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These two are the two erotic dialogues of Plato. Phædrus is the originator of both.
I put together these two dialogues, as distinguished by a marked peculiarity. They are the two erotic dialogues of Plato. They have one great and interesting subject common to both: though in the Phædrus, this subject is blended with, and made contributory to, another. They agree also in the circumstance, that Phædrus is, in both, the person who originates the conversation. But they differ materially in the manner of handling, in the comparisons and illustrations, and in the apparent purpose.
Eros as conceived by Plato. Different sentiment prevalent in Hellenic antiquity and in modern times. Position of women in Greece.
The subject common to both is, Love or Eros in its largest sense, and with its manifold varieties. Under the totally different vein of sentiment which prevails in modern times, and which recognises passionate love as prevailing only between persons of different sex — it is difficult for us to enter into Plato’s eloquent exposition of the feeling as he conceives it. In the Hellenic point of view,1 upon which Plato builds, the attachment of man to woman was regarded as a natural impulse, and as a domestic, social, sentiment; 2yet as belonging to a common-place rather than to an exalted mind, and seldom or never rising to that pitch of enthusiasm which overpowers all other emotions, absorbs the whole man, and aims either at the joint performance of great exploits or the joint prosecution of intellectual improvement by continued colloquy. We must remember that the wives and daughters of citizens were seldom seen abroad: that the wife was married very young: that she had learnt nothing except spinning and weaving: that the fact of her having seen as little and heard as little as possible, was considered as rendering her more acceptable to her husband:2 that her sphere of duty and exertion was 3confined to the interior of the family. The beauty of women yielded satisfaction to the senses, but little beyond. It was the masculine beauty of youth that fired the Hellenic imagination with glowing and impassioned sentiment. The finest youths, and those too of the best families and education, were seen habitually uncovered in the Palæstra and at the public festival-matches; engaged in active contention and graceful exercise, under the direction of professional trainers. The sight of the living form, in such perfection, movement, and variety, awakened a powerful emotional sympathy, blended with aesthetic sentiment, which in the more susceptible natures was exalted into intense and passionate devotion. The terms in which this feeling is described, both by Plato and Xenophon, are among the strongest which the language affords — and are predicated even of Sokrates himself. Far from being ashamed of the feeling, they consider it admirable and beneficial; though very liable to abuse, which they emphatically denounce and forbid.3 In their 4view, it was an idealising passion, which tended to raise a man above the vulgar and selfish pursuits of life, and even above the fear of death. The devoted attachments which it inspired were dreaded by the despots, who forbade the assemblage of youths for exercise in the palæstra.4
1 Schleiermacher (Einleit. zum Symp. p. 367) describes this view of Eros as Hellenic, and as “gerade den anti-modernen and anti-christlichen Pol der Platonischen Denkungsart”. Aristotle composed Θέσεις Ἐρωτικαὶ or Ἐρωτικάς, Diogenes Laert. v. 22-24. See Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 133, Berlin, 1863.
Compare the dialogue called Ἐρωτικός, among the works of Plutarch, p. 750 seq., where some of the speakers, especially Protogenes, illustrate and enlarge upon this Platonic construction of Eros — ἀληθινοῦ δὲ Ἔρωτος οὐδ’ ὁτιοῦν τῇ γυναικωνίτιδι μέτεστιν, &c. (750 C, 761 B, &c.)
In the Treatise De Educatione Puerorum (c. 15, p. 11 D-F) Plutarch hesitates to give a decided opinion on the amount of restriction proper to be imposed on youth: he is much impressed with the authority of Sokrates, Plato, Xenophon, Æschines, Kebês, καὶ τὸν πάντα χόρον ἐκείνων τῶν ἀνδρῶν, οἱ τοὺς ἄῤῥενας ἐδοκίμασαν ἔρωτας, &c. See the anecdote about Episthenes, an officer among the Ten Thousand Greeks under Xenophon, in Xenophon, Anabasis, vii. 4, 7, and a remarkable passage about Zeno the Stoic, Diog. Laert. vii. 13. Respecting the general subject of παιδεραστία in Greece, there is a valuable Excursus in Bekker’s Charikles, vol. i. pp. 347-377, Excurs. ii. I agree generally with his belief about the practice in Greece, see Cicero, Tusc. Disp. iv. 33, 70. Bekker quotes abundant authorities, which might be farther multiplied if necessary. In appreciating the evidence upon this point, we cannot be too careful to keep in mind what Sokrates says (in the Xenophontic Symposion, viii. 34) when comparing the Thebans and Eleians on one side with the Athenians and Spartans on the other — Ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ταῦτα νόμιμα, ἡμῖν δὲ ἐπονείδιστα. We must interpret passages of the classical authors according to their fair and real meanings, not according to the conclusions which we might wish to find proved.
If we read the oration of Demosthenes against Neæra (which is full of information about Athenian manners), we find the speaker Apollodôrus distributing the relations of men with women in the following manner (p. 1386) — τὸ γὰρ συνοικεῖν τοῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὃς ἂν παιδοποιῆται καὶ εἰσάγῃ εἴς τε τοὺς δημότας καὶ τοὺς φράτορας τοὺς υἱεῖς, καὶ τὰς θυγατέρας ἐκδιδῷ ὡς αὐτοῦ οὔσας τοῖς ἀνδράσι. Τὰς μὲν γὰρ ἑταίρας, ἡδονῆς ἕνεκα ἔχομεν — τὰς δὲ παλλακάς, τῆς καθ’ ἡμέραν θεραπείας τοῦ σώματος — τὰς δὲ γυναῖκας, τοῦ παιδοποιεῖσθαι γνησίως, καὶ τῶν ἕνδον φύλακα πίστην ἔχειν.
To the same purpose, the speaker in Lysias (Ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἐρατοσθένους φόνου — sect. 7), describing his wife, says — ἐν μὲν οὖν τῷ πρώτῳ χρόνῳ πασῶν ἦν βελτίστη· καὶ γὰρ οἰκονόμος δεινὴ καὶ φειδωλὸς ἀγαθὴ καὶ ἀκριβῶς πάντα διοικοῦσα.
Neither of these three relations lent itself readily to the Platonic vein of sentiment and ideality: neither of them led to any grand results either in war — or political ambition — or philosophical speculation; the three great roads, in one or other of which the Grecian ideality travelled. We know from the Republic that Plato did not appreciate the value of the family life, or the purposes for which men marry, according to the above passage cited from Demosthenes. In this point, Plato differs from Xenophon, who, in his Œconomicus, enlarges much (in the discourse of Ischomachus) upon the value of the conjugal union, with a view to prudential results and good management of the household; while he illustrates the sentimental and affectionate side of it, in the story of Pantheia and Abradates (Cyropædia).
2 See the Œconomicus of Xenophon, cap. iii. 12, vii. 5.
3 The beginning of the Platonic Charmidês illustrates what is here said, pp. 154-155; also that of the Protagoras and Lysis, pp. 205-206.
Xenophon, Sympos. i. 8-11; iv. 11, 15. Memorab. i. 3, 8-14 (what Sokrates observes to Xenophon about Kritobulus). Dikæarchus (companion of Aristotle) disapproved the important influence which Plato assigned to Eros (Cicero, Tusc. D. iv. 34-71).
If we pass to the second century after the Christian Era, we find some speakers in Athenæus blaming severely the amorous sentiments of Sokrates and the narrative of Alkibiades, as recited in the Platonic Symposium (v. 180-187; xi. 506-508 C). Athenæus remarks farther, that Plato, writing in this strain, had little right to complain (as we read in the Republic) of the licentious compositions of Homer and other poets, and to exclude them from his model city. Maximus Tyrius, in one of his four discourses (23-5) on the ἐρωτικὴ of Sokrates, makes the same remark as Athenæus about the inconsistency of Plato in banishing Homer from the model city, and composing what we read in the Symposion; he farther observes that the erotic dispositions of Sokrates provoked no censure from his numerous enemies at the time (though they assailed him upon so many other points), but had incurred great censure from contemporaries of Maximus himself, to whom he replies — τοὺς νυνὶ κατηγόρους (23, 6-7). The comparisons which he institutes (23, 9) between the sentiments and phrases of Sokrates, and those of Sappho and Anakreon, are very curious.
Dionysius of Halikarnassus speaks of the ἐγκώμια on Eros in the Symposion, as “unworthy of serious handling or of Sokrates”. (De Admir. Vi Dic. Demosth. p. 1027.)
But the most bitter among all the critics of Plato, is Herakleitus — author of the Allegoriæ Homericæ. Herakleitus repels, as unjust and calumnious, the sentence of banishment pronounced by Plato against Homer, from whom all mental cultivation had been derived. He affirms, and tries to show, that the poems of Homer — which he admits to be full of immorality if literally understood — had an allegorical meaning. He blames Plato for not having perceived this; and denounces him still more severely for the character of his own writings — ἐῤῥίφθω δὲ καὶ Πλάτων ὁ κόλαξ, Ὁμήρου συκοφάντης — Τοὺς δὲ Πλάτωνος διαλόγους, ἄνω καὶ κάτω παιδικοὶ καθυβρίζουσιν ἔρωτες, οὐδαμοῦ δε οὐχι τῆς ἀῤῥένος ἐπιθυμίας μεστός ἐστιν ὁ ἀνήρ (Herakl. All. Hom., c. 4-74, ed. Mehler, Leiden, 1851).
4 Plato, Sympos. 182 C. The proceedings of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, which illustrate this feeling, are recounted by Thucydides, vi. 54-57. These two citizens were gratefully recollected and extensively admired by the Athenian public.
Eros, considered as the great stimulus to improving philosophical communion. Personal Beauty, the great point of approximation between the world of sense and the world of Ideas. Gradual generalisation of the sentiment.
Especially to Plato, who combined erotic and poetical imagination with Sokratic dialectics and generalising theory — this passion presented itself in the light of a stimulus introductory to the work of philosophy — an impulse at first impetuous and undistinguishing, but afterwards regulated towards improving communion and colloquy with an improvable youth. Personal beauty (this is5 the remarkable doctrine of Plato in the Phædrus) is the main point of visible resemblance between the world of sense and the world of Ideas: the Idea of Beauty has a brilliant representative of itself among concrete objects — the Ideas of Justice and Temperance have none. The contemplation of a beautiful youth, and the vehement emotion accompanying it, was the only way of reviving in the soul the Idea of Beauty which it had seen in its antecedent stage of existence. This was the first stage through which every philosopher must pass; but the emotion of love thus raised, became gradually in the better minds both expanded and purified. The lover did not merely admire the person, but also contracted the strongest sympathy with the feelings and character, of the beloved youth: delighting to recognise and promote in him all manifestations of mental beauty which were in harmony with the physical, so as to raise him to the greatest attainable perfection of human nature. The original sentiment of admiration, having been thus first transferred by association from beauty in the person to beauty in the mind and character, became gradually still farther generalised; so that beauty was perceived not as exclusively specialised in any one individual, but as invested in all beautiful objects, bodies as well as minds. The view would presently be farther enlarged. 5The like sentiment would be inspired, so as to worship beauty in public institutions, in administrative arrangements, in arts and sciences. And the mind would at last be exalted to the contemplation of that which pervades and gives common character to all these particulars — Beauty in the abstract — or the Self-Beautiful — the Idea or Form of the Beautiful. To reach this highest summit, after mounting all the previous stages, and to live absorbed in the contemplation of “the great ocean of the beautiful,” was the most glorious privilege attainable by any human being. It was indeed attainable only by a few highly gifted minds. But others might make more or less approach to it: and the nearer any one approached, the greater measure would he ensure to himself of real good and happiness.6
5 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249 E, 250 B-E.
6 Plato, Sympos. pp. 210-211.
Respecting the Beautiful, I transcribe here a passage from Ficinus, in his Argument prefixed to the Hippias Major, p. 757. “Unumquodque è singulis pulchris, pulchrum hoc Plato vocat: formam in omnibus, pulchritudinem; speciem et ideam supra omnia, ipsum pulchrum. Primum sensus attingit opinioque. Secundum ratio cogitat. Tertium mens intuetur.
“Quid ipsum Bonum? Ipsum rerum omnium principium, actus purus, actus sequentia cuncta vivificans. Quid ipsum Pulchrum? Vivificus actus e primo fonte bonorum effluens, Mentem primo divinam idearum ordine infinité decorans, Numina deinde sequentia mentesque rationum serie complens, Animas tertio numerosis discursibus ornans, Naturas quarto seminibus, formis quinto materiam.”
All men love Good, as the means of Happiness, but they pursue it by various means. The name Eros is confined to one special case of this large variety.
Such is Plato’s conception of Eros or Love and its object. He represents it as one special form or variety of the universal law of gravitation pervading all mankind. Every one loves, desires, or aspires to happiness: this is the fundamental or primordial law of human nature, beyond which we cannot push enquiry. Good, or good things, are nothing else but the means to happiness:7 accordingly, every man, loving happiness, loves good also, and desires not only full acquisition, but perpetual possession of good. In this wide sense, love belongs to all human beings: every man loves good and happiness, with perpetual possession of them — and nothing else.8 But different men have different ways of pursuing this same 6object. One man aspires to good or happiness by way of money-getting, another by way of ambition, a third by gymnastics — or music — or philosophy. Still no one of these is said to love, or to be under the influence of Eros. That name is reserved exclusively for one special variety of it — the impulse towards copulation, generation, and self-perpetuation, which agitates both bodies and minds throughout animal nature. Desiring perpetual possession of good, all men desire to perpetuate themselves, and to become immortal. But an individual man or animal cannot be immortal: he can only attain a quasi-immortality by generating a new individual to replace himself.9 In fact even mortal life admits no continuity, but is only a succession of distinct states or phenomena: one always disappearing and another always appearing, each generated by its antecedent and generating its consequent. Though a man from infancy to old age is called the same, yet he never continues the same for two moments together, either in body or mind. As his blood, flesh, bones, &c., are in perpetual disappearance and renovation, always coming and going — so likewise are his sensations, thoughts, emotions, dispositions, cognitions, &c. Neither mentally nor physically does he ever continue the same during successive instants. The old man of this instant perishes and is replaced by a new man during the next.10 As this is true of the individual, so it is still more true of the species: continuance or immortality is secured only by perpetual generation of new individuals.
7 Plato, Sympos. pp. 204-205. Φέρε, ὁ ἐρῶν τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τί ἐρᾷ; Γενέσθαι, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, αὐτῷ. Καὶ τί ἔσται ἐκείνῳ ᾧ ἂν γένηται τἀγαθά; Τοῦτ’ εὐπορώτερον, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, ἔχω ἀποκρίνασθαι, ὅτι εὐδαίμων ἔσται. Κτήσει γάρ, ἔφη, ἀγαθῶν, οἱ εὐδαίμονες εὐδαίμονες· Καὶ οὐκέτι προσδεῖ ἐρέσθαι, ἵνα τί δὲ βούλεται εὐδαίμων εἶναι ὁ βουλόμενος, ἀλλὰ τέλος δοκεῖ ἔχειν ἡ ἀπόκρισις.… Ταύτην δὴ τὴν βούλησιν καὶ τὸν ἔρωτα τοῦτον, πότερα κοινὸν εἶναι πάντων ἀνθρώπων, καὶ πάντας τἀγαθὰ βούλεσθαι αὐτοῖς εἶναι ἀεί, ἢ πῶς λέγεις; Οὕτως, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, κοινὸν εἶναι πάντων.
8 Plato, Sympos. p. 206 A. ὡς οὐδέν γε ἄλλο ἐστὶν οὖ ἐρῶσιν ἄνθρωποι ἢ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ.
9 Plato, Sympos. p. 207 C.
10 Plato, Sympos. pp. 207-208.
Desire of mental copulation and procreation, as the only attainable likeness of immortality, requires the sight of personal beauty as an originating stimulus.
The love of immortality thus manifests itself in living beings through the copulative and procreative impulse, which so powerfully instigates living man in mind as well as in body. Beauty in another person exercises an attractive force which enables this impulse to be gratified: ugliness on the contrary repels and stifles it. Hence springs the love of beauty — or rather, of procreation in the beautiful — whereby satisfaction is obtained for this restless and impatient agitation.11 With some, this erotic impulse stimulates the body, attracting them towards women, and inducing them 7to immortalise themselves by begetting children: with others, it acts far more powerfully on the mind, and determines them to conjunction with another mind for the purpose of generating appropriate mental offspring and products. In this case as well as in the preceding, the first stroke of attraction arises from the charm of physical, visible, and youthful beauty: but when, along with this beauty of person, there is found the additional charm of a susceptible, generous, intelligent mind, the effect produced by the two together is overwhelming; the bodily sympathy becoming spiritualised and absorbed by the mental. With the inventive and aspiring intelligences — poets like Homer and Hesiod, or legislators like Lykurgus and Solon — the erotic impulse takes this turn. They look about for some youth, at once handsome and improvable, in conversation with whom they may procreate new reasonings respecting virtue and goodness — new excellences of disposition — and new force of intellectual combination, in both the communicants. The attachment between the two becomes so strong that they can hardly live apart: so anxious are both of them to foster and confirm the newly acquired mental force of which each is respectively conscious in himself.12
11 Plato, Sympos. p. 206 E. ὅθεν δὴ τῷ κυοῦντί τε καὶ ἤδη σπαργῶντι πολλὴ ἡ πτόησις γέγονε περὶ τὸ καλὸν διὰ τὸ μεγάλης ὠδῖνος ἀπολύειν τὸν ἔχοντα. Ἐστὶ γὰρ οὐ τοῦ καλοῦ ὁ ἔρως, ἀλλὰ — τῆς γεννήσεως καὶ τοῦ τόκου ἐν τῷ καλῷ.
12 Plato, Sympos. p. 209.
Highest exaltation of the erotic impulse in a few privileged minds, when it ascends gradually to the love of Beauty in genere. This is the most absorbing sentiment of all.
Occasionally, and in a few privileged natures, this erotic impulse rises to a still higher exaltation, losing its separate and exclusive attachment to one individual person, and fastening upon beauty in general, or that which all beautiful persons and beautiful minds have in common. The visible charm of beautiful body, though it was indispensable as an initial step, comes to be still farther sunk and undervalued, when the mind has ascended to the contemplation of beauty in genere, not merely in bodies and minds, but in laws, institutions, and sciences. This is the highest pitch of philosophical love, to which a few minds only are competent, and that too by successive steps of ascent: but which, when attained, is thoroughly soul-satisfying. If any man’s vision be once sharpened so that he can see beauty pure and absolute, he will have no eyes for the individual manifestations 8of it in gold, fine raiment, brilliant colours, or beautiful youths.13 Herein we have the climax or consummation of that erotic aspiration which first shows itself in the form of virtuous attachment to youth.14
13 Plato, Symposion, p. 211.
14 Plato, Symposion, p. 211 B. ὅταν δή τις ἀπὸ τῶνδε διὰ τὸ ὀρθῶς παιδεραστεῖν ἐπανιὼν ἐκεῖνο τὸ καλὸν ἄρχηται καθορᾷν, σχεδὸν ἄν τι ἅπτοιτο τοῦ τέλους, &c.
Purpose of the Symposion, to contrast this Platonic view of Eros with several different views of it previously enunciated by the other speakers; closing with a panegyric on Sokrates, by the drunken Alkibiades.
It is thus that Plato, in the Symposion, presents Love, or erotic impulse: a passion taking its origin in the physical and mental attributes common to most men, and concentrated at first upon some individual person — but gradually becoming both more intense and more refined, as it ascends in the scale of logical generalisation and comes into intimate view of the pure idea of Beauty. The main purpose of the Symposion is to contrast this Platonic view of Eros or Love — which is assigned to Sokrates in the dialogue, and is repeated by him from the communication of a prophetic woman named Diotima15 — with different views assigned to other speakers. Each of the guests at the Banquet — Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Sokrates — engages to deliver a panegyric on Eros: while Alkibiades, entering intoxicated after the speeches are finished, delivers a panegyric on Sokrates, in regard to energy and self-denial generally, but mainly and specially in the character of Erastes. The pure and devoted attachment of Sokrates towards Alkibiades himself — his inflexible self-command under the extreme of trial and temptation — the unbounded ascendancy which he had acquired over that insolent youth, who seeks in every conceivable manner to render himself acceptable to Sokrates — are emphatically extolled, and illustrated by singular details.
15 Plat. Sympos. p. 201 D. γυναικὸς μαντικῆς Διοτίμας, ἡ ταῦτά τε σοφὴ ἦν καὶ ἄλλα πολλά, καὶ Ἀθηναίοις ποτὲ θυσαμένοις πρὸ τοῦ λοιμοῦ δέκα ἔτη ἀναβολὴν ἐποίησε τῆς νόσου, ἢ δὴ καὶ ἐμὲ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ ἐδίδαξεν.
Instead of γυναικὸς μαντικῆς, which was the old reading, Stallbaum and other editors prefer to write γυναικὸς Μαντινικῆς, also 211 D. I cannot but think that μαντικῆς is right. There is no pertinence or fit meaning in Μαντινικῆς, whereas the word μαντικῆς is in full keeping with what is said about the special religious privileges and revelations of Diotima — that she procured for the Athenians an adjournment of the plague for ten years. The Delphian oracle assured the Lydian king Krœsus that Apollo had obtained from the Μοῖραι a postponement of the ruin of the Lydian kingdom for three years, but that he could obtain from them no more (Herodot. i. 91).
9 Views of Eros presented by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon.
Both Phædrus16 and Pausanias, in their respective encomiums upon Eros, dwell upon that God as creating within the human bosom by his inspirations the noblest self-denial and the most devoted heroism, together with the strongest incentives to virtuous behaviour. Pausanias however makes distinctions: recognising and condemning various erotic manifestations as abusive, violent, sensual — and supposing for these a separate inspiring Deity — Eros Pandêmus, contrasted with the good and honourable Eros Uranius17 or Cœlestis. In regard to the different views taken of Eros by Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon — the first is medical, physiological, cosmical18 — the second is comic and imaginative, even to exuberance — the third is poetical or dithyrambic: immediately upon which follows the analytical and philosophical exposition ascribed to Sokrates, opened in his dialectic manner by a cross-examination of his predecessor, and proceeding to enunciate the opinions communicated to him by the prophetess Diotima.
16 Sydenham conceives and Boeckh (ad Plat. Legg. iii. 694) concurs with him, that this discourse, assigned to Phædrus, is intended by Plato as an imitation of the style of Lysias. This is sufficiently probable. The encomium on Eros delivered by Agathon, especially the concluding part of it (p. 197), mimics the style of florid effeminate poetry, overcharged with balanced phrases (ἰσόκωλα, ἀντίθετα), which Aristophanes parodies in Agathon’s name at the beginning of the Thesmophoriazusæ, Athenæus, v. 187 C.
17 Plato, Sympos. pp. 180-181.
18 Respecting this view of Eros or Aphrodite, as a cosmical, all-pervading, procreative impulse, compare Euripides, Frag. Incert. 3, 6, assigned by Welcker (Griech. Trag. p. 737) to the lost drama — the first Hippolytus; also the beautiful invocation with which the poem of Lucretius opens, and the fragmentary exordium remaining from the poem of Parmenides.
Discourse of Sokrates from revelation of Diotima. He describes Eros as not a God, but an intermediate Dæmon between Gods and men, constantly aspiring to divinity, but not attaining it.
Sokrates treats most of the preceding panegyrics as pleasing fancies not founded in truth. In his representation (cited from Diotima) Eros is neither beautiful, nor good, nor happy; nor is he indeed a God at all. He is one of the numerous intermediate body of Dæmons, inferior to Gods yet superior to men, and serving as interpreting agents of communication between the two.19 Eros is the offspring of Poverty and Resource (Porus).20 He represents the state of aspiration and 10striving, with ability and energy, after goodness and beauty, but never actually possessing them: a middle condition, preferable to that of the person who neither knows that he is deficient in them, nor cares to possess them: but inferior to the condition of him who is actually in possession. Eros is always Love of something — in relation to something yet unattained, but desired: Eros is to be distinguished carefully from the object desired.21 He is the parallel of the philosopher, who is neither ignorant nor wise: not ignorant, because genuine ignorance is unconscious of itself and fancies itself to be knowledge: not wise, because he does not possess wisdom, and is well aware that he does not possess it. He is in the intermediate stage, knowing that he does not possess wisdom, but constantly desiring it and struggling after it. Eros, like philosophy, represents this continual aspiration and advance towards a goal never attained.22
19 Plato, Sympos. pp. 202-203.
20 What Sokrates says here in the Symposion about Eros is altogether at variance with what Sokrates says about Eros in Phædrus, wherein we find him speaking with the greatest reverence and awe about Eros as a powerful God, son of Aphroditê (Phædrus, pp. 242 D, 243 D, 257 A).
21 Plato, Symposion, pp. 199-200. Ὁ Ἔρως ἔρως ἐστὶν οὐδενὸς ἣ τινός; Πάνυ μὲν οὖν ἔστιν.… Πότερον ὁ Ἔρως ἐκείνου οὗ ἔστιν ἔρως, ἐπιθυμεῖ αὐτοῦ ἢ οὔ; Πάνυ γε.… Ἀνάγκη τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν ἐπιθυμεῖν οὖ ἐνδεές ἐστιν, ἢ μὴ ἐπιθυμεῖν, ἐὰν μὴ ἐνδεὲς ᾖ.
22 Plato, Sympos. p. 204 A. Τίνες οὖν οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες, εἰ μήτε οἱ σοφοὶ μήτε οἱ ἀμαθεῖς;… Οἱ μεταξὺ τούτων ἀμφοτέρων, ὧν αὖ καὶ ὁ Ἔρως. Ἐστὶ γὰρ δὴ τῶν καλλίστων ἡ σοφία, Ἔρως δ’ ἐστὶν ἔρως περὶ τὸ καλόν· ὥστε ἀναγκαῖον Ἔρωτα φιλόσοφον εἶναι, φιλόσοφον δὲ ὄντα μεταξὺ εἶναι σοφοῦ καὶ ἀμαθοῦς.
Analogy of the erotic aspiration with that of the philosopher, who knows his own ignorance and thirsts for knowledge.
It is thus that the truly Platonic conception of Love is brought out, materially different from that of the preceding speakers — Love, as a state of conscious want, and of aspiration or endeavour to satisfy that want, by striving after good or happiness — Philosophy as the like intermediate state, in regard to wisdom. And Plato follows out this coalescence of love and philosophy in the manner which has been briefly sketched above: a vehement impulse towards mental communion with some favoured youth, in the view of producing mental improvement, good, and happiness to both persons concerned: the same impulse afterwards expanding, so as to grasp the good and beautiful in a larger sense, and ultimately to fasten on goodness and beauty in the pure Idea: which is absolute — independent of time, place, circumstances, and all variable elements — moreover the object of the one and supreme science.23
23 Plato, Symposion, pp. 210-211.
11 Eros as presented in the Phædrus — Discourse of Lysias, and counter-discourse of Sokrates, adverse to Eros — Sokrates is seized with remorse, and recants in a high-flown panegyric on Eros.
I will now compare the Symposion with the Phædrus. In the first half of the Phædrus also, Eros, and the Self-Beautiful or the pure Idea of the Beautiful, are brought into close coalescence with philosophy and dialectic — but they are presented in a different manner. Plato begins by setting forth the case against Eros in two competing discourses (one cited from Lysias,24 the other pronounced by Sokrates himself as competitor with Lysias in eloquence) supposed to be addressed to a youth, and intended to convince him that the persuasions of a calm and intelligent friend are more worthy of being listened to than the exaggerated promises and protestations of an impassioned lover, from whom he will receive more injury than benefit: that the inspirations of Eros are a sort of madness, irrational and misguiding as well as capricious and transitory: while the calm and steady friend, unmoved by any passionate inspiration, will show himself worthy of permanent esteem and gratitude.25 By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Sokrates becomes ashamed of having thus slandered the divine Eros, and proceeds to deliver a counter-panegyric or palinode upon that God.26
24 Plato, Phædrus, p. 230 seq.
25 Plato, Phædrus, p. 237 seq.
26 Eros, in the Phædrus, is pronounced to be a God, son of Aphroditê (p. 242 E); in the Symposion he is not a God but a Dæmon, offspring of Porus and Penia, and attendant on Aphroditê, according to Diotima and Sokrates (p. 203).
Panegyric — Sokrates admits that the influence of Eros is a variety of madness, but distinguishes good and bad varieties of madness, both coming from the Gods. Good madness is far better than sobriety.
Eros (he says) is, mad, irrational, superseding reason and prudence in the individual mind.27 This is true: yet still Eros exercises a beneficent and improving influence. Not all madness is bad. Some varieties of it are bad, but others are good. Some arise from human malady, others from the inspirations of the Gods: both of them supersede human reason and the orthodoxy of established custom28 — but the former substitute what is worse, the latter what is better. The greatest blessings enjoyed by man arise from madness, when it is imparted by divine inspiration. 12And it is so imparted in four different phases and by four different Gods: Apollo infuses the prophetic madness — Dionysus, the ritual or religious — The Muses, the poetical — and Eros, the erotic.29 This last sort of madness greatly transcends the sober reason and concentration upon narrow objects which is so much praised by mankind generally.30 The inspired and exalted lover deserves every preference over the unimpassioned friend.
27 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265-266. τὸ ἄφρον τῆς διανοίας ἕν τι κοινῇ εἶδος.… τὸ τῆς παρανοίας ὡς ἓν ἐν ἡμῖν πεφυκὸς εἶδος. Compare p. 236 A.
28 Plato, Phædrus, p. 265 A. Μανίας δέ γε εἴδη δύο· τὴν μέν, ὑπὸ νοσημάτων ἀνθρωπίνων, τὴν δέ, ὑπὸ θείας ἐξαλλαγῆς τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων γιγνομένην. Compare 249 D.
29 Plato, Phædrus, p. 244 A. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἁπλοῦν τὸ μανίαν κακὸν εἶναι, καλῶς ἂν ἐλέγετο· νῦν δὲ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἡμῖν γίγνεται διὰ μανίας, θείᾳ μέντοι δόσει διδομένης.
Compare Plutarch, Ἐρωτικός, c. 16. pp. 758-759, &c.
30 Plato, Phædrus, p. 245 B. μηδέ τις ἡμᾶς λόγος θορυβείτω δεδιττόμενος ὡς πρὸ τοῦ κεκινημένου τὸν σώφρονα δεῖ προαιρεῖσθαι φίλον.
P. 256 E; ἡ δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ ἐρῶντος οἰκειότης, σωφροσύνῃ θνητῇ κεκραμένη, θνητά τε καὶ φειδωλὰ οἰκονομοῦσα, ἀνελευθερίαν ὑπὸ πλήθους ἐπανουμένην ὡς ἀρετὴν τῇ φίλῃ ψυχῇ ἐντεκοῦσα, &c.
Poetical mythe delivered by Sokrates, describing the immortality and pre-existence of the soul, and its pre-natal condition of partial companionship with Gods and eternal Ideas.
Plato then illustrates, by a highly poetical and imaginative mythe, the growth and working of love in the soul. All soul or mind is essentially self-moving, and the cause of motion to other things. It is therefore immortal, without beginning or end: the universal or cosmic soul, as well as the individual souls of Gods and men.31 Each soul may be compared to a chariot with a winged pair of horses. In the divine soul, both the horses are excellent, with perfect wings: in the human soul, one only of them is good, the other is violent and rebellious, often disobedient to the charioteer, and with feeble or half-grown wings.32 The Gods, by means of their wings, are enabled to ascend up to the summit of the celestial firmament — to place themselves upon the outer circumference or back of the heaven — and thus to be carried round along with the rotation of the celestial sphere round the Earth. In the course of this rotation they contemplate the pure essences and Ideas, truth and reality without either form or figure or colour: they enjoy the vision of the Absolute — Justice, Temperance, Beauty, Science. The human souls, with their defective wings, try to accompany the Gods; some attaching themselves 13to one God, some to another, in this ascent. But many of them fail in the object, being thrown back upon earth in consequence of their defective equipment, and the unruly character of one of the horses: some however succeed partially, obtaining glimpses of Truth and of the general Ideas, though in a manner transient and incomplete.
31 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 245-246. Compare Krische, De Platonis Phædro, pp. 49-50 (Göttingen, 1848).
Plato himself calls this panegyric in the mouth of Sokrates a μυθικός τις ὕμνος (Phædr. p. 265 D).
32 The reader will recollect Homer, Iliad, xvi. 152, where the chariot and horses of Patroklus are described, when he is about to attack the Trojans; the mortal horse Pedasus is harnessed to it alongside of the two immortal horses Xanthus and Balius.
Operation of such pre-natal experience upon the Intellectual faculties of man — Comparison and combination of particular sensations indispensable — Reminiscence.
Those souls which have not seen Truth or general Ideas at all, can never be joined with the body of a man, but only with that of some inferior animal. It is essential that some glimpse of truth should have been obtained, in order to qualify the soul for the condition of man:33 for the mind of man must possess within itself the capacity of comparing and combining particular sensations, so as to rise to one general conception brought together by reason.34 This is brought about by the process of reminiscence; whereby it recalls those pure, true, and beautiful Ideas which it had partially seen during its prior extra-corporeal existence in companionship with the Gods. The rudimentary faculty of thus reviving these general Conceptions — the visions of a prior state of existence — belongs to all men, distinguishing them from other animals: but in most men the visions have been transient, and the power of reviving them is faint and dormant. It is only some few philosophers, whose minds, having been effectively winged in their primitive state for ascent to the super-celestial regions, have enjoyed such a full contemplation of the divine Ideas as to be able to recall them with facility and success, during the subsequent corporeal existence. To the reminiscence of the philosopher, these Ideas present themselves with such brilliancy and fascination, that he forgets all other pursuits and interests. Hence he is set down as a madman by the generality of mankind, whose minds have not ascended beyond particular and present phenomena to the revival of the anterior Ideas.
33 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249-250. πᾶσα μὲν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴ φύσει τεθέαται τὰ ὄντα — ἢ οὐκ ἂν ἦλθεν εἰς τόδε τὸ ζῶον· ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι δ’ ἐκ τῶνδε ἐκεῖνα οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἁπάσῃ, &c.
34 Plato, Phædrus, p. 249 B. Οὐ γὰρ ἥ γε μή ποτε ἰδοῦσα τὴν ἀλήθειαν εἰς τόδε ἥξει τὸ σχῆμα. Δεῖ γὰρ ἄνθρωπον ξυνιέναι κατ’ εἶδος λεγόμενον, ἐκ πολλῶν ἰὸν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἓν λογισμῷ ξυναιρούμενον. Τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν ἀνάμνησις ἐκείνων, ἅ ποτ’ εἶδεν ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ συμπορευθεῖσα θεῷ καὶ ὑπεριδοῦσα ἃ νῦν εἶναί φαμεν, καὶ ἀνακύψασα εἰς τὸ ὂν ὄντως.
14 Reminiscence is kindled up in the soul of the philosopher by the aspect of visible Beauty, which is the great link between the world of sense and the world of Ideas.
It is by the aspect of visible beauty, as embodied in distinguished youth, that this faculty of reminiscence is first kindled in minds capable of the effort. It is only the embodiment of beauty, acting as it does powerfully upon the most intellectual of our senses, which has sufficient force to kindle up the first act or stage of reminiscence in the mind, leading ultimately to the revival of the Idea of Beauty. The embodiments of justice, wisdom, temperance, &c., in particular men, do not strike forcibly on the senses, nor approximate sufficiently to the original Idea, to effect the first stroke of reminiscence in an unprepared mind. It is only the visible manifestation of beauty, which strikes with sufficient shock at once on the senses and the intellect, to recall in the mind an adumbration of the primitive Idea of Beauty. The shock thus received first develops the reminiscent faculty in minds apt and predisposed to it, and causes the undeveloped wings of the soul to begin growing. It is a passion of violent and absorbing character; which may indeed take a sensual turn, by the misconduct of the unruly horse in the team, producing in that case nothing but corruption and mischief — but which may also take a virtuous, sentimental, imaginative turn, and becomes in that case the most powerful stimulus towards mental improvement in both the two attached friends. When thus refined and spiritualised, it can find its satisfaction only in philosophical communion, in the generation of wisdom and virtue; as well as in the complete cultivation of that reminiscent power, which vivifies in the mind remembrance of Forms or Ideas seen in a prior existence. To attain such perfection, is given to few; but a greater or less approximation may be made to it. And it is the only way of developing the highest powers and virtues of the mind; which must spring, not from human prudence and sobriety, but from divine madness or erotic inspiration.35
35 Plato, Phædrus, p. 256 B. οὗ μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν οὔτε σωφροσύνη ἀνθρωπίνη οὔτε θεία μανία δυνατὴ πορίσαι ἀνθρώπῳ. — 245 B: ἐπ’ εὐτυχία τῇ μεγίστῃ παρὰ θεῶν ἡ τοιαύτη μανία δίδοται.
