fications and thus ultimately to rise to tary basis of fact, some measurement of the highest knowledge, the conception at distance or time, on which they must ultionce the most abstract and the most self-mately rest." Thus he imagines "that the evident, from which all the rest may then method of science can anticipate science: " be derived. "This ideal logic," as Mr. to use a favourite expression of Mr. JowJowett observes, "is not the method which ett's, the Platonic Good is a "vacant was pursued by Plato in the search after ideal;" Plato "sees the light, but not the justice; there, like Aristotle in the 'Ni- objects which are revealed by the light." comachean Ethics,' he is arguing from experience and the common use of language." That the higher certainty of the longer way round" was, and remained, a mere aspiration, is plain, not only in the "Republic" (p. 533), but in works of a more decidedly dialectical character.

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Inexperience in the observation of facts, and ignorance of the nature and history of language, are the two characteristic weaknesses of ancient speculation. "The contemporary of Plato and Socrates could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense" (vol. ii. p. 505). The latter cause, indeed, and especially the habit which sprang from it of "identifying language not with thoughts or representations, but with ideas" (vol. i. p. 619), is almost sufficient to account for the Platonic theory. Plato, it may be said, confounded the power which words give of separating notions from the indi

The supremacy of the Idea of good is a feature of Plato's system, which is directly descended from the Socratic teaching. With Socrates, as we saw, the knowledge which constituted morality was simply the knowledge of the good, or useful, or really desirable. No man desires what he thinks will do him harm; therefore, he who has desired wrongly did so in ignorance. The thing seemed to him desir-viduals that they represent, with a sepaable, but was not really so. The Platonic form of this doctrine is that the Good is that which gives not only goodness but also Being to other parts of the world of Ideas. We say that a thing is bad because it is not what it professes to be, because the fact does not answer to the idea. Plato would say, inversely, that it is unreal for want of goodness. Language played a great part in this confusion. The same word (Bovλntóv or aiperóv) was used to express the object of a particular wish, the usual object of wish, and the right object of wish; and these three meanings shaded imperceptibly into each other.

Mr. Mill has observed that the Idea of good in the Republic" is less intelligible than the theory in the "Protagoras," according to which good is the object of an art of "measuring" or calculating pains and pleasures. In the "Republic," when the test of pain and pleasure is abandoned, no other elements are shown to us which the Measuring Art is to be employed to measure."* The same fallacy has been already noted in Plato's conception of Mathematics, when we found him insisting upon the study of the movements and harmonies which are "seen by the mind only." Because he saw that the value of mathematical science increases as it supersedes observation and measurement, he was led to place its perfection in an absolute independence of facts, overlooking "the circumstance that there was some elemen

• "Dissertations and Discussions," vol. iii. p. 345.

rate existence of the notions themselves; and, seeing that words connote what is uniform and permanent, whereas individuals are infinitely various and fluctuating, he did not see that this uniformity is only comparative, and amounts ultimately to no more than uniformity in the impressions made upon the portion of mankind speaking a particular language. This lesson has since been taught, first by long experience, and then by a just analysis of language. With the advance of science the language of ordinary life has become more and inore insufficient to express the known relations of things; and modern Dialectic has made it one of its chief functions to warn enquirers against the influence of words, and to direct them to look for fixedness and certainty, not in abstractions, but in the "opposite pole of experience."

The increase of knowledge, however, has not only tended to limit the influence of language upon thought, but it has given a new conception of experience. The value of experience in scientific enquiry depends on the amount of facts already collected, and on the progress that has been made in digesting them in the form of generalizations. Every new fact of observation, every impression on the senses, calls up a series of accepted and ascertained theories; and it is from this stock of theory that it derives, not indeed its truth as a fact, but its power of modifying or confirming opinion, its clearness to the understanding, and even its power of retaining

of his philosophy; for (as may be read ly supposed) it is in connection with these attempts, rather than with more abstruse enquiries, that positive and fruitful results are chiefly to be found. Three or four points of view may be distinguished, from which the solution is more or less consciously attempted: (1.) Mythology; (2.) Supernatural influence or madness; (3) Morality based upon habit only; and (4.) Systems of positive law.

