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, them. This is proved by an experiment tried on Republic; to which may be added the criticism one of Meno’s slaves, from whom Socrates elic-of them in the Parmenides, the personal form its truths of arithmetic and geometry, which he 17
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had never learned in this world. He must there-tice, temperance, and the like, in their unchange-fore have brought them with him from another.
able beauty, but not without an effort more than The notion of a previous state of existence is human. The soul of man is likened to a chari-found in the verses of Empedocles and in the frag-oteer and two steeds, one mortal, the other im-ments of Heracleitus. It was the natural answer mortal. The charioteer and the mortal steed are to two questions, ‘Whence came the soul? What in fierce conflict; at length the animal principle is the origin of evil?’ and prevailed far and wide is finally overpowered, though not extinguished, in the east. It found its way into Hellas probably by the combined energies of the passionate and through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rational elements. This is one of those passages rites and mysteries. It was easier to think of a in Plato which, partaking both of a philosophical former than of a future life, because such a life and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct has really existed for the race though not for the and inconsistent. The magnificent figure under individual, and all men come into the world, if which the nature of the soul is described has not not ‘trailing clouds of glory,’ at any rate able to much to do with the popular doctrine of the ideas.
enter into the inheritance of the past. In the Yet there is one little trait in the description which Phaedrus, as well as in the Meno, it is this former shows that they are present to Plato’s mind, rather than a future life on which Plato is dis-namely, the remark that the soul, which had seen posed to dwell. There the Gods, and men follow-truths in the form of the universal, cannot again ing in their train, go forth to contemplate the return to the nature of an animal.
heavens, and are borne round in the revolutions In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of of them. There they see the divine forms of jus-ideas is sought for in a previous state of exist-18
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ence. There was no time when they could have he has comforted himself and his friends, and been acquired in this life, and therefore they will not be too confident that the description must have been recovered from another. The which he has given of the soul and her mansions process of recovery is no other than the ordinary is exactly true, but he ‘ventures to think that law of association, by which in daily life the sight something of the kind is true.’ And in the Meno, of one thing or person recalls another to our after dwelling upon the immortality of the soul, minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from he adds, ‘Of some things which I have said I am any part of knowledge we may be led on to infer not altogether confident’ (compare Apology; the whole. It is also argued that ideas, or rather Gorgias). From this class of uncertainties he ex-ideals, must be derived from a previous state of empts the difference between truth and appear-existence because they are more perfect than the ance, of which he is absolutely convinced.
sensible forms of them which are given by expe-In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two rience. But in the Phaedo the doctrine of ideas is ways, which though not contradictory are differ-subordinate to the proof of the immortality of ent. In the tenth book they are represented as the soul. ‘If the soul existed in a previous state, the genera or general ideas under which indi-then it will exist in a future state, for a law of viduals having a common name are contained.
alternation pervades all things.’ And, ‘If the For example, there is the bed which the carpen-ideas exist, then the soul exists; if not, not.’ It is ter makes, the picture of the bed which is drawn to be observed, both in the Meno and the Phaedo, by the painter, the bed existing in nature of which that Socrates expresses himself with diffidence.
God is the author. Of the latter all visible beds He speaks in the Phaedo of the words with which are only the shadows or reflections. This and simi-19
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lar illustrations or explanations are put forth, not probably written some time afterwards, no men-for their own sake, or as an exposition of Plato’s tion occurs of the doctrine of ideas. Geometrical theory of ideas, but with a view of showing that forms and arithmetical ratios furnish the laws poetry and the mimetic arts are concerned with according to which the world is created. But an inferior part of the soul and a lower kind of though the conception of the ideas as genera or knowledge. On the other hand, in the 6th and 7th species is forgotten or laid aside, the distinction books of the Republic we reach the highest and of the visible and intellectual is as firmly main-most perfect conception, which Plato is able to tained as ever. The idea of good likewise disap-attain, of the nature of knowledge. The ideas are pears and is superseded by the conception of a now finally seen to be one as well as many, causes personal God, who works according to a final as well as ideas, and to have a unity which is the cause or principle of goodness which he himself idea of good and the cause of all the rest. They is. No doubt is expressed by Plato, either in the seem, however, to have lost their first aspect of Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of the truths universals under which individuals are contained, which he conceives to be the first and highest. It and to have been converted into forms of another is not the existence of God or the idea of good kind, which are inconsistently regarded from the which he approaches in a tentative or hesitating one side as images or ideals of justice, temper-manner, but the investigations of physiology.
ance, holiness and the like; from the other as hy-These he regards, not seriously, as a part of phi-potheses, or mathematical truths or principles.
losophy, but as an innocent recreation (Tim.).
