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    Full text of "Plato" PLATO

    ByA. E. TAYLOR

    NEW YORKDODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY

    214-220 EAST 23RD STREET

    r\

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    Printed in Great Britain by

    T. and A. Constable, Printers to His I^Iajesty

    at ihe University Press, Edinburgh

    3296.

    FOREWORD

    The following sketch makes no claim to beconsidered as a complete account of the philo-sophy of Plato. Many topics of importance havebeen omitted altogether, and others only treatedwith the utmost attainable brevity. I have alsothought it necessary to avoid, as far as possible,all controversial discussion, and have therefore inmany cases followed my own judgment on disput-able points without attempting to support it by

    the detailed reasoning which would be indispens-able in a work of larger scope. My object hasbeen to sit as loose as possible to all the tradi-tional expositions of Platonism, and to give inbroad outline the personpJ impression of thephilosopher's thought which I have derived fromrepeated study of the Platonic text. The list ofworks useful to the student, though it merelycomprises a few of those which I have myselffound useful or important, will give myreader the opportunity to form his own judgmentby comparing my interpretations with those of

    PLATO

    others. Those who are most competent to con-demn the numerous defects of my little book will,I hope, be also most indulgent in their verdict onan attempt to compress into so small a compassan account of the most original and influential ofall philosophies.

    A. E. T.

    VI

    CONTENTS

    CHAP. FAOE

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    I, Life and Writings , 1

    ^Knowledge and its Objects . . * , 34

    III. The Soul of Man Psychology, Ethics, and

    Politics ,73

    IV. Cosmology ..-..,,, 137Select Bibliography 149

    vn

    PLATO

    CHAPTER I

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    The tradilional story of the life of Plato is onein which it is unusually difficult to distinguishbetween historical fact and romantic fiction. Ofthe ' Lives ' of Plato which have come down to usfrom ancient times, the earliest in date is thatof the African rhetorician and romance-^vriterApuleius, who belongs to the middle and laterhalf of the second century a.d. There is a longerbiography in the scrap-book commonly known asthe Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes ofLaerte, a compilation which dates, in its presentform, from a time not long before the middle

    of the third century a.d., though much of itsmaterial is taken from earlier and better sources.The remaining 'Lives' belong to the latest ageof Neo-Platonism, i.e. the sixth century afterChrist and later. Thus the earliest extant bio-

    PLATO

    graphy of the philosopher comes to us from atime four hundred years after his death, andmust be taken -;g i^epresent the Platonic legend

    as it was current in a most uncritical age. Whenwe try to gat behind this legend to its basis inwell- accredited fact, the results we obtain aresingularly meagre. Plato himself has recordedonly two facts about his own life. He tells us,in the Aioology, that he was present in court atthe trial of his master Socrates, and that he wasone of the friends who offered to be surety forthe payment of any fine which might be imposedon the old philosopher. In the Phaedo he adds

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    that he was absent from the famous death-scenein the prison, owing to an illness, a statementwhich may, however, be no more than an artisticliterary fiction. His contemporary Xenophonmerely mentions him once in passing as a mem-ber of the inner Socratic circle. From Aristotlewe further learn that Plato, as a young man,apparently before his intimacy with Socrates,had been a pupil of the Heraclitean philosopherCratylus. A few anecdotes of an unfavourablekind are related by Diogenes of Laerte on theauthority of Aristoxenus of Messene, a pupil ofAristotle, and a well-known writer on music,whose credibility is, however, impaired by his

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    unmistakable personal animus against Socratesand Plato, and his anxiety to deny them allphilosophical originality. The dates of Plato'sbirth and death are, moreover, fixed for us bythe unimpeachable authority of the Alexandrian

    chronologists, whose testimony has been pre-served by Diogenes. We may thus take it ascertain that Plato was born in the year 427 B.C.,early in the great Peloponnesian war, and died in346, at the age of eighty- one. The way in whichXenophon, in his one solitary statement, couplesthe name of Plato with that of Charmides, aleader of the oligarchy of the ' Thirty,' set up bythe Spartans in Athens at the close of the Pelo-ponnesian war, taken together with the promi-nence given in the Platonic dialogues to Charmidesand Critias as friends of Socrates, confirms thelater tradition, according to which Plato himself

    was a near relative of the two ' oligarchs,' a factwhich has to be borne in mind in reading hissevere strictures upon Athenian democracy.

    There remains, indeed, a further source of in-formation, which, if its authenticity could beregarded as established, would be of the veryhighest value. Among the writings ascribed toPlato and preserved in our ancient manuscriptsthere is a collection of thirteen letters, purport-

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    PLATO

    ing to be written by the philosopher himself,some of which ostensibly contain a good deal ofautobiographical detail. In particular the seventhletter, the longest and most important of thegroup, professes to contain the philosopher's ownvindication of his life -long abstention from taking

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    part in the public life of his country, and, ifgenuine, absolutely confirms the later story, pre-sently to be narrated, of his political relationswith the court of Syracuse. As to the history ofthis collection of letters, all that we know forcertain is that they were in existence and wereregarded as Platonic early iji tYie first centuryA.D., when they were included by the scholarThrasyllus in his complete edition of the worksof Plato. This, however, is not of itself proof oftheir genuineness, since the edition of Thrasylluscontained works which we can now show to bespurious, such as the Theages and Frastae. Wefurther know from Diogenes of Laerte that cer-tain 'letters* had been included in the earlieredition of Plato by the famous scholar Aristo-phanes, who was librarian of the great museumof Alexandria towards the end of the secondcentury B.C. ; but we are not told which or howmany of our present collection Aristophanesrecognised. When we examine the extant letters