a hold on the memory. Plato did not start at a point in the progress of science at which the observation of particulars is applicable, except in the most imperfect way, to discovery. He is like a man using his eyes for the first time, who fancies, because everything seems equally near, that sight cannot tell him the forms and distances of objects. Hence he could not systematically test opinions or notions by facts, but by comparing them with other opinions and notions, either consciously 1. Plato's view of the office of mythol held or implied in language. His error ogy is expressed in the "Republic," where was not in devoting himself to the analy- he recognizes it as the earliest instrument sis of abstractions; for, as Mr. Jowett of education, to be used in order to accomsays, summing up the whole matter in a modate truth to the tender mind; but line: "Before men could observe the world partly also on account of our own uncerthey must be able to conceive the world." tainty. "In the tales of mythology, of His error lay in giving to abstractions, as which we were just now speaking, because such, an absolute value; in supposing that we do not know the truth about ancient the clearness which general notions give tradition, we make falsehood as much like to experience was a clearness which they truth as we can.' So in the "Phædrus," had in themselves apart from experience. the famous "allegory (as we should term Yet the Platonic mode of thought, which it) is called by Socrates himself a toleraconcerns itself with the abstractions under bly credible and possibly true, though which phenomena are conceived, has its partly erring myth." The value and inplace alongside of the study of these phe-tructiveness of a myth depends, therefore, nomena in detail. The clearness and just on its being "probable." Probability, so co-ordination of ideas which makes the used, does not mean so much that the philosophic habit of mind is not the same chances are in favour of its being true, as thing as the agreement of ideas with facts which constitutes scientific accuracy; and positive science does not supersede metaphysics, except as it works out in their application the conceptions which metaphysics have supplied.

that it reflects certain truth, or embodies it in the concrete, and consequently will prepare the way for the reception of the same principles in a more abstract shape.

An acute German critic has endeavoured to show that Plato only resorts to the mythical form when he is met by the necessity of explaining the origin or growth (yévɛou) of a thing, The theory of Ideas, he argues, is a theory of the existent as necessary and immutable; the process of becoming has logically no place in it: Plato intended his myths to do for philosophy what the popular mythology did for religion-to express a fundamental series of relations in a narrative form, as something which is, and also which has come to be what it is. Thus (to take the most prominent example), the myth in the

The value of Plato's scheme of Dialectic, as Mr. Jowett is careful to point out, lay in the high ideal which it held up as an aim to the science of the future. "The correlation of the sciences, the consciousness of the unity of knowledge, the sense of the importance of classification, the unwillingness to stop short of certainty or to confound probability with truth, are important principles of the higher education" (vol. ii. p. 157). On the other hand the weakness of the theory was soon felt in the difficulty of explaining consistently the very various degrees of value which Plato would not but recognize in the impressions and beliefs included by him under the term "opinion" or "the seeming." He is far from treating everything which falls short of his conception of knowledge as equally worthless; but he is much at a loss for a satisfactory account of the true or valuable element contained in particular instincts, conjectures, habits, and feelings. The modes in which he approaches the different sides of this problem form, per- Deuschle, "Die platonischen Mythen." Hahaps, the most generally interesting part nau, 1554.

Phædrus " reconciles the eternity of the mind and of knowledge with the rise and progress of knowledge in the individual. The theory, however, although it is highly suggestive, and opens up a new and interesting side from which to compare the ancient opposition of the real and the phenomenal with the modern idea of development, can hardly be applied to all the myths in the Platonic dialogues. A more

adequate account is suggested in Mr. | head, we shall send him away to another Jowett's remarks on the second book of city" (p. 398). The tone of this passage, the "Republic (vol. ii. pp. 37 ff.). and of the "Ion," is that of a gentle con"Art" (under which the composition of tempt for the irrational element. In other myths is included) "may be another aspect places, however, the same thing is treated of reason;" and "this conception of art is with the utmost respect. Thus, in the not limited to strains of music or the forms" Laws," it is said that Athenians, when of plastic art, but pervades all nature." good, are so in spite of their constitution, Mythology, in short, is made (like the by a divinely-given nature. Hence it is mathematical sciences) a universal type; not necessary to suppose that the theory it represents the effort of the philosophic in the "Meno," un-Platonic as it seems, is imagination to find modes of conceiving proposed in irony; of which, Mr. Jowett the unknown. In this wide sense there remarks, there is no trace. "A person may are myths taking the form, not only of his- have some skill or latent experience, which tory, geography, and cosmogony, but even he is able to use himself, and is yet unable of arithmetic and etymology. Thus the to teach others, because he has no princinumber in the "Republic" expresses an ples and is not able to collect and arrange undiscovered numerical relation, which is his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; believed by Plato to govern the periodical | art, but not science. This is a true fact of decay inevitable in all human society. psychology, which is recognized by Plato And the derivations in the "Cratylus" ex-in this passage" (vol. i. p. 253). We may press an equally undiscovered relation between the sounds of words and the things which they represent. In neither case is the truth of the myth maintained; only its probability or "likeness to truth; as we should say, its fitness to suggest truth.