In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato’s Passing on to the Parmenides, we find in that works immediately follows the Republic, though dialogue not an exposition or defence of the doc-20
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trine of ideas, but an assault upon them, which be termed Plato’s abridgement of the history of is put into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, philosophy (Soph.), is any mention made such and might be ascribed to Aristotle himself, or to as we find in the first book of Aristotle’s Meta-one of his disciples. The doctrine which is assailed physics, of the derivation of such a theory or of takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them any part of it from the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, to escape the dialectical difficulties which are the Heracleiteans, or even from Socrates. In the urged against it. It is admitted that there are Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Pla-ideas of all things, but the manner in which indi-tonic Dialogues, the conception of a personal or viduals partake of them, whether of the whole or semi-personal deity expressed under the figure of the part, and in which they become like them, of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is or how ideas can be either within or without the retained. The one and many of the Phaedrus and sphere of human knowledge, or how the human Theaetetus is still working in the mind of Plato, and divine can have any relation to each other, is and the correlation of ideas, not of ‘all with all,’
held to be incapable of explanation. And yet, if but of ‘some with some,’ is asserted and ex-there are no universal ideas, what becomes of plained. But they are spoken of in a different philosophy? (Parmenides.) In the Sophist the manner, and are not supposed to be recovered theory of ideas is spoken of as a doctrine held from a former state of existence. The metaphysi-not by Plato, but by another sect of philosophers, cal conception of truth passes into a psychologi-called ‘the Friends of Ideas,’ probably the cal one, which is continued in the Laws, and is Megarians, who were very distinct from him, if the final form of the Platonic philosophy, so far not opposed to him (Sophist). Nor in what may as can be gathered from his own writings (see 21
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especially Laws). In the Laws he harps once more to supplement or explain each other. They relate on the old string, and returns to general notions:—
to a subject of which Plato himself would have these he acknowledges to be many, and yet he said that ‘he was not confident of the precise insists that they are also one. The guardian must form of his own statements, but was strong in be made to recognize the truth, for which he has the belief that something of the kind was true.’
contended long ago in the Protagoras, that the It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree—
virtues are four, but they are also in some sense the spirit which places the divine above the hu-one (Laws; compare Protagoras).
man, the spiritual above the material, the one So various, and if regarded on the surface only, above the many, the mind before the body.
inconsistent, are the statements of Plato respect-The stream of ancient philosophy in the ing the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to har-Alexandrian and Roman times widens into a lake monize or to combine them, we should make out or sea, and then disappears underground to re-of them, not a system, but the caricature of a appear after many ages in a distant land. It be-system. They are the ever-varying expression of gins to flow again under new conditions, at first Plato’s Idealism. The terms used in them are in confined between high and narrow banks, but their substance and general meaning the same, finally spreading over the continent of Europe.
although they seem to be different. They pass It is and is not the same with ancient philosophy.
from the subject to the object, from earth There is a great deal in modern philosophy which (diesseits) to heaven (jenseits) without regard is inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient to the gulf which later theology and philosophy philosophy which was ‘born out of due time; and have made between them. They are also intended before men were capable of understanding it. To 22
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the fathers of modern philosophy, their own at this elevation, instead of going forwards went thoughts appeared to be new and original, but backwards from philosophy to psychology, from they carried with them an echo or shadow of the ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to be the past, coming back by recollection from an elder real meaning of them, an explanation of the na-world. Of this the enquirers of the seventeenth ture and origin of knowledge, will always continue century, who to themselves appeared to be work-to be one of the first problems of philosophy.