The long and highly poetical mythe, of which I have given some of the leading points, occupies from c. 51 to c. 83 (pp. 244-257) of the dialogue. It is adapted to the Hellenic imagination, and requires the reader to keep before him the palæstræ of Athens, as described in the Lysis, Erastæ, and Charmidês of Plato — visited both by men like Sokrates and by men like Kritias (Xenoph. Memor. i. 2, 29).
15Such is the general tenor of the dialogue Phædrus, in its first half: which presents to us the Platonic love, conceived as the source and mainspring of exalted virtue — as the only avenue to philosophy — as contrasted, not merely with sensual love, but also with the sobriety of the decent citizen who fully conforms to the teaching of Law and Custom. In the Symposion, the first of these contrasts appears prominently, while the second is less noticed. In the Phædrus, Sokrates declares emphatically that madness, of a certain sort, is greatly preferable to sobriety: that the temperate, respectable, orthodox citizen, is on the middle line, some madmen being worse than he, but others better: that madness springing from human distemper is worse, but that when it springs from divine inspiration, it is in an equal degree better, than sobriety: that the philosophical œstrus, and the reminiscence of the eternal Ideas (considered by Plato as the only true and real Entia), is inconsistent with that which is esteemed as sobriety: and is generated only by special inoculation from Eros or some other God. This last contrast, as I have just observed, is little marked in the Symposion. But on the other hand, the Symposion (especially the discourse of Sokrates and his repetition of the lessons of Diotima), insists much more upon the generalisation of the erotic impulse. In the Phædrus, we still remain on the ground of fervent attachment between two individuals — an attachment sentimental and virtuous, displaying itself in an intercourse which elicits from both of them active intelligence and exalted modes of conduct: in the Symposion, such intercourse is assimilated explicitly to copulation with procreative consequences, but it is represented as the first stage of a passion which becomes more and more expanded and comprehensive: dropping all restriction to any single individual, and enlarging itself not merely to embrace pursuits, and institutions, but also to the plenitude and great ocean of Beauty in its largest sense.
Elevating influence ascribed, both in Phædrus and Symposion, to Eros Philosophus. Mixture in the mind of Plato, of poetical fancy and religious mysticism, with dialectic theory.
The picture here presented by Plato, of the beneficent and elevating influence of Eros Philosophus, is repeated by Sokrates as a revelation made to him by the prophetess Diotima. It was much taken to heart by 16the Neo-Platonists.36 It is a striking manifestation of the Platonic characteristics: transition from amorous impulse to religious and philosophical mysticism — implication of poetical fancy with the conception of the philosophising process — surrender of the mind to metaphor and analogy, which is real up to a certain point, but is forcibly stretched and exaggerated to serve the theorising purpose of the moment. Now we may observe, that the worship of youthful masculine beauty, and the belief that contemplation of such a face and form was an operative cause, not only raising the admiration but also quickening the intelligence of the adult spectator, and serving as a provocative to instructive dialogue — together with a decided attempt to exalt the spiritual side of this influence and depreciate the sensual — both these are common to Plato with Sokrates and Xenophon. But what is peculiar to Plato is, that he treats this merely as an initial point to spring from, and soars at once into the region of abstractions, until he gets clear of all particulars and concomitants, leaving nothing except Beauty Absolute — τὸ Καλὸν — τὸ αὐτὸ-καλὸν — the “full sea of the beautiful”. Not without reason does Diotima express a doubt whether Sokrates (if we mean thereby the historical Sokrates) could have followed so bold a flight. His wings might probably have failed 17and dropped him: as we read in the Phædrus respecting the unprepared souls who try to rise aloft in company with the Gods. Plato alone is the true Dædalus equal to this flight, borne up by wings not inferior to those of Pindar37 — according to the comparison of Dionysius of Halikarnassus.
36 Porphyry, Vit. Plotini, 23.
Plato’s way of combining, in these two dialogues — so as to pass by an easy thread of association from one to the other — subjects which appear to us unconnected and even discordant, is certainly remarkable. We have to recognise material differences in the turn of imagination, as between different persons and ages. The following remark of Professor Mohl, respecting the Persian lyric poet Hafiz, illustrates this point. “Au reste, quand même nous serions mieux renseignés sur sa vie, il resterait toujours pour nous le singulier spectacle d’un homme qui tantôt célèbre l’absorption de l’âme dans l’essence de Dieu, tantôt chante le vin et l’amour, sans grossièreté, il est vrai, mais avec un laisser aller et un naturel qui exclut toute idée de symbolisme — et qui généralement glisse de l’une dans l’autre de ces deux manières de sentir, qui nous paraissent si différentes, sans s’apercevoir lui-même qu’il change de sujet. Les Orientaux ont cherché la solution de cette difficulté dans une interprétation mystique de toutes ses poésies; mais les textes s’y refusent. Des critiques modernes ont voulu l’expliquer en supposant une hypocrisie de l’auteur, qui lui aurait fait mêler une certaine dose de piété mystique, à ses vers plus légers, pour les faire passer: mais ce calcul parait étranger à la nature de l’homme. Je crois qu’il faut trouver le mot de l’énigme dans l’état général des esprits et de la culture de son temps: et la difficulté pour nous est seulement de nous réprésenter assez vivement l’état des esprits en Perse à cette époque, et la nature de l’influence que le Soufisme y exerçait depuis des siècles sur toutes les classes cultivées de la nation.” — Mohl (Rapport Annuel à la Société Asiatique, 1861, p. 89.)
37 Dionys. Hal. De Adm. Vi Dic. in Demosth., p. 972, Reiske.
Various remarks may be made, in comparing this exposition of Diotima in the Symposion with that which we read in the Phædrus and Phædon.
Differences between Symposion and Phædrus. In-dwelling conceptions assumed by the former, pre-natal experiences by the latter.
First, in the Phædrus and Phædon (also in the Timæus and elsewhere), the pre-existence of the soul, and its antecedent familiarity, greater or less, with the world of Ideas, — are brought into the foreground; so as to furnish a basis for that doctrine of reminiscence, which is one of the peculiar characteristics of Plato. The Form or Idea, when once disengaged from the appendages by which it has been overgrown, is said to be recognised by the mind and welcomed as an old acquaintance. But in the Symposion, no such doctrine is found. The mind is described as rising by gradual steps from the concrete and particular to the abstract and general, by recognising the sameness of one attribute as pervading many particulars, and by extending its comparisons from smaller groups of particulars to larger; until at length one and the same attribute is perceived to belong to all. The mind is supposed to evolve out of itself, and to generate in some companion mind, certain abstract or general conceptions, correlating with the Forms or Concepta without. The fundamental postulate here is, not that of pre-existence, but that of in-dwelling conceptions.
Nothing but metaphorical immortality recognised in Symposion.
Secondly, in the Phædrus and Phædon, the soul is declared to be immortal, à parte post as well as à parte ante. But in the Symposion, this is affirmed to be impossible.38 The soul yearns for, but is forbidden to reach, immortality: or at least can only reach immortality in a metaphorical sense, by its prolific operation — by generating in itself as long as it lasts, and in other minds who will survive it, a self-renewing series of noble thoughts and 18feelings — by leaving a name and reputation to survive in the memory of others.
38 Plato, Sympos. pp. 207-208.
Form or Idea of Beauty presented singly and exclusively in Symposion.
Thirdly, in Phædrus, Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere, Plato recognises many distinct Forms or Ideas — a world or aggregate of such Entia Rationis39 — among which Beauty is one, but only one. It is the exalted privilege of the philosophic mind to come into contemplation and cognition of these Forms generally. But in the Symposion, the Form of Beauty (τὸ καλὸν) is presented singly and exclusively — as if the communion with this one Form were the sole occupation of the most exalted philosophy.
39 Plat. Repub. v. 476. He recognises Forms of ἄδικον, κακόν, αἰσχρόν, as well as Forms of δίκαιον, ἀγαθόν, καλόν, &c.
Eros recognised, both in Phædrus and Symposion, as affording the initiatory stimulus to philosophy — Not so recognised in Phædon, Theætêtus, and elsewhere.
Fourthly, The Phædrus and Symposion have, both of them in common, the theory of Eros as the indispensable, initiatory, stimulus to philosophy. The spectacle of a beautiful youth is considered necessary to set light to various elements in the mind, which would otherwise remain dormant and never burn: it enables the pregnant and capable mind to bring forth what it has within and to put out its hidden strength. But if we look to the Phædon, Theætêtus, Sophistês, or Republic, we shall not find Eros invoked for any such function. The Republic describes an elaborate scheme for generating and developing the philosophic capacity: but Eros plays no part in it. In the Theætêtus, the young man so named is announced as having a pregnant mind requiring to be disburthened, and great capacity which needs foreign aid to develop it: the service needed is rendered by Sokrates, who possesses an obstetric patent, and a marvellous faculty of cross-examination. Yet instead of any auxiliary stimulus arising from personal beauty, the personal ugliness of both persons in the dialogue is emphatically signified.
I note these peculiarities, partly of the Symposion, partly of the Phædrus along with it — to illustrate the varying points of view which the reader must expect to meet in travelling through the numerous Platonic dialogues.
19 Concluding scene and speech of Alkibiades in the Symposion — Behaviour of Sokrates to Alkibiades and other handsome youths.
In the strange scene with which the Symposion is wound up, the main purpose of the dialogue is still farther worked out. The spirit and ethical character of Eros Philosophus, after having been depicted in general terms by Diotima, are specially exemplified in the personal history of Sokrates, as recounted and appreciated by Alkibiades. That handsome, high-born, and insolent youth, being in a complete state of intoxication, breaks in unexpectedly upon the company, all of whom are as yet sober: he enacts the part of a drunken man both in speech and action, which is described with a vivacity that would do credit to any dramatist. His presence is the signal for beginning to drink hard, and he especially challenges Sokrates to drink off, after him, as much wine as will fill the large water-vessel serving as cooler; which challenge Sokrates forthwith accepts and executes, without being the least affected by it. Alkibiades instead of following the example of the others by delivering an encomium on Eros, undertakes to deliver one upon Sokrates. He proceeds to depict Sokrates as the votary of Eros Philosophus, wrapped up in the contemplation of beautiful youths, and employing his whole time in colloquy with them — yet as never losing his own self-command, even while acquiring a magical ascendency over these companions.40 The abnormal exterior of Sokrates, resembling that of a Satyr, though concealing the image of a God within — the eccentric pungency of his conversation, blending banter with seriousness, homely illustrations with impressive principles — has exercised an influence at once fascinating, subjugating, humiliating. The impudent Alkibiades has been made to feel painfully his own unworthiness, even while receiving every mark of admiration from others. He has become enthusiastically devoted to Sokrates, whom he has sought to attach to himself, and to lay under obligation, by tempting offers of every kind. The details of these offers are given with a fulness which cannot be translated to modern readers, and which even then required to be excused as the revelations of a drunken man. They present one of the boldest fictions in the Greek language — if we look at them in conjunction with the real character of 20Alkibiades as an historical person.41 Sokrates is found proof against every variety of temptation, however seductive to Grecian feeling. In his case, Eros Philosophus maintains his dignity as exclusively pure, sentimental, and spiritual: while Alkibiades retires more humiliated than ever. We are given to understand that the like offers had been made to Sokrates by many other handsome youths also — especially by Charmides and Euthydemus — all of them being treated with the same quiet and repellent indifference.42 Sokrates had kept on the vantage-ground as regards all:— and was regarded by all with the same mixture of humble veneration and earnest attachment.
40 Plato, Sympos. p. 216 C-D.
41 Plato, Sympos. p. 219. See also, respecting the historical Alkibiades and his character, Thucyd. vi. 15; Xenoph. Memor. i. 1; Antisthenes, apud Athenæum, xii. 534.
The invention of Plato goes beyond that of those ingenious men who recounted how Phrynê and Lais had failed in attempts to overcome the continence of Xenokrates, Diog. L. iv. 7: and the saying of Lais, ὡς οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνδρός, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἀνδρίαντος, ἀνασταίη. Quintilian (viii. 4, 22-23) aptly enough compares the description given by Alkibiades — as the maximum of testimony to the “invicta continentia” of Sokrates — with the testimony to the surpassing beauty of Helen, borne by such witnesses as the Trojan δημογέροντες and Priam himself (Hom. Iliad iii. 156). One of the speakers in Athenæus censures severely this portion of the Platonic Symposion, xi. 506 C, 508 D, v. 187 D. Porphyry (in his life of Plotinus, 15) tells us that the rhetor Diophanes delivered an apology for Alkibiades, in the presence of Plotinus; who was much displeased, and directed Porphyry to compose a reply.
42 Plato, Symp. p. 222 B.
In the Hieron of Xenophon (xi. 11) — a conversation between the despot Hieron and the poet Simonides — the poet, exhorting Hieron to govern his subjects in a mild, beneficent, and careful spirit, expatiates upon the popularity and warm affection which he will thereby attract to himself from them. Of this affection one manifestation will be (he says) as follows:— ὥστε οὐ μόνον φιλοῖο ἄν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐρῷο, ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπων· καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς οὐ πειρᾷν, ἀλλὰ πειρώμενον ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀνέχεσθαι ἄν σε δέοι, &c.
These words illustrate the adventure described by Alkibiades in the Platonic Symposion.
Herakleides of Pontus, Dikæarchus, and the Peripatetic Hieronymus, all composed treatises Περὶ Ἐρωτος, especially περὶ παιδικῶν ἐρώτων (Athenæ. xiii. 602-603).
Perfect self-command of Sokrates — proof against every sort of trial.
Not merely upon this point but upon others also, Alkibiades recounts anecdotes of the perfect self-mastery of Sokrates: in endurance of cold, heat, hunger, and fatigue — in contempt of the dangers of war, in bravery on the day of battle — even in the power of bearing more wine than any one else, without being intoxicated, whenever the occasion was such as to require him to drink: though he never drank much willingly. While all his emotions are thus described as under the full control of Reason and Eros Philosophus — his special gift and privilege was that of conversation — not less 21eccentric in manner, than potent, soul-subduing,43 and provocative in its effects.
43 Plato, Sympos. pp. 221-222.
Alkibiades recites acts of distinguished courage performed by Sokrates, at the siege of Potidæa as well as at the battle of Delium.
About the potent effect produced by the conversation of Sokrates upon his companions, compare Sympos. p. 173 C-D.
In the Xenophontic Apology (s. 18), Sokrates adverts to the undisturbed equanimity which he had shown during the long blockade of Athens after the battle of Ægospotami, while others were bewailing the famine and other miseries.
Drunkenness of others at the close of the Symposion — Sokrates is not affected by it, but continues his dialectic process.
After the speech of Alkibiades is concluded, the close of the banquet is described by the primary narrator. He himself, with Agathon and Aristophanes, and several other fresh revellers, continue to drink wine until all of them become dead drunk. While Phædrus, Eryximachus, and others retire, Sokrates remains. His competency to bear the maximum of wine without being disturbed by it, is tested to the full. Although he had before, in acceptance of the challenge of Alkibiades, swallowed the contents of the wine cooler, he nevertheless continues all the night to drink wine in large bowls, along with the rest. All the while, however, he goes on debating his ordinary topics, even though no one is sufficiently sober to attend to him. His companions successively fall asleep, and at day-break, he finds himself the only person sober,44 except Aristodemus (the narrator of the whole scene), who has recently waked after a long sleep. Sokrates quits the house of Agathon, with unclouded senses and undiminished activity — bathes — and then visits the 22gymnasium at the Lykeion; where he passes all the day in his usual abundant colloquy.45
44 In Sympos. p. 176 B, Sokrates is recognised as δυνατώτατος πίνειν, above all the rest: no one can be compared with him. In the two first books of the Treatise De Legibus, we shall find much to illustrate what is here said (in the Symposion) about the power ascribed to him of drinking more wine than any one else, without being at all affected by it. Plato discusses the subject of strong potations (μέθη) at great length; indeed he seems to fear that his readers will think he says too much upon it (i. 642 A). He considers it of great advantage to have a test to apply, such as wine, for the purpose of measuring the reason and self-command of different men, and of determining how much wine is sufficient to overthrow it, in each different case (i. 649 C-E). You can make this trial (he argues) in each case, without any danger or harm; and you can thus escape the necessity of making the trial in a real case of emergency. Plato insists upon the χρεία τῆς μέθης, as a genuine test, to be seriously employed for the purpose of testing men’s reason and force of character (ii. p. 673). In the Republic, too (iii. p. 413 E), the φύλακες are required to be tested, in regard to their capacity of resisting pleasurable temptation, as well as pain and danger.
Among the titles of the lost treatises of Theophrastus, we find one Περὶ Μέθης (Diog. L. v. 44). It is one of the compliments that the Emperor Marcus Antoninus (i. 16) pays to his father — That he was, like Sokrates, equally competent both to partake of, and to abstain from, the most seductive enjoyments, without ever losing his calmness and self-mastery.
45 Plato, Sympos. p. 223.
Symposion and Phædon — each is the antithesis and complement of the other.
The picture of Sokrates, in the Symposion, forms a natural contrast and complement to the picture of him in the Phædon; though the conjecture of Schleiermacher46 — that the two together are intended to make up the Philosophus, or third member of the trilogy promised in the Sophistês — is ingenious rather than convincing. The Phædon depicts Sokrates in his last conversation with his friends, immediately before his death; the Symposion presents him in the exuberance of life, health, and cheerfulness: in both situations, we find the same attributes manifested — perfect equanimity and self-command, proof against every variety of disturbing agency — whether tempting or terrible — absorbing interest in philosophical dialectic. The first of these two elements, if it stood alone, would be virtuous sobriety, yet not passing beyond the limit of mortal virtue: the last of the two superadds a higher element, which Plato conceives to transcend the limit of mortal virtue, and to depend upon divine inspiration or madness.47
46 Einleitung zum Gastmahl, p. 359 seq.
47 Plato, Phædrus, p. 256 C-E. σωφροσύνη θνητή — ἐρωτικὴ μανία: σωφροσύνη ἀνθρωπίνη — θεία μανία. Compare p. 244 B.
Symposion of Plato compared with that of Xenophon.
The Symposion of Plato affords also an interesting subject of comparison with that of his contemporary Xenophon, as to points of agreement as well as of difference.48 Xenophon states in the beginning that he intends to describe what passed in a scene where he himself was 23present; because he is of opinion that the proceedings of excellent men, in hours of amusement, are not less worthy of being recorded than those of their serious hours. Both Plato and Xenophon take for their main subject a festive banquet, destined to celebrate the success of a young man in a competitive struggle. In Plato, the success is one of mind and genius — Agathon has gained the prize of tragedy: in Xenophon, it is one of bodily force and skill — Autolykus victor in the pankration. The Symposion of Xenophon differs from that of Plato, in the same manner as the Memorabilia of Xenophon generally differ from the Sokratic dialogues of Plato — that is, by approaching much nearer to common life and reality. It describes a banquet such as was likely enough to take place, with the usual accompaniments — a professional jester, and a Syracusan ballet-master who brings with him a dancing-girl, a girl to play on the flute and harp, and a handsome youth. These artists contribute to the amusement of the company by music, dancing, throwing up balls and catching them again, jumping into and out of a circle of swords. All this would have occurred at an ordinary banquet: here, it is accompanied and followed by remarks of pleasantry, buffoonery and taunt, interchanged between the guests. Nearly all the guests take part, more or less: but Sokrates is made the prominent figure throughout. He repudiates the offer of scented unguents: but he recommends the drinking of wine, though moderately, and in small cups. The whole company are understood to be somewhat elevated with wine, but not one of them becomes intoxicated. Sokrates not only talks as much fun as the rest, but even sings, and speaks of learning to dance, jesting on his own corpulence.49 Most part of the scene is broad farce, in the manner, though not with all the humour, of Aristophanes.50 24The number and variety of the persons present is considerable, greater than in most of the Aristophanic plays.51 Kallias, Lykon, Autolykus, Sokrates, Antisthenes, Hermogenes, Nikeratus, Kritobulus, have each his own peculiarity: and a certain amount of vivacity and amusement arises from the way in which each of them is required, at the challenge of Sokrates, to declare on what it is that he most prides himself. Sokrates himself carries the burlesque farther than any of them; pretending to be equal in personal beauty to Kritobulus, and priding himself upon the function of a pander, which he professes to exercise. Antisthenes, however, is offended, when Sokrates fastens upon him a similar function: but the latter softens the meaning of the term so as to appease him. In general, each guest is made to take pride in something the direct reverse of that which really belongs to him; and to defend his thesis in a strain of humorous parody. Antisthenes, for example, boasts of his wealth. The Syracusan ballet-master is described as jealous of Sokrates, and as addressing to him some remarks of offensive rudeness; which Sokrates turns off, and even begins to sing, for the purpose of preventing confusion and ill-temper from spreading among the company:52 while he at the same time gives prudent advice to the Syracusan about the exhibitions likely to be acceptable.
48 Pontianus, one of the speakers in Athenæus (xi. 504), touches upon some points of this comparison, with a view of illustrating the real or supposed enmity between Plato and Xenophon; an enmity not in itself improbable, yet not sufficiently proved.
Athenæus had before him the Symposion of Epikurus (not preserved) as well as those of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle (xv. 674); and we learn from him some of its distinctive points. Masurius (the speaker in Athenæus, v. init.) while he recognises in the Symposia of Xenophon and Plato a dramatic variety of characters and smartness — finds fault with both, but especially with Plato, for levity, rudeness, indecency, vulgarity, sneering, &c. The talk was almost entirety upon love and joviality. In the Symposion of Epikurus, on the contrary, nothing was said about these topics; the guests were fewer, the conversation was grave and dull, upon dry topics of science, such as the atomic theory (προφήτας ἀτόμων, v. 3, 187 B, 177 B. Ἐπίκουρος δὲ συμπόσιον φιλοσόφων μόνον πεποίηται), and even upon bodily ailments, such as indigestion or fever (187 C). The philosophers present were made by Epikurus to carry on their debate in so friendly a spirit, that the critic calls them “flatterers praising each other”; while he terms the Platonic guests “sneerers insulting each other” (μυκτηριστῶν ἀλλήλους τωθαζόντων, 182 A), though this is much more true about the Xenophontic Symposion than about the Platonic. He remarks farther that the Symposion of Epikurus included no libation or offering to the Gods (179 D).
It is curious to note these peculiarities in the compositions (now lost) of a philosopher like Epikurus, whom many historians of philosophy represent as thinking about nothing but convivial and sexual pleasure.
49 Xenophon, Sympos. vii. 1; ii. 18-19. προγάστωρ, &c.
50 The taunt ascribed to the jester Philippus, about the cowardice of the demagogue Peisander, is completely Aristophanic, ii. 14; also that of Antisthenes respecting the bad temper of Xanthippê, ii. 10; and the caricature of the movements of the ὀρχηστρὶς by Philippus, ii. 21. Compare also iii. 11.
51 Xen. Symp. c. 4-5.
52 Xen. Symp. vi. Αὐτὴ μὲν ἡ παροινία οὕτω κατεσβέσθη, vii. 1-5.
Epiktêtus insists upon this feature in the character of Sokrates — his patience and power of soothing angry men (ii. 12-14).
Small proportion of the serious, in the Xenophontic Symposion.
Though the Xenophontic Symposion is declared to be an alternate mixture of banter and seriousness,53 yet the only long serious argument or lecture delivered is by Sokrates; in which he pronounces a professed panegyric upon Eros, but at the same time pointedly distinguishes the sentimental from the sensual. He denounces the latter, and confines his panegyric to the former — selecting Kallias and Autolykus as honourable examples of it.54
53 Xen. Symp. iv. 28. ἀναμὶξ ἐσκωψάν τε καὶ ἐσπούδασαν, viii. 41.
54 Xen. Symp. viii. 24. The argument against the sensual is enforced with so much warmth that Sokrates is made to advert to the fact of his being elate with wine — ὅ τε γὰρ οἶνος συνεπαίρει, καὶ ὁ ἀεὶ σύνοικος ἐμοὶ ἔρως κεντρίζει εἰς τὸν ἀντίπαλον ἔρωτα αὐτοῦ παῤῥησιάζεσθαι.
The contrast between the customs of the Thebans and Eleians, and those of the Lacedæmonians, is again noted by Xenophon, Rep. Laced. ii. 13. Plato puts (Symp. 182) a like contrast into the mouth of Pausanias, assimilating the customs of Athens in this respect to those of Sparta. The comparison between Plato and Xenophon is here curious; we see how much more copious and inventive is the reasoning of Plato.
25The Xenophontic Symposion closes with a pantomimic scene of Dionysus and Ariadnê as lovers represented (at the instance of Sokrates) by the Syracusan ballet-master and his staff. This is described as an exciting spectacle to most of the hearers, married as well as unmarried, who retire with agreeable emotions. Sokrates himself departs with Lykon and Kallias, to be present at the exercise of Autolykus.55
55 Xen. Symp. viii. 5, ix. 7. The close of the Xenophontic Symposion is, to a great degree, in harmony with modern sentiment, though what is there expressed would probably be left to be understood. The Platonic Symposion departs altogether from that sentiment.
Platonic Symposion more ideal and transcendental than the Xenophontic.
We see thus that the Platonic Symposion is much more ideal, and departs farther from common practice and sentiment, than the Xenophontic. It discards all the common accessories of a banquet (musical or dancing artists), and throws the guests altogether upon their own powers of rhetoric and dialectic, for amusement. If we go through the different encomiums upon Eros, by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Diotima — we shall appreciate the many-coloured forms and exuberance of the Platonic imagination, as compared with the more restricted range and common-place practical sense of Xenophon.56 All the Platonic speakers are accomplished persons — a man of letters, a physician, two successful poets, a prophetess: the Xenophontic personages, except Sokrates and Antisthenes, are persons of ordinary capacity. The Platonic Symposion, after presenting Eros in five different points of view, gives pre-eminence and emphasis to a sixth, in which Eros is regarded as the privileged minister and conductor to the mysteries of philosophy, both the lowest and the highest: the Xenophontic Symposion dwells upon one view only of Eros (developed by Sokrates) and cites Kallias as example of it, making no mention of philosophy. The Platonic Symposion exalts Sokrates, as the representative of Eros Philosophus, to a pinnacle of elevation which places him above human fears and weaknesses57 — coupled however with that 26eccentricity which makes the vulgar regard a philosopher as out of his mind: the Xenophontic Symposion presents him only as a cheerful, amiable companion, advising temperance, yet enjoying a convivial hour, and contributing more than any one else to the general hilarity.
56 The difference between the two coincides very much with that which is drawn by Plato himself in the Phædrus — θεία μανία as contrasted with σωφροσύνη θνητὴ (p. 256 E). Compare Athenæus, v. 187 B.
57 Plato, Phædrus, p. 249 D. νουθετεῖται μὲν ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ὡς παρακινῶν, ἐνθουσιάζων δὲ λέληθε τοὺς πολλοὺς.… αἰτίαν ἔχει ὡς μανικῶς διακείμενος.
Such are the points of comparison which present themselves between the same subject as handled by these two eminent contemporaries, both of them companions, and admirers of Sokrates: and each handling it in his own manner.58
58 Which of these two Symposia was the latest in date of composition we cannot determine with certainty: though it seems certain that the latest of the two was not composed in imitation of the earliest.
From the allusion to the διοίκισις of Mantineia (p. 193 A) we know that the Platonic Symposion must have been composed after 385 B.C.: there is great probability also, though not full certainty, that it was composed during the time when Mantineia was still an aggregate of separate villages and not a town — that is, between 385-370 B.C., in which latter year Mantineia was re-established as a city. The Xenophontic Symposion affords no mark of date of composition: Xenophon reports it as having been himself present. It does indeed contain, in the speech delivered by Sokrates (viii. 32), an allusion to, and a criticism upon, an opinion supported by Pausanias ὁ Ἀγάθωνος τοῦ ποιητοῦ ἐραστής, who discourses in the Platonic Symposion: and several critics think that this is an allusion by Xenophon to the Platonic Symposion. I think this opinion improbable. It would require us to suppose that Xenophon is inaccurate, since the opinion which he ascribes to Pausanias is not delivered by Pausanias in the Platonic Symposion, but by Phædrus. Athenæus (v. 216) remarks that the opinion is not delivered by Pausanias, but he does not mention that it is delivered by Phædrus. He remarks that there was no known written composition of Pausanias himself: and he seems to suppose that Xenophon must have alluded to the Platonic Symposion, but that he quoted it inaccurately or out of another version of it, different from what we now read. Athenæus wastes reasoning in proving that the conversation described in the Platonic Symposion cannot have really occurred at the time to which Plato assigns it. This is unimportant: the speeches are doubtless all composed by Plato. If Athenæus was anxious to prove anachronism against Plato, I am surprised that he did not notice that of the διοίκισις of Mantineia mentioned in a conversation supposed to have taken place in the presence of Sokrates, who died in 399 B.C.
I incline to believe that the allusion of Xenophon is not intended to apply to the Symposion of Plato. Xenophon ascribes one opinion to Pausanias, Plato ascribes another; this is noway inconceivable. I therefore remain in doubt whether the Xenophontic or the Platonic Symposion is earliest. Compare the Præf. of Schneider to the former, pp. 140-143.
Second half of the Phædrus — passes into a debate on Rhetoric. Eros is considered as a subject for rhetorical exercise.
I have already stated that the first half of the Phædrus differs materially from the second; and that its three discourses on the subject of Eros (the first two depreciating Eros, the third being an effusion of high-flown and poetical panegyric on the same theme) may be better understood by being looked at in conjunction with the Symposion. The second half of the Phædrus passes into a different discussion, criticising the discourse of Lysias as a rhetorical composition: examining the principles upon which the teaching of Rhetoric as an Art either 27is founded, or ought to be founded: and estimating the efficacy of written discourse generally, as a means of working upon or instructing other minds.
Lysias is called a logographer by active politicians. Contempt conveyed by the word. Sokrates declares that the only question is, Whether a man writes well or ill.
I heard one of our active political citizens (says Phædrus) severely denounce Lysias, and fasten upon him with contempt, many times over, the title of a logographer. Active politicians will not consent to compose and leave behind them written discourses, for fear of being called Sophists.59 To write discourses (replies Sokrates) is noway discreditable: the real question is, whether he writes them well.60 And the same question is the only one proper to be asked about other writers on all subjects — public or private, in prose or in verse. How to speak well, and how to write well — is the problem.61 Is there any art or systematic method, capable of being laid down beforehand and defended upon principle, for accomplishing the object well? Or does a man succeed only by unsystematic knack or practice, such as he can neither realise distinctly to his own consciousness, nor describe to others?
59 Plato, Phædrus, p. 257 C.
60 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 257 E, 258 D.
The two appellations — λογογράφος and σοφιστής — are here coupled together as terms of reproach, just as they stand coupled in Demosthenes, Fals. Leg. p. 417. It is plain that both appellations acquired their discreditable import mainly from the collateral circumstance that the persons so denominated took money for their compositions or teaching. The λογογράφος wrote for pay, and on behalf of any client who could pay him. In the strict etymological sense, neither of the two terms would imply any reproach.
Yet Plato, in this dialogue, when he is discussing the worth of the reproachful imputation fastened on Lysias, takes the term λογογράφος only in this etymological, literal sense, omitting to notice the collateral association which really gave point to it and made it serve the purpose of a hostile speaker. This is the more remarkable, because we find Plato multiplying opportunities, even on unsuitable occasions, of taunting the Sophists with the fact that they took money. Here in the Phædrus, we should have expected that if he noticed the imputation at all, he would notice it in the sense intended by the speaker. In this sense, indeed, it would not have suited the purpose of his argument, since he wishes to make it an introduction to a philosophical estimate of the value of writing as a means of instruction.
Heindorf observes, that Plato has used a similar liberty in comparing the λογογράφος to the proposer of a law or decree. “Igitur, quum solemne legum initium ejusmodi esset, ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ, &c., Plato aliter longé quam vulgo acciperetur, neque sine calumniâ quâdam, interpretatus est” (ad p. 258).
61 Plato, Phædrus, p. 259 E. ὅπῃ καλῶς ἔχει λέγειν τε καὶ γράφειν, καὶ ὅπῃ μή, σκεπτέον. — p. 258 D. τίς ὁ τρόπος τοῦ καλῶς τε καὶ μὴ γράφειν.
28 Question about teaching the art of writing well or speaking well. Can it be taught upon system or principle? Or does the successful Rhetor succeed only by unsystematic knack?.
First let us ask — When an orator addresses himself to a listening crowd upon the common themes — Good and Evil, Just and Unjust — is it necessary that he should know what is really and truly good and evil, just and unjust? Most rhetorical teachers affirm, that it is enough if he knows what the audience or the people generally believe to be so: and that to that standard he must accommodate himself, if he wishes to persuade.62
62 Plato, Phædrus, p. 260 A.
Theory of Sokrates — that all art of persuasion must be founded upon a knowledge of the truth, and of gradations of resemblance to the truth.
He may persuade the people under these circumstances (replies Sokrates), but if he does so, it will be to their misfortune and to his own. He ought to know the real truth — not merely what the public whom he addresses believe to be the truth — respecting just and unjust, good and evil, &c. There can be no genuine art of speaking, which is not founded upon knowledge of the truth, and upon adequate philosophical comprehension of the subject-matter.63 The rhetorical teachers take too narrow a view of rhetoric, when they confine it to public harangues addressed to the assembly or to the Dikastery. Rhetoric embraces all guidance of the mind through words, whether in public harangue or private conversation, on matters important or trivial. Whether it be a controversy between two litigants in a Dikastery, causing the Dikasts to regard the same matters now as being just and good, presently as being unjust and evil: or between two dialecticians like Zeno, who could make his hearers view the same subjects as being both like and unlike — both one and many — both in motion and at rest: in either case the art (if there be any art) and its principles are the same. You ought to assimilate every thing to every thing, in all cases where assimilation is possible: if your adversary assimilates in like manner, concealing the process from his hearers, you must convict and expose his proceedings. Now the possibility or facility of deception in this way will depend upon the extent of likeness between things. If there be much real likeness, deception is easy, and one of them may easily be passed off as the other: if there be little likeness, 29deception will be difficult. An extensive acquaintance with the real resemblances of things, or in other words with truth, constitutes the necessary basis on which all oratorical art must proceed.64
63 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 260-261.
64 Plato, Phædrus, p. 262.
Comparison made by Sokrates between the discourse of Lysias and his own. Eros is differently understood: Sokrates defined what he meant by it: Lysias did not define.
Sokrates then compares the oration of Lysias with his own two orations (the first depreciating, the second extolling, Eros) in the point of view of art; to see how far they are artistically constructed. Among the matters of discourse, there are some on which all men are agreed, and on which therefore the speaker may assume established unanimity in his audience: there are others on which great dissension and discord prevail. Among the latter (the topics of dissension), questions about just and unjust, good and evil, stand foremost:65 it is upon these that deception is most easy, and rhetorical skill most efficacious. Accordingly, an orator should begin by understanding to which of these two categories the topic which he handles belongs: If it belongs to the second category (those liable to dissension) he ought, at the outset, to define what he himself means by it, and what he intends the audience to understand. Now Eros is a topic on which great dissension prevails. It ought therefore to have been defined at the commencement of the discourse. This Sokrates in his discourse has done: but Lysias has omitted to do it, and has assumed Eros to be obviously and unanimously apprehended by every one. Besides, the successive points in the discourse of Lysias do not hang together by any thread of necessary connection, as they ought to do, if the discourse were put together according to rule.66
65 Plato, Phædrus, p. 263 B. Compare Plato, Alkibiad. i. p. 109.
66 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 263-265.
Logical processes — Definition and Division — both of them exemplified in the two discourses of Sokrates.