2. The description of the pursuit of truth under the figure of a divine madness is found along with the mythical imagery of the "Phædrus" but it exemplifies a distinct mode of representing the true instincts which yet fall short of knowledge. Of madness Plato there says there are four kinds that of prophets, of the mysteries, of poetry, and of love; and of these the last is also the best. The enthusiasm of the lover is a lower form, a "shadow," of that of the philosopher: the object of the passion is desired because of the true relations which (like the productions of true art) it embodies in a concrete form. Thu there is a progress from sense to reason; the erotic madness passes if rightly directed, into that enthusiastic anticipation of knowledge (called the love of wisdom," piλooopia) which animates the search for absolute truth. At the end of the "Meno," the right opinion by which statesmen have guided cities is said to be "in politics what divination is in religion" (p. The same theory, applied to poetry, is drawn out in the "Ion," and in a passage of the "Republic," which prescribes the manner of treating the "multiform " or imitative poet. We will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being, but we must also inform him that there is no place for such as he is in our state the law will not allow them. And so when we have annointed him with inyrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his

99).

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add that it is a fact which the Socratic doctrine and that of Plato's earlier writing's had ignored; so that the "Meno" may be thought to mark Plato's first attempts to place the relation of virtue and knowledge in a truer light. Plato, we may suppose, felt the difficulties of the Socratic identification, and had not yet gained the higher point of view that of Dialectic - upon which his own identification ultimately rests.

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3. In the "Republic," the progress from sense to knowledge is represented by means of a psychology from which mythical and allegorical elements are finally excluded. The efficacy of the various means of moral education in preparing the way for the higher or scientific morality is now ascribed, as in the Ethics of Aristotle, to the influence of habit. "Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily. fasten, bearing grace in their movements and making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated, or ungraceful if illeducated;" and he who is thus trained "will justly blame and hate the bad now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason of the thing; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute her as a friend with whom his education has made him long familiar" (p. 402 Steph.). In the scheme of the seventh book this training is referred to as the music "which was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the iufluences of habit, etc." (p. 522). In the State the same influences produce a lower kind of virtue, yet one of real value. Thus, in the myth of the "Phædo," "those who have practised the civil and social

virtues which are called temperance and justice, and are acquired by habit and attention without philosophy and mind," are happy, and (it is added with a tinge of irony)" may be expected to pass into some gentle social nature which is like their own, such as that of bees, or ants, or even back again into the form of man, and just and moderate men spring from them " (p. 82). Yet, for want of knowledge, such characters are liable to fail; their virtue wants the "fastening of the cause; " they do not know the real superiority of good

to evil.

guage much of the same neglect of facts, or absorption of facts in the idea, which we have already noted as the main characteristic of Platonism. Yet the passage, amid the despairing picture which it so vividly presents of the decay of Greek politics, allows us to see that Plato is anxious to find a place in his philosophy for the lessons of experience. Nor can we be surprised that it is in political philosophy that respect for facts seems to show itself for the first time, when we remember what a vast field of observation in this field was afforded by the Greek States.

reason,

4. In the "Laws" and also in the In the "Republic," to which we now "Statesman," the spirit of compromise turn, the absolute and intrinsic value of with the actual conditions of the time is justice is shown not merely, as in the carried so far that Plato renounces the " Gorgias," by identifying morality with attempt to apply his ideal to human life. knowledge, but by answering the particuIn the place of philosophy he puts law: lar question, "What is justice?" And in the place of living guardians, governing the answer has two meanings, according by the fewest and most abstract princi- as it is applied to the State or the individples, he puts magistrates, bound by a vast ual. Justice, in the State, is the principle system of minute and unalterable regula- by which its different parts or classes are tions. The point of view from which this restricted to their proper work; in the change should be estimated may be ex- individual, it is the corresponding repressed in the words of the "Statesman." striction of the various faculties "The best thing of all is not that the law spirit, the desires to their functions in should rule, but that a man should rule, the microcosm of the soul. Mr. Grote supposing him to have wisdom and royal objected to this mode of solution that power," and that because "the law cannot justice, in the sense of Glaucon and comprehend exactly what is noblest or Adeimantus, is common honesty of dealmost just, or at once ordain what is best ing; whereas Socrates extends it to infor all" (p. 294 Steph.). Yet, until the clude all virtue. Plato would reply that perfect ruler is found, the best hope is in common honesty, which is the most familgoverning strictly according to law. iar kind of justice, must be considered not "When the foundation of politics is in the by itself, but under the idea which fits letter only and in custom, and knowledge the whole. And that idea must be one is divorced from action, can we wonder, that can be realized both in the State and Socrates, at the miseries that there are, in the individual. "In seeking to estaband always will be, in States? Any lish the purely internal nature of justice, other art, built on such a foundation, he is met by the fact that man is a social would be undermined, - there can be no being; and he tries to harmonize them as doubt of that. Ought we not rather to well as he can" (vol. ii. p. 21). The diffiwonder at the strength of the political culties are partly logical, as e. g., that there bond? For States have endured all this, may be justice between individuals who time out of mind, and yet some of them are themselves neither just nor unjust; still remain, and are not overthrown, partly practical, arising from the intimate though many of them, like ships founder- connection, yet not amouting to identity, ing at sea, are perishing and have perished, between justice and law. Aristotle cleared and will hereafter perish, through the in- up the subject by showing, in the first capacity of their pilots and crews, who place, that the vague political use of the have the worst ignorance of the highest term justice was really different from that truths I mean to say that they are in which it meant "honesty ;" and secondwholly unacquainted with politics, of ly, that justice, as the virtue of an individwhich, above all other sciences, they be- ual, is not a thing in which internal take lieve themselves to have acquired the the place of social relations, but a state of most perfect knowledge' (p. 302 Steph.). mind towards the acts required under Modern readers, aware how essential these social relations. Mr. Jowett's acthe influence of custom is, not merely for count of the Platonic view hardly seems the smooth working of institutions but for to recognize the way in which Plato's distheir existence, will recognize in this lan- tinction complicates, while appearing to