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    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    themselves, we seem led to the conclusion thatthey can hardly all be genuine works of Plato,since some of them appear to allude to character-istic doctrines of the Neo-Pythagoreanism whicharose about the beginning of the first centurybefore Christ. It is not surprising, therefore,that Grote has stood alone, or almost alone,among recent scholars in maintaining thegenuineness of the whole set of thirteen letters

    admitted into the collection of Thrasyllus. It isanother question whether some at least of thecollection, and notably the seventh, the onlyletter of real importance, may not be the workof Plato, and the problem must be said to beone upon which competent scholars are not asyet agreed. On the one side, it may be urgedthat the incidents related in the seventh letterare in no way incredible, and that their occur-rence, as we shall see directly, would explain acertain increase of pessimism in Plato's laterwritings on political philosophy. On the other,it is suspicious that the letter appears to quote

    directly from at least four Platonic dialogues(the Apology, PhaedOy Republic, Lysis), and that,apart from the account of Plato's relations withSyracuse, it contains nothing which might nothave been put together with the help of the

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    there is no reason why some of the epigramsascribed to him in the Greek Anthology shouldnot be genuine, but the story of the burnt tragedy

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    PLATO

    looks like a fabrication based upon the severecondemnation of poetry in general and the dramain particular in the Republic ; nor must we for-get that, according to Aristotle's statement,Plato got his introduction to philosophy notfrom Socrates, but from Cratylus.) The firstassociation between Plato and Socrates took placewhen Plato was twenty years old, and their con-nection lasted eight years, since the death ofSocrates falls in 399 B.C. After the death of themaster, Plato retired from Athens and spentsome years in foreign travel. The accounts ofthe extent of these travels become more andmore exaggerated as the narrators are increas-

    ingly removed in date from the actual events.'The seventh ' letter ' speaks merely of a voyageto Italy and Sicily undertaken apparently in con-sequence of the writer's disgust with the proceed-ings of the restored Athenian democracy, whichhad inaugurated its career by the condemnationof Socrates. Cicero, who is the earliest authorityfor the story of the travels, apart from the' letters,' makes Plato go first to Egypt, afterwardsto Italy and Sicily. The later Platonic legendprofesses to know more, and relates an entireromance on the subject of Plato's adventures.According to this story Plato withdrew from

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    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    Athens on the death of Socrates, and resided for awhile at the neighbouring city of Megara withhis friend and fellow-disciple Eucleides. He thenvisited Gyrene, to enjoy the society of the mathe-matician Theodorus, Egypt, where he learned thewisdom of the priests, and Italy, where he asso-

    ciated with the members of the Pythagoreanschool who had survived the forcible dissolutionof the political power of the sect. (The tale ranthat he further purposed to visit the PersianMagi, but that this scheme failed, though somewriters professed to know that Plato had met withMagians and learned their doctrines in Phoenicia.)From Italy the legend brings Plato to Sicily,where he is said, on the authority of the seventhletter, to have arrived at the age of forty; i.e.

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    after twelve years of continuous travel. Here hevisited the court of the vigorous ruler of Syracuse,Dionysius i., and so displeased that arbitrarymonarch by his freedoms of speech that he causedhim to be kidnapped by a Spartan ambassadorwho put him up for sale in the slave -market ofAegina, where, by a singular coincidence, thepeople had passed a resolution that the firstAthenian who should land on the island shouldbe put to death. Plato was, however, saved fromhis danger by a man of Gyrene, who ransomed9

    PLATO

    him and sent him home to Athens. (How muchtruth there may be in this story, the details ofwhich are differently given by the differentnarrators, it is impossible to say with certainty.The story of the kidnapping, in particular, is toldwith a good deal of discrepancy in the details ;many features of it are highly singular, and it

    appears entirely unknown to both Cicero and thewriter of the seventh ' letter.' Hence there isevery ground to regard it as pure romance. Thesame must be said of the story of the twelveyears' unbroken travel, and the association ofPlato with Oriental priests and magicians.Stories of this kind were widely circulated fromthe beginning of the first century before Christonward, when the gradual intermingling of Eastand West in great cities like Alexandria hadgiven rise to the fancy that Greek science andphilosophy had been originally borrowed fromOriental theosophy, a notion invented by Alex-

    andrian Neo-Pythagoreans and eagerly acceptedby Jews and Christians, whom it enabled torepresent the Greek sages as mere pilferers fromthe Hebrew scriptures. Even the alleged resi-dence in Megara and the voyage to Cyrene, may beno more than inventions based on the facts thatthe dialogue Theaetetus is dedicated to Plato's10

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    friend Eucleides of Mcgara and that the Cyrcnianmathematician Theodorus is one of its dramatispersonae. So again the frequent allusions in thedialogues to Egypt and Egyptian customs may bedue to reminiscences of actual travel in Egypt,but can hardly be said to show more knowledgethan an Athenian might have acquired at homeby reading Herodotus and conversing withtraders from the Nile Delta. On the other hand,the story of the visit to Italy and Sicily is con-

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    firmed by the fact that Plato's works, as is wellknown, show considerable familiarity both withPythagorean science and with the Pythagoreanand Orphic theological ideas, and that the firstdialogue in which this influence is particularlynoticeable is the Gorgias, the work in which, as isnow generally recognised, Plato speaks for thefirst time in the tone of the head of a philo-sophical school or sect. It is thus probable thatPlato's final settlement at Athens as a philo-sophical teacher was actually preceded, as thetradition dating at least from the seventh ' letter 'asserts, by a visit to the home of Pythagoreanism,the Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy.)