ing out independently the enquiry into all truth, Plato also left behind him a most potent instru-were unconscious. They stood in a new relation ment, the forms of logic—arms ready for use, but to theology and natural philosophy, and for a time not yet taken out of their armoury. They were maintained towards both an attitude of reserve the late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and and separation. Yet the similarities between mod-were the only part of it which has had an unin-ern and ancient thought are greater far than the terrupted hold on the mind of Europe. Philoso-differences. All philosophy, even that part of it phies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, which is said to be based upon experience, is the framing of definitions, the invention of meth-really ideal; and ideas are not only derived from ods still continue to be the main elements of the facts, but they are also prior to them and extend reasoning process.
far beyond them, just as the mind is prior to the Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with senses.
very simple conceptions. It is almost wholly a Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas reflection on self. It might be described as a quick-of Plato, or rather in the single idea of good. His ening into life of old words and notions latent in followers, and perhaps he himself, having arrived the semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new 23
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meaning into them. Unlike ancient philosophy, it it awakened the ‘ego’ in human nature. The has been unaffected by impressions derived from mind naked and abstract has no other certainty outward nature: it arose within the limits of the but the conviction of its own existence. ‘I think, mind itself. From the time of Descartes to Hume therefore I am;’ and this thought is God think-and Kant it has had little or nothing to do with ing in me, who has also communicated to the facts of science. On the other hand, the ancient reason of man his own attributes of thought and and mediaeval logic retained a continuous influ-extension—these are truly imparted to him be-ence over it, and a form like that of mathematics cause God is true (compare Republic). It has been was easily impressed upon it; the principle of often remarked that Descartes, having begun by ancient philosophy which is most apparent in it dismissing all presuppositions, introduces sev-is scepticism; we must doubt nearly every tradi-eral: he passes almost at once from scepticism to tional or received notion, that we may hold fast dogmatism. It is more important for the illustra-one or two. The being of God in a personal or tion of Plato to observe that he, like Plato, insists impersonal form was a mental necessity to the that God is true and incapable of deception (Re-first thinkers of modern times: from this alone public)—that he proceeds from general ideas, that all other ideas could be deduced. There had been many elements of mathematics may be found in an obscure presentiment of ‘cognito, ergo sum’
him. A certain influence of mathematics both on more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic the form and substance of their philosophy is notion that being and thought were the same discernible in both of them. After making the was revived in a new form by Descartes. But now greatest opposition between thought and exten-it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection: sion, Descartes, like Plato, supposes them to be 24
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reunited for a time, not in their own nature but Spinoza, who lived in the following generation.
by a special divine act (compare Phaedrus), and The system of Spinoza is less personal and also he also supposes all the parts of the human body less dualistic than that of Descartes. In this re-to meet in the pineal gland, that alone affording spect the difference between them is like that a principle of unity in the material frame of man.
between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teach-It is characteristic of the first period of modern ing of Spinoza might be described generally as philosophy, that having begun (like the the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and Presocratics) with a few general notions, taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Descartes first falls absolutely under their influ-Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated ence, and then quickly discards them. At the with the idea of Being or God. The greatness of same time he is less able to observe facts, be-both philosophies consists in the immensity of a cause they are too much magnified by the glasses thought which excludes all other thoughts; their through which they are seen. The common logic weakness is the necessary separation of this says ‘the greater the extension, the less the com-thought from actual existence and from practi-prehension,’ and we may put the same thought cal life. In neither of them is there any clear op-in another way and say of abstract or general position between the inward and outward world.
ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them, The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, the less are they capable of being applied to which alone are cognizable by man, thought and particular and concrete natures.
extension; these are in extreme opposition to one Not very different from Descartes in his rela-another, and also in inseparable identity. They tion to ancient philosophy is his successor may be regarded as the two aspects or expres-25
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sions under which God or substance is unfolded nial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of Spinoza approaches nearer to Plato than in his the Eleatic philosophy. The famous theorem of conception of an infinite substance. As Socrates Spinoza, ‘Omnis determinatio est negatio, ’ i s said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would already contained in the ‘negation is relation’
have maintained that knowledge alone is good, of Plato’s Sophist. The grand description of the and what contributes to knowledge useful. Both philosopher in Republic VI, as the spectator of are equally far from any real experience or ob-all time and all existence, may be paralleled with servation of nature. And the same difficulty is another famous expression of Spinoza, found in both when we seek to apply their ideas
‘Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.’
to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, the infinite substance and finite objects or indi-for they are conditioned by what is alien to them, viduals of Spinoza, just as there is between the and by one another. Human beings are included ideas of Plato and the world of sense.
in the number of them. Hence there is no reality Removed from Spinoza by less than a genera-in human action and no place for right and wrong.
tion is the philosopher Leibnitz, who after deep-Individuality is accident. The boasted freedom ening and intensifying the opposition between of the will is only a consciousness of necessity.
mind and matter, reunites them by his Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason to-preconcerted harmony (compare again wards the infinite, in which all things repose; and Phaedrus). To him all the particles of matter are herein lies the secret of man’s well-being. In the living beings which reflect on one another, and exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the de-in the least of them the whole is contained. Here 26
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we catch a reminiscence both of the omoiomere, equally superior to the illusions of language, and or similar particles of Anaxagoras, and of the are constantly crying out against them, as against world-animal of the Timaeus.
other idols.
In Bacon and Locke we have another develop-Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author ment in which the mind of man is supposed to of sensationalism any more than of idealism. His receive knowledge by a new method and to work system is based upon experience, but with him by observation and experience. But we may re-experience includes reflection as well as sense.
mark that it is the idea of experience, rather than His analysis and construction of ideas has no foun-experience itself, with which the mind is filled.
dation in fact; it is only the dialectic of the mind It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the real-
‘talking to herself.’ The philosophy of Berkeley ity which is vouchsafed to us. The Organon of is but the transposition of two words. For objects Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than of sense he would substitute sensations. He imag-the Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of ines himself to have changed the relation of the good. Many of the old rags and ribbons which human mind towards God and nature; they re-defaced the garment of philosophy have been main the same as before, though he has drawn stripped off, but some of them still adhere. A the imaginary line by which they are divided at crude conception of the ideas of Plato survives in a different point. He has annihilated the outward the ‘forms’ of Bacon. And on the other hand, world, but it instantly reappears governed by the there are many passages of Plato in which the same laws and described under the same names.
importance of the investigation of facts is as A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are almost philosophy the central principle is the denial of 27
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the relation of cause and effect. He would deprive more than the scepticism of the ancients require men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to be seriously refuted. Like some other philo-to lose; but he seems not to have observed that sophical paradoxes, it would have been better this alteration is merely verbal and does not in left to die out. It certainly could not be refuted any degree affect the nature of things. Still less by a philosophy such as Kant’s, in which, no less did he remark that he was arguing from the nec-than in the previously mentioned systems, the essary imperfection of language against the most history of the human mind and the nature of lan-certain facts. And here, again, we may find a guage are almost wholly ignored, and the cer-parallel with the ancients. He goes beyond facts tainty of objective knowledge is transferred to in his scepticism, as they did in their idealism.
the subject; while absolute truth is reduced to a Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more figment, more abstract and narrow than Plato’s important principles of ethics to custom and prob-ideas, of ‘thing in itself,’ to which, if we reason ability. But crude and unmeaning as this philoso-strictly, no predicate can be applied.
phy is, it exercised a great influence on his suc-The question which Plato has raised respect-cessors, not unlike that which Locke exercised ing the origin and nature of ideas belongs to the upon Berkeley and Berkeley upon Hume himself.
infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would All three were both sceptical and ideal in almost no longer be asked. Their origin is only their his-equal degrees. Neither they nor their predeces-tory, so far as we know it; there can be no other.