Farthermore, in the two discourses of Sokrates, not merely was the process of logical definition exemplified in the case of Eros — but also the process of logical division, in the case of Madness or Irrationality. This last extensive genus was divided first into two species — Madness, from human distemper — Madness, from divine inspiration, carrying a man out of the customary orthodoxy.67 Next, this last species was again divided into 30four branches or sub-species, according to the God from whom the inspiration proceeded, and according to the character of the inspiration — the prophetic, emanating from Apollo — the ritual or mystic, from Dionysus — the poetic, from the Muses — the amatory, from Eros and Aphroditê.68 Now both these processes, definition and division, are familiar to the true dialectician or philosopher: but they are not less essential in rhetoric also, if the process is performed with genuine art. The speaker ought to embrace in his view many particular cases, to gather together what is common to all, and to combine them into one generic concept, which is to be embodied in words as the definition. He ought also to perform the counter-process: to divide the genus not into parts arbitrary and incoherent (like a bad cook cutting up an animal without regard to the joints) but into legitimate species;69 each founded on some positive and assignable characteristic. “It is these divisions and combinations (says Sokrates) to which I am devotedly attached, in order that I may become competent for thought and discourse: and if there be any one else whom I consider capable of thus contemplating the One and the Many as they stand in nature — I follow in the footsteps of that man as in those of a God. I call such a man, rightly or wrongly, a Dialectician.”70
67 Plato, Phædrus, p. 265 A. ὑπὸ θείας ἐξαλλαγῆς τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων.
68 Plato, Phædrus, p. 265.
69 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265-266. 265 D: εἰς μίαν τε ἰδέαν συνορῶντα ἄγειν τὰ πολλαχῆ διεσπαρμένα, ἵν’ ἕκαστον ὁριζόμενος δῆλον ποῖῃ περὶ οὗ ἂν ἀεὶ διδάσκειν ἐθέλῃ. 265 E: τὸ πάλιν κατ’ εἴδη δύνασθαι τέμνειν κατ’ ἄρθρα, ᾗ πέφυκε, καὶ μὴ ἐπιχειρεῖν καταγνύναι μέρος μηδέν, κακοῦ μαγείρου τρόπῳ χρώμενον.
Seneca, Epist. 89, p. 395, ed. Gronov. “Faciam ergo quod exigis, et philosophiam in partes, non in frusta, dividam. Dividi enim illam, non concidi, utile est.”
70 Plato, Phædrus, p. 266 B. Τούτων δὴ ἔγωγε αὐτός τε ἐραστής, ὦ Φαῖδρε, τῶν διαιρέσεων καὶ συναγωγῶν, ἵν’ οἷός τε ὦ λέγειν τε καὶ φρονεῖν· ἐάν τέ τιν’ ἄλλον ἡγήσωμαι δυνατὸν εἰς ἓν καὶ ἐπὶ πολλὰ πεφυκὸς ὁρᾷν, τοῦτον διώκω κατόπισθε μετ’ ἴχνιον ὥστε θεοῖο. καὶ μέντοι καὶ τοὺς δυναμένους αὐτὸ δρᾷν εἰ μὲν ὀρθῶς ἢ μὴ προσαγορεύω, θεὸς οἶδε· καλῶ δὲ οὖν μέχρι τοῦδε διαλεκτικούς.
This is Dialectic (replies Phædrus); but it is not Rhetoric, as Thrasymachus and other professors teach the art.
View of Sokrates — that there is no real Art of Rhetoric, except what is already comprised in Dialectic — The rhetorical teaching is empty and useless.
What else is there worth having (says Sokrates), which these professors teach? The order and distribution of a discourse: first, the exordium, then recital, proof, second proof, refutation, recapitulation at the close: advice how to introduce maxims or similes: receipts for moving the anger or compassion of the dikasts. 31Such teaching doubtless enables a speaker to produce considerable effect upon popular assemblies:71 but it is not the art of rhetoric. It is an assemblage of preliminary accomplishments, necessary before a man can acquire the art: but it is not the art itself. You must know when, how far, in what cases, and towards what persons, to employ these accomplishments:72 otherwise you have not learnt the art of rhetoric. You may just as well consider yourself a physician because you know how to bring about vomit and purging — or a musician, because you know how to wind up or unwind the chords of your lyre. These teachers mistake the preliminaries or antecedents of the art, for the art itself. It is in the right, measured, seasonable, combination and application of these preliminaries, in different doses adapted to each special matter and audience — that the art of rhetoric consists. And this is precisely the thing which the teacher does not teach, but supposes the learner to acquire for himself.73
71 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 267-268.
72 Plato, Phædrus, p. 268 B. ἐρέσθαι εἰ προσεπίσταται καὶ οὑστίνας δεῖ καὶ ὁπότε ἕκαστα τούτων ποιεῖν, καὶ μέχρι ὁπόσου;
73 Plato, Phædrus, p. 269.
What the Art of Rhetoric ought to be — Analogy of Hippokrates and the medical Art.
The true art of rhetoric (continues Sokrates) embraces a larger range than these teachers imagine. It deals with mind, as the medical researches of Hippokrates deal with body — as a generic total with all its species and varieties, and as essentially relative to the totality of external circumstances. First, Hippokrates investigates how far the body is, in every particular man, simple, homogeneous, uniform: and how far it is complex, heterogeneous, multiform, in the diversity of individuals. If it be one and the same, or in so far as it is one and the same, he examines what are its properties in relation to each particular substance acting upon it or acted upon by it. In so far as it is multiform and various, he examines and compares each of the different varieties, in the same manner, to ascertain its properties in relation to every substance.74 It is in this way that Hippokrates32 discovers the nature or essence of the human body, distinguishing its varieties, and bringing the medical art to bear upon each, according to its different properties. This is the only scientific or artistic way of proceeding.
74 Plato, Phædrus, p. 270 D. Ἆρ’ οὐχ ὧδε δεῖ διανοεῖσθαι περὶ ὁτουοῦν φύσεως; Πρῶτον μὲν, ἁπλοῦν ἢ πολυειδές ἐστιν, οὗ περὶ βουλησόμεθα εἶναι αὐτοὶ τεχνικοὶ καὶ ἄλλον δυνατοὶ ποιεῖν; ἔπειτα δέ, ἐὰν μὲν ἁπλοῦν ᾖ, σκοπεῖν τὴν δύναμιν αὐτοῦ, τίνα πρὸς τί πέφυκεν εἰς τὸ δρᾷν ἔχον ἢ τίνα εἰς τὸ παθεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ; ἐὰν δὲ πλείω εἴδη ἔχῃ, ταῦτα ἀριθμησάμενος, ὅπερ ἐφ’ ἑνός, τοῦτ’ ἰδεῖν ἐφ’ ἑκάστου, τῷ τί ποιεῖν αὐτὸ πέφυκεν ἢ τῷ τί παθεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ;
Art of Rhetoric ought to include a systematic classification of minds with all their varieties, and of discourses with all their varieties. The Rhetor must know how to apply the one to the other, suitably to each particular case.
Now the true rhetor ought to deal with the human mind in like manner. His task is to work persuasion in the minds of certain men by means of discourse. He has therefore, first, to ascertain how far all mind is one and the same, and what are the affections belonging to it universally in relation to other things: next, to distinguish the different varieties of minds, together with the properties, susceptibilities, and active aptitudes, of each: carrying the subdivision down until he comes to a variety no longer admitting division.75 He must then proceed to distinguish the different varieties of discourse, noting the effects which each is calculated to produce or to hinder, and the different ways in which it is likely to impress different minds.76 Such and such men are persuadable by such and such discourses — or the contrary. Having framed these two general classifications, the rhetor must on each particular occasion acquire a rapid tact in discerning to which class of minds the persons whom he is about to address belong: and therefore what class of discourses will be likely to operate on them persuasively.77 He must farther know those subordinate artifices of speech on which the professors insist; and he must also be aware of the proper season and limit within which each can be safely employed.78
75 Plato, Phædrus, p. 277 B. ὁρισάμενός τε πάλιν κατ’ εἴδη μέχρι τοῦ ἀτμήτου τέμνειν ἐπιστηθῇ.
76 Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 A. Πρῶτον, πάσῃ ἀκριβείᾳ γράψει τε καὶ ποιήσει ψυχὴν ἰδεῖν, πότερον ἓν καὶ ὅμοιον πέφυκεν ἢ κατὰ σώματος μορφὴν πολυειδές· τοῦτο γάρ φαμεν φύσιν εἶναι δεικνύναι.
Δεύτερον δέ γε, ὅτῳ τί ποιεῖν ἢ παθεῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ πέφυκεν.
Τρίτον δὲ δὴ διαταξάμενος τὰ λόγων τε καὶ ψυχῆς γένη καὶ τὰ τούτων παθήματα, δίεισι τὰς αἰτίας, προσαρμόττων ἕκαστον ἑκάστῳ, καὶ διδάσκων οἵα οὖσα ὑφ’ οἵων λόγων δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἡ μὲν πείθεται, ἡ δὲ ἀπειθεῖ.
77 Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D. δεῖ μὴ ταῦτα ἱκανῶς νοήσαντα, μετὰ ταῦτα θεώμενον αὐτὰ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσιν ὄντα τε καὶ πραττόμενα, ὀξέως τῇ αἰσθήσει δύνασθαι ἐπακολουθεῖν, &c.
78 Plato, Phædrus, p. 272 A. ταῦτα δὲ ἤδη πάντ’ ἔχοντι, προσλαβόντι καιροὺς τοῦ πότε λεκτέον καὶ ἐπισχετέον, βραχυλογίας τε αὖ καὶ ἐλεεινολογίας καὶ δεινώσεως, ἑκάστων τε ὅσ’ ἂν εἴδη μάθῃ λόγων, τούτων τὴν εὐκαιρίαν τε καὶ ἀκαιρίαν διαγνόντι, καλῶς τε καὶ τελέως ἐστὶν ἡ τέχνη ἀπειργασμένη, πρότερον δ’ οὔ.
33 The Rhetorical Artist must farther become possessed of real truth, as well as that which his auditors believe to be truth. He is not sufficiently rewarded for this labour.
Nothing less than this assemblage of acquirements (says Sokrates) will suffice to constitute a real artist, either in speaking or writing. Arduous and fatiguing indeed the acquisition is: but there is no easier road. And those who tell us that the rhetor need not know what is really true, but only what his audience will believe to be true — must be reminded that this belief, on the part of the audience, arises from the likeness of that which they believe, to the real truth. Accordingly, he who knows the real truth will be cleverest in suggesting apparent or quasi-truth adapted to their feelings. If a man is bent on becoming an artist in rhetoric, he must go through the process here marked out: yet undoubtedly the process is so laborious, that rhetoric, when he has acquired it, is no adequate reward. We ought to learn how to speak and act in a way agreeable to the Gods, and this is worth all the trouble necessary for acquiring it. But the power of speaking agreeably and effectively to men, is not of sufficient moment to justify the expenditure of so much time and labour.79
79 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 273-274.
Question about Writing — As an Art, for the purpose of instruction, it can do little — Reasons why. Writing may remind the reader of what he already knows.
We have now determined what goes to constitute genuine art, in speaking or in writing. But how far is writing, even when art is applied to it, capable of producing real and permanent effect? or indeed of having art applied to it at all? Sokrates answers himself — Only to a small degree. Writing will impart amusement and satisfaction for the moment: it will remind the reader of something which he knew before, if he really did know. But in respect to any thing which he did not know before, it will neither teach nor persuade him: it may produce in him an impression or fancy that he is wiser than he was before, but such impression is illusory, and at best only transient. Writing is like painting — one and the same to all readers, whether young or old, well or ill informed. It cannot adapt itself to the different state of mind of different persons, as we have declared that every finished speaker ought to do. It cannot answer questions, supply deficiencies, reply to objections, rectify misunderstanding. It is 34defenceless against all assailants. It supersedes and enfeebles the memory, implanting only a false persuasion of knowledge without the reality.80
80 Plato, Phædrus, p. 275 D-E. ταὐτὸν δὲ καὶ οἱ λόγοι (οἱ γεγραμμένοι)· δόξαις μὲν ἂν ὥς τι φρονοῦντας αὐτοὺς λέγειν ἐὰν δέ τι ἕρῃ τῶν λεγομένων βουλόμενος μαθεῖν, ἕν τι σημαίνει μόνον ταὐτὸν ἀεί. Ὅταν δὲ ἅπαξ γραφῇ, κυλινδεῖται μὲν πανταχοῦ πᾶς λόγος ὁμοίως παρὰ τοῖς ἐπαΐουσιν, ὡς δ’ αὐτῶς παρ’ οἷς οὐδὲν προσήκει, καὶ οὐκ ἐπίσταται λέγειν οἷς δεῖ γε καὶ μή.
Neither written words, nor continuous speech, will produce any serious effect in teaching. Dialectic and cross-examination are necessary.
Any writer therefore, in prose or verse — Homer, Solon, or Lysias — who imagines that he can by a ready-made composition, however carefully turned,81 if simply heard or read without cross-examination or oral comment, produce any serious and permanent effect in persuading or teaching, beyond a temporary gratification — falls into a disgraceful error. If he intends to accomplish any thing serious, he must be competent to originate spoken discourse more effective than the written. The written word is but a mere phantom or ghost of the spoken word: which latter is the only legitimate offspring of the teacher, springing fresh and living out of his mind, and engraving itself profoundly on the mind of the hearer.82 The speaker must know, with discriminative comprehension, and in logical subdivision, both the matter on which he discourses, and the minds of the particular hearers to whom he addresses himself. He will thus be able to adapt the order, the distribution, the manner of presenting his subject, to the apprehension of the particular hearers and the exigencies of the particular moment. He will submit to cross-examination,83 remove difficulties, and furnish all additional explanations which the case requires. By this process he will not indeed produce that immediate, though flashy and evanescent, impression of suddenly acquired knowledge, which arises from the perusal of what is written. He will sow seed which for a long time appears buried under ground; but which, after such interval, springs up and ripens into complete 35and lasting fruit.84 By repeated dialectic debate, he will both familiarise to his own mind and propagate in his fellow-dialogists, full knowledge; together with all the manifold reasonings bearing on the subject, and with the power also of turning it on many different sides, of repelling objections and clearing up obscurities. It is not from writing, but from dialectic debate, artistically diversified and adequately prolonged, that full and deep teaching proceeds; prolific in its own nature, communicable indefinitely from every new disciple to others, and forming a source of intelligence and happiness to all.85
81 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 277-278. ὡς οἱ ῥαψῳδούμενοι (λόγοι) ἄνευ ἀνακρίσεως καὶ διδαχῆς πειθοῦς ἕνεκα ἐλέχθησαν, &c.
82 Plato, Phædrus, p. 276 A. ἄλλον ὁρῶμεν λόγον τούτου ἀδελφὸν γνήσιον τῷ τρόπῳ τε γίγνεται, καὶ ὅσῳ ἀμείνων καὶ δυνατώτερος τούτου φύεται;… Ὅς μετ’ ἐπιστήμης γράφεται ἐν τῇ τοῦ μανθάνοντος ψυχῇ, δυνατὸς μὲν ἀμῦναι ἑαυτῷ, ἐπιστήμων δὲ λέγειν τε καὶ σιγᾷν πρὸς οὓς δεῖ. Τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον λέγεις ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον, οὗ ὁ γεγραμμένος εἴδωλον ἄν τι λέγοιτο δικαίως, &c. 278 A.
83 Plato, Phædrus, p. 278 C. εἰ μὲν εἰδὼς ᾗ τἀληθὲς ἔχει συνέθηκε ταῦτα (τὰ συγγράμματα) καὶ ἔχων βοηθεῖν, εἰς ἔλεγχον ἰὼν περὶ ὧν ἔγραψε, καὶ λέγων αὐτὸς δυνατὸς τὰ γεγραμμένα φαῦλα ἀποδεῖξαι, &c.
84 Plato, Phædrus, p. 276 A.
85 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 276-277.
This blending of philosophy with rhetoric, which pervades the criticisms on Lysias in the Phædrus, is farther illustrated by the praise bestowed upon Isokrates in contrast with Lysias. Isokrates occupied that which Plato in Euthydêmus calls “the border country between philosophy and politics”. Many critics declare (and I think with probable reason86) that Isokrates is the person intended (without being named) in the passage just cited from the Euthydêmus. In the Phædrus, Isokrates is described as the intimate friend of Sokrates, still young; and is pronounced already superior in every way to Lysias — likely to become superior in future to all the rhetors that have ever flourished — and destined probably to arrive even at the divine mysteries of philosophy.87
86 See above, vol. ii. ch. xxi. p. 227.
87 Plato, Phædrus, p. 279 A.
When we consider that the Phædrus was pretty sure to bring upon Plato a good deal of enmity — since it attacked, by name, both Lysias, a resident at Athens of great influence and ability, and several other contemporary rhetors more or less celebrated — we can understand how Plato became disposed to lighten this amount of enmity by a compliment paid to Isokrates. This latter rhetor, a few years older than Plato, was the son of opulent parents at Athens, and received a good education; but when his family became impoverished by the disasters at the close of the Peloponnesian war, he established himself as a teacher of rhetoric at Chios: after some time, however, he returned to Athens, and followed the same profession there. He engaged himself also, like Lysias, in composing discourses for pleaders before the 36dikastery88 and for speakers in the assembly; by which practice he acquired both fortune and reputation. Later in life, he relinquished these harangues destined for real persons on real occasions, and confined himself to the composition of discourses (intended, not for contentious debate, but for the pleasure and instruction of hearers) on general questions — social, political, and philosophical: at the same time receiving numerous pupils from different cities of Greece. Through such change, he came into a sort of middle position between the rhetoric of Lysias and the dialectic of Plato: insomuch that the latter, at the time when he composed the Phædrus, had satisfaction in contrasting him favourably with Lysias, and in prophesying that he would make yet greater progress towards philosophy. But at the time when Plato composed the Euthydêmus, his feeling was different.89 In the Phædrus, Isokrates is compared with Lysias and other rhetors, and in that comparison Plato presents him as greatly superior: in the Euthydêmus, he is compared with philosophers as well as with rhetors, and is even announced as disparaging philosophy generally: Plato then declares him to be a presumptuous half-bred, and extols against him even the very philosopher whom he himself had just been caricaturing. To apply a Platonic simile, the most beautiful ape is ugly compared with man — the most beautiful man is an ape compared with the Gods:90 the same intermediate position between rhetoric and philosophy is assigned by Plato to Isokrates.
88 Dion. Hal. De Isocrate Judicium, p. 576. δεσμὰς πάνυ πολλὰς δικανικῶν λόγων περιφέρεσθαί φησιν ὑπὸ τῶν βιβλιοπωλῶν Ἀριστοτέλης, &c.
Plutarch, Vit. x. Oratt. pp. 837-838.
The Athenian Polykrates had been forced, by loss of property, to quit Athens and undertake the work of a Sophist in Cyprus. Isokrates expresses much sympathy for him: it was a misfortune like what had happened to himself (Orat. xi. Busiris 1). Compare De Permutation. Or. xv. s. 172.
The assertion made by Isokrates — that he did not compose political and judicial orations, to be spoken by individuals for real causes and public discussions — may be true comparatively, and with reference to a certain period of his life. But it is only to be received subject to much reserve and qualification. Even out of the twenty-one orations of Isokrates which we possess, the last five are composed to be spoken by pleaders before the dikastery. They are such discourses as the logographers, Lysias among the rest, were called upon to furnish, and paid for furnishing.
89 Plato, Euthydêm. p. 306. I am inclined to agree with Ueberweg in thinking that the Euthydêmus is later than the Phædrus. Ueberweg, Aechtheit der Platon. Schriften, pp. 256-259-265.
90 Plato, Hipp. Major, p. 289.
From the pen of Isokrates also, we find various passages apparently directed against the viri Socratici including Plato 37(though without his name): depreciating,91 as idle and worthless, new political theories, analytical discussions on the principles of ethics, and dialectic subtleties; maintaining that the word philosophy was erroneously interpreted and defined by many contemporaries, in a sense too much withdrawn from practical results: and affirming that his own teaching was calculated to impart genuine philosophy. During the last half of Plato’s life, his school and that of Isokrates were the most celebrated among all that existed at Athens. There was competition between them, gradually kindling into rivalry. Such rivalry became vehement during the last ten years of Plato’s life, when his scholar Aristotle, then an aspiring young man of twenty-five, proclaimed a very contemptuous opinion of Isokrates, and commenced a new school of rhetoric in opposition to him.92 Kephisodôrus, a pupil of Isokrates, retaliated; publishing against Aristotle, as well as against Plato, an acrimonious work which was still read some centuries afterwards. Theopompus, another eminent pupil of Isokrates, commented unfavourably upon Plato in his writings: and other writers who did the same may probably have belonged to the Isokratean school.93
91 Isokrates, Orat. x. 1 (Hel. Enc.); Orat. v. (Philipp.) 12; Or. xiii. (Sophist.) 9-24; Orat. xv. (Permut.) sect. 285-290. φιλοσοφίαν μὲν οὖν οὐκ οἶμαι δεῖν προσαγορεύειν τὴν μηδὲν ἐν τῷ παρόντι μήτε πρὸς τὸ λέγειν μήτε πρὸς τὸ πράττειν ὥφελοῦσαν — τὴν καλουμένην ὑπό τινων φιλοσοφίαν οὐκ εἶναι φημί, &c.
92 Cicero, De Oratore, iii. 35, 141; Orator. 19, 62; Numenius, ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. xiv. 6, 9. See Stahr, Aristotelia, i. p. 63 seq., ii. p. 44 seq.
Schroeder’s Quæstiones Isocrateæ (Utrecht, 1859), and Spengel’s work, Isokrates und Plato, are instructive in regard to these two contemporary luminaries of the intellectual world at Athens. But, unfortunately, we can make out few ascertainable facts. When I read the Oration De Permut., Or. xv. (composed by Isokrates about fifteen years before his own death, and about five years before the death of Plato, near 353 B.C.), I am impressed with the belief that many of his complaints about unfriendly and bitter criticism refer to the Platonic School of that day, Aristotle being one of its members. See sections 48-90-276, and seq. He certainly means the Sokratic men, and Plato as the most celebrated of them, when he talks of οἱ περὶ τὰς ἐρωτήσεις καὶ ἀποκρίσεις, οὓς ἀντιλογικοὺς καλοῦσιν — οἱ περὶ τὰς ἔριδας σπουδάζοντες — those who are powerful in contentious dialectic, and at the same time cultivate geometry and astronomy, which others call ἀδολεσχία and μικρολογία (280) — those who exhorted hearers to virtue about which others knew nothing, and about which they themselves were in dispute. When he complains of the περιττολόγιαι of the ancient Sophists, Empedokles, Ion, Parmenides, Melissus, &c., we cannot but suppose that he had in his mind the Timæus of Plato also, though he avoids mention of the name.
93 Athenæus, iii. p. 122, ii. 60; Dionys. Hal. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 757.
The Dialectician and Cross-Examiner is the only man who can really teach. If the writer can do this, he is more than a writer.
This is the true philosopher (continues Sokrates) — the man who alone is competent to teach truth about the just, good, 38and honourable.94 He who merely writes, must not delude himself with the belief that upon these important topics his composition can impart any clear or lasting instruction. To mistake fancy for reality hereupon, is equally disgraceful, whether the mistake be made by few or by many persons. If indeed the writer can explain to others orally the matters written — if he can answer all questions, solve difficulties, and supply the deficiencies, of each several reader — in that case he is something far more and better than a writer, and ought to be called a philosopher. But if he can do no more than write, he is no philosopher: he is only a poet, or nomographer, or logographer.95
94 Plato, Phædrus, p. 277 D-E.
95 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 278-279.
Lysias is only a logographer: Isokrates promises to become a philosopher.
In this latter class stands Lysias. I expect (concludes Sokrates) something better from Isokrates, who gives promise of aspiring one day to genuine philosophy.96
96 Respecting the manner in which Plato speaks of Isokrates in the Phædrus, see what I have already observed upon the Euthydêmus, vol. ii. ch. xxi. pp. 227-229.
Date of the Phædrus — not an early dialogue.
I have already observed that I dissent from the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, Ast, and others, who regard the Phædrus either as positively the earliest, or at least among the earliest, of the Platonic dialogues, composed several years before the death of Sokrates. I agree with Hermann, Stallbaum, and those other critics, who refer it to a much later period of Plato’s life: though I see no sufficient evidence to determine more exactly either its date or its place in the chronological series of dialogues. The views opened in the second half of the dialogue, on the theory of rhetoric and on the efficacy of written compositions as a means of instruction, are very interesting and remarkable.
Criticism given by Plato on the three discourses — His theory of Rhetoric is more Platonic than Sokratic.
The written discourse of Lysias (presented to us as one greatly admired at the time by his friends, Phædrus among them) is contrasted first with a pleading on the same subject (though not directed towards the attainment of the same end) by Sokrates (supposed to be improvised39 on the occasion); next with a second pleading of Sokrates directly opposed to the former, and intended as a recantation. These three discourses are criticised from the rhetorical point of view,97 and are made the handle for introducing to us a theory of rhetoric. The second discourse of Sokrates, far from being Sokratic in tenor, is the most exuberant effusion of mingled philosophy, poetry, and mystic theology, that ever emanated from Plato.
97 Plato, Phædrus, p. 235 A.
His theory postulates, in the Rhetor, knowledge already assured — it assumes that all the doubts have been already removed.
The theory of rhetoric too is far more Platonic than Sokratic. The peculiar vein of Sokrates is that of confessed ignorance, ardour in enquiry, and testing cross-examination of all who answer his questions. But in the Phædrus we find Plato (under the name of Sokrates) assuming, as the basis of his theory, that an expositor shall be found who knows what is really and truly just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable — distinct from, and independent of, the established beliefs on these subjects, traditional among his neighbours and fellow-citizens:98 assuming (to express the same thing in other words) that all the doubts and difficulties, suggested by the Sokratic cross-examination, have been already considered, elucidated, and removed.
98 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 259 E, 260 E, and 262 B.
The Expositor, with knowledge and logical process, teaches minds unoccupied and willing to learn.
The expositor, master of such perfect knowledge, must farther be master (so Plato tells us) of the arts of logical definition and division: that is, he must be able to gather up many separate fragmentary particulars into one general notion, clearly identified and embodied in a definition: and he must be farther able to subdivide such a general notion into its constituent specific notions, each marked by some distinct characteristic feature.99 This is the only way to follow out truth in a manner clear and consistent with itself: and truth is equally honourable in matters small or great.100
99 Plato, Phædrus, p. 266.
100 Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 A.
That truth upon matters small and contemptible deserves to be sought out and proved as much as upon matters great and sublime, is a doctrine affirmed in the Sophistês, Politikus, Parmenidês: Sophist. pp. 218 E, 227 A; Politik. 266 D; Parmenid. 130 E.
Thus far we are in dialectic: logical exposition proceeding by 40way of classifying and declassifying: in which it is assumed that the expositor will find minds unoccupied and unprejudiced, ready to welcome the truth when he lays it before them. But there are many topics on which men’s minds are, in the common and natural course of things, both pre-occupied and dissentient with each other. This is especially the case with Justice, Goodness, the Honourable, &c.101 It is one of the first requisites for the expositor to be able to discriminate this class of topics, where error and discordance grow up naturally among those whom he addresses. It is here that men are liable to be deceived, and require to be undeceived — contradict each other, and argue on opposite sides: such disputes belong to the province of Rhetoric.
101 Plato, Phædrus, p. 263 A.
The Rhetor does not teach, but persuades persons with minds pre-occupied — guiding them methodically from error to truth.
The Rhetor is one who does not teach (according to the logical process previously described), but persuades; guiding the mind by discourse to or from various opinions or sentiments.102 Now if this is to be done by art and methodically — that is, upon principle or system explicable and defensible — it pre-supposes (according to Plato) a knowledge of truth, and can only be performed by the logical expositor. For when men are deceived, it is only because they mistake what is like truth for truth itself: when they are undeceived, it is because they are made to perceive that what they believe to be truth is only an apparent likeness thereof. Such resemblances are strong or faint, differing by many gradations. Now no one can detect, or bring into account, or compare, these shades of resemblance, except he who knows the truth to which they all ultimately refer. It is through the slight differences that deception is operated. To deceive a man, you must carry him gradually away from the truth by transitional stages, each resembling that which immediately precedes, though the last in the series will hardly at all resemble the first: to undeceive him (or to avoid being deceived yourself), you must conduct him back by the counter-process from error to truth, by a series of transitional resemblances tending in that direction. You cannot do this like an artist (on system and by pre-determination), unless you know 41what the truth is.103 By anyone who does not know, the process will be performed without art, or at haphazard.
102 Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 A. ἡ ῥητορικὴ τέχνη ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων, &c.
103 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 262 A-D, 273 D.
He must then classify the minds to be persuaded, and the means of persuasion or varieties of discourse. He must know how to fit on the one to the other in each particular case.
The Rhetor — being assumed as already knowing the truth — if he wishes to make persuasion an art, must proceed in the following manner:— He must distribute the multiplicity of individual minds into distinct classes, each marked by its characteristic features of differences, emotional and intellectual. He must also distribute the manifold modes of discourse into distinct classes, each marked in like manner. Each of these modes of discourse is well adapted to persuade some classes of mind — badly adapted to persuade other classes: for such adaptation or non-adaptation there exists a rational necessity,104 which the Rhetor must examine and ascertain, informing himself which modes of discourse are adapted to each different class of mind. Having mastered this general question, he must, whenever he is about to speak, be able to distinguish, by rapid perception,105 to which class of minds the hearer or hearers whom he is addressing belong: and accordingly, which mode of discourse is adapted to their particular case. Moreover, he must also seize, in the case before him, the seasonable moment and the appropriate limit, for the use of each mode of discourse. Unless the Rhetor is capable of fulfilling all these exigencies, without failing in any one point, his Rhetoric is not entitled to be called an Art. He requires, in order to be an artist in persuading the mind, as great an assemblage of varied capacities as Hippokrates declares to be necessary for a physician, the artist for curing or preserving the body.106
104 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 270 E, 271 A-D. Τρίτον δὲ δὴ διαταξάμενος τὰ λόγων τε καὶ ψυχῆς γένη, καὶ τὰ τούτων παθήματα, δίεισι τὰς αἰτίας, προσαρμόττων ἕκαστον ἑκάστῳ, καὶ διδάσκων οἵα οὖσα ὑφ’ οἵων λόγων δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἡ μὲν πείθεται, ἡ δὲ ἀπειθεῖ.
105 Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E. δεῖ δὴ ταῦτα ἱκανῶς νοήσαντα, μετὰ ταῦτα θεώμενον αὐτὰ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσιν ὄντα τε καὶ πραττόμενα, ὀξέως τῇ αἰσθήσει δύνασθαι ἐπακολουθεῖν, ἢ μηδὲ εἰδέναι πω πλέον αὐτῶν ὧν τότε ἤκουε λόγων ξυνών.
106 Plato, Phædrus, p. 270 C.
Plato’s Idéal of the Rhetorical Art — involves in part incompatible conditions — the Wise man or philosopher will never be listened to by the public.
The total, thus summed up by Plato, of what is necessary to constitute an Art of Rhetoric, is striking and comprehensive. It is indeed an idéal, not merely unattainable by reason of its magnitude, but also including 42impracticable conditions. He begins by postulating a perfectly wise man, who knows all truth on the most important social subjects; on which his country-men hold erroneous beliefs, just as sincerely as he holds his true beliefs. But Plato has already told us, in the Gorgias, that such a person will not be listened to: that in order to address auditors with effect, the rhetor must be in genuine harmony of belief and character with them, not dissenting from them either for the better or the worse: nay, that the true philosopher (so we read in one of the most impressive portions of the Republic) not only has no chance of guiding the public mind, but incurs public obloquy, and may think himself fortunate if he escapes persecution.107 The dissenter will never be allowed to be the guide of a body of orthodox believers; and is even likely enough, unless he be prudent, to become their victim. He may be permitted to lecture or discuss, in the gardens of the Academy, with a few chosen friends, and to write eloquent dialogues: but if he embodies his views in motions before the public assembly, he will find only strenuous opposition, or something worse. This view, which is powerfully set forth by Sokrates both in the Gorgias and Republic, is founded on a just appreciation of human societies: and it is moreover the basis of the Sokratic procedure — That the first step to be taken is to disabuse men’s minds of their false persuasion of knowledge — to make them conscious of ignorance — and thus to open their minds for the reception of truth. But if this be the fact, we must set aside as impracticable the postulate advanced by Sokrates here in the Phædrus — of a perfectly wise man as the employer of rhetorical artifices. Moreover I do not agree with what Sokrates is here made to lay down as the philosophy of Error:— that it derives its power of misleading from resemblance to truth. This is the case to a certain extent: but it is very incomplete as an account of the generating causes of error.
The other part of the Platonic Idéal is grand but unattainable — breadth of psychological data and classified modes of discourse.
But the other portion of Plato’s sum total of what is necessary to an Art of Rhetoric, is not open to the same objection. It involves no incompatible conditions: and we can say nothing against it, except that it requires 43a breadth and logical command of scientific data, far greater than there is the smallest chance of attaining. That Art is an assemblage of processes, directed to a definite end, and prescribed by rules which themselves rest upon scientific data — we find first announced in the works of Plato.108 A vast amount of scientific research, both inductive and deductive, is here assumed as an indispensable foundation — and even as a portion — of what he calls the Art of Rhetoric: first, a science of psychology, complete both in its principles and details: next, an exhaustive catalogue and classification of the various modes of operative speech, with their respective impression upon each different class of minds. So prodigious a measure of scientific requirement has never yet been filled up: of course, therefore, no one has ever put together a body of precepts commensurate with it. Aristotle, following partially the large conceptions of his master, has given a comprehensive view of many among the theoretical postulates of Rhetoric; and has partially enumerated the varieties both of persuadable auditors, and of persuasive means available to the speaker for guiding them. Cicero, Dionysius of Halikarnassus, Quintilian, have furnished valuable contributions towards this last category of data, but not much towards the first: being all of them defective in breadth of psychological theory. Nor has 44Plato himself done anything to work out his conception in detail or to provide suitable rules for it. We read it only as an impressive sketch — a grand but unattainable idéal — “qualem nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum”.
108 I repeat the citation from the Phædrus, one of the most striking passages in Plato, p. 271 D.
ἔπειδὴ λόγου δύναμις τυγχάνει ψυχαγωγία οὖσα, τὸν μέλλοντα ῥητορικὸν ἔσεσθαι ἀνάγκη εἰδέναι ψυχὴ ὅσα εἴδη ἔχει. ἔστιν οὖν τόσα καὶ τόσα, καὶ τοῖα καὶ τοῖα· ὅθεν οἱ μὲν τοιοίδε, οἱ δὲ τοιοίδε γίγνονται. τούτων δὲ δὴ διῃρημένων, λόγων αὖ τόσα καὶ τόσα ἔστιν εἴδη, τοιόνδε ἕκαστον. οἱ μὲν οὖν τοιοίδε ὑπὸ τῶν τοιῶνδε λογων διὰ τήνδε τὴν αἰτίαν ἐς τὰ τοιάδε εὐπειθεῖς, οἱ δὲ τοιοίδε διὰ τάδε δυσπειθεῖς, &c. Comp. p. 261 A.
The relation of Art to Science is thus perspicuously stated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the concluding chapter of his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (Book vi. ch. xii. § 2):
“The relation in which rules of Art stand to doctrines of Science may be thus characterised. The Art proposes to itself an end to be attained, defines the end, and hands it over to the Science. The Science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to Art with a theorem of the combinations of circumstances by which it could be produced. Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and according as any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable or not. The only one of the premisses, therefore, which Art supplies, is the original major premiss, which asserts that the attainment of the given end is desirable. Science then lends to Art the proposition (obtained by a series of inductions or of deductions) that the performance of certain actions will attain the end. From these premisses Art concludes that the performance of these actions is desirable; and finding it also practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept.”
Plato’s ideal grandeur compared with the rhetorical teachers — Usefulness of these teachers for the wants of an accomplished man.