    We have to think of Plato, then, as definitelyestablished, from about 887 B.C., in Athens as therecognised head of a permanent seat of learning,II

    PLATO

    a university, as we might call it in our modernterminology. The home of this institution wasin the north-western suburb of Athens known asthe Academy, in consequence of the presence thereof a shrine of the local hero Academus. HerePlato possessed a small property, which was per-haps (the words of the legend as preserved byDiogenes are obscure,) purchased for him byhis foreign friends. From this circumstance thephilosophical school founded by Plato came to beknown in later days as the ' Academy.' It was notthe first institution of the kind ; Plato's contem-porary and rival, the rhetorician and publicist

    Isocrates, had already gathered round him asimilar group of students, and the writings ofboth authors bear traces of the rivalry betweenthem. Their educational aims were, in fact,markedly different. Isocrates desired, first andforemost, to turn out accomplished and capablemen of action, successful orators and politicians.Plato, on the other hand, was convinced thatthough the trained intelligence ought to directthe course of public life in a well-ordered society,the equipment requisite for such a task must firstbe obtained by a thorough mastery of the prin-ciples of science and philosophy, and was not to

    be derived from any superficial education in12

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    'general culture.' Thus, while Plato, in well-known passages, describes the pupils of Isocrates

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    as ' smatterers ' and * pretenders to philosophy,'Isocrates, on his side, depreciates those of Plato asunpractical theorists. Of the precise nature of theteaching in Plato's Academy, unfortunately, littleis known, but the reports of later tradition, suchas they are, indicate that the author of the Re-public carried his theories of education intopractice, and made the thorough and systematicstudy of exact mathematical science the founda-tion of all further philosophic instruction. Thestory that the door of the Academy bore theinscription * Let none unversed in geometry comeunder this roof,' is, indeed, first found in theworks of a mediaeval Byzantine, but its spirit isthoroughly Platonic.

    The outward peculiarity, it must be remem-bered, by which the education given by bothPlato and Isocrates differed from that afforded bythe eminent ' sophists ' of the last half of the fifthcentury, was that their teaching was more con-tinuous, and that it was, in theory at least,gratuitous. The great sophist of the past hadusually been a distinguished foreigner whose task

    of making his pupils ' good men, able to managetheir own private affairs and the affairs of the13

    V PLATO

    nation well/ had to be accomplished in the courseof a flying visit of a few weeks or months, and hehad also been a professional educator, dependingupon his professional fees for his livelihood, andtherefore inevitably exposed to the temptation to

    make his instruction attractive and popular,rather than thorough. Plato and Isocrates, onthe other hand, were the heads of permanentschools, in which the education of the pupil couldbe steadily carried on for a protracted period, andwhere he could remain long after his time ofpupilage proper was over, as an associate in thestudies of his master. They were, moreover, notdependent for subsistence upon payments bytheir pupils, and were hence free from the neces-sity to make their teaching popular in the badsense of the term, though it is only fair to addtha'b neither had any objection to the occasional

    reception of presents from friends or pupils, andthat Isocrates, at least, required a fee from foreignstudents. It is in virtue of this permanent andorganised pursuit of intellectual studies, and thisabsence of ' professionalism ' from their teaching,that we may call Plato and Isocrates the jointcreators of the idea of what we now understandby university education. The remark I have justmade about the absence of ' professionalism ' from14

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    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    their scheme of instruction will, I hope, explainthat persistent objection to the sophists' practiceof demanding a fee for their courses which Grotefound so unreasonable on the part of Plato andAristotle.

    Plato's long life of quiet absorption in his self-chosen task as a director of scientific studies anda writer on philosophy, was destined to be once atleast disastrously interrupted. The details of hisabortive attempt to put his theories of govern-ment into practice at Syracuse must be soughtin the histories of Greece. Here it must sufficeto recapitulate the leading facts, as related inthe 'letters,' and, apparently without any otherauthority than the ' letters,' in Plutarch's life ofDion. In the year 367 B.C., when Plato was aman of sixty and had presided over the Academyfor twenty years, Dionysius i. of Syracuse died,

    leaving his kingdom to his son Dionysius ii., aweak but impressionable youth. The actualdirection of affairs was, at the time, mostly in thehands of Dion, the brother-in-law of Dionysius i.and an old friend and admirer of Plato. Platohimself had written in his Republic that trulygood government will only be possible when aking becomes a philosopher, or a philosophera king, i.e. when the knowledge of sound prin-15

    PLATOciples of government and the power to embodythem in fact are united in the same person.Dion seems to have thought that the circum-stances at Syracuse offered a favourable oppor-tunity for the realisation of this ideal. Whyshould not Dionysius, under the instructions ofthe great master, become the promised philoso-pher-king, and employ the unlimited power athis command to convert Syracuse into somethingnot far removed from the ideal state of Plato'sdream ? To us, such a project seems chimerical

    enough, but, as Professor Bury has properlyreminded us, the universal belief of Hellas wasthat a not very dissimilar task had actually beenachieved by Lycurgus for Sparta, and there was noa priori reason for doubting that what Lycurgushad done for Sparta could be done for Syracuseby Plato. Plato was accordingly invited to Syra-cuse to undertake the education of the youngprince. His reception was, at first, most promis-ing, but the thoroughness with which he set

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    about accomplishing his work foredoomed it tofailure. It was the first principle of his politicalsystem that nothing but the most thoroughtraining of intelligence in the ideas and methodsof science will ever fit a man for the work ofgoverning mankind with true insight. Accord-i6

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    ingly he insisted upon beginning by putting hispupil through a thorough course of geometry.Dionysius, naturally enough, soon grew weary ofthis preliminary drill, and began to revolt againstthe control of his preceptors. An opportunitywas found for banishing Dion, and though Diony-sius would have liked to keep Plato with him,the philosopher recognised that his scheme hadfailed, and speedily pressed for permission toreturn to Athens. A year or two later he paidanother visit to Syracuse, apparently in the hopeof reconciling Dion and Dionysius, but without

    result. The sequel of the story, the rapiddevelopment of Dionysius into a reckless tyrant,the expedition of Dion which led to the downfalland flight of Dionysius, the assassination of Dionby Callippus, another pupil of Plato, who then sethimself up as tyrant, but was speedily overthrownin his turn by the half-brother of Dionysius,belongs to the history of Sicily, not to the bio-graphy of Plato. It is not unlikely that thedisastrous failure of the Syracusan enterprise,and the discredit which subsequent events castupon the members of the Academy, have muchto do with the relatively disillusioned and pes-

    simistic tone of Plato's political utterances inthe Theaetetus and Politicus as contrasted withB 17

    PLATO

    the serenity and hopeful spirit of the greaterpart of the Republic. Yet, even in his old age,Plato seems to have clung to the belief that theexperiment which had failed at Syracuse mightbe successful elsewhere. In his latest work, the

    Laivs, which was possibly not circulated untilafter his death, he still insists that the onechance for the establishment of a really soundform of government lies in the association of ayoung and high-spirited prince with a wise law-giver.