sors had any true conception of language or of We may trace them in language, in philosophy, the history of philosophy. Hume’s paradox has in mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue a been forgotten by the world, and did not any priori about them. We may attempt to shake them 28
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off, but they are always returning, and in every error and illusion and have as little relation to sphere of science and human action are tending actual facts as the ideas of Plato. Few students of to go beyond facts. They are thought to be in-theology or philosophy have sufficiently reflected nate, because they have been familiar to us all how quickly the bloom of a philosophy passes our lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from away; or how hard it is for one age to understand our mind. Many of them express relations of the writings of another; or how nice a judgment terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all is required of those who are seeking to express in rerum natura corresponds. We are not such the philosophy of one age in the terms of an-free agents in the use of them as we sometimes other. The ‘eternal truths’ of which metaphysi-imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most com-cians speak have hardly ever lasted more than a plete possession of some thinkers who have been generation. In our own day schools or systems of most determined to renounce them, and have philosophy which have once been famous have been vehemently affirmed when they could be died before the founders of them. We are still, as least explained and were incapable of proof. The in Plato’s age, groping about for a new method world has often been led away by a word to which more comprehensive than any of those which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstrac-now prevail; and also more permanent. And we tions such as ‘authority,’ ‘equality,’ ‘utility, ’
seem to see at a distance the promise of such a
‘liberty,’ ‘pleasure,’ ‘experience,’ ‘conscious-method, which can hardly be any other than the n e s s , ’ ‘ c h a n c e , ’ ‘ s u b s t a n c e , ’ ‘ m a t t e r, ’
method of idealized experience, having roots
‘atom,’ and a heap of other metaphysical and which strike far down into the history of philoso-theological terms, are the source of quite as much phy. It is a method which does not divorce the 29
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present from the past, or the part from the whole, MENO
or the abstract from the concrete, or theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from another, but labours to connect them.
by
Along such a road we have proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the want Plato
of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will become Translated by Benjamin Jowett the knowledge of ‘the revelation of a single science’ (Symp.), and all things, like the stars in PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Meno, Socrates, heaven, will shed their light upon one another.
A Slave of Meno (Boy), Anytus.
MENO: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?
SOCRATES: O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are equally 30
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famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, living as I do in this region of poverty, am as poor which is the native city of your friend Aristippus.
as the rest of the world; and I confess with shame And this is Gorgias’ doing; for when he came that I know literally nothing about virtue; and there, the flower of the Aleuadae, among them when I do not know the ‘quid’ of anything how your admirer Aristippus, and the other chiefs of can I know the ‘quale’? How, if I knew nothing the Thessalians, fell in love with his wisdom. And at all of Meno, could I tell if he was fair, or the he has taught you the habit of answering ques-opposite of fair; rich and noble, or the reverse of tions in a grand and bold style, which becomes rich and noble? Do you think that I could?
those who know, and is the style in which he him-MENO: No, indeed. But are you in earnest, self answers all comers; and any Hellene who Socrates, in saying that you do not know what likes may ask him anything. How different is our virtue is? And am I to carry back this report of lot! my dear Meno. Here at Athens there is a you to Thessaly?
dearth of the commodity, and all wisdom seems SOCRATES: Not only that, my dear boy, but you to have emigrated from us to you. I am certain may say further that I have never known of any that if you were to ask any Athenian whether one else who did, in my judgment.
virtue was natural or acquired, he would laugh MENO: Then you have never met Gorgias when in your face, and say: ‘Stranger, you have far he was at Athens?
too good an opinion of me, if you think that I can SOCRATES: Yes, I have.
answer your question. For I literally do not know MENO: And did you not think that he knew?
what virtue is, and much less whether it is ac-SOCRATES: I have not a good memory, Meno, and quired by teaching or not.’ And I myself, Meno, therefore I cannot now tell what I thought of him 31
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at the time. And I dare say that he did know, and order her house, and keep what is indoors, and that you know what he said: please, therefore, to obey her husband. Every age, every condition of remind me of what he said; or, if you would rather, life, young or old, male or female, bond or free, tell me your own view; for I suspect that you and has a different virtue: there are virtues number-he think much alike.
less, and no lack of definitions of them; for vir-MENO: Very true.
tue is relative to the actions and ages of each of SOCRATES: Then as he is not here, never mind us in all that we do. And the same may be said of him, and do you tell me: By the gods, Meno, be vice, Socrates (Comp