Indeed it seems that Plato himself regarded it as unattainable — and as only worth aiming at for the purpose of pleasing the Gods, not with any view to practical benefit, arising from either speech or action among mankind.109 This is a point to be considered, when we compare his views on Rhetoric with those of Lysias and the other rhetors, whom he here judges unfavourably and even contemptuously. The work of speech and action among mankind, which Plato sets aside as unworthy of attention, was the express object of solicitude to Lysias, Isokrates, and rhetors generally: that which they practised efficaciously themselves, and which they desired to assist, cultivate, and improve in others: that which Perikles, in his funeral oration preserved by Thucydides, represents as the pride of the Athenian people collectively110 — combination of full freedom of preliminary contentious debate, with energy in executing the resolution which might be ultimately adopted. These rhetors, by the example of their composed speeches as well as by their teaching, did much to impart to young men the power of expressing themselves with fluency and effect before auditors, either in the assembly or in the dikastery: as Sokrates here fully admits.111 Towards this purpose it was useful to analyse the constituent parts of a discourse, and to give an appropriate name to each part. Accordingly, all the rhetorical teachers (Quintilian included) continued such analysis, though differing more or less in their way of performing it, until the extinction of Pagan civilisation. Young men were taught to learn by heart regular discourses,112 — to compose the like for themselves — to understand the difference between such as were well or ill composed — and to acquire a command of oratorical means for moving or convincing the hearer. All this instruction had a practical value: 45though Plato, both here and elsewhere, treats it as worthless. A citizen who stood mute and embarrassed, unable to argue a case with some propriety before an audience, felt himself helpless and defective in one of the characteristic privileges of a Greek and a freeman: while one who could perform the process well, acquired much esteem and influence.113 The Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias consoles the speechless men by saying — What does this signify, provided you are just and virtuous? Such consolation failed to satisfy: as it would fail to satisfy the sick, the lame, or the blind.
109 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 273-274. ἣν οὐχ ἕνεκα τοῦ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν πρὸς ἀνθρώπους δεῖ διαπονεῖσθαι τὸν σώφρονα, ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῖς κεχαρισμένα μὲν λέγειν δύνασθαι, &c. (273 E).
110 Thucyd. ii. 39-40-41.
111 Plato, Phædrus, p. 288 A.
112 See what is said by Aristotle about ἡ Γοργίου πραγματεία in the last chapter of De Sophisticis Elenchis.
113 I have illustrated this point in my History of Greece, by the example of Xenophon in his command of the Cyreian army during its retreat.
His democratical education, and his powers of public speaking, were of the greatest service not only in procuring influence to himself, but also in conducting the army through its many perils and difficulties.
See Aristot. Rhet. i. 1, 3, p. 1355, b. 1.
The Rhetorical teachers conceived the Art too narrowly: Plato conceived it too widely. The principles of an Art are not required to be explained to all learners.
The teaching of these rhetors thus contributed to the security, dignity, and usefulness of the citizens, by arming them for public speech and action. But it was essentially practical, or empirical: it had little system, and was founded upon a narrow theory. Upon these points Plato in the Phædrus attacks them. He sets little value upon the accomplishments arming men for speech and action (λεκτικοὺς καὶ πρακτικοὺς εἶναι) — and he will not allow such teaching to be called an Art. He explains, in opposition to them, what he himself conceived the Art of Rhetoric to be, in the comprehensive way which I have above described.
But if the conception of the Art, as entertained by the Rhetors, is too narrow — that of Plato, on the other hand, is too wide.
First, it includes the whole basis of science or theory on which the Art rests: it is a Philosophy of Rhetoric, expounded by a theorist — rather than an Art of Rhetoric, taught to learners by a master. To teach the observance of certain rules or precepts is one thing: to set forth the reasons upon which those rules are founded, is another — highly important indeed, and proper to be known by the teacher; yet not necessarily communicated, or even communicable, to all learners. Quintilian, in his Institutio Rhetorica, gives both:— an ample theory, as well as an ample 46development of rules, of his professional teaching. But he would not have thought himself obliged to give this ample theory to all learners. With many, he would have been satisfied to make them understand the rules, and to exercise them in the ready observance thereof.
Plato includes in his conception of Art, the application thereof to new particular cases. — This can never be taught by rule.
Secondly, Plato, in defining the Art of Rhetoric, includes not only its foundation of science (which, though intimately connected with it, ought not to be considered as a constituent part), but also the application of it to particular cases; which application lies beyond the province both of science and of art, and cannot be reduced to any rule. “The Rhetor” (says Plato) “must teach his pupils, not merely to observe the rules whereby persuasion is operated, but also to know the particular persons to whom those rules are to be applied — on what occasions — within what limits — at what peculiar moments, &c.114 Unless the Rhetor can teach thus much, his pretended art is no art at all: all his other teaching is of no value.” Now this is an amount of exigence which can never be realised. Neither art nor science can communicate that which Plato here requires. The rules of art, together with many different hypothetical applications thereof, may be learnt: when the scientific explanation of the rules is superadded, the learner will be assisted farther towards fresh applications: but after both these have been learnt, the new cases which will arise can never be specially foreseen. The proper way of applying the general precepts to each case must be suggested by conjecture adapted to the circumstances, under the corrections of past experience.115 It is inconsistent in Plato, after affirming that nothing 47deserves the name of art116 except what is general — capable of being rationally anticipated and prescribed beforehand — then to include in art the special treatment required for the multiplicity of particular cases; the analogy of the medical art, which he here instructively invokes, would be against him on this point.
114 Plato, Phædr. pp. 268 B, 272 A.
115 What Longinus says about critical skill is applicable here also — πολλῆς ἔστι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα. Isokrates (De Permut. Or. xv. sect. 290-312-316) has some good remarks about the impossibility of ἐπιστήμη respecting particulars. Plato, in the Gorgias, puts τέχνη, which he states to depend upon reason and foreknowledge, in opposition to ἐμπειρία and τριβή, which he considers as dependant on the φύσις στοχαστική. But in applying the knowledge or skill called Art to particular cases, the φύσις στοχαστικὴ is the best that can be had (p. 463 A-B). The conception of τέχνη given in the Gorgias is open to the same remark as that which we find in the Phædrus. Plato, in another passage of the Phædrus, speaks of the necessity that φύσις, ἐπιστήμη, and μελέτη, shall concur to make an accomplished orator. This is very true; and Lysias, Isokrates, and all the other rhetors whom Plato satirises, would have concurred in it. In his description of τέχνη and ἐπιστήμη, and in the estimate which he gives of all that it comprises, he leaves no outlying ground for μελέτη. Compare Xenophon, Memor. iii. 1, 11; also Isokrates contra Sophistas, a. 16; and a good passage of Dionysius Halik. De Compos. Verborum, in which that rhetor remarks that καιρὸς or opportunity neither has been nor can be reduced to art and rule.
116 Plato, Gorgias, pp. 464-465.
Plato’s charge against the Rhetorical teachers is not made out.
While therefore Plato’s view of the science or theory of Rhetoric is far more comprehensive and philosophical than any thing given by the rhetorical teachers — he has not made good his charge against them, that what they taught as an art of Rhetoric was useless and illusory. The charge can only be sustained if we grant — what appears to have been Plato’s own feeling — that the social and political life of the Athenians was a dirty and corrupt business, unworthy of a virtuous man to meddle with. This is the argument of Sokrates (in the Gorgias,117 the other great anti-rhetorical dialogue), proclaiming himself to stand alone and aloof, an isolated, free-thinking dissenter. As representing his sincere conviction, and interpreting Plato’s plan of life, this argument deserves honourable recognition. But we must remember that Lysias and the rhetorical teachers repudiated such a point of view. They aimed at assisting and strengthening others to perform their parts, not in speculative debate on philosophy, but in active citizenship; and they succeeded in this object to a great degree. The rhetorical ability of Lysias personally is attested not merely by the superlative encomium on him assigned to Phædrus,118 but also by his great celebrity — by the frequent demand for his services as a logographer or composer of discourses for others — by the number of his discourses preserved and studied after his death. He, and a fair proportion of the other rhetors named in the Phædrus, performed well the useful work which they undertook.
117 Plato, Gorg. 521 D.
118 Plato, Phædr. p. 228 A.
Plato has not treated Lysias fairly, in neglecting his greater works, and selecting for criticism an erotic exercise for a private circle.
When Plato selects, out of the very numerous discourses before him composed by Lysias, one hardly intended for any real auditors — neither deliberative, nor judicial, nor panegyrical, but an ingenious erotic paradox for a 48private circle of friends — this is no fair specimen of the author. Moreover Plato criticises it as if it were a philosophic exposition instead of an oratorical pleading. He complains that Lysias does not begin his discourse by defining — but neither do Demosthenes and other great orators proceed in that manner. He affirms that there is no organic structure, or necessary sequence, in the discourse, and that the sentences of it might be read in an inverted order:119 — and this remark is to a certain extent well-founded. In respect to the skilful marshalling of the different parts of a discourse, so as to give best effect to the whole, Dionysius of Halikarnassus120 declares Lysias to be inferior to some other orators — while ascribing to him marked oratorical superiority on various other points. Yet Plato, in specifying his objections against the erotic discourses of Lysias, does not show that it offends against the sound general principle which he himself lays down respecting the art of persuasion — That the topics insisted on by the persuader shall be adapted to the feelings and dispositions of the persuadend. Far from violating this principle, Lysias kept it in view, and employed it to the best of his power — as we may see, not merely by his remaining orations, but also by the testimonies of the critics:121 though he did not go through the large preliminary work of scientific classification, both of different minds and different persuasive apparatus, which Plato considers essential to a thorough comprehension and mastery of the principle.
119 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 263-264.
120 Dionysius (Judicium De Lysiâ, pp. 487-493) gives an elaborate criticism on the πραγματικὸς χαρακτὴρ of Lysias. The special excellence of Lysias (according to this critic) lay in his judicial orations, which were highly persuasive and plausible: the manner of presenting thoughts was ingenious and adapted to the auditors: the narration of facts and details, especially, was performed with unrivalled skill. But as to the marshalling of the different parts of a discourse, Dionysius considers Lysias as inferior to some other orators — and still more inferior in respect to δεινοτὴς and to strong emotional effects.
121 Dionys. Hal. (Ars Rhetorica, p. 381) notices the severe exigencies which Plato here imposes upon the Rhetor, remarking that scarcely any rhetorical discourse could be produced which came up to them. The defect did not belong to Lysias alone, but to all other rhetors also — ὁπότε γὰρ καὶ Λυσίαν ἐλέγχει, πᾶσαν τὴν ἡμετέραν ῥητορικὴν ἔοικεν ἐλέγχειν. Demosthenes almost alone (in the opinion of Dionysius) contrived to avoid the fault, because he imitated Plato.
No fair comparison can be taken between this exercise of Lysias and the discourses delivered by Sokrates in the Phædrus.
The first discourse assigned by Plato to Sokrates professes to be placed in competition with the discourse of Lysias, and to aim at the same object. But in reality it aims 49at a different object: it gives the dissuasive arguments, but omits the persuasive — as Phædrus is made to point out: so that it cannot be fairly compared with the discourse of Lysias. Still more may this be said respecting the second discourse of Sokrates: which is of a character and purpose so totally disparate, that no fair comparison can be taken between it and the ostensible competitor. The mixture of philosophy, mysticism, and dithyrambic poetry, which the second discourse of Sokrates presents, was considered by a rhetorical judge like Dionysius as altogether inconsistent with the scope and purpose of reasonable discourse.122 In the Menexenus, Plato has brought himself again into competition with Lysias, and there the competition is fairer:123 for Plato has there entirely neglected the exigencies enforced in the Phædrus, and has composed a funeral discourse upon the received type; which Lysias and other orators before him had followed, from Perikles downward. But in the Phædrus, Plato criticises Lysias upon principles which are a medley between philosophy and rhetoric. Lysias, in defending himself, might have taken the same ground as we find Sokrates himself taking in the Euthydêmus. “Philosophy and politics are two distinct walks, requiring different aptitudes, and having each its own practitioners. A man may take whichever he pleases; but he must not arrogate to himself superiority by an untoward attempt to join the two together.”124
122 See the Epistol. of Dion. Halikarn. to Cneius Pompey — De Platone — pp. 755-765.
123 Plato, Menexen. p. 237 seq. Stallbaum, Comm. in Menexenum, pp. 10-11.
124 Plato, Euthydêm. p. 306 A-C.
Continuous discourse, either written or spoken, inefficacious as a means of instruction to the ignorant.
Another important subject is also treated in the Phædrus. Sokrates delivers views both original and characteristic, respecting the efficacy of continuous discourse — either written to be read, or spoken to be heard without cross-examination — as a means of instruction. They are re-stated — in a manner substantially the same, though with some variety and fulness of illustration — in Plato’s seventh Epistle125 to the surviving friends of Dion. I have already touched upon these views in my eighth Chapter, on the Platonic Dialogues generally, and have 50pointed out how much Plato understood to be involved in what he termed knowledge. No man (in his view) could be said to know, who was not competent to sustain successfully, and to apply successfully, a Sokratic cross-examination. Now knowledge, involving such a competency, certainly cannot be communicated by any writing, or by any fixed and unchangeable array of words, whether written or spoken. You must familiarise learners with the subject on many different sides, and in relation to many different points of view, each presenting more or less chance of error or confusion. Moreover, you must apply a different treatment to each mind, and to the same mind at different stages: no two are exactly alike, and the treatment adapted for one will be unsuitable for the other. While it is impossible, for these reasons, to employ any set forms of words, it will be found that the process of reading or listening leaves the reader or listener comparatively passive: there is nothing to stir the depths of the mind, or to evolve the inherent forces and dormant capacities. Dialectic conversation is the only process which can adapt itself with infinite variety to each particular case and moment — and which stimulates fresh mental efforts ever renewed on the part of each respondent and each questioner. Knowledge — being a slow result generated by this stimulating operation, when skilfully conducted, long continued, and much diversified — is not infused into, but evolved out of, the mind. It consists in a revival of those unchangeable Ideas or Forms, with which the mind during its state of eternal pre-existence had had communion. There are only a few privileged minds, however, that have had sufficient communion therewith to render such revival possible: accordingly, none but these few can ever rise to knowledge.126
125 Plato, Epistol. vii. pp. 341-344.
126 Schleiermacher, in his Introduction to the Phædrus, justly characterises this doctrine as genuine Sokratism — “die ächt Sokratische erhabene Verachtung alles Schreibens and alles rednerischen Redens,” p. 70.
Written matter is useful as a memorandum for persons who know — or as an elegant pastime.
Though knowledge cannot be first communicated by written matters, yet if it has been once communicated and subsequently forgotten, it may be revived by written matters. Writing has thus a real, though secondary, usefulness, as a memorandum. And Plato doubtless accounted written dialogues the most useful of all 51written compositions, because they imitated portions of that long oral process whereby alone knowledge had been originally generated. His dialogues were reports of the conversations purporting to have been held by Sokrates with others.
Plato’s didactic theories are pitched too high to be realised.
It is an excellent feature in the didactic theories of Plato, that they distinguish so pointedly between the passive and active conditions of the intellect; and that they postulate as indispensable, an habitual and cultivated mental activity, worked up by slow, long-continued, colloquy. To read or hear, and then to commit to memory, are in his view elegant recreations, but nothing more. But while, on this point, Plato’s didactic theories deserve admiration, we must remark on the other hand that they are pitched so high as to exceed human force, and to overpass all possibility of being realised.127 They mark out an idéal, which no person ever attained, either then or since — like the Platonic theory of rhetoric. To be master of any subject, in the extent and perfection required for sustaining and administering a Sokratic cross-examination — is a condition which scarce any one can ever fulfil: certainly no one, except upon a small range of subjects. Assuredly, Plato himself never fulfilled it.
127 A remark made by Sextus Empiricus (upon another doctrine which he is discussing) may be applied to this view of Plato — τὸ δὲ λέγειν ὅτι τῇ διομαλισμῷ τῶν πράξεων καταλαμβάνομεν τὸν ἔχοντα τὴν περὶ τὸν βίον τέχνην, ὑπερφθεγγομένων ἔστι τὴν ἀνθρώπων φύσιν, καὶ εὐχομένων μᾶλλον ἢ ἀληθῆ λεγόντων (Pyrrh. Hyp. iii. 244).
No one has ever been found competent to solve the difficulties raised by Sokrates, Arkesilaus, Karneades, and the negative vein of philosophy.
Such a cross-examination involved the mastery of all the openings for doubt, difficulty, deception, or refutation, bearing on the subject: openings which a man is to profit by, if assailant — to keep guarded, if defendant. Now when we survey the Greek negative philosophy, as it appears in Plato, Aristotle, and Sextus Empiricus — and when we recollect that between the second and the third of these names, there appeared three other philosophers equally or more formidable in the same vein, all whose arguments have perished (Arkesilaus, Karneades, Ænesidêmus) — we shall see that no man has ever been known competent both to strike and parry with these weapons, in a manner so skilful and ready as to 52amount to knowledge in the Platonic sense. But in so far as such knowledge is attainable or approachable, Plato is right in saying that it cannot be attained except by long dialectic practice. Reading books, and hearing lectures, are undoubtedly valuable aids, but insufficient by themselves. Modern times recede from it even more than ancient. Regulated oral dialectic has become unknown; the logical and metaphysical difficulties — which negative philosophy required to be solved before it would allow any farther progress — are now little heeded, amidst the multiplicity of observed facts, and theories adapted to and commensurate with those facts. This change in the character of philosophy is doubtless a great improvement. It is found that by acquiescing provisionally in the axiomata media, and by applying at every step the control of verification, now rendered possible by the multitude of ascertained facts — the sciences may march safely onward: notwithstanding that the logical and metaphysical difficulties, the puzzles (ἀπορίαι) involved in philosophia prima and its very high abstractions, are left behind unsolved and indeterminate. But though the modern course of philosophy is preferable to the ancient, it is not for that reason to be considered as satisfactory. These metaphysical difficulties are not diminished either in force or relevancy, because modern writers choose to leave them unnoticed. Plato and Aristotle were quite right in propounding them as problems, the solution of which was indispensable to the exigencies and consistent schematism of the theorising intelligence, as well as to any complete discrimination between sufficient and insufficient evidence. Such they still remain, overlooked yet not defunct.
Plato’s idéal philosopher can only be realised under the hypothesis of a pre-existent and omniscient soul, stimulated into full reminiscence here.
Now all these questions would be solved by the idéal philosopher whom Plato in the Phædrus conceives as possessing knowledge: a person who shall be at once a negative Sokrates in excogitating and enforcing all the difficulties — and an affirmative match for Sokrates, as respondent in solving them: a person competent to apply this process to all the indefinite variety of individual minds, under the inspirations of the moment. This is a magnificent idéal. Plato affirms truly, that those teachers who taught rhetoric and philosophy by writing, could never produce such a pupil: 53and that even the Sokratic dialectic training, though indispensable and far more efficacious, would fail in doing so, unless in those few cases where it was favoured by very superior capacity — understood by him as superhuman, and as a remnant from the pre-existing commerce of the soul with the world of Forms or Ideas. The foundation therefore of the whole scheme rests upon Plato’s hypothesis of an antecedent life of the soul, proclaimed by Sokrates here in his second or panegyrical discourse on Eros. The rhetorical teachers, with whom he here compares himself and whom he despises as aiming at low practical ends — might at any rate reply that they avoided losing themselves in such unmeasured and unwarranted hypotheses.
Different proceeding of Plato in the Timæus.
One remark yet remains to be made upon the doctrine here set forth by Plato: that no teaching is possible by means of continuous discourse spoken or written — none, except through prolonged and varied oral dialectic.128 To this doctrine Plato does not constantly conform in his practice: he departs from it on various important occasions. In the Timæus, Sokrates calls upon the philosopher so named for an exposition on the deepest and most mysterious cosmical subjects. Timæus delivers the exposition in a continuous harangue, without a word of remark or question addressed by any of the auditors: while at the beginning of the Kritias (the next succeeding dialogue) Sokrates greatly commends what Timæus had spoken. The Kritias itself too (though unfinished) is given in the form of continuous exposition. Now, as the Timæus is more abstruse than any other Platonic writing, we cannot imagine that Plato, at the time when he composed it, thought so meanly about continuous exposition, as a vehicle of instruction, as we find him declaring in the Phædrus. I point this out, because it illustrates my opinion that the different dialogues of Plato represent very different, sometimes even opposite, 54points of view: and that it is a mistake to treat them as parts of one preconceived and methodical system.
128 The historical Sokrates would not allow his oral dialectic process to be called teaching. He expressly says “I have never been the teacher of any one” (Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 33 A, 19 E): and he disclaimed the possession of knowledge. Aristotle too considers teaching as a presentation of truths, ready made and supposed to be known, by the teacher to learners, who are bound to believe them, δεῖ γὰρ πιστεύειν τὸν μανθάνοντα. The Platonic Sokrates, in the Phædrus and Symposion, differs from both; he recognises no teaching except the perpetual generation of new thoughts and feelings, by means of stimulating dialectic colloquy, and the revival in the mind thereby of the experience of an antecedent life, during which some communion has been enjoyed with the world of Ideas or Forms.
Opposite tendencies co-existent in Plato’s mind — Extreme of the Transcendental or Absolute — Extreme of specialising adaptation to individuals and occasions.
Plato is usually extolled by his admirers, as the champion of the Absolute — of unchangeable forms, immutable truth, objective necessity cogent and binding on every one. He is praised for having refuted Protagoras; who can find no standard beyond the individual recognition and belief, of his own mind or that of some one else. There is no doubt that Plato often talks in that strain: but the method followed in his dialogues, and the general principles of method which he lays down, here as well as elsewhere, point to a directly opposite conclusion. Of this the Phædrus is a signal instance. Instead of the extreme of generality, it proclaims the extreme of specialty. The objection which the Sokrates of the Phædrus advances against the didactic efficacy of written discourse, is founded on the fact, that it is the same to all readers — that it takes no cognizance of the differences of individual minds nor of the same mind at different times. Sokrates claims for dialectic debate the valuable privilege, that it is constant action and re-action between two individual minds — an appeal by the inherent force and actual condition of each, to the like elements in the other — an ever shifting presentation of the same topics, accommodated to the measure of intelligence and cast of emotion in the talkers and at the moment. The individuality of each mind — both questioner and respondent — is here kept in view as the governing condition of the process. No two minds can be approached by the same road or by the same interrogation. The questioner cannot advance a step except by the admission of the respondent. Every respondent is the measure to himself. He answers suitably to his own belief; he defends by his own suggestions; he yields to the pressure of contradiction and inconsistency, when he feels them, and not before. Each dialogist is (to use the Protagorean phrase) the measure to himself of truth and falsehood, according as he himself believes it. Assent or dissent, whichever it may be, springs only from the free working of the individual mind, in its actual condition then and there. It is to the individual mind alone, that appeal is made, and this is what Protagoras asks for.
55We thus find, in Plato’s philosophical character, two extreme opposite tendencies and opposite poles co-existent. We must recognise them both: but they can never be reconciled: sometimes he obeys and follows the one, sometimes the other.
If it had been Plato’s purpose to proclaim and impose upon every one something which he called “Absolute Truth,” one and the same alike imperative upon all — he would best proclaim it by preaching or writing. To modify this “Absolute,” according to the varieties of the persons addressed, would divest it of its intrinsic attribute and excellence. If you pretend to deal with an Absolute, you must turn away your eyes from all diversity of apprehending intellects and believing subjects.
56
Character of dialogues immediately preceding — much transcendental assertion. Opposite character of the Parmenides.
In the dialogues immediately preceding — Phædon, Phædrus, Symposion — we have seen Sokrates manifesting his usual dialectic, which never fails him: but we have also seen him indulging in a very unusual vein of positive affirmation and declaration. He has unfolded many novelties about the states of pre-existence and post-existence: he has familiarised us with Ideas, Forms, Essences, eternal and unchangeable, as the causes of all the facts and particularities of nature: he has recognised the inspired variety of madness, as being more worthy of trust than sober, uninspired, intelligence: he has recounted, with the faith of a communicant fresh from the mysteries, revelations made to him by the prophetess Diotima, — respecting the successive stages of exaltation whereby gifted intelligences, under the stimulus of Eros Philosophus, ascend into communion with the great sea of Beauty. All this is set forth with as much charm as Plato’s eloquence can bestow. But after all, it is not the true character of Sokrates:— I mean, the Sokrates of the Apology, whose mission it is to make war against the chronic malady of the human mind — false persuasion of knowledge, without the reality. It is, on the contrary, Sokrates himself infected with the same chronic malady which he combats in others, and requiring medicine against it as much as others. Such is the exact character in which Sokrates appears in the Parmenides: which dialogue I shall now proceed to review.
Sokrates is the juvenile defendant — Parmenides the veteran censor and cross-examiner. Parmenides gives a specimen of exercises to be performed by the philosophical aspirant.
The Parmenides announces its own purpose as intended to 57repress premature forwardness of affirmation, in a young philosophical aspirant: who, with meritorious eagerness in the search for truth, and with his eyes turned in the right direction to look for it — has nevertheless not fully estimated the obstructions besetting his path, nor exercised himself in the efforts necessary to overcome them. By a curious transposition, or perhaps from deference on Plato’s part to the Hellenic sentiment of Nemesis, — Sokrates, who in most Platonic dialogues stands forward as the privileged censor and victorious opponent, is here the juvenile defendant under censorship by a superior. It is the veteran Parmenides of Elea who, while commending the speculative impulse and promise of Sokrates, impresses upon him at the same time that the theory which he had advanced — the self-existence, the separate and substantive nature, of Ideas — stands exposed to many grave objections, which he (Sokrates) has not considered and cannot meet. So far, Parmenides performs towards Sokrates the same process of cross-examining refutation as Sokrates himself applies to Theætêtus and other young men elsewhere. But we find in this dialogue something ulterior and even peculiar. Having warned Sokrates that his intellectual training has not yet been carried to a point commensurate with the earnestness of his aspirations — Parmenides proceeds to describe to him what exercises he ought to go through, in order to guard himself against premature assertion or hasty partiality. Moreover, Parmenides not only indicates in general terms what ought to be done, but illustrates it by giving a specimen of such exercise, on a topic chosen by himself.
Circumstances and persons of the Parmenides.
Passing over the dramatic introduction1 whereby the personages58 discoursing are brought together, we find Sokrates, Parmenides, and the Eleatic Zeno (the disciple of Parmenides), engaged in the main dialogue. When Parmenides begins his illustrative exercise, a person named Aristotle (afterwards one of the Thirty oligarchs at Athens), still younger than Sokrates, is made to serve as respondent.
1 This dramatic introduction is extremely complicated. The whole dialogue, from beginning to end, is recounted by Kephalus of Klazomenæ; who heard it from the Athenian Antiphon — who himself had heard it from Pythodôrus, a friend of Zeno, present when the conversation was held. A string of circumstances are narrated by Kephalus, to explain how he came to wish to hear it, and to find out Antiphon. Plato appears anxious to throw the event back as far as possible into the past, in order to justify the bringing Sokrates into personal communication with Parmenides: for some unfriendly critics tried to make out that the two could not possibly have conversed on philosophy (Athenæus, xi. 505). Plato declares the ages of the persons with remarkable exactness: Parmenides was 65, completely grey-headed, but of noble mien: Zeno about 40, tall and graceful: Sokrates very young. (Plat. Parmen. p. 127 B-C.)
It required some invention in Plato to provide a narrator, suitable for recounting events so long antecedent as the young period of Sokrates.
Sokrates is one among various auditors, who are assembled to hear Zeno reading aloud a treatise of his own composition, intended to answer and retort upon the opponents of his preceptor Parmenides.
Manner in which the doctrine of Parmenides was impugned. Manner in which his partisan Zeno defended him.
The main doctrine of the real Parmenides was, “That Ens, the absolute, real, self-existent, was One and not many”: which doctrine was impugned and derided by various opponents, deducing from it absurd conclusions. Zeno defended his master by showing that the opposite doctrine ( — “That Ens, the absolute, self-existent universe, is Many — ”) led to conclusions absurd in an equal or greater degree. If the Absolute were Many, the many would be both like and unlike: but they cannot have incompatible and contradictory attributes: therefore Absolute Ens is not Many. Ens, as Parmenides conceived it, was essentially homogeneous and unchangeable: even assuming it to be Many, all its parts must be homogeneous, so that what was predicable of one must be predicable of all; it might be all alike, or all unlike: but it could not be both. Those who maintained the plurality of Ens, did so on the ground of apparent severalty, likeness, and unlikeness, in the sensible world. But Zeno, while admitting these phenomena in the sensible world, as relative to us, apparent, and subject to the varieties of individual estimation — denied their applicability to absolute and self-existent Ens.2 Since absolute Ens or Entia are Many (said the opponents of Parmenides), they will be both like and unlike: and thus we can explain the phenomena of the sensible world. The absolute (replied Zeno) cannot be both like and unlike; therefore it cannot be many. We must recollect 59that both Parmenides and Zeno renounced all attempt to explain the sensible world by the absolute and purely intelligible Ens. They treated the two as radically distinct and unconnected. The one was absolute, eternal, unchangeable, homogeneous, apprehended only by reason. The other was relative, temporary, variable, heterogeneous; a world of individual and subjective opinion, upon which no absolute truth, no pure objectivity, could be reached.
2 I have already given a short account of the Zenonian Dialectic, ch. ii. p. 93 seq.
Sokrates here impugns the doctrine of Zeno. He affirms the Platonic theory of ideas separate from sensible objects, yet participable by them.
Sokrates, depicted here as a young man, impugns this doctrine of Zeno: and maintains that the two worlds, though naturally disjoined, were not incommunicable. He advances the Platonic theory of Ideas: that is, an intelligible world of many separate self-existent Forms or Ideas, apprehended by reason only — and a sensible world of particular objects, each participating in one or more of these Forms or Ideas. “What you say (he remarks to Zeno), is true of the world of Forms or Ideas: the Form of Likeness per se can never be unlike, nor can the Form of Unlikeness be ever like. But in regard to the sensible world, there is nothing to hinder you and me, and other objects which rank and are numbered as separate individuals, from participating both in the Form of likeness and in the Form of unlikeness.3 In so far as I, an individual object, participate in the Form of Likeness, I am properly called like; in so far as I participate in the Form of Unlikeness, I am called unlike. So about One and Many, Great and Little, and so forth: I, the same individual, may participate in many different and opposite Forms, and may derive from them different and opposite denominations. I am one and many — like and unlike — great and little — all at the same time. But no such combination is possible between the Forms themselves, self-existent and opposite: the Form of Likeness cannot become unlike, nor vice versâ. The Forms themselves stand permanently apart, incapable of fusion or coalescence with each other: but different and even opposite Forms may lend 60themselves to participation and partnership in the same sensible individual object.”4
3 Plato, Parmenid. p. 129 A. οὐ νομίζεις εἶναι αὐτὸ καθ’ αὐτὸ εἶδός τι ὁμοιότητος, καὶ τῷ τοιούτῳ αἶ ἄλλο τι ἐναντίον, ὃ ἔστιν ἀνόμοιον; τούτοιν δὲ δυοῖν ὄντοιν καὶ ἐμὲ καὶ σὲ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἃ δὴ πολλὰ καλοῦμεν, μεταλαμβάνειν;
4 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 129-130.
Parmenides and Zeno admire the philosophical ardour of Sokrates. Parmenides advances objections against the Platonic theory of Ideas.
Parmenides and Zeno are represented as listening with surprise and interest to this language of Sokrates, recognising two distinct worlds: one, of invisible but intelligible Forms, — the other that of sensible objects, participating in these Forms. “Your ardour for philosophy” (observes Parmenides to Sokrates), “is admirable. Is this distinction your own?”5
5 Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 A. Ὦ Σώκρατες, ὡς ἄξιος εἶ ἄγασθαι τῆς ὁρμῆς τῆς ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους· καί μοι εἰπέ, αὐτὸς σὺ οὕτω διῄρησαι ὡς λέγεις, χωρὶς μὲν εἴδη αὐτὰ ἄττα, χωρὶς δὲ τὰ τούτων αὖ μετέχοντα;
Plato now puts into the mouth of Parmenides — the advocate of One absolute and unchangeable Ens, separated by an impassable gulf from the sensible world of transitory and variable appearances or phenomena — objections against what is called the Platonic theory of Ideas: that is, the theory of an intelligible world, comprising an indefinite number of distinct intelligible and unchangeable Forms — in partial relation and communication with another world of sensible objects, each of which participates in one or more of these Forms. We thus have the Absolute One pitted against the Absolute Many.
What Ideas does Sokrates recognise? Of the Just and Good? Yes. Of Man, Horse, &c.? Doubtful. Of Hair, Mud, &c.? No.
What number and variety of these intelligible Forms do you recognise — (asks Parmenides)? Likeness and Unlikeness — One and Many — Just, Beautiful, Good, &c. — are all these Forms absolute and existent per se? Sokr. — Certainly they are. Parm. — Do you farther recognise an absolute and self-existent Form of Man, apart from us and all other individuals? — or a Form of fire, water, and the like? Sokr. — I do not well know how to answer:— I have often been embarrassed with the question. Parm. — Farther, do there exist distinct intelligible Forms of hair, mud, dirt, and all the other mean and contemptible objects of sense which we see around? Sokr. — No — certainly — no such Forms as these exist. Such objects are as we see them, and nothing beyond: it would be too absurd to suppose Forms of such like things.6 Nevertheless there are 61times when I have misgivings on the point; and when I suspect that there must be Forms of them as well as of the others. When such reflections cross my mind, I shrink from the absurdity of the doctrine, and try to confine my attention to Forms like those which you mentioned first.
6 Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 D. Οὐδαμῶς, φάναι τὸν Σωκράτην, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μέν γε, ἅπερ ὁρῶμεν, ταῦτα καὶ εἶναι· εἶδος δέ τι αὐτῶν οἰηθῆναι εἶναι μὴ λίαν ᾖ ἄτοπον.
Alexander, who opposes the doctrine of the Platonists about Ideas, treats it as understood that they did not recognise Ideas of worms, gnats, and such like animals. Schol. ad Aristot. Metaphys. A. 991 a. p. 575, a. 30 Brandis.
Parmenides declares that no object in nature is mean to the philosopher.
Parm. — You are still young, Sokrates:— you still defer to the common sentiments of mankind. But the time will come when philosophy will take stronger hold of you, and will teach you that no object in nature is mean or contemptible in her view.7
7 Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 E. Νέος γὰρ εἶ ἔτι, καὶ οὕπω σου ἀντείληπται φιλοσοφία ὡς ἕτι ἀντιλήψεται, κατ’ ἐμὴν δόξαν, ὅτε οὐδὲν αὐτῶν ἀτιμάσεις· νῦν δὲ ἔτι πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀποβλέπεις δόξας διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν.
Remarks upon this — Contrast between emotional and scientific classification.
This remark deserves attention. Plato points out the radical distinction, and frequent antipathy between classifications constructed by science, and those which grow up spontaneously under the associating influence of a common emotion. What he calls “the opinions of men,” — in other words, the associations naturally working in an untaught and unlettered mind — bring together the ideas of objects according as they suggest a like emotion — veneration, love, fear, antipathy, contempt, laughter, &c.8 As things which inspire like emotions are thrown into the same category and receive the same denomination, so the opposite proceeding inspires great repugnance, when things creating antipathetic emotions are forced into the same category. A large proportion of objects in nature come to be regarded as unworthy of any serious attention, and fit only to serve for discharging on them our laughter, contempt, or antipathy. The investigation of the structure and manifestations of insects is one of the marked features which Aristophanes ridicules in Sokrates: moreover the same poet also brings odium on the philosopher for alleged study of astronomy and meteorology — the heavenly bodies being as it were at the opposite emotional pole, objects of such reverential admiration and worship, 62that it was impious to watch or investigate them, or calculate their proceedings beforehand.9 The extent to which anatomy and physiology were shut out from study in antiquity, and have continued to be partially so even in modern times, is well known. And the proportion of phenomena is both great and important, connected with the social relations, which are excluded both from formal registration and from scientific review; kept away from all rational analysis either of causes or remedies, because of the strong repugnances connected with them. This emotional view of nature is here noted by Plato as conflicting with the scientific. No object (he says) is mean in the eyes of philosophy. He remarks to the same effect in the Sophistês and Politikus, and the remark is illustrated by the classifying processes there exhibited:10 mean objects and esteemed objects being placed side by side.
8 Plato, himself, however, occasionally appeals πρὸς ἀνθρώπων δόξας, and becomes ἀτεχνῶς δημήγορος, when it suits his argument; see Gorgias, 494 C.
9 Aristophan. Nubes, 145-170-1490.
|
τί γὰρ μαθόντ’ ἐς τοὺς θεοὺς ὑβρίζετον,
καὶ τῆς σελήνης ἐσκοπεῖσθε τὴν ἔδραν; |
Compare Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 11-13, iv. 7, 6-7; Plutarch, Perikles, 23; also the second chapter of the first Book of Macrobius, about the discredit which is supposed to be thrown upon grand and solemn subjects by a plain and naked exposition. “Inimicam esse naturæ nudam expositionem sui.”