    Nothing is recorded of the life of Plato afterhis last return from Syracuse, except that he died legend says at a wedding-feast in the year

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    347-6, at the age of eighty-one. His will, whichis preserved by Diogenes, and is likely enough tobe genuine, provides for a 'child Adeimantus,'who was probably a relative, as the same namehad been borne by one of his half-brothers.Nothing further is known which throws anylight on the question whether Plato was evermarried or left any descendants. The scurrilousgossip collected by writers like Athenaeus, andthe late Neo-Platonic traditions v/hich make himinto a celibate ascetic, are equally worthless. Theheadship of the Academy passed first for a fewyears to Speusippus, a nephew of Plato, and

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    then to Xenocrates of Chalcedon, another of themaster's immediate pupils. The one man of realgenius among the disciples, Aristotle of Stageira,took an independent course. For ten or elevenyears after the death of the master, of whoseschool he had been a member from about 367-6

    B.C. until 346, he was absent from Athens, beingemployed for part of the period (343-336 B.C.) astutor to the future Alexander the Great, thenCrown Prince of Macedonia. On his return in335 he broke away from the Academy, andorganised a new school with himself as its head.The formal reverence which Aristotle expressesin his writings for his predecessor was combinedwith a pugnacious determination to find him inthe wrong on every possible occasion. Yet, inspite of the carping and unpleasantly self-satisfiedtone of most of the Aristotelian criticism of Plato,the thought of the later philosopher on all the

    ultimate issues of speculation is little more thanan echo of the larger utterance of his master,and it is perhaps as much by inspiring thedoctrine of Aristotle as by his own utterancesthat Plato has continued to our own day to exer-cise an influence in every department of philo-sophic thought, which is not less potent for beingmost often unsuspected. Of the direct and enor-19

    PLATO

    mously important influence of Platonism on thedevelopment of Christian theology this is perhapshardly the place to speak.

    The works of Plato, we have reason to believe,have come down to us absolutely entire and com-plete. This is, no doubt, to be explained by thefact that the original manuscripts were carefullypreserved in the Platonic Academy ; thence

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    copies, as Grote has argued, would naturally findtheir way into the great library at Alexandria. Itdoes not, however, follow that everything whichour extant manuscripts of Plato contain mustnecessarily be Platonic. It would be quite easy,in course of time, for works incorrectly ascribedto Plato, or deliberately forged in his name, tobe imposed upon the Alexandrian librarians, andto acquire a standing in the library, side by sidewith genuine writings derived directly from theoriginal manuscripts preserved at first in theAcademy at Athens. Indeed, the very anxietyof the Ptolemies, and their imitators the kingsof Pergamus, to make their great collections ofbooks as complete as possible, would furnish apowerful incentive to the unscrupulous to pro-duce alleged copies of works by famous authors.As it happens, we do not know either how longthe original manuscripts of Plato continued to

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    LIFE AND WRITINGSexist undispersed (indeed, the very statementthat they were kept in the Academy is an infer-ence from the probabilities of the case, and doesnot rest upon direct ancient testimony), nor whatworks of Plato were originally included in theAlexandrian library. The first trace which hasbeen preserved of the existence of an edition ofPlato in that library is the statement of Diogenesthat the scholar Aristophanes of Byzantiummade an arrangement of the works of Plato, inwhich certain of the dialogues were grouped

    together in 'trilogies,' or sets of three, after thefashion of the tragic dramas of the fifth century.Diogenes gives the names of fourteen dialogues,which, together with a collection of ' letters,' hadbeen thus divided by Aristophanes into five tri-logies, and adds that the grouping was not carriedout 'for the rest/ Unfortunately, he does nottell us the titles of the * rest,' so that we have noright to assert that everything now included inour manuscripts was recognised as Platonic atAlexandria in the time of Aristophanes. At amuch later date, the grammarian Thrasyllus, wholived in the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius {i.e.

    in the early part of the first century a.d.), madea new classification of the Platonic dialogues into* tetralogies,' or groups of four, on the analogy of the

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    old tragic tetralogy of three tragedies followed bya satyric play. The Platonic canon of Thrasylluscontained nine of these tetralogies, i.e. thirty-five dialogues with a collection of thirteen ' letters,'the same as those we now possess. Of works im-properly ascribed to Plato he reckoned ten, fiveof which are still extant.