-a

solve, the difficulty of the sufficiency of sents itself as a fact or process rather than justice for happiness. "The two brothers as an idea. In the "Protagoras " Socrates ask Socrates to prove to them that the begins, indeed, by assuming that pleasure just is happy when they have taken from is merely another name for good; but he him all that in which happiness is ordin- soon shows that the choice of pains and arily supposed to consist" (Ibid., p. 20). pleasures involves comparison between And Socrates undertakes this proof. His them, and therefore an "art of measureanswer in substance amounts to this, ment." Pains and pleasures, it follows, that under favourable circumstances, i.e. are only, as it were, the material out of in the perfect State, justice and happiness which the Good (or "useful" or "happiwill coincide: and that when justice has ness") may be formed; whereas knowlbeen once found, happiness may be left to edge is the formative element. This mode take care of itself" (Ibid., p. 22). This, of stating the theory of Socrates is hardly however, is only the happiness of the State. to be distinguished from the latest form The happiness of the individual depends, of Utilitarianism; but with Plato, to whom according to the sequel of the "Republic," the form or idea is always the real element, not upon the perfect State, but upon the it led directly to the inference that pleasure perfect or just individual. The "royally is something transient and "unreal," constituted man is especially happy when view which naturally acquired strength he is king in the ideal State, and the and consistency with the development of tyrannical man especially miserable when the theory of Ideas. In the "Theætetus," he is also a tyrant; but this is, in both again, Socrates shows that the apprehercases, an exceptional enhancing of their sion of the useful, by bringing in the conposition. In reality, as Aristotle per-sideration of consequences, involves comceived, the question is not so much, parison, and therefore the universal ele"What is justice?" as "What is happiness?" If happiness consists in external goods, then justice (or rather the rule of society), in the strong man's view, is that he should get as much as he desires; in that of weak men, that they should combine to keep what they can. Or, if happiness consists in the pleasure of the greatest number, then justice depends upon the conduct by which that pleasure may be best secured. But if happiness is an idea -the application to human life of a higher abstraction, the Idea of good, or the realization of human perfection, or under whatever form an ideal philosophy of ethics may conceive it. then it is the task of such a philosophy to harmonize this idea with its conception of the world and of knowledge. If Plato fails, as Mr. Grote says, by representing (in the just man of the "Gorgias") a superhuman or transcendent virtue; or again, as Mr. Mill points out, by finding no worthy place for an Aristides, a man whose justice consists in implicit obedience to law and traditional morality: the reason is, that in his ethics, as in other parts of his system, the highest truth is made to reside in the purest attainable abstraction. The notion of happiness, apart from ingredients, is parallel to the notion of an astronomy without the visible heavens," or of harmonics without audible harmony."

ment. In both cases, the difficulty which we feel in rightly understanding the issue arises from the extreme form in which the opposite doctrines are found. All philosophers, even the most opposed, would now agree in giving a value both to experience and to abstractions, and also in recognizing pleasure as an element to be brought under regulation by a principle of some kind. Modern psychology lies wholly within the ancient extremes,- Sense is the only knowledge ""sense is delusive; just as modern ethics lies within the analogous extremes," Pleasure is the good," "Pleasure is worthless."

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The "confusion of ethics and politics" is not, strictly speaking, the Platonic confusion of the State and the individual as moral agents, but rather a confusion of the relations in which an individual stands to the State with those in which he stands to other groups or to the whole of mankind, to other sentient beings, and to his own character and prospects. The place which the organization of the State has held in this general fabric of moral duty has varied in different periods of history; but the tendency has been, on the whole, towards diminishing its importance. The duties enforced by law, or by a custom having the stringency of law-though never in Greece, perhaps, co-extensive with morality-are much less nearly so than they were in Plato's time. The State, moreover, does not now make so exclusive a claim on the regard of its citi

The manner in which Plato treats the question of pleasure varies in the different dialogues, but always exhibits the tendency to make light of that which pre-zens.

Other forms of common action and