10 Plato, Sophist. p. 227 B; Politik. p. 266 D; also Theætêt. p. 174 D.
Both the Platonic Sokrates, and the Xenophontic Sokrates, frequently illustrate the education of men by comparison with the bringing up of young animals as well as with the training of horses: they also compare the educator of young men with the trainer of young horses. Indeed this comparison occurs so frequently, that it excites much displeasure among various modern critics (Forchhammer, Köchly, Socher, &c.), who seem to consider it as unseemly and inconsistent with “the dignity of human nature”. The frequent allusions made by Plato to the homely arts and professions are noted by his interlocutors as tiresome.
See Plato, Apolog. Sokr. p. 20 A. ὦ Καλλία, εἰ μέν σου τὼ υἱέε πώλω ἢ μόσχω ἐγενέσθην, &c.
The Zoological works of Aristotle exhibit a memorable example of scientific intelligence, overcoming all the contempt and disgust usually associated with minute and repulsive organisms. To Plato, it would be repugnant to arrange in the same class the wolf and the dog. See Sophist. p. 231 A.
Parmenides now produces various objections against the Platonic variety of dualism: the two distinct but partially inter-communicating worlds — one, of separate, permanent, unchangeable, Forms or Ideas — the other, of individual objects, transient and variable; participating in, and receiving denomination from, these Forms.
Objections of Parmenides — How can objects participate in the Ideas. Each cannot have the whole Idea, nor a part thereof.
1. How (asks Parmenides) can such participation take place? 63Is the entire Form in each individual object? No: for one and the same Form cannot be at the same time in many distant objects. A part of it therefore must be in one object; another part in another. But this assumes that the Form is divisible — or is not essentially One. Equality is in all equal objects: but how can a part of the Form equality, less than the whole, make objects equal? Again, littleness is in all little objects: that is, a part of the Form littleness is in each. But the Form littleness cannot have parts; because, if it had, the entire Form would be greater than any of its parts, — and the Form littleness cannot be greater than any thing. Moreover, if one part of littleness were added to other parts, the sum of the two would be less, and not greater, than either of the factors. It is plain that none of these Forms can be divisible, or can have parts. Objects therefore cannot participate in the Form by parts or piecemeal. But neither can each object possess the entire Form. Accordingly, since there remains no third possibility, objects cannot participate in the Forms at all.11
11 Plato, Parmenid. p. 131. A similar argument, showing the impossibility of such μέθεξις, appears in Sextus Empiric. adv. Arithmeticos, sect. 11-20, p. 334 Fab., p. 724 Bek.
Comparing the Idea with the sensible objects partaking in the Idea, there is a likeness between them which must be represented by a higher Idea — and so on ad infinitum.
2. Parmenides now passes to a second argument. The reason why you assume that each one of these Forms exists, is — That when you contemplate many similar objects, one and the same ideal phantom or Concept is suggested by all.12 Thus, when you see many great objects, one common impression of greatness arises from all. Hence you conclude that The Great, or the Form of Greatness, exists as One. But if you take this Form of Greatness, and consider it in comparison with each or all the great individual objects, it will have in common with them something that makes it great. You must therefore search for some higher Form, which represents what belongs in common both to the Form of Greatness and to individual great objects. And this higher Form again, when compared with the rest, will have 64something in common which must be represented by a Form yet higher: so that there will be an infinite series of Forms, ascending higher and higher, of which you will never reach the topmost.13
12 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132. Οἶμαι σε ἐκ τοῦ τοιοῦδε ἓν ἕκαστον εἶδος οἴεσθαι εἶναι. Ὅταν πόλλ’ ἄττα μεγάλα σοι δόξῃ εἶναι, μία τις ἴσως δοκεῖ ἰδέα ἡ αὐτὴ εἶναι ἐπὶ πάντα ἰδόντι, ὅθεν ἓν τὸ μέγα ἡγεῖ εἶναι.
13 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 A. See this process, of comparing the Form with particular objects denominated after the Form, described in a different metaphysical language by Mr. John Stuart Mill, System of Logic, book iv. ch. 2, sect. 3. “As the general conception is itself obtained by a comparison of particular phenomena, so, when obtained, the mode in which we apply it to other phenomena is again by comparison. We compare phenomena with each other to get the conception; and we then compare those and other phenomena with the conception. We get the conception of an animal by comparing different animals, and when we afterwards see a creature resembling an animal, we compare it with our general conception of an animal: and if it agrees with our general conception, we include it in the class. The conception becomes the type of comparison. We may perhaps find that no considerable number of other objects agree with this first general conception: and that we must drop the conception, and beginning again with a different individual case, proceed by fresh comparisons to a different general conception.”
The comparison, which the argument of the Platonic Parmenides assumes to be instituted, between τὸ εἶδος and τὰ μετέχοντα αὐτοῦ, is denied by Proklus; who says that there can be no comparison, nor any κοινότης, except between τὰ ὁμοταγῆ: and that the Form is not ὁμοταγὲς with its participant particulars. (Proklus ad Parmenidem, p. 125, p. 684 ed. Stallbaum.)
This argument of Parmenides is the memorable argument known under the name of ὁ τρίτος ἄνθρωπος. Against the Platonic εἴδη considered as χωριστά, it is a forcible argument. See Aristot. Metaphys. A. 990, b. 15 seq., where it is numbered among οἱ ἀκριβέστεροι τῶν λόγων. We find from the Scholion of Alexander (p. 566 Brandis), that it was advanced in several different ways by Aristotle, in his work Περὶ Ἰδεῶν: by his scholar Eudemus ἐν τοῖς περὶ Λέξεως: and by a contemporary σοφιστὴς named Polyxenus, as well as by other Sophists.
Are the Ideas conceptions of the mind, and nothing more? Impossible.
3. Perhaps (suggests Sokrates) each of these Forms is a Conception of the mind and nothing beyond: the Form is not competent to exist out of the mind.14 How? (replies Parmenides.) There cannot be in the mind any Conception, which is a Conception of nothing. Every Conception must be of something really existing: in this case, it is a Conception of some one thing, which you conceive as belonging in common to each and all the objects considered. The Something thus conceived as perpetually One and the same in all, is, the Form. Besides, if you think that individual objects participate in the Forms, and that these Forms are Conceptions of the mind, — you must suppose, either that all 65objects are made up of Conceptions, and are therefore themselves Concipients: or else that these Forms, though Conceptions, are incapable of conceiving. Neither one nor the other is admissible.15
14 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 B. μὴ τῶν εἰδῶν ἕκαστον ᾖ τούτων νοήμα, καὶ οὐδαμοῦ αὐτῷ προσήκη ἐγγίγνεσθαι ἄλλοθι ἢ ἐν ψυχαῖς.… Τί οὖν; φάναι, ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι τῶν νοημάτων, νόημα δὲ οὐδενός; Ἀλλ’ ἀδύνατον, εἰπεῖν. Ἀλλὰ τινός; Ναί. Ὄντος ἢ οὐκ ὄντος; Ὄντος. Οὐχ ἑνός τινος, ὃ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἐκεῖνο τὸ νόημα ἐπὸν νοεῖ, μίαν τινὰ οὖσαν ἰδέαν; Ναί.
Aristotle (Topic. ii. 113, a. 25) indicates one way of meeting this argument, if advanced by an adversary in dialectic debate — εἰ τὰς ἰδέας ἐν ἡμῖν ἔφησεν εἶναι.
15 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 D. οὐκ ἀνάγκη, εἰ τἄλλα φῂ τῶν εἰδῶν μετέχειν, ἢ δοκεῖν σοι ἐκ νοήματα ὄντα ἀνόητα εἶναι; Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῦτο, φάναι, ἔχει λόγον.
The word ἀνόητα here is used in its ordinary sense, in which it is the negation, not of νοητός but of νοητικός. There is a similar confusion, Plato, Phædon, p. 80 B. Proklus (pp. 699-701, Stall.) is prolix but very obscure.
The Ideas are types or exemplars, and objects partake of them by being likened to them. Impossible.
4. Probably the case stands thus (says Sokrates). These Forms are constants and fixtures in nature, as models or patterns. Particular objects are copies or likenesses of them: and the participation of such objects in the Form consists in being made like to it.16 In that case (replies Parmenides), the Form must itself be like to the objects which have been made like to it. Comparing the Form with the objects, that in which they resemble must itself be a Form: and thus you will have a higher Form above the first Form — and so upwards in the ascending line. This follows necessarily from the hypothesis that the Form is like the objects. The participation of objects in the Form, therefore, cannot consist in being likened to it.17
16 Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 991, a. 20) characterises this way of presenting the Platonic Ideas as mere κενολογία and poetical metaphor. See also the remarkable Scholion of Alexander, pp. 574-575, Brandis.
17 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 132-133.
This is again a repetition, though differently presented, of the same argument — ὁ τρίτος ἄνθρωπος — enunciated p. 132 A.
If Ideas exist, they cannot be knowable by us. We can know only what is relative to ourselves. Individuals are relative to individuals: Ideas relative to Ideas.
5. Here are grave difficulties (continues Parmenides) opposed to this doctrine of yours, affirming the existence of self-existent, substantive, unchangeable, yet participated, Forms. But difficulties still graver remain behind. Such Forms as you describe cannot be cognizable by us: at least it is hard to show how they can be cognizable. Being self-existent and substantive, they are not in us: such of them as are relative, have their relation with each other, not with those particular objects among us, which are called great, little, and so forth, from being supposed to be similar to or participant in the forms, and bearing names the same as those of the Forms. Thus, for example, if I, an individual man, am in the relation of master, I bear that relation to another individual66 man who is my servant, not to servantship in general (i.e. the Form of servantship, the Servus per se). My servant, again, bears the relation of servant to me, an individual man as master, — not to mastership in general (i.e. to the Form of mastership, the Dominus per se). Both terms of the relation are individual objects. On the other hand, the Forms also bear relation to each other. The Form of servantship (Servus per se) stands in relation to the Form of mastership (Dominus per se). Neither of them correlates with an individual object. The two terms of the relation must be homogeneous, each of them a Form.18
18 Plato, Parmenid. p. 133 E.
Forms can be known only through the Form of Cognition, which we do not possess.
Now apply this to the case of cognition. The Form of Cognition correlates exclusively with the Form of Truth: the Form of each special Cognition, geometrical or medical, or other, correlates with the Form of Geometry or Medicine. But Cognition as we possess it, correlates only with Truth relatively to us: also, each special Cognition of ours has its special correlating Truth, relatively to us.19 Now the Forms are not in or with us, but apart from us: the Form of Cognition is not our Cognition, the Form of Truth is not our Truth. Forms can be known only through the Form of Cognition, which we do not possess: we cannot therefore know Forms. We have our own cognition, whereby we know what is relative to us; but we know nothing more. Forms, which are not relative to us, lie out of our knowledge. Bonum per se, Pulchrum per se, and the other self-existent Forms or Ideas, are to us altogether unknowable.20
19 Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 A. Οὐκοῦν καὶ ἐπιστήμη, αὐτὴ μὲν ὃ ἔστιν ἐπιστήμη, τῆς ὃ ἔστιν ἀλήθεια, αὐτῆς ἂν ἐκείνης εἴη ἐπιστήμη; … Ἡ δὲ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπιστήμη οὐ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ἂν ἀληθείας εἴη; καὶ αὖ ἑκάστη ἡ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπιστήμη τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ὄντων ἑκάστου ἂν ἐπιστήμη σύμβαινοι εἶναι;
Aristotle (Topica, vi. p. 147, a. 6) adverts to this as an argument against the theory of Ideas, but without alluding to the Parmenides; indeed he puts the argument in a different way — τὸ δ’ εἶδος πρὸς τὸ εἶδος δοκεῖ λέγεσθαι, οἷον αὐτὴ ἐπιθυμία αὐτοῦ ἡδέος, καὶ αὐτὴ βούλησις αὐτοῦ ἀγαθοῦ. Aristotle argues that there is no place in this doctrine for the φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν, which nevertheless men often wish for, and he remarks, in the Nikom. Ethica, i. 4, 1096 b. 33 — that the αὐτὸ-ἀγαθὸν is neither πρακτὸν nor κτητὸν ἀνθρώπῳ.
20 Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 C. Ἄγνωστον ἄρα ἡμῖν καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν ὃ ἔστι, καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, καὶ πάντα ἃ δὴ ὡς ἰδέας αὐτὰς οὔσας ὑπολαμβάνομεν.
Form of cognition, superior to our Cognition, belongs to the Gods. We cannot know them, nor can they know us.
6. Again, if there be a real self-existent Form of Cognition, apart from that which we or others possess — it must doubtless be far superior in accuracy and perfection 67to that which we possess.21 The Form of Beauty and the other Forms, must be in like manner superior to that which is found under the same name in individual objects. This perfect Form of Cognition must therefore belong to the Gods, if it belong to any one. But if so, the Gods must have a Form of Truth, the proper object of their Form of Cognition. They cannot know the truth relatively to us, which belongs to our cognition — any more than we can know the more perfect truth belonging to them. So too about other Forms. The perfect Form of mastership belongs to the Gods, correlating with its proper Form of servantship. Their mastership does not correlate with individual objects like us: in other words, they are not our masters, nor are we their servants. Their cognition, again, does not correlate with individual objects like us: in other words, they do not know us, nor do we know them. In like manner, we in our capacity of masters are not masters of them — we as cognizant beings know nothing of them or of that which they know. They can in no way correlate with us, nor can we correlate with them.22
21 An argument very similar is urged by Aristotle (Metaph. Θ. 1050, b. 34) εἰ ἄρα τινές εἰσι φύσεις τοιαῦται ἢ οὐσίαι οἵας λέγουσιν οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τὰς ἰδέας, πολὺ μᾶλλον ἐπιστῆμον ἄν τι εἴη ἡ αὐτοεπιστήμη καὶ κινούμενον ἡ κίνησις.
22 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 A. Ταῦτα μὲντοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔφη ὁ Παρμενίδης, καὶ ἔτι ἄλλα πρὸς τούτοις πάνυ πολλὰ ἀναγκαῖον ἔχειν τὰ εἴδη, εἰ εἰσὶν αὐται αἱ ἰδέαι τῶν ὄντων, &c.
Sum total of objections against the Ideas is grave. But if we do not admit that Ideas exist, and that they are knowable, there can be no dialectic discussion.
Here are some of the objections, Sokrates (concludes Parmenides), which beset your doctrine, that there exist substantive, self-standing, Forms of Ideas, each respectively definable. Many farther objections might also be urged.23 So that a man may reasonably maintain, either that none such exist — or that, granting their existence, they are essentially unknowable by us. He must put forth great ingenuity to satisfy himself of the affirmative; and still more wonderful ingenuity to find arguments for the satisfaction of others, respecting this question.
23 Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 D-E. Οὔκουν εἰ παρὰ τῷ θεῷ αὕτη ἔστιν ἡ ἀκριβεστάτη δεσποτεία καὶ αὕτη ἡ ἀκριβεστάτη ἐπιστήμη, οὔτ’ ἂν ἡ δεσποτεία ἡ ἐκείνων (i.e. τῶν θεῶν) ἡμῶν ποτὲ ἂν δεσπόσειεν, οὔτ’ ἂν ἡ ἐπιστήμη ἡμᾶς γνοίη οὐδέ τι ἄλλο τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν· ἀλλὰ ὁμοίως ἡμεῖς τ’ ἐκείνων οὐκ ἄρχομεν τῇ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀρχῇ, οὐδε γιγνώσκομεν τοῦ θείου οὐδὲν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ ἐπιστήμη, ἐκεῖνοί τε αὖ (sc. οἱ θεοί) κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον οὔτε δεσπόται ἡμῶν εἰσὶν οὔτε γιγνώσκουσι τὰ ἀνθρώπεια πράγματα θεοὶ ὄντες. Ἀλλὰ μὴ λίαν, ἔφη (Sokrates), ᾖ θαυμαστὸς ὁ λόγος, εἴ τις θεὸν ἀποστερήσεις τοῦ εἰδέναι.
The inference here drawn by Parmenides supplies the first mention of a doctrine revived by (if not transmitted to) Averroes and various scholastic doctors of the middle ages, so as to be formally condemned by theological councils. M. Renan tells us — “En 1269, Étienne Tempier, évêque de Paris, ayant rassemblé le conseil des maîtres en théologie … condamna, de concert avec eux, treize propositions qui ne sont presque toutes que les axiomes familiers de l’averroïsme: Quod intellectus hominum est unus et idem numero. Quod mundus est æternus. Quod nunquam fuit primus homo. Quod Deus non cognoscit singularia,” &c. (Renan, Averroès, p. 213, 2nd ed., p. 268.)
68Nevertheless, on the other side (continues Parmenides), unless we admit the existence of such Forms or Ideas — substantive, eternal, unchangeable, definable — philosophy and dialectic discussion are impossible.24
24 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 B.
Dilemma put by Parmenides — Acuteness of his objections.
Here then, Parmenides entangles himself and his auditors in the perplexing dilemma, that philosophical and dialectic speculation is impossible, unless these Forms or Ideas, together with the participation of sensible objects in them, be granted; while at the same time this cannot be granted, until objections, which appear at first sight unanswerable, have been disposed of.
The acuteness with which these objections are enforced, is remarkable. I know nothing superior to it in all the Platonic writings. Moreover the objections point directly against that doctrine which Plato in other dialogues most emphatically insists upon, and which Aristotle both announces and combats as characteristic of Plato — the doctrine of separate, self-existent, absolute, Forms or Ideas. They are addressed moreover to Sokrates, the chief exponent of that doctrine here as well as in other dialogues. And he is depicted as unable to meet them.
The doctrine which Parmenides attacks is the genuine Platonic theory of Ideas. His objections are never answered in any part of the Platonic dialogues.
It is true that Sokrates is here introduced as juvenile and untrained; or at least as imperfectly trained. And accordingly, Stallbaum with others think, that this is the reason of his inability to meet the objections: which (they tell us), though ingenious and plausible, yet having no application to the genuine Platonic doctrine about Ideas, might easily have been answered if Plato had thought fit, and are answered in other 69dialogues.25 But to me it appears, that the doctrine which is challenged in the Parmenidês is the genuine Platonic doctrine about Ideas, as enunciated by Plato in the Republic, Phædon, Philêbus, Timæus, and elsewhere — though a very different doctrine is announced in the Sophistês. Objections are here made against it in the Parmenidês. In what other dialogue has Plato answered them? and what proof can be furnished that he was able to answer them? There are indeed many other dialogues in which a real world of Ideas absolute and unchangeable, is affirmed strenuously and eloquently, with various consequences and accompaniments traced to it: but there are none in which the Parmenidean objections are elucidated, or even recited. In the Phædon, Phædrus, Timæus, Symposion, &c., and elsewhere, Sokrates is made to talk confidently about the existence and even about the cognoscibility of these Ideas; just as if no such objections as those which we read in the Parmenidês could be produced.26 In these other dialogues, Plato accepts implicitly one horn of the Parmenidean dilemma; but without explaining to us upon what grounds he allows himself to neglect the other.
25 Stallbaum, Prolegom. pp. 52-286-332.
26 According to Stallbaum (Prolegg. pp. 277-337) the Parmenidês is the only dialogue in which Plato has discussed, with philosophical exactness, the theory of Ideas; in all the other dialogues he handles it in a popular and superficial manner. There is truth in this — indeed more truth (I think) than Stallbaum himself supposed: otherwise he would hardly have said that the objections in the Parmenides could easily have been answered, if Plato had chosen.
Stallbaum tells us, not only respecting Socher but respecting Schleiermacher (pp. 324-332), “Parmenidem omnino non intellexit”. In my judgment, Socher understands the dialogue better than Stallbaum, when he (Socher) says, that the objections in the first half bear against the genuine Platonic Ideas; though I do not agree with his inference about the spuriousness of the dialogue.
Views of Stallbaum and Socher. The latter maintains that Plato would never make such objections against his own theory, and denies the authenticity of the Parmenidês.
Socher has so much difficulty in conceiving that Plato can have advanced such forcible objections against a doctrine, which nevertheless in other Platonic dialogues is proclaimed as true and important, — that he declares the Parmenidês (together with the Sophistês and Politikus) not to be genuine, but to have been composed by some unknown Megaric contemporary. To pass over the improbability that any unknown author should have been capable of composing works of so much ability as these — Socher’s decision about spuriousness is founded upon an estimate of Plato’s philosophical character, which I think incorrect. Socher 70expects (or at least reasons as if he expected) to find in Plato a preconceived system and a scheme of conclusions to which every thing is made subservient.
Philosophers are usually advocates, each of a positive system of his own.
In most philosophers, doubtless, this is what we do find. Each starts with some favourite conclusions, which he believes to be true, and which he supports by all the arguments in their favour, as far as his power goes. If he mentions the arguments against them, he usually answers the weak, slurs over or sneers at the strong: at any rate, he takes every precaution that these counter arguments shall appear unimportant in the eyes of his readers. His purpose is, like that of a speaker in the public assembly, to obtain assent and belief: whether the hearers understand the question or not, is a matter of comparative indifference: at any rate, they must be induced to embrace his conclusion. Unless he thus foregoes the character of an impartial judge, to take up that of an earnest advocate; unless he bends the whole force of his mind to the establishment of the given conclusion — he becomes suspected as deficient in faith or sincerity, and loses much in persuasive power. For an earnest belief, expressed with eloquence and feeling, is commonly more persuasive than any logic.
Different spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search.
Now whether this exclusive devotion to the affirmative side of certain questions be the true spirit of philosophy or not, it is certainly not the spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search; wherein he conceives the work of philosophy in a totally different manner. He does not begin by stating, even to himself a certain conclusion at which he has arrived, and then proceed to prove that conclusion to others. The search or debate (as I have observed in a preceding chapter) has greater importance in his eyes than the conclusion: nay, in a large proportion of his dialogues, there is no conclusion at all: we see something disproved, but nothing proved. The negative element has with him a value and importance of its own, apart from the affirmative. He is anxious to set forth what can be said against a given conclusion; even though not prepared to establish any thing in its place.
71The Parmenidês is the extreme manifestation of the negative element. That Plato should employ one dialogue in setting forth the negative case against the Theory of Ideas is not unnatural.
Such negative element, manifested as it is in so many of the Platonic dialogues, has its extreme manifestation in the Parmenidês. When we see it here applied to a doctrine which Plato in other dialogues insists upon as truth, we must call to mind (what sincere believers are apt to forget) that a case may always be made out against truth as well as in its favour: and that its privilege as a certified portion of “reasoned truth,” rests upon no better title than the superiority of the latter case over the former. It is for testing the two cases — for determining where the superiority lies — and for graduating its amount — that the process of philosophising is called for, and that improvements in the method thereof become desirable. That Plato should, in one of his many diversified dialogues, apply this test to a doctrine which, in other dialogues, he holds out as true — is noway inconsistent with the general spirit of these compositions. Each of his dialogues has its own point of view, worked out on that particular occasion; what is common to them all, is the process of philosophising applied in various ways to the same general topics.
Those who, like Socher, deny Plato’s authorship of the Parmenidês, on the ground of what is urged therein against the theory of Ideas, must suppose, either that he did not know that a negative case could be made out against that theory; or that knowing it, he refrained from undertaking the duty.27 Neither supposition is consistent with what we know both of his negative ingenuity, and of his multifarious manner of handling.
27 Plato, Philêbus, p. 14, where the distinction taken coincides accurately enough with that which we read in Plato, Parmenid. p. 129 A-D.
Strümpell thinks that the Parmenidês was composed at a time of Plato’s life when he had become sensible of the difficulties and contradictions attaching to his doctrine of self-existent Forms or Ideas, and when he was looking about for some way of extrication from them: which way he afterwards thought that he found in that approximation to Pythagorism — that exchange of Ideas for Ideal numbers, &c. — which we find imputed to him by Aristotle (Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96, 3). This is not impossible; but I find no sufficient ground for affirming it. Nor can I see how the doctrine which Aristotle ascribes to Plato about the Ideas (that they are generated by two στοιχεῖα or elements, τὸ ἕν along with τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) affords any escape from the difficulties started in the Parmenidês.
Strümpell considers the dialogue Parmenidês to have been composed “ganz ausdrücklich zur dialektischen Uebung,” ib. s. 96, 2, p. 128.
Force of the negative case in the Parmenidês. Difficulties about participation of sensible objects in the world of Ideas.
The negative case, made out in the Parmenidês against the 72theory of Ideas, is indeed most powerful. The hypothesis of the Ideal World is unequivocally affirmed by Sokrates, with its four principal characteristics. 1. Complete essential separation from the world of sense. 2. Absolute self-existence. 3. Plurality of constituent items, several contrary to each other. 4. Unchangeable sameness and unity of each and all of them. — Here we have full satisfaction given to the Platonic sentiment, which often delights in soaring above the world of sense, and sometimes (see Phædon) in heaping contemptuous metaphors upon it. But unfortunately Sokrates cannot disengage himself from this world of sense: he is obliged to maintain that it partakes of, or is determined by, these extra-sensible Forms or Ideas. Here commence the series of difficulties and contradictions brought out by the Elenchus of Parmenides. Are all sensible objects, even such as are vulgar, repulsive, and contemptible, represented in this higher world? The Platonic sentiment shrinks from the admission: the Platonic sense of analogy hesitates to deny it. Then again, how can both assertions be true — first that the two worlds are essentially separate, next, that the one participates in, and derives its essence from, the other? How (to use Aristotelian language28) can the essence be separated from that of which it is the essence? How can the Form, essentially One, belong at once to a multitude of particulars?
28 Arist. Met. A. 991, b. 1. ἀδύνατον, χωρὶς εἶναι τὴν οὐσίαν καὶ οὖ ἡ οὐσία.
Two points deserve notice in this debate respecting the doctrine of Ideas:—
Difficulties about the Cognizability of Ideas. If Ideas are absolute, they cannot be cognizable: if they are cognizable, they must be relative. Doctrine of Homo Mensura.
1. Parmenides shows, and Sokrates does not deny, that these Forms or Ideas described as absolute, self-existent, unchangeable, must of necessity be unknown and unknowable to us.29 Whatever we do know, or can know, is relative to us; — to our actual cognition, or to our cognitive power. If you declare an object to 73be absolute, you declare it to be neither known nor knowable by us: if it be announced as known or knowable by us, it is thereby implied at the same time not to be absolute. If these Forms or Objects called absolute are known, they can be known only by an absolute Subject, or the Form of a cognizant Subject: that is, by God or the Gods. Even thus, to call them absolute is a misnomer: they are relative to the Subject, and the Subject is relative to them.
29 Plato, Parmenid. 133 B. εἴ τις φαίη μηδὲ προσήκειν αὐτὰ γιγνώσκεσθαι ὄντα τοιαῦτα οἷά φαμεν δεῖν εἶναι τὰ εἴδη.… ἀπίθανος ἂν εἴη ὁ ἄγνωστα αὐτὰ ἀναγκάζων εἶναι. 134 A. ἡ δὲ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἐπιστήμη οὐ τῆς παρ’ ἡμῖν ἂν ἀληθείας εἴη; καὶ αὖ ἑκάστη ἡ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἑπιστήμη τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν ὄντων ἑκάστου ἂν ἐπιστήμη ξύμβαινοι εἶναι; 134 C. ἄγνωστον ἄρα ἡμῖν ἔστι καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν ὃ ἔστι, καὶ τὸ ἀγαθόν, καὶ πάντα ἃ δὴ ὡς ἰδέας αὐτὰς οὔσας ὑπολαμβάνομεν.
The opinion here advanced by the Platonic Parmenides asserts, in other words, what is equivalent to the memorable dictum of Protagoras — “Man is the measure of all things — of things existent, that they do exist — and of things non-existent, that they do not exist”. This dictum affirms universal relativity, and nothing else: though Plato, as we shall see in the elaborate argument against it delivered by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, mixed it up with another doctrine altogether distinct and independent — the doctrine that knowledge is sensible perception.30 Parmenides here argues that if these Forms or Ideas are known by us, they can be known only as relative to us: and that if they be not relative to us, they cannot be known by us at all. Such relativity belongs as much to the world of Conception, as to the world of Perception. And it is remarkable that Plato admits this essential relativity not merely here, but also in the Sophistês: in which latter dialogue he denies the Forms or Ideas to be absolute existences, on the special ground that they are known:— and on the farther ground that what is known must act upon the knowing mind, and must be acted upon thereby, i.e., must be relative. He there defines the existent to be, that which has power to act upon something else, or to be acted upon by something else. Such relativeness he declares to constitute existence:31 defining existence to mean potentiality.
31 Plato, Sophistês, pp. 248-249. This reasoning is put into the mouth of the Eleatic Stranger, the principal person in that dialogue.
Answer of Sokrates — That Ideas are mere conceptions of the mind. Objection of Parmenides correct, though undeveloped.
2. The second point which deserves notice in this portion of the Parmenidês, is the answer of Sokrates (when embarrassed by some of the questions of the Eleatic 74veteran) — “That these Forms or Ideas are conceptions of the mind, and have no existence out of the mind”. This answer gives us the purely Subjective, or negation of Object: instead of the purely Objective (Absolute), or negation of Subject.32 Here we have what Porphyry calls the deepest question of philosophy33 explicitly raised: and, as far as we know, for the first time. Are the Forms or Ideas mere conceptions of the mind and nothing more? Or are they external, separate, self-existent realities? The opinion which Sokrates had first given declared the latter: that which he now gives declares the former. He passes from the pure Objective (i.e., without Subject) to the pure Subjective (i.e., without Object). Parmenides, in his reply, points out that there cannot be a conception of nothing: that if there be Conceptio, there must be Conceptum aliquid:34 and that this Conceptum or Concept is what is common to a great many distinct similar Percepta.
32 Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 A-B.
The doctrine, that ποιότητες were φιλαὶ ἔννοιαι, having no existence without the mind, was held by Antisthenes as well as by the Eretrian sect of philosophers, contemporary with Plato and shortly after him. Simplikius, Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 30, Brandis. See, respecting Antisthenes, the first volume of the present work, p. 165.
33 See the beginning of Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. βαθυτάτη οὔσης τῆς τοιαύτης πραγματείας, &c. Simplikius (in Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 28, ed. Brandis) alludes to the Eretrian philosophers and Theopompus, who considered τὰς ποιότητας as φιλὰς μόνας ἐννοίας διακενῶς λεγομένας κατ’ οὐδεμίας ὑποστάσεως, οἷον ἀνθρωπότητα ἢ ἱππότητα, &c.
34 Compare Republic, v. p. 476 B. ὁ γιγνώσκων γιγνώσκει τὶ ἢ οὐδὲν; Γιγνώσκει τί, &c.
The following passage in the learned work of Cudworth bears on the portion of the Parmenidês which we are now considering. Cudworth, Treatise of Immutable Morality, pp. 243-245.
“But if any one demand here, where this ἀκίνητος οὐσία, these immutable Entities do exist? I answer, first, that as they are considered formally, they do not properly exist in the Individuals without us, as if they were from them imprinted upon the Understanding, which some have taken to be Aristotle’s opinion; because no Individual Material thing is either Universal or Immutable.… Because they perish not together with them, it is a certain argument that they exist independently upon them. Neither, in the next place, do they exist somewhere else apart from the Individual Sensibles, and without the Mind, which is that opinion that Aristotle justly condemns, but either unjustly or unskilfully attributes to Plato.… Wherefore these Intelligible Ideas or Essences of Things, those Forms by which we understand all Things, exist nowhere but in the mind itself; for it was very well determined long ago by Socrates, in Plato’s Parmenidês, that these things are nothing else but Noemata: ‘These Species or Ideas are all of them nothing but Noemata or Notions that exist nowhere but in the Soul itself’.…
“And yet notwithstanding, though these Things exist only in the Mind, they are not therefore mere Figments of the Understanding.…
“It is evident that though the Mind thinks of these Things at pleasure, yet they are not arbitrarily framed by the Mind, but have certain, determinate, and immutable Natures of their own, which are independent upon the Mind, and which are blown (quære not blown) away into Nothing at the pleasure of the same Being that arbitrarily made them.”
It is an inadvertence on the part of Cudworth to cite this passage of the Parmenidês as authenticating Plato’s opinion that Forms or Ideas existed only in the mind. Certainly Sokrates is here made to express that opinion, among others; but the opinion is refuted by Parmenidês and dropped by Sokrates. But the very different opinion, which Cudworth accuses Aristotle of wrongly attributing to Plato, is repeated by Sokrates in the Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere, and never refuted.
75This reply, though scanty and undeveloped, is in my judgment both valid, as it negatives the Subject pure and simple, and affirms that to every conception in the mind, there must correspond a Concept out of (or rather along with) the mind (the one correlating with or implying the other) — and correct as far as it goes, in declaring what that Concept is. Such Concept is, or may be, the Form. Parmenides does not show that it is not so. He proceeds to impugn, by a second argument, the assertion of Sokrates — that the form is a Conception wholly within the mind: he goes on to argue that individual things (which are out of the mind) cannot participate in these Forms (which are asserted to be altogether in the mind): because, if that were admitted, either every such thing must be a Concipient, or must run into the contradiction of being a Conceptio non concipiens.35 Now this argument may refute the affirmation of Sokrates literally taken, that the Form is a Conception entirely belonging to the mind, and having nothing Objective corresponding to it — but does not refute the doctrine that the Form is a Concept correlating with the mind — or out of the mind as well as in it. In this as in other Concepts, the subjective point of view preponderates over the objective, though Object is not altogether eliminated: just as, in the particular external things, the objective point of view predominates, though Subject cannot be altogether dismissed. Neither Subject nor Object can ever entirely disappear: the one is the inseparable correlative and complement of the other: but sometimes the subjective point of view may preponderate, sometimes76 the objective. Such preponderance (or logical priority), either of the one or the other, may be implied or connoted by the denomination given. Though the special connotation of the name creates an illusion which makes the preponderant point of view seem to be all, and magnifies the Relatum so as to eclipse and extinguish the Correlatum — yet such preponderance, or logical priority, is all that is really meant when the Concepts are said to be “in the mind” — and the Percepts (Percepta, things perceived) to be “out of the mind”: for both Concepts and Percepts are “of the mind, or relative to the mind”.36
35 On this point the argument in the dialogue itself, as stated by Parmenides, is not clear to follow. Strümpell remarks on the terms employed by Plato. “Der Umstand, dass die Ausdrücke εἶδος und ἰδέα nicht sowie λόγος den Unterschied, zwischen Begriff und dem durch diesen begriffenen Realen, hervortreten lassen — sondern, weil dieselben bald im subjektiven Sinne den Begriff, bald im objektiven Sinne das Reale bezeichnen — bald in der einen bald in der andern Bedeutung zu nehmen sind — kann leicht eine Verwechselung und Unklarheit in der Auffassung veranlassen,” &c. (Gesch. der Gr. Philos. s. 90, p. 115).
36 This preponderance of the Objective point of view, though without altogether eliminating the Subjective, includes all that is true in the assertion of Aristotle, that the Perceptum is prior to the Percipient — the Percipiendum prior to the Perceptionis Capax. He assimilates the former to a Movens, the latter to a Motum. But he declares that he means not a priority in time or real existence, but simply a priority in nature or logical priority; and he also declares the two to be relatives or reciproca. The Prius is relative to the Posterius, as the Posterius is relative to the Prius. — Metaphys. Γ. 1010, b. 36 seq. ἀλλ’ ἔστι τι καὶ ἕτερον παρὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν, ὃ ἀναγκη πρότερον εἶναι τῆς αἰσθήσεῶς· τὸ γὰρ κινοῦν τοῦ κινουμένου φύσει πρότερόν ἐστι· κἂν εἰ λέγεται πρὸς ἄλληλα ταῦτα, οὐδὲν ἧττον.
See respecting the πρότερον φύσει, Aristot. Categor. p. 12, b. 5-15, and Metaphys. Δ. 1018, b. 12 — ἁπλῶς καὶ τῇ φύσει πρότερον.
Meaning of Abstract and General Terms, debated from ancient times to the present day — Different views of Plato and Aristotle upon it.