    No one now supposes that anything which wasrejected by Thrasyllus is a genuine work of Plato,but there has been during the last sixty years agood deal of discussion as to whether all that wasincluded by Thrasyllus may safely be accepted.The extreme view that nothing contained in thecanon of Thrasyllus is spurious has found no im-portant defender except Grote, whose reasoningis vitiated by the double assumption that every-thing accepted as genuine by Thrasyllus musthave been guaranteed by the Alexandrian library,and that the Alexandrian librarians themselvescannot have been misled or imposed upon. Onthe other hand, the scepticism of those Germancritics of the last half of the nineteenth century,who rejected as spurious many of the most im-

    portant dialogues, including, in some instances,works (e.g. the Laws) which are specifically namedas Plato's by Aristotle, has proved itself evenmore untenable. Our surest guide in the matter,

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    wherever obtainable, is the evidence of Aristotle,and an increasingly careful study of the Aris-

    totelian text has now enabled us to say that,though some of the chief dialogues are neveractually cited by Aristotle in express words,there is none of them, with the doubtful excep-tion of the Parinenides, which is not alluded toby him in a way in which, so far as we can dis-cern, he never makes use of any works exceptthose of Plato. There is thus at present a generalagreement among scholars that no considerablework in the canon of Thrasyllus is spurious. Thefew dialogues of his list which are either certainlyor possibly spurious are all of them, from thephilosophical point of view, insignificant, and no

    difference is made to our conception of Platonismby our judgment upon them.

    A more important question than that of thegenuineness or spuriousness of the few minordialogues about which it is still permissible todoubt is presented by the problem of the orderof composition of the leading dialogues. Untilsome conclusion has been established as to theorder in which Plato's principal works were com-

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    posed, it is impossible to form any intelligibletheory of the development of Plato's thought.Now it so happens that the only positive piece of

    PLATO

    information on this point which has come downto us from antiquity, is the statement of Aristotlethat the Laws was a later work than the Bepublic.The dialogues themselves enable us to supplementthis statement to a slight extent. Thus theSophistes and Politicus are expressly repre-sented as continuations of the conversation con-tained in the Theaetetus, and must therefore belater than that dialogue, and for a similar reasonthe Timaeus must be later than the earlier booksof the Republic, since it recapitulates in its open-ing the political and educational theories ofRepublic ii.-v. And further, a dialogue whichquotes from another, as the Republic appears todo from the Phaedo, and the Phaedo from theMeno, must, of course, be later than the dialogue

    quoted. But the results which can be won byconsiderations of this kind carry us only a littleway, and, in the main, students of Plato were untilforty years ago about as devoid of the meansof forming a correct conception of the develop-ment of Plato's thought as students of Kantwould have been of the means of writing thehistory of Kantianism, if the works of Kant hadcome down to us entirely undated. Each scholarhad his own theory of the order of the dialogues,founded upon some fanciful principle of arrange-24

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    ment for which no convincing grounds could begiven. The first step towards the definite sohitionof the problem by rational methods was takenby Professor Lewis Campbell in 1867 in hisedition of the Sophistes and Foliticus. Startingfrom the universally recognised fact that theLaws must, on linguistic grounds, as well as onthe strength of ancient tradition, be regarded asPlato's latest composition, Professor Campbell

    proposed to treat the amount of stylistic resem-blance between a given dialogue and the Laws, asascertained by minute linguistic statistics, as acriterion of relative date. The method of investi-gation thus pointed out has been since followedby a number of other scholars, and notably, andwith the greatest wealth of detail, by W. Lutos-lawski in his work on The Origin and Growth ofPlato's Logic. At the same time, much additionallight has been thrown on the subject by the

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    more careful investigation of the numerous half-concealed polemical references in Plato toIsocrates, and in Isocrates to Plato. The resultis that while we are still by no means able toarrange the works of Plato in an absolutelycertain serial order, there is, in spite of some indi-vidual points of disagreement, a growing consensusamong scholars as to the relative order of succes-25

    PLATO

    sion of the principal dialogues. For a full accountof the methods just referred to and the resultsto which they lead, the reader may be referred tothe recent work of Hans Raeder, Flaton's Philo-sophische Entwickelung. I shall content myselfhere with a statement of what appear to be themain results.

    Plato's genuine writings fall on examinationinto four main classes. These are: (1) Early

    dialogues, marked by the freshness of thedramatic portraiture, the predominant preoccupa-tion with questions of ethics, and the absenceof the great characteristic Platonic psychological,epistemological, and metaphysical conceptions,particularly of the famous theory of ' Ideas.' Tothis group belong the dialogues which have oftenbeen called par excellence * Socratic,' such as theApology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Euthyphro,Euthydemus, and probably Cratylus. The mostimportant members of the group are the Prota-goras and Gorgias, the latter being almostcertainly the last of the series. There is reason,

    as already said, to regard the Gorgias as probablycomposed soon after 387, when Plato was beginninghis career as president of the Academy. (2) Agroup of great dialogues in which Plato's literarypower is at its height, and which are all marked by

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    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    the central position given in them to the ' theory

    of Ideas,' with its corollary, the doctrine thatscientific knowledge is recollection. The Meno ap-pears to furnish the connecting link between thisgroup and the preceding ; the other members of itare the Syinjjosiuin, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus.Of these the Phaedrus has been shown, conclu-sively as I think, by Raeder, and, on independentgrounds, by Lutoslawski, to be later than theRepublic, which, in its turn, is pretty certainly laterthan the other two. Since the Phaedrus appears

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    to allude to the Panegyricus of Isocrates, whichwas published in 380 B.C., the ' second period ' ofPlato's activity as a writer must have extended atleast down to that year. (3) A group of dialoguesof a * dialectical ' kind, in which the primaryobjects of consideration are logical questions, thenature of true and of false predication, the problemof the categories, the meaning of negation, theprocesses of logical division and definition. Anexternal link is provided between the dialoguesof this group by the exceptional prominencegiven in them all to the doctrines of the greatEleatic philosopher Parmenides. The groupconsists of four great dialogues, Thcaetetus,Pa/mienides, Sophistes, Politicus. The last twoare undoubtedly later than the others. They are,27

    PLATO

    in form, continuations of the conversation begunin the Theaetetus, and are shown to be later than

    the Parmenides both by linguistic evidence andby the presence in the Sophistes of an explicitallusion to the arguments of the Parmenides.Whether the Theaetetus is also later than theParmenides is still an open question, though italso contains what looks like a distinct referenceto that dialogue.

    (4) Three important works remain which form,linguistically, a group by themselves and mustbe referred to the latest years of Plato's life : thePhilehus, the maturest exposition of Platonicethics; the Timaeus (with its fragmentary con-

    tinuation, the Critias), concerned in the mainwith cosmology and physics, but including a greatdeal that is of high metaphysical and ethicalimportance; and the Laws, in which the agedphilosopher, without abandoning the ideals of theRepublic, undertakes the construction of such a' second-best ' form of society as might be actuallypracticable not for * philosophers,' but for averagefourth -century Greeks. Actual dates can hardlybe determined in connection with these two lastgroups. We can only say that the seven worksmentioned must have been written between 380(the earliest possible date for the Phaed/i'us) and

    28

    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    847-6, the year of Plato's death, and that thedifference of tone between the third and secondgroups of dialogues makes it almost certain thatthe earliest works of the third group fall at least

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    some years later than the Phaedrus. It is tempt-ing to go a step further, and say, with Lutos-lawski, that the bitter expressions of theTheaetetus about the helplessness of the philo-sopher in practical affairs contain a personalallusion to the failure of Plato's own interventionat Syracuse, in which case the TJieaetetus and allthe following dialogues must be later than 367-6,but the inference is far from certain.

    This chapter may conveniently end with someibrief observations on the form of the Platonic'writings, and the difficulties which that formcreates for the interpreter of Plato's thought. Inform, the philosophical w^orks of Plato are alldramatic ; they are, one and all, BtaXoyoc, conver-sations. This is true even of the Apology, whichis, in point of fact, no set speech, but a series ofcollo quies of Socrates with his accuser and hisjudges. It is true that the dramatic elementbecomes less prominent as we pass from theearlier works to the later. In the dialogues ofour last two groups, the function of the minorpersonages becomes less and less important.

    29

    PLATO

    They tend, more and more, to serve as mereinstruments for giving the chief speaker his cue,until in the Timaeus the conversation becomes amere prelude to the delivery of a consecutive andunbroken cosmological discourse, and in the Lawsthe two minor characters have little more to dothan to receive the instructions of their com-

    panion with appropriate expressions of agreement.We note, too, that in general the position of chiefspeaker is assigned to Socrates, though in threeof the later dialogues (the Sophistes, Politicus,and Timaeus) he recedes into the background, asthough Plato felt that he was passing in theseworks definitely beyond the bounds of the Socraticinfluence, while in the Laws he disappearsaltogether (probably because the scene of thedialogue is laid in Crete, where the introductionof the home-keeping son of Sophroniscus wouldhave been incongruous), and his place is taken bya 'stranger from Athens,' who is palpably no

    other than Plato himself Plato's reasons forchoosing the dialogue as the most appropriatevehicle of philosophical thought are not hard todiscover. It was the natural mode of expres-sion for a philosophic movement which originatedin the searching and incisive conversation ofSocrates. Most of the ' Socratic men ' expressed30

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    LIFE AND WRITINGS

    their ideas in the guise of Socratic dialogue, andPlato may not have been the originator of thepractice. Moreover, Plato, as he himself tells us,had a poor opinion of written books as provoca-tive of thought, in comparison with the actualface-to-face discussion of problems and examina-tion of difficulties between independent seekersfor truth. The dialogue form recommendeditself to him as the nearest literary approximationto the actual contact of mind with mind ; itenabled him to examine a doctrine successivelyfrom the points of view of its adherents and itsopponents, and thus to ensure thoroughness inthe quest for truth. And finally, the dialogue,more than any other form of composition, givesfull play to the dramatic gifts of portrayal ofcharacter and humorous satire in which Platotakes rank with the greatest comic and tragicmasters. At the same time, Plato's choice of thedialogue as his mode of expression has createda source of fallacy for his interpreters. If we

    would avoid serious errors, it is necessary alwaysto remember that the personages of one of Plato'sphilosophical dialogues are one and all charactersin a play. * Protagoras ' or ' Gorgias,' in aPlatonic dialogue, is not the historical Professorof that name, but a fictitious personage created by31

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    Plato as a representative of views and tendencies

    which he wishes to criticise. Mingled withtraits drawn from the actual persons whose namesthese characters bear, we can often find in thepicture others which can be known or suspectedto belong to the writer's contemporaries. Andthe same thing is true, though the fact is com-monly forgotten, of the protagonist of the drama,the Platonic ' Socrates.* ' Socrates ' in Plato isneither, as some of the older and more uncriticalexpositors used to assume, the historical Socrates,nor, as is too often taken for granted to-day, thehistorical Plato, but the hero of the Platonicdrama. The hero's character is largely modelled

    on that of the actual Socrates, his opinions areoften those of the historical Plato, but he is stilldistinct from them both. In particular, it is agrave mistake of interpretation to assume that aproposition put forward by * Socrates ' must neces-sarily represent the views of his creator, or thatwhere ' Socrates ' declares himself baffled by a pro-blem, Plato must always have been equally at aloss. Plato shares to the full that gift of Attic* irony ' which is so characteristic of the great

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    Athenian tragedians, and, as any attentive read-ing of the Protagoras will show, he has noobjection to exercising it, on occasion, at the32

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    expense of his principal personage. In determin-ing which of the views of his hero are putforward as his own, we, who are deprived of theoral instructions dispensed to the students of theAcademy, have to observe much the same con-ditions and practise much the same precautionsas are required for similar interpretation of agreat dramatist or novehst.