The question — What is the real and precise meaning attached to abstract and general words? — has been debated down to this day, and is still under debate. It seems to have first derived its importance, if not its origin, from Sokrates, who began the practice of inviting persons to define the familiar generalities of ethics and politics, and then tested by cross-examination the definitions given by men who thought that common sense would enable any one to define.37 But I see no ground for believing that Sokrates ever put to himself the question — Whether that which an abstract term denotes is a mental conception, or a separate and self-existent reality. That question was raised by Plato, and first stands clearly brought to view here in the Parmenidês.
37 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. 987, b. 3. M. 1078, b. 18-32.
If we follow up the opinion here delivered by the Platonic Sokrates, together with the first correction added to it by Parmenides, amounting to this — That the Form is a Conception of the mind with its corresponding Concept: if, besides, we dismiss the doctrine held by Plato, that the Form is a separate self-existent77 unchangeable Ens (ἓν παρὰ τὰ πολλὰ): there will then be no greater difficulty in understanding how it can be partaken by, or be at once in, many distinct particulars, than in understanding (what is at bottom the same question) how one and the same attribute can belong at once to many different objects: how hardness or smoothness can be at once in an indefinite number of hard and smooth bodies dispersed everywhere.38 The object and the attribute are both of them relative to the same percipient and concipient mind: we may perceive or conceive many objects as distinct individuals — we may also conceive them all as resembling in a particular manner, making abstraction of the individuality of each: both these are psychological facts, and the latter of the two is what we mean when we say, that all of them possess or participate in one and the same attribute. The concrete term, and its corresponding abstract, stand for the same facts of sense differently conceived. Now the word one, when applied to the attribute, has a different meaning from one when applied to an individual object. Plato speaks sometimes elsewhere as if he felt this diversity of meaning: not however in the Parmenidês, though there is great demand for it. But Aristotle (in this respect far superior) takes much pains to point out that 78Unum Ens — and the preposition In (to be in any thing) — are among the πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα, having several different meanings derived from one primary or radical by diverse and distant ramifications.39 The important logical distinction between Unum numero and Unum specie (or genere, &c.) belongs first to Aristotle.40
38 That “the attribute is in its subject,” is explained by Aristotle only by saying That it is in its subject, not as a part in the whole, yet as that which cannot exist apart from its subject (Categor. 1, a. 30-3, a. 30). Compare Hobbes, Comput. or Logic. iii. 3, viii. 3. Respecting the number of different modes τοῦ ἔν τινι εἶναι, see Aristot. Physic. iii. p. 210, a. 18 seq., with the Scholia, p. 373 Brandis, and p. 446, 10 Brand. The commentators made out, variously, nine, eleven, sixteen distinct τρόπους τοῦ ἔν τινι εἶναι. In the language of Aristotle, genus, species, εἶδος, and even differentia are not ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ, but are predicated καθ’ ὑποκειμένου (see Cat. p. 3, a. 20). The proprium and accidens alone are ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ. Here is a difference between his language and that of Plato, according to whom τὸ εἶδος is ἐν ἑκάστῳ τῶν πολλῶν (Parmenid. 131 A). But we remark in that same dialogue, that when Parmenides questions Sokrates whether he recognises εἴδη αὐτὰ καθ’ αὐτά he first asks whether Sokrates admits δικαίου τι εἶδος αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό, καὶ καλοῦ, καὶ ἀγαθοῦ, καὶ πάντων τῶν τοιούτων. Sokrates answers without hesitation, Yes. Then Parmenides proceeds to ask, Do you recognise an εἶδος of man, separate and apart from all of us individual men? — or an εἶδος of fire, water, and such like? Here Sokrates hesitates: he will neither admit nor deny it (130 D). The first list, which Sokrates at once accepts, is of what Aristotle would call accidents: the second, which Sokrates doubts about, is of what Aristotle would call second substances. We thus see that the conception of a self-existent εἶδος realised itself most easily and distinctly to the mind of Plato in the case of accidents. He would, therefore, naturally conceive τὰ εἴδη as being ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ, agreeing substantially, though not in terms, with Aristotle. It is in the case of accidents or attributes that abstract names are most usually invented; and it is the abstract name, or the neuter adjective used as its equivalent, which suggests the belief in an εἶδος.
39 Aristotel. Metaphys. Δ. 1015-1016, I. 1052, a. 29 seq. τὰ μὲν δὴ οὕτως ἓν ἢ συνεχὲς ἢ ὅλον· τὰ δὲ ὧν ἂν ὁ λόγος εἷς ᾖ· τοιαῦτα δὲ ὧν ἡ νόησις μία, &c.
About abstract names, or the names of attributes, see Mr. John Stuart Mill’s ‘System of Logic,’ i. 2, 4, p. 30, edit. 5th. “When only one attribute, neither variable in degree nor in kind, is designated by the name — as visibleness, tangibleness, equality, &c. — though it denotes an attribute of many different objects, the attribute itself is always considered as one, not as many.” Compare, also, on this point, p. 153, and a note added by Mr. Mill to the fifth edition, p. 203, in reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer. The oneness of the attribute, in different subjects, is not conceded by every one. Mr. Spencer thinks that the same abstract word denotes one attribute in Subject A, and another attribute, though exactly like it, in Subject B (Principles of Psychology, p. 126 seq.) Mr. Mill’s view appears the correct one; but the distinction (pointed out by Archbishop Whately) between undistinguishable likeness and positive identity, becomes in these cases imperceptible or forgotten.
Aristotle, however, in the beginning of the Categories ranks ἡ τίς γραμματικὴ as ἄτομον καὶ ἓν ἀριθμῷ (pp. 1, 6, 8), which I do not understand; and it seems opposed to another passage, pp. 3, 6, 15.
The argument between two such able thinkers as Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer, illustrates forcibly the extreme nicety of this question respecting the One and the Many, under certain supposable circumstances. We cannot be surprised that it puzzled the dialecticians of the Platonic Aristotelian age, who fastened by preference on points of metaphysical difficulty.
40 See interesting remarks on the application of this logical distinction in Galen, De Methodo Medendi, Book iii. vol. x. p. 130 seq. Aristotle and Theophrastus both dwelt upon it.
Plato never expected to make his Ideas fit on to the facts of sense: Aristotle tried to do it and partly succeeded.
Plato has not followed out the hint which he has here put into the mouth of Sokrates in the Parmenidês — That the Ideas or Forms are conceptions existing only in the mind. Though the opinion thus stated is not strictly correct (and is so pointed out by himself), as falling back too exclusively on the subjective — yet if followed out, it might have served to modify the too objective and absolute character which in most dialogues (though not in the Sophistês) he ascribes to his Forms or Ideas: laying stress upon them as objects — and as objects not of sensible perception — but overlooking or disallowing the fact of their being relative to the concipient mind. The bent of Plato’s philosophy was to dwell upon these Forms, and to bring them into harmonious conjunction with each other: he neither took pains, nor expected, to make them fit on to the world of sense. With Aristotle, on the contrary, this last-mentioned purpose is kept very generally in view. Amidst all the extreme abstractions 79which he handles, he reverts often to the comparison of them with sensible particulars: indeed Substantia Prima was by him, for the first time in the history of philosophy, brought down to designate the concrete particular object of sense: in Plato’s Phædon, Republic, &c, the only Substances are the Forms or Ideas.
Continuation of the Dialogue — Parmenides admonishes Sokrates that he has been premature in delivering a doctrine, without sufficient preliminary exercise.
Parmenides now continues the debate. He has already fastened upon Sokrates several difficult problems: he now proposes a new one, different and worse. Which way are we to turn then, if these Forms be beyond our knowledge? I do not see my way (says Sokrates) out of the perplexity. The fact is, Sokrates (replies Parmenides), you have been too forward in producing your doctrine of Ideas, without a sufficient preliminary exercise and enquiry. Your love of philosophical research is highly praiseworthy: but you must employ your youth in exercising and improving yourself, through that continued philosophical discourse which the vulgar call useless prosing: otherwise you will never attain truth.41 You are however right in bestowing your attention, not on the objects of sense, but on those objects which we can best grasp in discussion, and which we presume to exist as Forms.42
41 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C. Πρῲ γάρ, πρὶν γυμνασθῆναι, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὁρίζεσθαι ἐπιχειρεῖς καλόν τέ τι καὶ δίκαιον καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν εἰδῶν … καλὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ θεία, εἶ ἴσθι, ἡ ὁρμὴ ἣν ὁρμᾷς ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους· ἕλκυσον δὲ σαυτὸν καὶ γυμνάσαι, μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς δοκούσης ἀχρήστου εἶναι καὶ καλουμένης ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἀδολεσχίας, ἕως ἔτι νέος εἶ· εἰ δὲ μὴ, σὲ διαφεύξεται ἡ ἀλήθεια.
42 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 E.
What sort of exercise? Parmenides describes: To assume provisionally both the affirmative and the negative of many hypotheses about the most general terms, and to trace the consequences of each.
What sort of exercise must I go through? asks Sokrates. Zeno (replies Parmenides) has already given you a good specimen of it in his treatise, when he followed out the consequences flowing from the assumption — “That the self-existent and absolute Ens is plural”. When you are trying to find out the truth on any question, you must assume provisionally, first the affirmative and then the negative, and you must then follow out patiently the consequences deducible from one hypothesis as well as from the other. If you are enquiring about the Form of Likeness, whether it exists or does not exist, you must assume successively 80both one and the other;43 marking the deductions which follow, both with reference to the thing directly assumed, and with reference to other things also. You must do the like if you are investigating other Forms — Unlikeness, Motion, and Rest, or even Existence and Non-Existence. But you must not be content with following out only one side of the hypothesis: you must examine both sides with equal care and impartiality. This is the only sort of preparatory exercise which will qualify you for completely seeing through the truth.44
43 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 A. καὶ αὖθις αὖ ἐὰν ὑποθῇ, εἰ ἔστιν ὁμοιότης ἢ εἰ μή ἐστι, τί ἐφ’ ἑκατέρας τῆς ὑποθέσεως συμβήσεται, καὶ αὐτοῖς τοῖς ὑποτεθεῖσι καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις καὶ πρὸς αὑτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα.
44 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.
Impossible to do this before a numerous audience — Parmenides is entreated to give a specimen — After much solicitation he agrees.
You propose to me, Parmenides (remarks Sokrates), a work of awful magnitude. At any rate, show me an example of it yourself, that I may know better how to begin. — Parmenides at first declines, on the ground of his old age: but Zeno and the others urge him, so that he at length consents. — The process will be tedious (observes Zeno); and I would not ask it from Parmenides unless among an audience small and select as we are here. Before any numerous audience, it would be an unseemly performance for a veteran like him. For most people are not aware that, without such discursive survey and travelling over the whole field, we cannot possibly attain truth or acquire intelligence.45
45 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 D. εἰ μὲν οὖν πλείους ἦμεν, οὐκ ἂν ἄξιον ἦν δεῖσθαι· ἀπρεπῆ γὰρ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλῶν ἐναντίον λέγειν, ἄλλως τε καὶ τηλικούτῳ· ἀγνοοῦσι γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ ὅτι ἄνευ ταύτης τῆς διὰ πάντων διεξόδου καὶ πλάνης, ἀδύνατον ἐντυχόντα τῷ ἀληθεῖ νοῦν σχεῖν. Hobbes remarks (Computatio sive Logica, i. 3, 12): “Learners ought to go through logical exercises silently and by themselves: for it will be thought both ridiculous and absurd, for a man to use such language publicly”. Proklus tells us, that the difficulty of the γυμνασία, here set out by the Platonic Parmenides, is so prodigious, that no one after Plato employed it. (Prok. ad Parmen. p. 801, Stallb.)
Parmenides elects his own theory of the Unum, as the topic for exhibition — Aristoteles becomes respondent.
It is especially on this ground — the small number and select character of the auditors — that Parmenides suffers himself to be persuaded to undertake what he calls “amusing ourselves with a laborious pastime”.46 He selects, as the subject of his dialectical exhibition, his own doctrine respecting the One. He proceeds to 81trace out the consequences which flow, first, from assuming the affirmative thesis, Unum Est: next, from assuming the negative thesis, or the Antithesis, Unum non Est. The consequences are to be deduced from each hypothesis, not only as regards Unum itself, but as regards Cætera, or other things besides Unum. The youngest man of the party, Aristoteles, undertakes the duty of respondent.
46 Plato, Parmenid. p. 137 A. δεῖ γὰρ χαρίζεσθαι, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ὃ Ζήνων λέγει, αὐτοί ἐσμεν … ἢ βούλεσθε ἐπειδήπερ δοκεῖ πραγματειώδη παιδιὰν παίζειν, &c.
Exhibition of Parmenides — Nine distinct deductions or Demonstrations, first from Unum Est — next from Unum non Est.
The remaining portion of the dialogue, half of the whole, is occupied with nine distinct deductions or demonstrations given by Parmenides. The first five start from the assumption, Unum Est: the last four from the assumption, Unum non Est. The three first draw out the deductions from Unum Est, in reference to Unum: the fourth and fifth draw out the consequences from the same premiss, in reference to Cætera. Again, the sixth and seventh start from Unum non Est, to trace what follows in regard to Unum: the eighth and ninth adopt the same hypothesis, and reason it out in reference to Cætera.
The Demonstrations in antagonising pairs, or Antinomies. Perplexing entanglement of conclusions given without any explanation.
Of these demonstrations, one characteristic feature is, that they are presented in antagonising pairs or Antinomies: except the third, which professes to mediate between the first and second, though only by introducing new difficulties. We have four distinct Antinomies: the first and second, the fourth and fifth, the sixth and seventh, the eighth and ninth, stand respectively in emphatic contradiction with each other. Moreover, to take the demonstrations separately — the first, fifth, seventh, ninth, end in conclusions purely negative: the other four end in double and contradictory conclusions. The purpose is formally proclaimed, of showing that the same premisses, ingeniously handled, can be made to yield these contradictory results.47 No attempt is made to reconcile the contradictions, except partially by means of the third, in reference to the two preceding. In regard to the fourth and fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth and ninth, no hint is given that they 82can be, or afterwards will be, reconciled. The dialogue concludes abruptly at the end of the ninth demonstration, with these words: “We thus see that — whether Unum exists or does not exist — Unum and Cætera both are, and are not, all things in every way — both appear, and do not appear, all things in every way — each in relation to itself, and each in relation to the other”.48 Here is an unqualified and even startling announcement of double and contradictory conclusions, obtained from the same premisses both affirmative and negative: an announcement delivered too as the fulfilment of the purpose of Parmenides. Nothing is said at the end to intimate how the demonstrations are received by Sokrates, nor what lesson they are expected to administer to him: not a word of assent, or dissent, or surprise, or acknowledgment in any way, from the assembled company, though all of them had joined in entreating Parmenides, and had expressed the greatest anxiety to hear his dialectic exhibition. Those who think that an abrupt close, or an abrupt exordium, is sufficient reason for declaring a dialogue not to be the work of Plato (as Platonic critics often argue), are of course consistent in disallowing the Parmenides. For my part, I do not agree in the opinion. I take Plato as I find him, and I perceive both here and in the Protagoras and elsewhere, that he did not always think it incumbent upon him to adapt the end of his dialogues to the beginning. This may be called a defect, but I do not feel called upon to make out that Plato’s writings are free from defects; and to acknowledge nothing as his work unless I can show it to be faultless.
47 See the connecting words between the first and second demonstration, pp. 142 A, 159. Οὐκοῦν ταῦτα μὲν ἤδη ἐῶμεν ὡς φανερά, ἐπισκοπῶμεν δὲ πάλιν, ἓν εἰ ἔστιν, ἆρα καὶ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει τἄλλα τοῦ ἑνὸς ἢ οὕτω μόνον; Also p. 163 B.
48 Plato, Parmenid. ad fin. Εἰρήσθω τοίνυν τοῦτό τε καὶ ὅτι, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἓν εἴτ’ ἔστιν εἴτε μὴ ἔστιν, αὐτό τε καὶ τἄλλα καὶ πρὸς αὑτὰ καὶ πρὸς ἄλληλα πάντα πάντως ἐστί τε καὶ οὐκ ἐστι καὶ φαίνεταί τε καὶ οὐ φαίνεται.
Different judgments of Platonic critics respecting the Antinomies and the dialogue generally.
The demonstrations or Antinomies in the last half of the Parmenides are characterised by K. F. Hermann and others as a masterpiece of speculative acuteness. Yet if these same demonstrations, constructed with care and labour for the purpose of proving that the same premisses will conduct to double and contradictory conclusions, had come down to us from antiquity under the name either of the Megaric Eukleides, or Protagoras, or Gorgias — many of the Platonic critics would probably have 83said of them (what is now said of the sceptical treatise remaining to us under the name of Gorgias) that they were poor productions worthy of such Sophists, who are declared to have made a trade of perverting truth. Certainly the conclusions of the demonstrations are specimens of that “Both and Neither,” which Plato (in the Euthydemus49) puts into the mouth of the Sophist Dionysodorus as an answer of slashing defiance — and of that intentional evolution of contradictions which Plato occasionally discountenances, both in the Euthydemus and elsewhere.50 And we know from Proklus51 that there were critics in ancient times, who depreciated various parts of the Parmenides as sophistical. Proklus himself denies the charge with some warmth. He as well as the principal Neo-Platonists between 200-530 A.D. (especially his predecessors and instructors at Athens, Jamblichus, Syrianus, and Plutarchus) admired the Parmenides as a splendid effort of philosophical genius in its most exalted range, inspired so as to become cognizant of superhuman persons and agencies. They all agreed so far as to discover in the dialogue a sublime vein of mystic theology and symbolism: but along with this general agreement, there was much discrepancy in their interpretation of particular parts and passages. The commentary of Proklus attests the existence of such debates, reporting his own dissent from the interpretations sanctioned by his venerated masters, Plutarchus and Syrianus. That commentary, in spite of its prolixity, is curious to read as a specimen of the fifth century, A.D., in one of its most eminent representatives. Proklus discovers a string of theological symbols and a mystical meaning throughout the whole dialogue: not merely in the acute argumentation which characterises its middle part, but also in the perplexing antinomies of its close, and even in the dramatic 84details of places, persons, and incidents, with which it begins.52
49 Plato, Euthydem. p. 300 C. Ἀλλ’ οὐ τοῦτο ἐρωτῶ, ἀλλὰ τὰ πάντα σιγᾷ ἢ λέγει; Οὐδέτερα καὶ ἀμφότερα, ἔφη ὑφαρπάσας ὁ Διονυσόδωρος· εὖ γὰρ οἶδα ὅτι τῇ ἀποκρίσει οὐχ ἕξεις ὅ, τι χρῇ.
50 Plato, Sophist. p. 259 B. εἴτε ὡς τι χαλεπὸν κατανενοηκὼς χαίρει, τοτὲ μὲν ἐπὶ θάτερα τοτὲ δ’ ἐπὶ θάτερα τοὺς λόγους ἕλκων, οὐκ ἄξια πολλῆς σπουδῆς ἐσπούδακεν, ὡς οἱ νῦν λόγοι φασίν. — Also p. 259 D. Τὸ δὲ ταὐτὸν ἕτερον ἀποφαίνειν ἁμῇ γέ πῃ, καὶ τὸ θάτερον ταὐτόν, καὶ τὸ μέγα σμικρόν, καὶ τὸ ὅμοιον ἀνόμοιον, καὶ χαίρειν οὕτω τἀναντία ἀεὶ προφέροντα ἐν τοῖς λόγοις, οὔ τέ τις ἔλεγχος οὗτος ἀληθινός, ἄρτι τε τῶν ὄντων τινὸς ἐφαπτομένου δῆλος νεογενὴς ὤν.
51 Proklus, ad Platon. Parmen. p. 953, ed. Stallb.; compare p. 976 in the last book of the commentary, probably composed by Damaskius. K. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der Platon. Philos. p. 507.
52 This commentary is annexed to Stallbaum’s edition of the Parmenides. Compare also the opinion of Marinus (disciple and biographer of Proklus) about the Parmenidês — Suidas v. Μαρῖνος. Jamblichus declared that Plato’s entire theory of philosophy was embodied in the two dialogues, Parmenides and Timæus: in the Parmenides, all the intelligible or universal Entia were deduced from τὸ ἕν: in the Timæus, all cosmical realities were deduced from the Demiurgus. Proklus ad Timæeum, p. 5 A, p. 10 Schneider.
Alkinous, in his Introduction to the Platonic Dialogues (c. 6, p. 159, in the Appendix Platonica attached to K. F. Hermann’s edition of Plato) quotes several examples of syllogistic reasoning from the Parmenides, and affirms that the ten categories of Aristotle are exhibited therein.
Plotinus (Ennead. v. 1, 8) gives a brief summary of what he understood to be contained in the Antinomies of the Platonic Parmenides; but the interpretation departs widely from the original.
I transcribe a few sentences from the argument of Ficinus, to show what different meanings may be discovered in the same words by different critics. (Ficini Argum. in Plat. Parmen. p. 756.) “Cum Plato per omnes ejus dialogos totius sapientiæ semina sparserit, in libris De Republicâ cuncta moralis philosophiæ instituta collegit, omnem naturalium rerum scientiam in Timæo, universam in Parmenide complexus est Theologiam. Cumque in aliis longo intervallo cæteros philosophos antecesserit, in hoc tandem seipsum superasse videtur. Hic enim divus Plato de ipso Uno subtilissimé disputat: quemadmodum Ipsum Unum rerum omnium principium est, super omnia, omniaque ab illo: quo pacto ipsum extra omnia sit et in omnibus: omniaque ex illo, per illud, atque ad illud. Ad hujus, quod super essentiam est, Unius intelligentiam gradatim ascendit. In iis quæ fluunt et sensibus subjiciuntur et sensibilia nominantur: In iis etiam quas semper eadem sunt et sensibilia nuncupantur, non sensibus amplius sed solâ mente percipienda: Nec in iis tantum, verum etiam supra sensum et sensibilia, intellectumque et intelligibilia:— ipsum Unum existit. — Illud insuper advertendum est, quod in hoc dialogo cum dicitur Unum, Pythagoreorum more quæque substantia a materiâ penitus absoluta significari potest: ut Deus, Mens, Anima. Cum vero dicitur Aliud et Alia, tam materia, quam illa quæ in materiâ fiunt, intelligere licet.”
The Prolegomena, prefixed by Thomson to his edition of the Parmenides, interpret the dialogue in the same general way as Proklus and Ficinus: they suppose that by Unum is understood Summus Deus, and they discover in the concluding Antinomies theological demonstrations of the unity, simplicity, and other attributes of God. Thomson observes, very justly, that the Parmenides is one of the most difficult dialogues in Plato (Prolegom. iv.-x.) But in my judgment, his mode of exposition, far from smoothing the difficulties, adds new ones greater than those in the text.
The various explanations of it given by more recent commentators may be seen enumerated in the learned Prolegomena of Stallbaum,53 who has also set forth his own views at considerable length. And the prodigious opposition between the views 85of Proklus (followed by Ficinus in the fifteenth century), who extols the Parmenides as including in mystic phraseology sublime religious truths — and those of the modern Tiedemann, who despises them as foolish subtleties and cannot read them with patience — is quite sufficient to inspire a reasonable Platonic critic with genuine diffidence.
53 Stallbaum, Prolegg. in Parmen. ii. 1, pp. 244-265. Compare K. F. Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. der Platon. Phil. pp. 507-668-670.
To the works which he has there enumerated, may be added the Dissertation by Dr. Kuno Fischer, Stuttgart, 1851, De Parmenide Platonico, and that of Zeller, Platonische Studien, p. 169 seqq.
Kuno Fischer (pp. 102-103) after Hegel (Gesch. der Griech. Phil. I. p. 202), and some of the followers of Hegel, extol the Parmenides as a masterpiece of dialectics, though they complain that “der philosophirende Pöbel” misunderstand it, and treat it as obscure. Werder, Logik, pp. 92-176, Berlin, 1841. Carl Beck, Platon’s Philosophie im Abriss ihrer genetischen Entwickelung, p. 75, Reutlingen, 1852. Marbach, Gesch. der Griech. Phil. sect. 96, pp. 210-211.
No dogmatical solution or purpose is wrapped up in the dialogue. The purpose is negative, to make a theorist keenly feel all the difficulties of theorising.
In so far as these different expositions profess, each in its own way, to detect a positive dogmatical result or purpose in the Parmenides,54 none of them carry conviction to my mind, any more than the mystical interpretations 86which we read in Proklus. If Plato had any such purpose, he makes no intimation of it, directly or indirectly. On the contrary, he announces another purpose not only different, but contrary. The veteran Parmenides, while praising the ardour of speculative research displayed by Sokrates, at the same time reproves gently, but distinctly, the confident forwardness of two such immature youths as Sokrates and Aristotle in laying down positive doctrines without the preliminary exercise indispensable for testing them.55 Parmenides appears from the beginning to the end of the dialogue as a propounder of doubts and objections, not as a doctrinal teacher. He seeks to restrain the haste of Sokrates — to make him ashamed of premature affirmation87 and the false persuasion of knowledge — to force upon him a keen sense of real difficulties which have escaped his notice. To this end, a specimen is given of the exercise required. It is certainly well calculated to produce the effect intended — of hampering, perplexing, and putting to shame, the affirmative rashness of a novice in philosophy. It exhibits a tangled skein of ingenious contradiction which the novice must somehow bring into order, before he is in condition to proclaim any positive dogma. If it answers this purpose, it does all that Parmenides promises. Sokrates is warned against attaching himself exclusively to one side of an hypothesis, and neglecting the opposite: against surrendering himself to some pre-conception, traditional, or self-originated, and familiarising his mind with its consequences, while no pains are taken to study the consequences of the negative side, and bring them into comparison. It is this one-sided mental activity, and premature finality of assertion, which Parmenides seeks to correct. Whether the corrective exercises which he prescribes are the best for the purpose, may be contested: but assuredly the malady which he seeks to correct is deeply rooted in our human nature, and is combated by Sokrates himself, though by other means, in several of the Platonic dialogues. It is a rare mental endowment to study both sides of a question, and suspend decision until the consequences of each are fully known.
54 I agree with Schleiermacher, in considering that the purpose of the Parmenides is nothing beyond γυμνασία, or exercise in the method and perplexities of philosophising (Einl. p. 83): but I do not agree with him, when he says (pp. 90-105) that the objections urged by Parmenides (in the middle of the dialogue) against the separate substantiality of Forms or Ideas, though noway answered in the dialogue itself, are sufficiently answered in other dialogues (which he considers later in time), especially in the Sophistes (though, according to Brandis, Handb. Gr.-Röm. Phil. p. 241, the Sophistes is earlier than the Parmenides). Zeller, on the other hand, denies that these objections are at all answered in the Sophistes; but he maintains that the second part of the Parmenides itself clears up the difficulties propounded in the first part. After an elaborate analysis (in the Platon. Studien, pp. 168-178) of the Antinomies or contradictory Demonstrations in the concluding part of the dialogue, Zeller affirms the purpose of them to be “die richtige Ansicht von den Ideen als der Einheit in dem Mannichfaltigen der Erscheinung dialektisch zu begründen, die Ideenlehre möglichen Einwürfen und Missverständnissen gegenüber dialektisch zu begründen” (pp. 180-182). This solution has found favour with some subsequent commentators. See Susemihl, Die genetische Entwickelung der Platon. Philosophie, pp. 341-353; Heinrich Stein, Vorgeschichte und System des Platonismus, pp. 217-220.
To me it appears (what Zeller himself remarks in p. 188, upon the discovery of Schleiermacher that the objections started in the Parmenides are answered in the Sophistes) that it requires all the acuteness of so able a writer as Zeller to detect any such result as that which he here extracts from the Parmenidean Antinomies — from what Aristeides calls (Or. xlvii. p. 430) “the One and Many, the multiplied twists and doublings, of this divine dialogue”. I confess that I am unable to perceive therein what Zeller has either found or elicited. Objections and misunderstandings (Einwürfe und Missverständnisse), far from being obviated or corrected, are accumulated from the beginning to the end of these Antinomies, and are summed up in a formidable total by the final sentence of the dialogue. Moreover, none of these objections which Parmenides had advanced in the earlier part of the dialogue are at all noticed, much less answered, in the concluding Antinomies.
The general view taken by Zeller of the Platonic Parmenides, is repeated by him in his Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. pp. 394-415-429, ed. 2nd. In the first place, I do not think that he sets forth exactly (see p. 415) the reasoning as we read it in Plato; but even if that were exactly set forth, still what we read in Plato is nothing but an assemblage of difficulties and contradictions. These are indeed suggestive, and such as a profound critic may meditate with care, until he finds himself put upon a train of thought conducting him to conclusions sound and tenable in his judgment. But the explanations, sufficient or not, belong after all not to Plato but to the critic himself. Other critics may attach, and have attached, totally different explanations to the same difficulties. I see no adequate evidence to bring home any one of them to Plato; or to prove (what is the main point to be determined) that any one of them was present to his mind when he composed the dialogue.
Schwegler also gives an account of what he affirms to be the purpose and meaning of the Parmenides — “The positive meaning of the antinomies contained in it can only be obtained by inferences which Plato does not himself expressly enunciate, but leaves to the reader to draw” (Geschichte der Philosophie im Umriss, sect. 14, 4 c. pp. 52-53, ed. 5).
A learned man like Schwegler, who both knows the views of other philosophers, and has himself reflected on philosophy, may perhaps find affirmative meaning in the Parmenides; just as Sokrates, in the Platonic Protagoras, finds his own ethical doctrine in the song of the poet Simonides. But I venture to say that no contemporary reader of Plato could have found such a meaning in the Parmenides; and that if Plato intended to communicate such a meaning, the whole structure of the dialogue would be only an elaborate puzzle calculated to prevent nearly all readers from reaching it.
By assigning the leadership of the dialogue to Parmenides (Schwegler says) Plato intends to signify that the Platonic doctrine of Ideas is coincident with the doctrine of Parmenides, and is only a farther development thereof. How can this be signified, when the discourse assigned to Parmenides consists of a string of objections against the doctrine of Ideas, concluding with an intimation that there are other objections, yet stronger, remaining behind?
The fundamental thought of the Parmenides (says Schwegler) is, that the One is not conceivable in complete abstraction from the Many, nor the Many in complete abstraction from the One, — that each reciprocally supposes and serves as condition to the other. Not so: for if we follow the argumentation of Parmenides (p. 131 E), we shall see that what he principally insists upon, is the entire impossibility of any connection or participation between the One and the Many — there is an impassable gulf between them.
Is the discussion of τὸ ἓν (in the closing Antinomies) intended as an example of dialectic investigation — or is it per se the special object of the dialogue? This last is clearly the truth (says Schwegler). “otherwise the dialogue would end without result, and its two portions would be without any internal connection”. Not so; for if we read the dialogue, we find Parmenides clearly proclaiming and singling out τὸ ἓν as only one among a great many different notions, each of which must be made the subject of a bilateral hypothesis, to be followed out into its consequences on both sides (p. 136 A). Moreover, I think that the “internal connection” between the first and the last half of the dialogue, consists in the application of this dialectic method, and in nothing else. If the dialogue ends without result, this is true of many other Platonic dialogues. The student is brought face to face with logical difficulties, and has to find out the solution for himself; or perhaps to find out that no solution can be obtained.
55 Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C.
This negative purpose is expressly announced by Plato himself. All dogmatical purpose, extending farther, is purely hypothetical, and even inconsistent with what is declared.
Such, in my judgment, is the drift of the contradictory demonstrations here put into the mouth of Parmenides respecting Unum and Cætera. Thus far at least, we are perfectly safe: for we are conforming strictly to the language of Plato himself in the dialogue: we have no proof that he meant anything more. Those who presume that he must have had some ulterior dogmatical purpose, place themselves upon hypothetical ground: but when they go farther and attempt to set forth what this purpose was, they show their ingenuity only by bringing out what they themselves have dropped in. The number of discordant hypotheses attests56 the difficulty of the problem. I agree with those 88early Platonic commentators (mentioned and opposed by Proklus) who could see no other purpose in these demonstrations than that of dialectical exercise. In this view Schleiermacher, Ast, Strümpell, and others mainly concur: the two former however annexing to it a farther hypothesis — which I think improbable — that the dialogue has come to us incomplete; having once contained at the end (or having been originally destined to contain, though the intention may never have been realised) an appendix elucidating the perplexities of the demonstrations.57 This would have been inconsistent with the purpose declared by Parmenides: who, far from desiring to facilitate the onward march of Sokrates by clearing up difficulties, admonishes him that he is advancing too rapidly, and seeks to keep him back by giving him a heap of manifest contradictions to disentangle. Plato conceives the training for philosophy or for the highest exercise of intellectual force, to be not less laborious than that which was required for the bodily perfections of an Olympic athlete. The student must not be helped out of difficulties at once: he must work his own way slowly out of them.
56 Proklus ad Platon. Parmen. I. pp. 482-485, ed. Stallb.; compare pp. 497-498-788-791, where Proklus is himself copious upon the subject of exercise in dialectic method.
Stallbaum, after reciting many different hypothetical interpretations from those interpreters who had preceded him, says (Prolegg. p. 265), “En lustravimus tandem varias interpretum de hoc libro opiniones. Quid igitur? verusne fui, quum suprà dicerem, tantam fuisse hominum eruditorum in eo explicando fluctuationem atque dissensionem, ut quamvis plurimi de eo disputaverint, tamen ferè alius aliter judicaverit? Nimirum his omnibus cognitis, facilè alicui in mentem veniat Terentianum illud — Fecisti propé, multo sim quam dudum incertior.”
Brandis (Handbuch Gr.-Röm. Phil. s. 105, pp. 257-258) cannot bring himself to believe that dialectical exercise was the only purpose with which Plato composed the Parmenides. He then proceeds to state what Plato’s ulterior purpose was, but in such very vague language, that I hardly understand what he means, much less can I find it in the Antinomies themselves. He has some clearer language, p. 241, where he treats these Antinomies as preparatory ἀπορίαι.
57 Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, pp. 239-244; Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Parmen. pp. 94-99; Strümpell, Geschichte der Theoretischen Philosophie der Griechen, sect. 96, pp. 128-129.
I do not agree with Socher’s conclusion, that the Parmenides is not a Platonic composition. But I think he is quite right in saying that the dialogue as it now stands performs all that Parmenides promises, and leaves no ground for contending that it is an unfinished fragment (Socher, Ueber Platon’s Schriften, p. 286), so far as philosophical speculation is concerned. The dialogue as a dramatic or literary composition undoubtedly lacks a proper close; it is ἄπους or κολοβὸς (Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8), sinning against the strict exigence which Plato in the Phædrus applies to the discourse of Lysias.
The Demonstrations or Antinomies considered. They include much unwarranted assumption and subtlety. Collection of unexplained perplexities or ἀπορίαι.
That the demonstrations include assumption both unwarranted and contradictory, mingled with sophistical subtlety (in the modern sense of the words), is admitted by most of the commentators: and I think that the real 89amount of it is greater than they admit. How far Plato was himself aware of this, I will not undertake to say. Perhaps he was not. The reasonings which have passed for sublime and profound in the estimation of so many readers, may well have appeared the same to their author. I have already remarked that Plato’s ratiocinative force is much greater on the negative side than on the positive: more ingenious in suggesting logical difficulties than sagacious in solving them. Impressed, as Sokrates had been before him, with the duty of combating the false persuasion of knowledge, or premature and untested belief, — he undertook to set forth the pleadings of negation in the most forcible manner. Many of his dialogues manifest this tendency, but the Parmenides more than any other. That dialogue is a collection of unexplained ἀπορίαι (such as those enumerated in the second book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica) brought against a doctrine which yet Plato declares to be the indispensable condition of all reasoning. It concludes with a string of demonstrations by which contradictory conclusions (Both and Neither) are successively proved, and which appear like a reductio ad absurdum of all demonstration. But at the time when Plato composed the dialogue, I think it not improbable that these difficulties and contradictions appeared even to himself unanswerable: in other words, that he did not himself see any answers and explanations of them. He had tied a knot so complicated, that he could not himself untie it. I speak of the state of Plato’s mind when he wrote the Parmenides. At the dates of other dialogues (whether earlier or later), he wrote under different points of view; but no key to the Parmenides does he ever furnish.
Even if Plato himself saw through these subtleties, he might still choose to impose and to heap up difficulties in the way of a forward affirmative aspirant.