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    CHAPTER II^KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

    The word 'philosophy,' which to us has cometo mean no more than a body of theories andinquiries, has for Plato a more living and subjec-tive sense. Philosophy is, as its name declares,the love of wisdom, the passionate striving aftertruth and light which is, in some degree, thedower of every human soul. It belongs, theSymposium tells us, neither to the mind thatis wholly wise, nor to that which is merely and

    complacently stupid. It is the aspiration of.^_e_partly illuminated, partly confused and perplexed,soul towards a complete vision in which its 'pvez^sent doubts and difficulties may vanish. Accord-ing to the Theaetetus and Republic, philosophybegins in wonder, or more precisely in the mentaldistress we feel when confronted by conflictingperceptions, each apparently equally well ac-credited. In a famous passage this state ofdistress, in which the soul is, so to say, in travail34

    KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

    with a half-formed idea, is likened to the painsof child-birth, and the philosopher is presented,in his relation to his disciples, as the midwifeof the spirit. His task -is not to think forother men, but to help them to bring theirown thoughts to the bu*th. , This conceptionof philosophy and its function is far from being

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    narrowly 'intellectualist' in a bad sense. Philo-sophy is, in Plato's eyes, a ' way of life,' a disciplinefor character no less than for understandinsr.But it is his conviction that there is a deep truthenshrined in the crude saying of the old physi-ologists that ' like is known by like.' { His theoryof education is dominated by the thought thatthe mind itself inevitably ' imitates ' the characterof the things it habitually contemplates. | Justbecause the aspiration after wisdom is the funda-mental expression of the mind's true nature, itcannot be followed persistently without resultingin a transfiguration of our whole character JTtsultimate effect is to reproduce in the individualsoul those very features of law, order, and rationalpurpose which the philosopher's contemplationreveals as omnipresent in the world of genuineknowledge. Yet the starting-point of the wholeprocess is an intellectual emotion, a passion forinsight into truthT^The upward pilgrimage of35

    PLATOthe soul begins for Plato not, as for Bunyan,with ' conviction of sin/ but with that humiliatingsense of ignorance which Socrates aimed at pro-ducing in those who submitted to his cross-questioning. \Insight and enhghtenment are thefirst requisites for sound morality, no less thanfor science, i In action as well as in speculation,VBthat distinguishes the 'philosopher' from othermen is the fact that where they have mere'opinions' he has 'knowledge,' i.e. convictionswhich have been won by free intellectual inquiry

    and can be justified at the bar of reason. The ' theory of knowledge' is thus the v eryc entre of Plato's philoso phy. He takes his standupon the fundamental assumption that therereally is,suekatMng as ' science,' i.e. as a body ofknowable truth which is valid alwavg an d_ahgol-u jely and for every thinking mi nd. The problemhe sets before himself in his metaphysics is to^find the answer to the question ' How is sciencepossible ? ' ' What is the general character whichmust be ascribed to the objects of our scientificknowledge?' Plato may, therefore, in spite of

    Kant's hasty inclusion of him among the dog-matists, be ^ truly said to be a great 'critical'philosoplier, and, indeed, with a partial reservationin favour of his revered predecessor Parmenides,

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    KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

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    the earliest critical philosopher of Europe. Indeed,it is not too much to say that Plato's fundamentalproblem is essentially identical with that ofKant in the Critique of Pure Reason, thoughPlato's solution of it differs strikingly in somerespects from Kant's. (X^ja.- Kan t, -he finds hispoint of departure in the broad contrast betweenthe world of everyday unsystematised * experience,'and that of science. The world as it a ppearsto th ^ ever ydayjUTigp.iAnt.ifip. mflTi is a. f^rpriPi of_strange disorder and confus ion; his so-calledexperience is made up of what Plato calls"' opinions,' a multitude of conflicting and changingbeliefs, some of which are o f^en actually contra- _dictory of o thers ; h e can give no satisfactorygrounds for regarding them as true, and canoften be persuaded out of them by appeals toirrational emotion. [ Science, on the other hand,is a body of consi stent a nd fixed convictions,a system of truth s, valid absolutely, always, andfor every^jone^_jn^which^ t^ members |

    are con nected by a bond of logical necessity in a I

    word, a body of reasone d deductions from tr ue /prmciples. What then is the relation betweenthese apparently so diverse worlds, that of' opinion 'and that of * science'? In more modern lan-guage, of what nature are the objects cognised by37

    PLATO

    the universal propositions of science, and howare they related to the particular percepts of

    sense? iPlato's answer to this question is con-tained 'in his famous '.Theory of jdeas,' which isthus, according to its author's intention, neither* dogmatic ' metaphysics nor poetical imagery,but a logical doctrine of the import of universalpropositions.

    The real . character of this central Platonicdoctrine, as jmmarily^a theory of predication, isweir brought out by the succinct account of itsmeaning and its logical connection with previousGreek thought given by Aristotle in his Meta-physics. \ According to Aristotle, the doctrine was

    a logical consequence from two premises, takenone from Heracliteanism, the other from Socrates.From Heracliteanism Plato had learned that allthe kinds of things which our senses perceive are,'in .flux,' i.e. are constantly undergoing all sortsof incalculable changes, and consequently that nouniversal truths can be formulated about them.(Cf. Locke's doctrine that all our certain know-ledge of 'nature' is 'barely particular/) FromSocrates, whose methods, though used by himself

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    only in the discussion of 'matters of conduct,'were really of universal application, he furtherlearned that without universal truths there can

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    KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

    be no science. Hence j since there js_siicli a thin^^as science, PTato inferred that the objects which

    science defines, and ab out which she under takes_^to prove nmversally valid conckisions , cannot b^the indefinitely variable thinp^s of the sensiblephysical world. There is therefore a supra- .physical world of entities, eternal and immutable^and it is thes^ uncha nging entities, called by Plato'T Laeas,' wn icn are th e ob]ects with which thedefinitions and universal truths of exact scienceare concerned.,/] The rel ation between this world_~"

    "ot pure logica l concepts a nd the world of every-day sensible" experience is that the things ot the ^;;;^sensible world are approximate and imperfectres emblances of the^corresponding conc eptualentities^om jvhich they get their various c lass- ~~names. / This relation Plato calls ' participation in 'the Ideas, a phrase to which Aristotle objectsthat it is no more than a misleading imaginativemetaphor. ^ Such is the preliminary accountwhich Aristotle prefixes to his ' smashing ' attackon the Platonic metaphysics.

    i When we turn to the great dialogues, such as

    the Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus^ in which thedoctrine of Ideas is most prominent, we find thisaccount, so far as it goes, fully borne out. IiLthcTimaeus, in the only passage where Plato ever39

    4'

    PLATO

    directly raises the question whether the 'Ideas'actually exist or not, their existence is said to bea necessary" im^Ecation (^^^^^ of the

    distinction between ' true opinion ' and ' science/If science is no more than true opinion, thereneed be no objects except those of the physicalnd sensible world ; if science is other than trueopinion, there must be a corresponding difference

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    of the name is what Plato means when he speaksof the 'many things which partake of the oneIdea or class-concept.J Consequently he some-times says that there exists an Idea for everygroup of many things which 'have a commonname,' and we find Aristotle using the expression' the One aver the Many ' as a synonym for thePlatonic Idea. But this restriction of the rangeof Ideas to classes of many things with a com-mon class-concept is not really involved in thegeneral theory of the nature of the Idea, since, asthe existence of significant singular terms showsus, classes with only one member are just ascommon in logic as classes with many, (and so wefind Plato in the Timaeus explicitly recognisingone such concept or Idea which is * partaken of 'by only one sensible thing, viz. the Idea or con-cept of the physical universe itself as a whole(the so-called avro^Mov). By the ' Ideas,* then,Plato means_th^^ystem_olJ:firmL&^r_.conc^fixed and d eterminate intension which wou ldform th contents of an ideally perfect science,and which form the content of our existingscience in so far as it is completely and rigidly

    'scientific/.^ the- system of universal meanings.Before we go further, it may be as well to call42

    KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

    attention to one or two points in regard to whichhis doctrine is capable of being and has oftenactually been misunderstood.

    (1) Plato's theory of 'Ideas/ as the true objects

    of knowledge, is not at all a doctrine of * Idealism 'in the modern sense of the word. / He calls theconcepts of science * Ideas ' simply because theyconstitute the forms or types in accordance withwhich the universe of things is constructed; thewords IBea, elSo^, simply meaiJ* shape/ ' form/ andnothing more.'; We merely miss his meaning if| 'we allow the Berkeleyan notion of an * idea ' as a \state of mind to affect our interpretation of him. .The , suggestion that an ' Idea ' is somethingwhich only exists * in a soul/ and therefore is a' thought/ is only made once in Plato's writings,in a passage of the Parmenides, and is only put

    forward there to be promptly rejected, i With' -^Plato the/ Ideas' are not 'states' of the knowingmind, but objects distinct from and independentof itself, about which it has knowledge. J It is onlywith the Ne-Platonists, who taught that * objectsof thought have no subsistence outside the think-ing mind,' that we come within measurable dis-tance of any form of modern ' Idealism.' Hence'conceptual reahsm' is a much better and less,ambiguous name than 'Idealism' for the type of

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    43

    PLATO

    doctrine of which !PlQ,tQ,i&..the.most illustrioiisexponent/

    -^ ^ (2) It follows also at once that, since the ' Ideas 'are not processes of thought but objects ofthought, we must not conceive of them as the,thoughts of the divine mind, ' creative conceptions '

    ^ of God. ' This interpretation of Plato is as old,at least, as the Alexandrian Jewish philosopherPhilo, a contemporary of Christ, and has foundnotable support in modern times, but is, none theless, thoroughly un-Platonic. It is not easy totell how far, when Plato speaks of personal godsor a personal God, he is using the language ofexact philosophy, or how far he is merely accom-modating himself to the current phraseology of

    his time ; but this much, at least, is clear. WhenGod is spoken of in connection with the ' Ideas,'

    *^ as fin the Timaeus, where he is imaginativelyportrayed as shaping the physical universe onthe model of the * Ideas,' the ' Ideas ' are alwaysreferred to as objects existing independently of God.and known by HirrLj. never as owing their exist-ence to His thought about them. In fact,;whatever mav have been Plato's precise concep-tion of God, jGod appears in the language of the Idialogues as altogether secondary in his system ; jit is the I Ideas,' and not, as in so many modem

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    KNOWLEDGE AND ITS OBJECTS

    s}^stfimfi^.GiJd.^w]iick are, ior Plato, the ens realis-simum.l As we shall see further in the nextchapter^it is just. because X^od smd * the soul ' arejnot for Plato entia realissima that he has to!employ imaginative myths when he would speakof them, whereas his language, when he dealswith the * Ideas,' is as devoid of mythical traits

    as the multiplication table.(3) (In speaking of the relation between themembers of the extension of a class- name and thecommon intension or class-concept or 'Idea'which corresponds to themjPlato employs notonly the expression, regarded by^ Aristotle asspecially characteristic of him, that the variousthings 'partake of the Idea, but a number ofequivalent phrases.l Thus it is paid ( Phae dotthsit

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    the things ' have communion with ' (KOLvcovel) theIdea, or that the Idea 'is present to_ ' {irdpeari)them; and it is explicitjy^j^cl^d^jhatjjt^doesnot matter which of these expressions we use^ so^long as we understand the relation, which Jtheyi,all denote.; Yet another way of expressing thesame relation is to say that the things are ' imita-tions ' (fitfiijfMaTa) or ' copies ' of Ideas ^, This formof expression naturally meets us more particularlyin the semi-mythical cosmogony of the Timae u^,but it is found also side by side with the language45

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    PLATO

    about ' participation * in the Republic ; and in theParmem