If however we suppose that Plato must have had the key present to his own mind, he might still think it right to employ, in such a dialogue, reasonings recognised by himself as defective. It is the task imposed upon Sokrates to find out and expose these defective links. There is no better way of illustrating how universal is the malady of human intelligence — unexamined belief and over-confident affirmation — as it stands proclaimed to be in the Platonic Apology. Sokrates is exhibited in the Parmenides as placed under the screw of the Elenchus, and no more able than others 90to extricate himself from it, when it is applied by Parmenides: though he bears up successfully against Zeno, and attracts to himself respectful compliments, even from the aged dialectician who tests him. After the Elenchus applied to himself, Sokrates receives a farther lesson from the “Neither and Both” demonstrations addressed by Parmenides to the still younger Aristotle. Sokrates will thus be driven, with his indefatigable ardour for speculative research, to work at the problem — to devote to it those seasons of concentrated meditation, which sometimes exhibited him fixed for hours in the same place and almost in the same attitude58 — until he can extricate himself from such difficulties and contradictions. But that he shall not extricate himself without arduous mental effort, is the express intention of Parmenides: just as the Xenophontic Sokrates proceeds with the youthful Euthydemus and the Platonic Sokrates with Lysis, Theætetus, and others. Plausible subtlety was not unsuitable for such a lesson.59 Moreover, in the Parmenides, Plato proclaims explicitly that the essential condition of the lesson is to be strictly private: that a process so roundabout and tortuous cannot be appreciated by ordinary persons, and would be unseemly before an audience.60 He selects as respondent the youngest person in the company, one still younger than Sokrates: because (he says) such a person will reply with artless simplicity, to each question as the question may strike him — not carrying his mind forward to the ulterior questions for which his reply may furnish the handle — not afraid of being entangled in puzzling inconsistencies — not solicitous to baffle the purpose of 91the interrogator.61 All this betokens the plan of the dialogue — to bring to light all those difficulties which do not present themselves except to a keen-sighted enquirer.
58 Plato, Symposion, p. 220 C-D: compare pp. 174-175.
In the dialogue Parmenides (p. 130 E), Parmenides himself is introduced as predicting that the youthful Sokrates will become more and more absorbed in philosophy as he advances in years.
Proklus observes in his commentary on the dialogue — ὁ γὰρ Σωκράτης ἄγαται τὰς ἀπορίας, &c. (L. v. p. 252).
59 Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, ad fin.
60 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 136 C, 137 A. Hobbes remarks (Computatio sive Logica, Part I, ch. iii. s. 12), “Learners ought to go through logical exercises silently and by themselves: for it will be thought both ridiculous and absurd, for a man to use such language publicly”.
Proklus tells us, that the difficulty of the γυμνασία here enjoined by the Platonic Parmenides is so prodigious, that no one after Plato employed it (Prokl. ad Parmenid. p. 306, p. 801, Stallb.).
εἰ μὲν οὖν πλείους ἦμεν, οὐκ ἂν ἄξιον ἦν δεῖσθαι. ἀπρεπῆ γὰρ τὰ τοιαῦτα πολλῶν ἐναντίον λέγειν, ἄλλως τε καὶ τηλικούτῳ· ἀγνοοῦσι γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ ὅτι ἀνευ ταύτης τῆς διὰ πάντων διεξόδου καὶ πλάνης ἀδύνατον ἐντυχόντα τῷ ἀληθεῖ νοῦν σχεῖν.
61 Plato, Parmenides, p. 137 B; compare Sophistes, p. 217 D.
To understand the force of this remark of Parmenides, we should contrast it with the precepts given by Aristotle in the Topica for dialectic debate: precepts teaching the questioner how to puzzle, and the respondent how to avoid being puzzled. Such precautions are advised to the respondent by Aristotle, not merely in the Topica but also in the Analytica — χρὴ δ’ ὅπερ φυλάττεσθαι παραγγέλλομεν ἀποκρινομένους, αὐτοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας πειρᾶσθαι λανθάνειν (Anal. Priora, ii. p. 66, a. 33).
The exercises exhibited by Parmenides are exhibited only as illustrative specimens of a method enjoined to be applied to many other Antinomies.
We must remark farther, that the two hypotheses here handled at length by Parmenides are presented by him only as examples of a dialectical process which he enjoins the lover of truth to apply equally to many other hypotheses.62 As he shows that in the case of Unum, each of the two assumptions (Unum est — Unum non est) can be traced through different threads of deductive reasoning so as to bring out double and contradictory results — Both and Neither: so also in the case of those other assumptions which remain to be tested afterwards in like manner, antinomies of the same character may be expected: antinomies apparent at least, if not real — which must be formally propounded and dealt with, before we can trust ourselves as having attained reasoned truth. Hence we see that, negative and puzzling as the dialogue called Parmenides is, even now — it would be far more puzzling if all that it prescribes in general terms had been executed in detail. While it holds out, in the face of an aspirant in philosophy, the necessity of giving equal presumptive value to the affirmative and negative sides of each hypothesis, and deducing with equal care, the consequences of both — it warns him at the same time of the contradictions in which he will thereby become involved. These contradictions are presented in the most glaring manner: but we must recollect a striking passage in the Republic, where Plato declares that to confront the aspirant with manifest contradictions, is the best way of provoking him to intellectual effort in the higher regions of speculation.63
62 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.
63 Plato, Repub. vii. p. 524 E, and indeed the whole passage, pp. 523-524.
These Platonic Antinomies are more formidable than any of the sophisms or subtleties broached by the Megaric philosophers.
I have already had occasion, when I touched upon the other viri 92Socratici, contemporaneous with or subsequent to Plato, to give some account of the Zenonian and Megaric dialecticians, and of their sophisms or logical puzzles, which attracted so much attention from speculative men, in the fourth and third centuries B.C. These Megarics, like the Sophists, generally receive very harsh epithets from the historian of philosophy. They took the negative side, impugned affirmative dogmas, insisted on doubts and difficulties, and started problems troublesome to solve. I have tried to show, that such disputants, far from deserving all the censure which has been poured upon them, presented one indispensable condition to the formation of any tolerable logical theory.64 Their sophisms were challenges to the logician, indicating various forms of error and confusion, against which a theory of reasoning, in order to be sufficient, was required to guard. And the demonstrations given by Plato in the latter half of the Parmenides are challenges of the same kind: only more ingenious, elaborate, and effective, than any of those (so far as we know them) proposed by the Megarics — by Zeno, or Eukleides, or Diodorus Kronus. The Platonic Parmenides here shows, that in regard to a particular question, those who believe the affirmative, those who believe the negative, and those who believe neither — can all furnish good reasons for their respective conclusions. In each case he gives the proof confidently as being good: and whether unimpeachable or not, it is certainly very ingenious and subtle. Such demonstrations are in the spirit of Sextus Empiricus, who rests his theory of scepticism upon the general fact, that there are opposite and contradictory conclusions, both of them supported by evidence equally good: the affirmative no more worthy of belief than the negative.65 Zeno (or, as Plato calls him, the Eleatic 93Palamêdes66) did not profess any systematic theory of scepticism; but he could prove by ingenious and varied dialectic, both the thesis and the antithesis on several points of philosophy, by reasons which few, if any, among his hearers could answer. In like manner the Platonic Parmenides enunciates his contradictory demonstrations as real logical problems, which must exercise the sagacity and hold back the forward impulse of an eager philosophical aspirant. Even if this dilemma respecting Unum Est and Unum non Est, be solved, Parmenides intimates that he has others in reserve: so that either no tenable positive result will ever be attained — or at least it will not be attained until after such an amount of sagacity and patient exercise as Sokrates himself declares to be hardly practicable.67 Herein we may see the germ and premisses of that theory which was afterwards formally proclaimed by Ænesidemus and the professed Sceptics: the same holding back (ἐποχὴ), and protest against precipitation in dogmatising,68 which these latter converted into a formula and vindicated as a system.
64 Among the commentators on the Categories of Aristotle, there were several whose principal object it was to propound all the most grave and troublesome difficulties which they could think of. Simplikius does not commend the style of these men, but he expresses his gratitude to them for the pains which they had taken in the exposition of the negative case, and for the stimulus and opportunity which they had thus administered to the work of affirmative exposition (Simplikius, Schol. ad Categ. Aristot. p. 40, a. 22-30; Schol. Brandis). David the Armenian, in his Scholia on the Categories (p. 27, b. 41, Brandis), defends the Topica of Aristotle as having been composed γυμνασίας χάριν, ἵνα θλιβομένη ἡ ψυχὴ ἐκ τῶν ἐφ’ ἑκάτερα ἐπιχειρημάτων ἀπογεννήσῃ τὸ τῆς ἀληθείας φῶς.
65 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hypot. i. 8-12. Ἔστι δὲ ἡ σκεπτικὴ δύναμις ἀντιθετικὴ φαινομένων τε καὶ νοουμένων καθ’ οἱονδήποτε τρόπον, ἀφ’ ἧς ἐρχόμεθα, διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς ἀντικειμένοις πράγμασι καὶ λόγοις ἰσοσθένειαν, τὸ μὲν πρῶτον εἰς ἐποχὴν τὸ δὲ μετὰ τοῦτο εἰς ἀταραξίαν … ἰσοσθένειαν δὲ λέγομεν τὴν κατὰ πίστιν καὶ ἀπιστίαν ἰσότητα, ὡς μηδένα μηδενὸς προκεῖσθαι τῶν μαχομένων λόγων ὡς πιστότερον … συστάσεως δὲ τῆς σκεπτικῆς ἐστιν ἀρχὴ μάλιστα τὸ παντὶ λόγῳ λόγον ἴσον ἀντικεῖσθαι.
66 Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 D.
67 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 C-D.
68 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 20-212. τὴν τῶν δογματικῶν προπέτειαν — τὴν δογματικὴν προπέτειαν.
In order to understand fully the Platonic Antinomies, we ought to have before us the problems of the Megarics and others. Uselessness of searching for a positive result.
Schleiermacher has justly observed,69 that in order to understand properly the dialectic manœuvres of the Parmenides, we ought to have had before us the works of that philosopher himself, of Zeno, Melissus, Gorgias, and other sceptical reasoners of the age immediately preceding — which have unfortunately perished. Some reference to these must probably have been present to Plato in the composition of this dialogue.70 At the same time, if we accept the dialogue as being (what it declares itself to be) a string of objections and dialectical problems, we shall take care not to look for 94any other sort of merit than what such a composition requires and admits. If the objections are forcible, the problems ingenious and perplexing, the purpose of the author is satisfied. To search in the dialogue for some positive result, not indeed directly enunciated but discoverable by groping and diving — would be to expect a species of fruit inconsistent with the nature of the tree. Ζητῶν εὑρήσεις οὐ ῥόδον ἀλλὰ βάτον.
69 Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Parmen. pp. 97-99.
70 Indeed, the second demonstration, among the nine given by Parmenides (pp. 143 A, 155 C), coincides to a great degree with the conclusion which Zeno is represented as having maintained in his published dissertation (p. 127 E); and shows that the difficulties and contradictions belong to the world of invisible Ideas, as well as to that of sensible particulars, which Sokrates had called in question (p. 129 C-E).
The Aristotelian treatise (whether by Aristotle, Theophrastus, or any other author) De Zenone, Melisso, Xenophane, et Gorgiâ — affords some curious comparisons with the Parmenides of Plato. Aristotel. p. 974 seq. Bekk.; also Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum, ed. Didot, pp. 278-309.
Assumptions of Parmenides in his Demonstrations convey the minimum of determinate meaning. Views of Aristotle upon these indeterminate predicates, Ens, Unum, &c.
It may indeed be useful for the critic to perform for himself the process which Parmenides intended Sokrates to perform; and to analyse these subtleties with a view to measure their bearing upon the work of dogmatic theorising. We see double and contradictory conclusions elicited, in four separate Antinomies, from the same hypothesis, by distinct chains of interrogatory deduction; each question being sufficiently plausible to obtain the acquiescence of the respondent. The two assumptions successively laid down by Parmenides as principia for deduction — Si Unum est — Si Unum non est — convey the very minimum of determinate meaning. Indeed both words are essentially indeterminate. Both Unum and Ens are declared by Aristotle to be not univocal or generic words,71 though at the same time not absolutely equivocal: but words bearing several distinct transitional95 meanings, derived either from each other, or from some common root, by an analogy more or less remote. Aristotle characterises in like manner all the most indeterminate predicates, which are not included in any one distinct category among the ten, but are made available to predication sometimes in one category, sometimes in another: such as Ens, Unum, Idem, Diversum, Contrarium, &c. Now in the Platonic Parmenides, the two first among these words are taken to form the proposition assumed as fundamental datum, and the remaining three are much employed in the demonstration: yet Plato neither notices nor discriminates their multifarious and fluctuating significations. Such contrast will be understood when we recollect that the purpose of the Platonic Parmenides is, to propound difficulties; while that of Aristotle is, not merely to propound, but also to assist in clearing them up.
71 Aristot. Metaphys. iv. 1015-1017, ix. 1052, a. 15; Anal. Poster. ii. p. 92, b. 14. τὸ δ’ εἶναι οὐκ οὐσία οὐδενί. οὐ γὰρ γένος τὸ ὄν. — Topica, iv. p. 127, a. 28. πλείω γὰρ τὰ πᾶσιν ἑπόμενα· οἷον τὸ ὂν καὶ τὸ ἓν τῶν πᾶσιν ἑπομένων ἔστιν, Physica, i. p. 185, b. 6.
Simplikius noted it as one among the differences between Plato and Aristotle — That Plato admitted Unum as having only one meaning, not being aware of the diversity of meanings which it bore; while Aristotle expressly pointed it out as a πολλακῶς λεγόμενον (Schol. ad Aristot. Sophist. Elench. p. 320, b. 3, Brandis). Aristotle farther remarks that Plato considered τὸ γένος as ἓν ἀριθμῷ, and that this was an error; we ought rather to say that Plato did not clearly discriminate ἓν ἀριθμῷ from ἓν εἴδει (Aristot. Topic. vi. 143, b. 30).
Simplikius farther remarks, that it was Aristotle who first rendered to Logic the important service of bringing out clearly and emphatically the idea of τὸ ὁμώνυμον — the same word with several meanings either totally distinct and disparate, or ramifying in different directions from the same root, so that there came to be little or no affinity between many of them. It was Aristotle who first classified and named these distinctions (συνώνυμον — ὁμώνυμον, and the intermediate κατ’ ἀναλογίαν), though they had been partially noticed by Plato and even by Sokrates. ἕως Ἀριστοτέλους οὐ πάμπαν ἔκδηλον ἦν τὸ ὁμώνυμον· ἀλλὰ Πλάτων τε ἤρξατο περὶ τούτου ἢ μᾶλλον ἐκείνου Σωκράτης, Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. p. 323, b. 24, Brandis.
In the Platonic Demonstrations the same proposition in words is made to bear very different meanings.
Certainly, in Demonstrations 1 and 2 (as well as 4 and 5), the foundation assumed is in words the same proposition — Si Unum est: but we shall find this same proposition used in two very different senses. In the first Demonstration, the proposition is equivalent to Si Unum est Unum:72 in the second, to Si Unum est Ens, or Si Unum existit. In the first the proposition is identical and the verb est serves only as copula: in the second, the verb est is not merely a copula but implies Ens as a predicate, and affirms existence. We might have imagined that the identical proposition — Unum est Unum — since it really affirms nothing — would have been barren of all consequences: and so indeed it is barren of all affirmative consequences. But Plato obtains for it one first step in the way of negative predicates — Si Unum est Unum, Unum non est Multa: and from hence he proceeds, by a series of gentle transitions ingeniously managed, to many other negative predications respecting the subject Unum. Since it is not Multa, it can have no parts, nor can it be a whole: it has neither beginning, middle, nor end: it has no boundary, or it is boundless: it has no figure, it is neither straight nor circular: it has therefore no place, being 96neither in itself, nor in anything else: it is neither in motion nor at rest: it is neither the same with anything else, nor the same with itself:73 it is neither different from any thing else, nor different from itself: it is neither like, nor unlike, to itself, nor to anything else: it is neither equal, nor unequal, to itself nor to any thing else: it is neither older nor younger, nor of equal age, either with itself or with anything else: it exists therefore not in time, nor has it any participation with time: it neither has been nor will be, nor is: it does not exist in any way: it does not even exist so as to be Unum: you can neither name it, nor reason upon it, nor know it, nor perceive it, nor opine about it.
72 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 137 C, 142 B.
73 This part of the argument is the extreme of dialectic subtlety, p. 139 C-D-E.
First demonstration ends in an assemblage of negative conclusions. Reductio ad Absurdum, of the assumption — Unum non Multa.
All these are impossibilities (concludes Plato). We must therefore go back upon the fundamental principle from which we took our departure, in order to see whether we shall not obtain, on a second trial, any different result.74
74 Plato, Parmenid. p. 142 A.
Here then is a piece of dialectic, put together with ingenuity, showing that everything can be denied, and that nothing can be affirmed of the subject — Unum. All this follows, if you concede the first step, that Unum is not Multa. If Unum be said to have any other attribute except that of being Unum, it would become at once Multa. It cannot even be declared to be either the same with itself, or different from any thing else; because Idem and Diversum are distinct natures from Unum, and if added to it would convert it into Multa.75 Nay it cannot even be affirmed to be itself: it cannot be named or enunciated: if all predicates are denied, the subject is denied along with them: the subject is nothing but the sum total of its predicates — and when they are all withdrawn, no subject remains. As far as I can understand the bearing of this self-contradictory demonstration, it appears a reductio ad absurdum of the proposition — Unum is not Multa. Now Unum which is not Multa designates the Αὐτὸ-Ἓν or Unum Ideale; which Plato himself affirmed, and which Aristotle impugned.76 If this be what is meant, the dialogue Parmenides 97would present here, as in other places, a statement of difficulties understood by Plato as attaching to his own doctrines.
75 This is the main point of Demonstration 1, and is stated pp. 139 D, 140 A, compared with p. 137 C.
76 Aristot. Metaph. A. 987, b. 20; A. 992, a. 8; B. 1001, a. 27; I. 1053, b. 18. Some ancient expositors thought that the purpose of Plato in the Parmenides was to demonstrate this Αὐτὸ-Ἓν; see Schol. ad Aristot. Metaph. p. 786, a. 10, Brandis.
It is not easy to find any common bearing between the demonstrations given in this dialogue respecting Ἓν and Πολλὰ — and the observations which Plato makes in the Philêbus upon Ἓν and Πολλά. Would he mean to include the demonstrations which we read in the Parmenides, in the category of what he calls in Philêbus “childish, easy, and irrational debates on that vexed question?” (Plato, Philêbus, p. 14 D). Hardly: for they are at any rate most elaborate as well as ingenious and suggestive. Yet neither do they suit the description which he gives in Philêbus of the genuine, serious, and difficult debates on the same question.
Parmenides now proceeds to his second demonstration: professing to take up again the same hypothesis — Si Unum est — from which he had started in the first77 — but in reality taking up a different hypothesis under the same words. In the first hypothesis, Si Unum est, was equivalent to, Si Unum est Unum: nothing besides Unum being taken into the reasoning, and est serving merely as copula. In the second, Si Unum est, is equivalent to, Si Unum est Ens, or exists: so that instead of the isolated Unum, we have now Unum Ens.78 Here is a duality consisting of Unum and Ens: which two are considered as separate or separable factors, coalescing to form the whole Unum Ens, each of them being a part thereof. But each of these parts is again dual, containing both Unum and Ens: so that each part may be again divided into lesser parts, each of them alike dual: and so on ad infinitum. Unum Ens thus contains an infinite number of parts, or is Multa.79 But even Unum 98itself (Parmenides argues), if we consider it separately from Ens in which it participates, is not Unum alone, but Multa also. For it is different from Ens, and Ens is different from it. Unum therefore is not merely Unum but also Diversum: Ens also is not merely Ens but Diversum. Now when we speak of Unum and Ens — of Unum and Diversum — or of Ens and Diversum — we in each case speak of two distinct things, each of which is Unum. Since each is Unum, the two things become three — Ens, Diversum, Unum — Unum, Diversum, Unum — Unum being here taken twice. We thus arrive at two and three — twice and thrice — odd and even — in short, number, with its full extension and properties. Unum therefore is both Unum and Multa — both Totum and Partes — both finite and infinite in multitude.80
77 Plato, Parmenid. p. 142 A. Βούλει οὖν ἐπὶ τὴν ὑπόθεσιν πάλιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπανέλθωμεν, ἐάν τι ἡμῖν ἐπανιοῦσιν ἀλλοῖον φανῇ;
78 This shifting of the real hypothesis, though the terms remain unchanged, is admitted by implication a little afterwards, p. 142 B. νῦν δὲ οὐχ αὕτη ἔστιν ἡ ὑπόθεσις, εἰ ἓν ἓν, τί χρὴ συμβαίνειν, ἀλλ’ εἰ ἓν ἔστιν.
79 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 142-143. This is exactly what Sokrates in the early part of the dialogue (p. 129 B-D) had pronounced to be utterly inadmissible, viz.: That ὃ ἔστιν ἓν should be πολλὰ — that ὃ ἔστιν ὅμοιον should be ἀνόμοιον. The essential characteristic of the Platonic Ideas is here denied. However, it appears to me that Plato here reasons upon two contradictory assumptions; first, that Unum Ens is a total composed of two parts separately assignable — Unum and Ens; next, that Unum is not assignable separately from Ens, nor Ens from Unum. Proceeding upon the first, he declares that the division must be carried on ad infinitum, because you can never reach either the separate Ens or the separate Unum. But these two assumptions cannot be admitted both together. Plato must make his election; either he takes the first, in which case the total Unum Ens is divisible, and its two factors, Unum and Ens, can be assigned separately; or he takes the second, in which case Unum and Ens cannot be assigned separately — are not distinguishable factors, — so that Unum Ens instead of being infinitely divisible, is not divisible at all.
The reasoning as it now stands is, in my judgment, fallacious.
80 Plato, Parmen. pp. 144 A-E, 145 A.
It ends in demonstrating Both, of that which the first Demonstration had demonstrated Neither.
Parmenides proceeds to show that Unum has beginning, middle, and end — together with some figure, straight or curved: and that it is both in itself, and in other things: that it is always both in motion and at rest:81 that it is both the same with itself and different from itself — both the same with Cætera, and different from Cætera:82 both like to itself, and unlike to itself — both like to Cætera, and unlike to Cætera:83 that it both touches, and does not touch, both itself and Cætera:84 that it is both equal, greater, and less, in number, as compared with itself and as compared with Cætera:85 that it is both older than itself, younger than itself, and of the same age with itself — both older than Cætera, younger than Cætera, and of the same age as Cætera — also that it is not older nor younger either than itself or than Cætera:86 that it grows both older and younger than itself, and than Cætera.87 Lastly, Unum was, is, and will be; it has been, is, and will be generated: it has had, has now, and will have, attributes and predicates: it can be named, and can be the object of perception, conception, opinion, reasoning, and cognition.88
81 Plato, Parmenid. p. 146 A-B.
82 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 146-147 C.
83 Plato, Parmenid. p. 148 A-D.
84 Plato, Parmenid. p. 149 A-D.
85 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 150-151 D.
86 Plato, Parmen. pp. 152-153-154 A.
87 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 154 B, 155 C. κατὰ δὴ πάντα ταῦτα, τὸ ἓν αὐτό τε αὑτοῦ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων πρεσβύτερον καὶ νεώτερον ἔστι τε καὶ γίγνεται, καὶ οὕτε πρεσβύτερον οὕτε νεώτερον οὕτ’ ἔστιν οὕτε γίγνεται οὕτε αὑτοῦ οὕτε τῶν ἄλλων.
88 Plato, Parmenid. p. 155 C-D.
99Here Parmenides finishes the long Demonstratio Secunda, which completes the first Antinomy. The last conclusion of all, with which it winds up, is the antithesis of that with which the first Demonstration wound up: affirming (what the conclusion of the first had denied) that Unum is thinkable, perceivable, nameable, knowable. Comparing the second Demonstration with the first, we see — That the first, taking its initial step, with a negative proposition, carries us through a series of conclusions every one of which is negative (like those of the second figure of the Aristotelian syllogism):— That whereas the conclusions professedly established in the first Demonstration are all in Neither (Unum is neither in itself nor in any thing else — neither at rest nor in motion — neither the same with itself nor different from itself, &c.), the conclusions of the second Demonstration are all in Both (Unum is both in motion and at rest, both in itself and in other things, both the same with itself and different from itself):— That in this manner, while the first Demonstration denies both of two opposite propositions, the second affirms them both.
Startling paradox — Open offence against logical canon — No logical canon had then been laid down.
Such a result has an air of startling paradox. We find it shown, respecting various pairs of contradictory propositions, first, that both are false — next, that both are true. This offends doubly against the logical canon, which declares, that of two contradictory propositions, one must be true, the other must be false. We must remember, that in the Platonic age, there existed no systematic logic — no analysis or classification of propositions — no recognised distinction between such as were contrary, and such as were contradictory. The Platonic Parmenides deals with propositions which are, to appearance at least, contradictory: and we are brought, by two different roads, first to the rejection of both, next to the admission of both.89
89 Prantl (in his Geschichte der Logik, vol. i. s. 3, pp. 70-71-73) maintains, if I rightly understand him, not only that Plato did not adopt the principium identitatis et contradictionis as the basis of his reasonings, but that one of Plato’s express objects was to demonstrate the contrary of it, partly in the Philêbus, but especially in the Parmenides:—
“Eine arge Täuschung ist es, zu glauben, dass das principium identitatis et contradictionis oberstes logisches Princip des Plato sei … Es ist gerade eine Hauptaufgabe, welche sich Plato stellen musste, die Coexistenz der Gegensätze nachzuweisen, wie diess bekanntlich im Philebus und besonders im Parmenides geschieht.”
According to this view, the Antinomies in the Parmenides are all of them good proofs, and the conclusions of all of them, summed up as they are in the final sentence of the dialogue, constitute an addition to the positive knowledge of Sokrates. I confess that this to me is unintelligible. I understand these Antinomies as ἀπορίαι to be cleared up, but in no other character.
Prantl speaks (p. 73) of “die antinomische Begründung der Ideenlehre im Parmenides,” &c. This is the same language as that used by Zeller, upon which I have already remarked.
100Demonstration third — Attempt to reconcile the contradiction of Demonstrations I. and II.
How can this be possible? How can these four propositions all be true — Unum est Unum — Unum est Multa — Unum non est Unum — Unum non est Multa? Plato suggests a way out of the difficulty, in that which he gives as Demonstration 3. It has been shown that Unum “partakes of time” — was, is, and will be. The propositions are all true, but true at different times: one at this time, another at that time.90 Unum acquires and loses existence, essence, and other attributes: now, it exists and is Unum — before, it did not exist and was not Unum: so too it is alternately like and unlike, in motion and at rest. But how is such alternation or change intelligible? At each time, whether present or past, it must be either in motion or at rest: at no time, neither present nor past, can it be neither in motion nor at rest. It cannot, while in motion, change to rest — nor, while at rest, change to motion. No time can be assigned for the change: neither the present, nor the past, nor the future: how then can the change occur at all?91
90 This is a distinction analogous to that which Plato points out in the Sophistes (pp. 242-243) between the theories of Herakleitus and Empedoklês.
91 Plato, Parmenid. p. 156.
Plato’s imagination of the Sudden or Instantaneous — Breaches or momentary stoppages in the course of time.
To this question the Platonic Parmenides finds an answer in what he calls the Sudden or the Instantaneous: an anomalous nature which lies out of, or apart from, the course of time, being neither past, present, nor future. That which changes, changes at once and suddenly: at an instant when it is neither in motion nor at rest. This Suddenly is a halt or break in the flow of time:92 an extra-temporal condition, in which the subject has 101no existence, no attributes — though it revives again forthwith clothed with its new attributes: a point of total negation or annihilation, during which the subject with all its attributes disappears. At this interval (the Suddenly) all predicates may be truly denied, but none can be truly affirmed.93 Unum is neither at rest, nor in motion — neither like nor unlike — neither the same with itself nor different from itself — neither Unum nor Multa. Both predicates and Subject vanish. Thus all the negations of the first Demonstration are justified. Immediately before the Suddenly, or point of change, Unum was in motion — immediately after the change, it is at rest: immediately before, it was like — equal — the same with itself — Unum, &c. — immediately after, it is unlike — unequal — different from itself — Multa, &c. And thus the double and contradictory affirmative predications, of which the second Demonstration is composed, are in their turn made good, as successive in time. This discovery of the extra-temporal point Suddenly, enables Parmenides to uphold both the double negative of the first Demonstration, and the double affirmative of the second.
92 Plato, Parmenid. p. 156 E. ἀλλ’ ἡ ἐξαίφνης αὕτη φύσις ἄτοπός τις ἐγκάθηται μεταξὺ τῆς κινήσεώς τε καὶ στάσεως, ἐν χρόνῳ οὐδενὶ οὖσα, καὶ εἰς ταύτην δὴ καὶ ἐκ ταύτης τό τε κινούμενον μεταβάλλει ἐπὶ τὸ ἑστάναι, καὶ τὸ ἑστὸς ἐπὶ τὸ κινεῖσθαι.… καὶ τὸ ἓν δή, εἴπερ ἕστηκέ τε καὶ κινεῖται, μεταβάλλοι ἂν ἐφ’ ἑκάτερα· μόνως γὰρ ἂν οὕτως ἀμφότερα ποιοῖ· μεταβάλλον δ’ ἐξαίφνης μεταβάλλει, καὶ ὅτε μεταβάλλει, ἐν οὐδενὶ χρόνῳ ἂν εἴη, οὐδὲ κινοῖτ’ ἂν τότε, οὐδ’ ἂν σταίη.
Τὸ ἐξαίφνης — ἡ ἐξαίφνης φύσις ἄτοπός τις — may be compared to an infinitesimal; analogous to what is recognised in the theory of the differential calculus.
93 This appears to be an illustration of the doctrine which Lassalle ascribes to Herakleitus; perpetual implication of negativity and positivity — des Nichtseins mit dem Sein: perpetual absorption of each particular into the universal; and perpetual reappearance as an opposite particular. See the two elaborate volumes of Lassalle upon Herakleitus, especially i. p. 358, ii. p. 258. He scarcely however takes notice of the Platonic Parmenides.
Some of the Stoics considered τὸ νῦν as μηδέν — and nothing in time to be real except τὸ παρῳχηκὸς and τὸ μέλλον (Plutarch, De Commun. Notitiis contra Stoicos, p. 1081 D).
Review of the successive pairs of Demonstrations or Antinomies in each, the first proves the Neither, the second proves the Both.
The theory here laid down in the third Demonstration respecting this extra-temporal point — the Suddenly — deserves all the more attention, because it applies not merely to the first and second Demonstration which precede it, but also to the fourth and fifth, the sixth and seventh, the eighth and ninth, which follow it. I have already observed, that the first and second Demonstration form a corresponding pair, branching off from the same root or hypothetical proposition (at least the same in terms), respecting the subject Unum; and destined to prove, one the Neither, the other the Both, of several different predicates. So also the fourth and fifth form a pair applying to the subject Cætera; and destined to prove, that from 102the same hypothetical root — Si Unum est — we can deduce the Neither as well as the Both, of various predicates of Cætera. When we pass on to the four last Demonstrations, we find that in all four, the hypothesis Si Unum non est is substituted for that of Si Unum est: but the parallel couples, with the corresponding purpose, are still kept up. The sixth and seventh apply to the subject Unum, and demonstrate respecting that subject (proceeding from the hypothesis Si Unum non est) first the Both, then the Neither, of various predicates: the eighth and ninth arrive at the same result, respecting the subject Cætera. And a sentence at the close sums up in few words the result of all the four pairs (1-2, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, that is, of all the Demonstrations excepting the third) — the Neither and the Both respecting all of them.
The third Demonstration is mediatorial but not satisfactory — The hypothesis of the Sudden or Instantaneous found no favour.
To understand these nine Demonstrations properly, therefore, we ought to consider eight among them (1-2, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9) as four Antinomies, or couples establishing dialectic contradictions: and the third as a mediator satisfactory between the couples — announced as if it reconciled the contradictions of the first Antinomy, and capable of being adapted, in the same character with certain modifications, to the second, third, and fourth Antinomy. Whether it reconciles them successfully — in other words, whether the third Demonstration will itself hold good — is a different question. It will be found to involve the singular and paradoxical (Plato’s own phrase) doctrine of the extra-temporal Suddenly — conceiving Time as a Discretum and not a Continuum. This doctrine is intended by Plato here as a means of rendering the fact of change logically conceivable and explicable. He first states briefly the difficulty (which we know to have been largely insisted on by Diodorus Kronus and other Megarics) of logically explaining the fact of change — and then enunciates this doctrine as the solution. We plainly see that it did not satisfy others — for the puzzle continued to be a puzzle long after — and that it did not even satisfy Plato, except at the time when he composed the Parmenides — since neither the doctrine itself (the extra-temporal break or transition) nor the very peculiar phrase in which it is embodied (τὸ ἐξαίφνης, ἄτοπός τις φύσις) occur in any of his other dialogues. If the doctrine were really tenable, it would have been of use in dialectic, and as such, would have 103been called in to remove the theoretical difficulties raised among dialectical disputants, respecting time and motion. Yet Plato does not again advert to it, either in Sophistes or Timæus, in both of which there is special demand for it.94 Aristotle, while he adopts a doctrine like it (yet without employing the peculiar phrase τὸ ἐξαίφνης) to explain qualitative change, does not admit the same either as to quantitative change, or as to local motion, or as to generation and destruction.95 The doctrine served the purpose of the Platonic Parmenides, as ingenious, original, and provocative to intellectual effort: but it did not acquire any permanent footing in Grecian dialectics.
94 Steinhart represents this idea of τὸ ἐξαίφνης — the extra-temporal break or zero of transition — as an important progress made by Plato, compared with the Theætêtus, because it breaks down the absoluten Gegensatz between Sein and Werden, Ruhe and Bewegung (Einleitung zum Parmen. p. 309).
Surely, if Plato had considered it a progress, we should have seen the same idea repeated in various other dialogues — which is not the case.
95 Aristotel. Physic. p. 235, b. 32, with the Scholion of Simplikius, p. 410, b. 20, Brandis.
The discussion occupies two or three pages of Aristotle’s Physica. In regard to ἀλλοίωσις or qualitative change, he recognised what he called ἀθρόαν μεταβολήν — a change all at once, which occupied no portion of time. It is plain, however, that even his own scholars Theophrastus and Eudemus had great difficulty in accepting the doctrine; see Scholia, pp. 409-410-411, Brandis.
The two last Antinomies, or four last Demonstrations, have, in common, for their point of departure, the negative proposition, Si Unum non est: and are likewise put together in parallel couples (6-7, 8-9), a Demonstration and a Counter-Demonstration — a Both and a Neither: first with reference to the subject Unum — next with reference to the subject Cætera.
Review of the two last Antinomies. Demonstrations VI. and VII.
Si Unum est — Si Unum non est. Even from such a proposition as the first of these, we might have thought it difficult to deduce any string of consequences — which Plato has already done: from such a proposition as the second, not merely difficult, but impossible. Nevertheless the ingenious dialectic of Plato accomplishes the task, and elicits from each proposition a Both, and a Neither, respecting several predicates of Unum as well as of Cætera. When you say Unum non est (so argues the Platonic Parmenides in Demonstration 6), you deny existence respecting Unum: but the proposition Unum non est, is distinguishable from Magnitudo non est — Parvitudo non est — and such like: propositions wherein the subject is different, though the predicate is the same: so that 104Unum non Ens is still a Something knowable, and distinguishable from other things — a logical subject of which various other predicates may be affirmed, though the predicate of existence cannot be affirmed.96 It is both like and unlike, equal and unequal — like and equal to itself unlike and unequal to other things.97 These its predicates being all true, are also real existences: so that Unum partakes quodam modo in existence: though Unum be non-Ens, nevertheless, Unum non-Ens est. Partaking thus both of non-existence and of existence, it changes: it both moves and is at rest: it is generated and destroyed, yet is also neither generated nor destroyed.98
96 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 160-161 A. εἶναι μὲν δὴ τῷ ἑνὶ οὐχ οἷόν τε, εἴπερ γε μὴ ἔστι, μετέχειν δὲ πολλῶν οὐδὲν κωλύει, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀνάγκη, εἴπερ τό γε ἓν ἐκεῖνο καὶ μὴ ἄλλο μὴ ἔστιν. εἰ μέντοι μήτε τὸ ἓν μήτ’ ἐκεῖνο μὴ ἔσται, ἀλλὰ περὶ ἄλλου του ὁ λόγος, οὐδὲ φθέγγεσθαι δεῖ οὐδέν· εἰ δὲ τὸ ἓν ἐκεῖνο καὶ μὴ ἄλλο ὑποκεῖται μὴ εἶναι, καὶ τοῦ ἐκείνου καὶ ἄλλων πολλῶν ἀνάγκη αὐτῷ μετεῖναι.
97 Plato, Parmenid. p. 161 C-D.
98 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 162-163 A.
The steps by which these conclusions are made out are extremely subtle, and hardly intelligible to me.
Having thus deduced from the fundamental principle this string of Both opposite predicates, the Platonic Parmenides reverts (in Demonstration 7) to the same principium (Si Unum non est) to deduce by another train of reasoning the Neither of these predicates. When you say that Unum non est, you must mean that it does not partake of existence in any way — absolutely and without reserve. It therefore neither acquires nor loses existence: it is neither generated nor destroyed: it is neither in motion nor at rest: it partakes of nothing existent: it is neither equal nor unequal — neither like nor unlike — neither great nor little — neither this, nor that: neither the object of perception, nor of knowledge, nor of opinion, nor of naming, nor of debate.99
99 Plato, Parmenid. pp. 163-164 A.
Demonstration VII. is founded upon the genuine doctrine of Parmenides.
These two last counter-demonstrations (6 and 7), forming the third Antinomy, deserve attention in this respect — That the seventh is founded upon the genuine Parmenidean or Eleatic doctrine about Non-Ens, as not merely having no attributes, but as being unknowable, unperceivable, unnameable: while the sixth is founded upon a different apprehension of Non-Ens, which is explained and defended by Plato in the Sophistes, as a substitute for, and refutation of, the Eleatic doctrine.100 According to 105Number 7, when you deny, of Unum, the predicate existence, you deny of it also all other predicates: and the name Unum is left without any subject to apply to. This is the Eleatic dogma. Unum having been declared to be Non-Ens, is (like Non-Ens) neither knowable nor nameable. According to Number 6, the proposition Unum est non-Ens, does not carry with it any such consequences. Existence is only one predicate, which may be denied of the subject Unum, but which, when denied, does not lead to the denial of all other predicates — nor, therefore, to the loss of the subject itself. Unum still remains Unum, knowable, and different from other things. Upon this first premiss are built up several other affirmations; so that we thus arrive circuitously at the affirmation of existence, in a certain way: Unum, though non-existent, does nevertheless exist quodam modo. This coincides with that which the Eleatic stranger seeks to prove in the Sophistes, against Parmenides.
100 Plato, Sophistes, pp. 258-259.
Demonstrations VI. and VII. considered — Unwarrantable steps in the reasoning — The fundamental premiss differently interpreted, though the same in words.
If we compare the two foregoing counter-demonstrations (7 and 6), we shall see that the negative results of the seventh follow properly enough from the assumed premisses: but that the affirmative results of the sixth are not obtained without very unwarrantable jumps in the reasoning, besides its extreme subtlety. But apart from this defect, we farther remark that here also (as in Numbers 1 and 2) the fundamental principle assumed is in terms the same, in signification materially different. The signification of Unum non est, as it is construed in Number 7, is the natural one, belonging to the words: but as construed in Number 6, the meaning of the predicate is altogether effaced (as it had been before in Number 1): we cannot tell what it is which is really denied about Unum. As, in Number 1, the proposition Unum est is so construed as to affirm nothing except Unum est Unum — so in Number 7, the proposition Unum non est is so construed as to deny nothing except Unum non est Unum, yet conveying along with such denial a farther affirmation — Unum non est Unum, sed tamen est aliquid scibile, differens ab aliis.101 Here this aliquid scibile is assumed as a 106substratum underlying Unum, and remaining even when Unum is taken away: contrary to the opinion — that Unum was a separate nature and the fundamental Subject of all — which Aristotle announces as having been held by Plato.102 There must be always some meaning (the Platonic Parmenides argues) attached to the word Unum, even when you talk of Unum non Ens: and that meaning is equivalent to Aliquid scibile, differens ab aliis. From this he proceeds to evolve, step by step, though often in a manner obscure and inconclusive, his series of contradictory affirmations respecting Unum.
101 Plato, Parmenid. p. 160 C.
102 Aristot. Metaph. B. 1001, a. 6-20.
The last couple of Demonstrations — 8 and 9 — composing the fourth Antinomy, are in some respects the most ingenious and singular of all the nine. Si Unum non est, what is true about Cætera? The eighth demonstrates the Both of the affirmative predicates, the ninth proves the Neither.
Demonstrations VIII. and IX. — Analysis of Demonstration VIII.
Si Unum non est (is the argument of the eighth), Cætera must nevertheless somehow still be Cætera: otherwise you could not talk about Cætera.103 (This is an argument like that in Demonstration 6: What is talked about must exist, somehow.) But if Cætera can be named and talked about, they must be different from something, — and from something, which is also different from them. What can this Something be? Not certainly Unum: for Unum, by the Hypothesis, does not exist, and cannot therefore be the term of comparison. Cætera therefore must be different among themselves and from each other. But they cannot be compared with each other by units: for Unum does not exist. They must therefore be compared with each other by heaps or multitudes: each of which will appear at first sight to be an unit, though it be not an unit in reality. There will be numbers of such heaps, each in appearance one, though not in reality:104 numbers odd and even, great and little, in appearance: heaps appearing to be greater and less than each other, and equal to each other, though not being really so. Each of these heaps will appear to have a beginning, middle, and end, yet will not really have any such: 107for whenever you grasp any one of them in your thoughts, there will appear another beginning before the beginning,105 another end after the end, another centre more centrical than the centre, — minima ever decreasing because you cannot reach any stable unit. Each will be a heap without any unity; looking like one, at a distance, — but when you come near, each a boundless and countless multitude. They will thus appear one and many, like and unlike, equal and unequal, at rest and moving, separate and coalescing: in short, invested with an indefinite number of opposite attributes.106
103 Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 B. Ἄλλα μέν που δεῖ αὐτὰ εἶναι· εἰ γὰρ μηδὲ ἄλλα ἐστίν, οὐκ ἂν περὶ τῶν ἄλλων λέγοιτο.
104 Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 D. Οὐκοῦν πολλοὶ ὄγκοι ἔσανται, εἶς ἕκαστος φαινόμενος, ὢν δὲ οὔ, εἴπερ ἓν μὴ ἔσται. Οὕτως.
105 Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 A. Ὅτι ἀεὶ αὐτῶν ὅταν τίς τι λάβῃ τῇ διανοίᾳ ὥς τι τούτων ὅν, πρό τε τῆς ἀρχῆς ἄλλη ἀεὶ φαίνεται ἀρχή, μετά τε τὴν τελευτὴν ἑτέρα ὑπολειπομένη τελευτή, ἕν τε τῷ μέσῳ ἄλλα μεσαίτερα τοῦ μέσου, σμικρότερα δὲ διὰ τὸ μὴ δύνασθαι ἑνὸς αὐτῶν ἑκάστου λαμβάνεσθαι, ἄτε οὐκ ὄντος τοῦ ἑνός.
106 Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 E. Compare p. 158 E. τοῖς ἄλλοις δὴ τοῦ ἑνὸς.… ἡ δὲ αὐτῶν φύσις καθ’ ἑαυτὰ ἀπειρίαν (πάρεσχε).
Demonstration VIII. is very subtle and Zenonian.
This Demonstration 8, with its strange and subtle chain of inferences, purporting to rest upon the admission of Cætera without Unum, brings out the antithesis of the Apparent and the Real, which had not been noticed in the preceding demonstrations. Demonstration 8 is in its character Zenonian. It probably coincides with the proof which Zeno is reported (in the earlier half of this dialogue) to have given against the existence of any real Multa. If you assume Multa (Zeno argued), they must be both like and unlike, and invested with many other opposite attributes; but this is impossible; therefore the assumption is untrue.107 Those against whom Zeno reasoned, contended for real Multa, and against a real Unum. Zeno probably showed, and our eighth Demonstration here shows also, — that Multa under this supposition are nothing real, but an assemblage of indefinite, ever-variable, contradictory appearances: an Ἄπειρον, Infinite, or Chaos: an object not real and absolute, but relative and variable according to the point of view of the subject.
107 Plato, Parmenid. p. 127 E; compare this with the close of the eighth Demonstration, p. 165 E — εἰ ἑνὸς μὴ ὄντος πολλὰ ἔστιν.
Demonstration IX. Neither following Both.
To the eighth Demonstration, ingenious as it is, succeeds a countervailing reversal in the ninth: the Neither following the Both. The fundamental supposition is in terms the same. Si Unum non est, what is to become108 of Cætera? Cætera are not Unum: yet neither are they Multa: for if there were any Multa, Unum would be included in them. If none of the Multa were Unum, all of them would be nothing at all, and there would be no Multa. If therefore Unum be not included in Cætera, Cætera would be neither Unum nor Multa: nor would they appear to be either Unum or Multa: for Cætera can have no possible communion with Non-Entia: nor can any of the Non-Entia be present along with any of Cætera — since Non-Entia have no parts. We cannot therefore conceive or represent to ourselves Non-Ens as along with or belonging to Cætera. Therefore, Si Unum non est, nothing among Cætera is conceived either as Unum or as Multa: for to conceive Multa without Unum is impossible. It thus appears, Si Unum non est, that Cætera neither are Unum nor Multa. Nor are they conceived either as Unum or Multa — either as like or as unlike — either as the same or as different — either as in contact or as apart. — In short, all those attributes which in the last preceding Demonstration were shown to belong to them in appearance, are now shown not to belong to them either in appearance or in reality.108
108 Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 A-B. Ἓν ἄρα εἰ μὴ ἔστι, τἄλλα οὔτε ἔστιν οὔτε δοξάζεται ἓν οὔτε πολλά.… Οὔδ’ ἄρα ὅμοια οὐδὲ ἀνόμοια.… Οὐδὲ μὴν τὰ αὐτά γε οὐδ’ ἕτερα, οὐδὲ ἁπτόμενα οὐδὲ χωρίς, οὐδὲ ἄλλ’ ὅσα ἐν τοῖς πρόσθεν διήλθομεν (compare διελθεῖν, p. 165 E) ὡς φαινόμενα αὐτά, τούτων οὔτε τι ἔστιν οὔτε φαίνεται τἄλλα, ἓν εἰ μὴ ἔστιν.
Concluding words of the Parmenides — Declaration that he has demonstrated the Both and the Neither of many different propositions.
Here we find ourselves at the close of the Parmenides. Plato announces his purpose to be, to elicit contradictory conclusions, by different trains of reasoning, out of the same fundamental assumption.109 He declares, in the concluding words, that — on the hypothesis of Unum est, as well as on that of Unum non est — he has succeeded in demonstrating the Both and the Neither of many distinct propositions, respecting Unum and respecting Cætera.
109 Compare, with the passage cited in the last note, another passage, p. 159 B, at the beginning of Demonstration 5.
Οὐκοῦν ταῦτα μὲν ἤδη ἐῶμεν ὡς φανερά, ἐπισκοπῶμεν δὲ πάλιν, ἓν εἰ ἔστιν, ἆρα καὶ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχει τἄλλα τοῦ ἑνὸς ἢ οὕτω μόνον;
Here the purpose to prove οὐχ οὕτως, immediately on the heels of οὕτως, is plainly enunciated.
Comparison of the conclusion of the Parmenides to an enigma of the Republic. Difference. The constructor of the enigma adapted its conditions to a foreknown solution. Plato did not.
The close of the Parmenides, as it stands here, may be fairly compared to the enigma announced by Plato in his Republic — “A man and no man, struck and did not 109strike, with a stone and no stone, a bird and no bird, sitting upon wood and no wood”.110 This is an enigma, propounded for youthful auditors to guess: stimulating their curiosity, and tasking their intelligence to find it out. As far as I can see, the puzzling antinomies in the Parmenides have no other purpose. They drag back the forward and youthful Sokrates from affirmative dogmatism to negative doubt and embarrassment. There is however this difference between the enigma in the Republic, and the Antinomies in the Parmenides. The constructor of the enigma had certainly a preconceived solution to which he adapted the conditions of his problem: whereas we have no sufficient ground for asserting that the author of the Antinomies had any such solution present or operative in his mind. How much of truth Plato may himself have recognised, or may have wished others to recognise, in them, we have no means of determining. We find in them many equivocal propositions and unwarranted inferences — much blending of truth with error, intentionally or unintentionally. The veteran Parmenides imposes the severance of the two, as a lesson, upon his youthful hearers Sokrates and Aristoteles.
110 Plato, Republ. v. 479 C. The allusion was to an eunuch knocking down a bat seated upon a reed. Αἰνός τις ἔστιν ὡς ἀνήρ τε κοὐκ ἀνήρ, Ὄρνιθά τε κοὐκ ὄρνιθ’ ἰδών τε κοὐκ ἰδών, Ἐπὶ ξύλου τε κοὐ ξύλου καθημένην Λίθῳ τε κοὐ λίθῳ βάλοι τε κοὐ βάλοι.
I read with astonishment the amount of positive philosophy which a commentator like Steinhart extracts from the concluding enigma of the Parmenides, and which he even affirms that no attentive reader of the dialogue can possibly miss (Einleitung zum Parmenides, pp. 302-303).
Subjects and personages in the Theætêtus.
In this dialogue, as in the Parmenides immediately preceding, Plato dwells upon the intellectual operations of mind: introducing the ethical and emotional only in a partial and subordinate way. The main question canvassed is, What is Knowledge — Cognition — Science? After a long debate, turning the question over in many distinct points of view, and examining three or four different answers to the question — all these answers are successively rejected, and the problem remains unsolved.
The two persons who converse with Sokrates are, Theodôrus, an elderly man, eminent as a geometrician, astronomer, &c., and teaching those sciences — and Theætêtus, a young man of great merit and still greater promise: acute, intelligent, and inquisitive — high-principled and courageous in the field, yet gentle and conciliatory to all: lastly, resembling Sokrates in physiognomy and in the flatness of his nose. The dialogue is supposed to have taken place during the last weeks of the life of Sokrates, when his legal appearance as defendant is required to answer the indictment of Melêtus, already entered in the official record.1 The dialogue is here read aloud to Eukleides of Megara and his fellow-citizen Terpsion, by a slave of Eukleides: this last person had recorded it in writing from narrative previously made to him by Sokrates.2 It is prefaced by a short discourse between 111Eukleides and Terpsion, intended to attract our sympathy and admiration towards the youthful Theætêtus.
1 Plato, Theætêt. ad fin. p. 210.
2 Plato, Theætêt. i. pp. 142 E, 143 A. Plato hardly keeps up the fiction about the time of this dialogue with perfect consistency. When it took place, the indictment of Melêtus had already been recorded: Sokrates breaks off the conversation for the purpose of going to answer it: Eukleides hears the dialogue from the mouth of Sokrates afterwards. “Immediately on getting home to Megara” (says Eukleides) “I wrote down memoranda (of what I had heard): then afterwards I called it back to my mind at leisure, and as often as I visited Athens I questioned Sokrates about such portions as I did not remember, and made corrections on my return here, so that now nearly all the dialogue has been written out.”
Such a process would require longer time than is consistent with the short remainder of the life of Sokrates. Socher indeed tries to explain this by assuming a long interval between the indictment and the trial, but this is noway satisfactory. (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, p. 251.)
Mr. Lewis Campbell, in the Preface to his very useful edition of this dialogue (p. lxxi. Oxford, 1861), considers that the battle in which Theætêtus is represented as having been wounded, is probably meant for that battle in which Iphikrates and his peltasts destroyed the Spartan Mora, B.C. 390: if not that, then the battle at the Isthmus of Corinth against Epaminondas. B.C. 369. Schleiermacher in his Einleitung to the dialogue (p. 185) seems to prefer the supposition of some earlier battle or skirmish under Iphikrates. The point can hardly be determined. Still less can we fix the date at which the dialogue was written, though the mention of the battle of Corinth certifies that it was later than 394 B.C. Ast affirms confidently that it was the first dialogue composed by Plato after the Phædon, which last was composed immediately after the death of Sokrates (Ast, Platon’s Leben, &c., p. 192). I see no ground for this affirmation. Most of the commentators rank it among the dialectical dialogues, which they consider to belong to a later period of Plato’s life than the ethical, but to an earlier period than the constructive, such as Republic, Timæus, &c. Most of them place the Theætêtus in one or other of the years between 393-383 B.C., though they differ much among themselves whether it is to be considered as later or earlier than other dialogues — Kratylus, Euthydemus, Menon, Gorgias, &c. (Stallbaum, Proleg. Theæt. pp. 6-10; Steinhart, Einleit. zum Theæt. pp. 100-213.) Munk and Ueberweg, on the contrary, place the Theætêtus at a date considerably later, subsequent to 368 B.C. Munk assigns it to 358 or 357 B.C. after Plato’s last return from Sicily (Munk, Die natürliche Ordnung der Platon. Schr. pp. 357-597: Ueberweg, Ueber die Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 228-236).
Question raised by Sokrates — What is knowledge or Cognition? First answer of Theætêtus, enumerating many different cognitions. Corrected by Sokrates.
In answer to the question put by Sokrates — What is Knowledge or Cognition? Theætêtus at first replies — That there are many and diverse cognitions:— of geometry, of arithmetic, of arts and trades, such as shoemaking, joinery, &c. Sokrates points out (as in the Menon, Hippias Major, and other dialogues) that such an answer involves a misconception of the question: which was general, and required a general answer, setting forth the characteristic common to all cognitions. No one can know what cognition is in shoemaking or any particular case — unless he first knows what is cognition generally.3 Specimens of suitable answers to general questions are then given (or of definition of a general term), in the case of clay — and of numbers square and oblong.4 112I have already observed more than once how important an object it was with Plato to impress upon his readers an exact and adequate conception of the meaning of general terms, and the proper way of defining them. For this purpose he brings into contrast the misconceptions likely to arise in the minds of persons not accustomed to dialectic.
3 Plato, Theætêt. p. 147 A.
Οὐδ’ ἄρα ἐπιστήμην ὑποδημάτων συνίησιν, ὁ ἐπιστήμην μὴ εἰδιός; Οὐ γάρ.
4 Plato, Theætêt. p. 148. Oblong (προμήκεις) numbers are such as can be produced only from two unequal factors. The explanation of this difficult passage, requiring us to keep in mind the geometrical conception of numbers usual among the Greek mathematicians, will be found clearly given in Mr. Campbell’s edition of this dialogue, pp. 20-22.
Preliminary conversation before the second answer is given. Sokrates describes his own peculiar efficacy — mental obstetric — He cannot teach, but he can evolve knowledge out of pregnant minds.
Theætêtus, before he attempts a second answer, complains how much the subject had embarrassed him. Impressed with what he had heard about the interrogatories of Sokrates, he had tried to solve this problem: but he had not been able to satisfy himself with any attempted solution — nor yet to relinquish the search altogether. “You are in distress, Theætêtus” (observes Sokrates), “because you are not empty, but pregnant.5 You have that within you, of which you need to be relieved; and you cannot be relieved without obstetric aid. It is my peculiar gift from the Gods to afford such aid, and to stimulate the parturition of pregnant minds which cannot of themselves bring forth what is within them.6 I can produce no truth myself: but I can, by my art inherited from my mother the midwife Phænaretê, extract truth from others, and test the answers given by others: so as to determine whether such answers are true and valuable, or false and worthless. I can teach nothing: I only bring out what is already struggling in the minds of youth: and if there be nothing within them, my procedure is unavailing. My most important function is, to test the answers given, how far they are true or false. But most people, not comprehending my drift, complain of me as a most eccentric person, who only makes others sceptical. They reproach me, and that truly enough, with always asking questions, and never saying any thing of my own: because I have nothing to say worth hearing.7 113The young companions who frequent my society, often suffer long-continued pains of parturition night and day, before they can be delivered of what is within them. Some, though apparently stupid when they first come to me, make great progress, if my divine coadjutor is favourable to them: others again become tired of me, and go away too soon, so that the little good which I have done them becomes effaced. Occasionally, some of these impatient companions wish to return to me afterwards — but my divine sign forbids me to receive them: where such obstacle does not intervene, they begin again to make progress.”8
5 Plato, Theætêt. p. 148 E. ὠδίνεις, διὰ τὸ μὴ κενὸς ἀλλ’ ἐγκύμων εἶναι.
6 Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A, p. 150 A.
7 Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A. οἱ δέ, ἄτε οὐκ εἰδότες, τοῦτο μὲν οὐ λέγουσι περὶ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι δὲ ἀτοπώτατός εἰμι, καὶ ποιῶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀπορεῖν. 150 B-C μέγιστον δὲ τοῦτ’ ἕνι τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ τέχνῃ, βασανίζειν δυνατὸν εἶναι παντὶ τρόπῳ, πότερον εἴδωλον ἢ ψεῦδος ἀποτίκτει τοῦ νέου ἡ διανοία, ἢ γόνιμόν τε καὶ ἀληθές· ἐπεὶ τόδε γε καὶ ἐμοὶ ὑπάρχει ὅπερ ταῖς μαίαις· ἄγονός εἰμι σοφίας, &c.
8 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 150 E, 151 A. ἐνίοις μὲν τὸ γιγνόμενόν μοι δαιμόνιον ἀποκωλύει ξυνεῖναι, ἐνίοις δὲ ἐᾷ· καὶ πάλιν οὗτοι ἐπιδιδόασιν.
We here see (what I have already adverted to in reviewing the Theagês, vol. ii. ch. xv. pp. 105-7) the character of mystery, unaccountable and unpredictable in its working on individuals, with which Plato invests the colloquy of Sokrates.
Ethical basis of the cross-examination of Sokrates — He is forbidden to pass by falsehood without challenge.
This passage, while it forcibly depicts the peculiar intellectual gift of Sokrates, illustrates at the same time the Platonic manner of describing, full of poetry and metaphor. Cross-examination by Sokrates communicated nothing new, but brought out what lay buried in the mind of the respondent, and tested the value of his answers. It was applicable only to minds endowed and productive: but for them it was indispensable, in order to extract what they were capable of producing, and to test its value when extracted. “Do not think me unkind,” (says Sokrates,) “or my procedure useless, if my scrutiny exposes your answers as fallacious. Many respondents have been violently angry with me for doing so: but I feel myself strictly forbidden either to admit falsehood, or to put aside truth.”9 Here we have a suitable prelude to a dialogue in which four successive answers are sifted and rejected, without reaching, even at last, any satisfactory solution.
9 Plato, Theætêt. p. 151 D.
Answer of Theætêtus — Cognition is sensible perception: Sokrates says that this is the same doctrine as the Homo Mensura laid down by Protagoras, and that both are in close affinity with the doctrines of Homer, Herakleitus, Empedoklês, &c., all except Parmenides.
The first answer given by Theætêtus is — “Cognition is sensation (or sensible perception)”. Upon this answer Sokrates remarks, that it is the same doctrine, though in other words, as what was laid down by Protagoras — “Man is the measure of all things: of things existent, that they exist: of things non-existent, that they do not exist. As things appear to me, so they 114are to me: as they appear to you, so they are to you.”10 Sokrates then proceeds to say, that these two opinions are akin to, or identical with, the general view of nature entertained by Herakleitus, Empedoklês, and other philosophers, countenanced moreover by poets like Homer and Epicharmus. The philosophers here noticed (he continues), though differing much in other respects, all held the doctrine that nature consisted in a perpetual motion, change, or flux: that there was no real Ens or permanent substratum, but perpetual genesis or transition.11 These philosophers were opposed to Parmenides, who maintained (as I have already stated in a previous chapter) that there was nothing real except Ens — One, permanent, and unchangeable: that all change was unreal, apparent, illusory, not capable of being certainly known, but only matter of uncertain opinion or estimation.
10 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 151 E — 152 A.
Theætêt. οὐκ ἄλλο τί ἐστιν ἐπιστήμη ἢ αἴσθησις.…
Sokrat. Κινδυνεύεις μέντοι λόγον οὐ φαῦλον εἰρηκέναι περὶ ἐπιστήμης, ἀλλ’ ὅν ἔλεγε καὶ Πρωταγόρας· τρόπον δέ τινα ἄλλον εἴρηκε τὰ αὐτὰ ταῦτα. Φησὶ γάρ που — Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὄντων, ὡς ἔστι — τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν. Ἀνέγνωκας γάρ που;
Theætêt. Ἀνέγνωκα καὶ πολλάκις.
Sokrat. Οὐκοῦν οὕτω πως λέγει, ὠς οἷα μὲν ἕκαστα ἐμοὶ φαίνεται, τοιαῦτα μέν ἐστιν ἐμοὶ — οἷα δὲ σοί, τοιαῦτα δὲ αὖ σοί· ἀνθρωπος δὲ σύ τε κἀγώ.
Theætêt. Λέγει γὰρ οὖν οὕτως.
Here Plato appears to transcribe the words of Protagoras (compare p. 161 B, and the Kratylus, p. 386 A) which distinctly affirm the doctrine of Homo Mensura — Man is the measure of all things, — but do not affirm the doctrine, that knowledge is sensible perception. The identification between the two doctrines is asserted by Plato himself. It is Plato who asserts “that Protagoras affirmed the same doctrine in another manner,” citing afterwards the manner in which he supposed Protagoras to affirm it. If there had been in the treatise of Protagoras any more express or peremptory affirmation of the doctrine “that knowledge is sensible perception,” Plato would probably have given it here.
11 Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 E. καὶ περὶ τούτου πάντες ἑξῆς οἱ σοφοὶ πλὴν Παρμενίδου ξυμφερέσθων, Πρωταγόρας τε καὶ Ἡράκλειτος καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ ἄκροι τῆς ποιήσεως ἑκατέρας, κωμῳδίας μὲν Ἐπίχαρμος, τραγῳδίας δὲ Ὅμηρος.
Plato here blends together three distinct theories for the purpose of confuting them; yet he also professes to urge what can be said in favour of them. Difficulty of following his exposition.
The one main theme intended for examination here (as Sokrates12 expressly declares) is the doctrine — That Cognition is sensible perception. Nevertheless upon all the three opinions, thus represented as cognate or identical,13 Sokrates bestows a lengthened comment 115(occupying a half of the dialogue) in conversation, principally with Theætêtus, but partly also with Theodôrus. His strictures are not always easy to follow with assurance, because he often passes with little notice from one to the other of the three doctrines which he is examining: because he himself, though really opposed to them, affects in part to take them up and to suggest arguments in their favour: and further because, disclaiming all positive opinion of his own, he sometimes leaves us in doubt what is his real purpose — whether to expound, or to deride, the opinions of others — whether to enlighten Theætêtus, or to test his power of detecting fallacies.14 We cannot always distinguish between the ironical and the serious. Lastly, it is a still greater difficulty, that we have not before us either of the three opinions as set forth by their proper supporters. There remains no work either of Protagoras or of Herakleitus: so that we do not clearly know the subject matter upon which Plato is commenting — nor whether these authors would have admitted as just the view which he takes of their opinions.15
12 Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A.
13 Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 D. Sokrat. Παγκάλως ἄρα σοι εἴρηται ὅτι ἐπιστήμη οὐκ ἄλλο τί ἐστιν ἢ αἴσθησις· καὶ εἰς ταὐτὸν συμπέπτωκε, κατὰ μὲν Ὅμηρον καὶ Ἡράκλειτον καὶ πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον φῦλον, οἷον ῥεύματα κινεῖσθαι τὰ πάντα — κατὰ δὲ Πρωταγόραν τὸν σοφώτατον, πάντων χρημάτων ἄνθρωπον μέτρον εἶναι — κατὰ δὲ Θεαίτητον, τούτων οὗτως ἐχόντων, αἴσθησιν ἐπιστήμην γίγνεσθαι.
14 See the answer of Theætêtus and the words of Sokrates following, p. 157 C.
15 It would be hardly necessary to remark, that when Plato professes to put a pleading into the mouth of Protagoras (pp. 165-166) we have no other real speaker than Plato himself, if commentators did not often forget this. Steinhart indeed tells us (Einleit. zum Theætêt. pp. 36-47) positively — that Plato in this pleading keeps in the most accurate manner (auf das genaueste) to the thoughts of Protagoras, perhaps even to his words. How Steinhart can know this I am at a loss to understand. To me it seems very improbable. The mere circumstance that Plato forces into partnership three distinct theories, makes it probable that he did not adhere to the thoughts or language of any one of them.
The doctrine of Protagoras is completely distinct from the other doctrines. The identification of them as one and the same is only constructive — the interpretation of Plato himself.
It is not improbable that the three doctrines, here put together by Plato and subjected to a common scrutiny, may have been sometimes held by the same philosophers. Nevertheless, the language16 of Plato himself shows us that Protagoras never expressly affirmed knowledge to be sensible Perception: and that the substantial identity between this doctrine, and the different doctrine maintained by Protagoras, is to be regarded as a construction put upon the two by Plato. That the theories of Herakleitus and Empedokles differed 116materially from each other, we know certainly: the theory of each, moreover, differed from the doctrine of Protagoras — “Man is the measure of all things”. How this last doctrine was defended by its promulgator, we cannot say. But the defence of it noway required him to maintain — That knowledge is sensible perception. It might be consistently held by one who rejected that definition of knowledge.17 And though Plato tries to refute both, yet the reasonings which he brings against one do not at all tell against the other.
16 See Theætêt. p. 152 A. This is admitted (to be a construction put by Plato himself) by Steinhart in his note 7, p. 214, Einleitung zum Theætêtus, though he says that Plato’s construction is the right one.
17 Dr. Routh, in a note upon his edition of the Euthydêmus of Plato (p. 286 C) observes:— “Protagoras docebat, Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὄντων, ὡς ἔστι· τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστι. Quâ quidem opinione qualitatum sensilium sine animi perceptione existentiam sustulisse videtur.”
The definition here given by Routh is correct as far as it goes, though too narrow. But it is sufficient to exhibit the Protagorean doctrine as quite distinct from the other doctrine, ὅτι ἐπιστήμη οὐκ ἄλλο τί ἐστιν ἢ αἴσθησις.
Explanation of the doctrine of Protagoras — Homo Mensura.
The Protagorean doctrine — Man is the measure of all things — is simply the presentation in complete view of a common fact — uncovering an aspect of it which the received phraseology hides. Truth and Falsehood have reference to some believing subject — and the words have no meaning except in that relation. Protagoras brings to view this subjective side of the same complex fact, of which Truth and Falsehood denote the objective side. He refuses to admit the object absolute — the pretended thing in itself — Truth without a believer. His doctrine maintains the indefeasible and necessary involution of the percipient mind in every perception — of the concipient mind in every conception — of the cognizant mind in every cognition. Farther, Protagoras acknowledges many distinct believing or knowing Subjects: and affirms that every object known must be relative to (or in his language, measured by) the knowing Subject: that every cognitum must have its cognoscens, and every cognoscibile its cognitionis capax: that the words have no meaning unless this be supposed: that these two names designate two opposite poles or aspects of the indivisible fact of cognition — actual or potential — not two factors, which are in themselves separate or separable, and which come together to make a compound product. A man cannot in any case get clear of or discard his own mind as a Subject. Self is necessarily omnipresent; 117concerned in every moment of consciousness, and equally concerned in all, though more distinctly attended to in some than in others.18 The Subject, self, or Ego, is that which all our moments of consciousness have in common and alike: Object is that in which they do or may differ — although some object or other there always must be. The position laid down by Descartes — Cogito, ergo sum — might have been stated with equal truth — Cogito, ergo est (cogitatum aliquid): sum cogitans — est cogitatum — are two opposite aspects of the same indivisible mental fact — cogitatio. In some cases, doubtless, the objective aspect may absorb our attention, eclipsing the subjective: in other cases, the subjective attracts exclusive notice: but in all cases and in every act of consciousness, both are involved as co-existent and correlative. That alone exists, to every man, which stands, or is believed by him to be capable of standing, in some mode of his consciousness as an Object correlative with himself as a Subject. If he believes in its existence, his own believing mind is part and parcel of such fact of belief, not less than the object believed in: if he disbelieves it, his own disbelieving mind is the like. Consciousness in all varieties has for its two poles Subject and Object: there cannot be one of these poles without the opposite pole — north without south — any more than there can be concave without convex (to use a comparison familiar with Aristotle), or front 118 without back: which are not two things originally different and coming into conjunction, but two different aspects of the same indivisible fact.
18 In regard to the impossibility of carrying abstraction so far as to discard the thinking subject, see Hobbes, Computation or Logic, ch. vii. 1.
“In the teaching of natural philosophy I cannot begin better than from privation; that is, from feigning the world to be annihilated. But if such annihilation of all things be supposed, it may perhaps be asked what would remain for any man (whom only I except from this universal annihilation of things) to consider as the subject of philosophy, or at all to reason upon; or what to give names unto for ratiocination’s sake.
“I say, therefore, there would remain to that man ideas of the world, and of all such bodies as he had, before their annihilation, seen with his eyes, or perceived by any other sense; that is to say, the memory and imagination of magnitudes, motions, sounds, colours, &c., as also of their order and parts. All which things, though they be nothing but ideas and phantasms, happening internally to him that imagineth, yet they will appear as if they were external and not at all depending upon any power of the mind. And these are the things to which he would give names and subtract them from, and compound them with one another. For seeing that after the destruction of all other things I suppose man still remaining, and namely that he thinks, imagines, and remembers, there can be nothing for him to think of but what is past.… Now things may be considered, that is, be brought into account, either as internal accidents of our mind, in which manner we consider them when the question is about some faculty of the mind: or, as species of external things, not as really existing, but appearing only to exist, or to have a being without us. And in this manner we are now to consider them.”
Perpetual implication of Subject with Object — Relate and Correlate.
In declaring that “Man is the measure of all things” — Protagoras affirms that Subject is the measure of Object, or that every object is relative to a correlative Subject. When a man affirms, believes, or conceives, an object as existing, his own believing or concipient mind is one side of the entire fact. It may be the dark side, and what is called the Object may be the light side, of the entire fact: this is what happens in the case of tangible and resisting substances, where Object, being the light side of the fact, is apt to appear all in all:19 a man thinks of the Something which resists, without attending to the other aspect of the fact of resistance, viz.: his own energy or pressure, to which resistance is made. On the other hand, when we speak of enjoying any pleasure or suffering any pain, the enjoying or suffering Subject appears all in all, distinguished plainly from other Subjects, supposed to be not enjoying or suffering in the same way: yet it is no more than the light side of the fact, of which Object is the dark side. Each particular pain which we suffer has its objective or differential peculiarity, distinguishing it from other sensations, correlating with the same sentient Subject.
19 “Nobiscum semper est ipsa quam quærimus (anima); adest, tractat, loquitur — et, si fas est dicere, inter ista nescitur.” (Cassiodorus, De Animâ, c. 1, p. 594, in the edition of his Opera Omnia, Venet. 1729).
“In the primitive dualism of consciousness, the Subject and Object being inseparable, either of them apart from the other must be an unknown quantity: the separation of either must be the annihilation of both.” (F. W. Farrar, Chapters on Language, c. 23, p. 292: which chapter contains more on the same topic, well deserving of perusal.)
Such relativity is no less true in regard to the ratiocinative combinations of each individual, than in regard to his percipient capacities.
The Protagorean dictum will thus be seen, when interpreted correctly, to be quite distinct from that other doctrine with which Plato identifies it: that Cognition is nothing else but sensible Perception. If, rejecting this last doctrine, we hold that cognition includes mental elements distinct from, though co-operating with, sensible perception — the principle of relativity laid down by Protagoras will not be the less true. My intellectual activity — my powers of remembering, imagining, ratiocinating, combining, &c., are a part of 119my mental nature, no less than my powers of sensible perception: my cognitions and beliefs must all be determined by, or relative to, this mental nature: to the turn and development which all these various powers have taken in my individual case. However multifarious the mental activities may be, each man has his own peculiar allotment and manifestations thereof, to which his cognitions must be relative. Let us grant (with Plato) that the Nous or intelligent Mind apprehends intelligible Entia or Ideas distinct from the world of sense: or let us assume that Kant and Reid in the eighteenth century, and M. Cousin with other French writers in the nineteenth, have destroyed the Lockian philosophy, which took account (they say) of nothing but the à posteriori element of cognition — and have established the existence of other elements of cognition à priori: intuitive beliefs, first principles, primary or inexplicable Concepts of Reason.20 Still we must recollect that all such à priori Concepts, Intuitions, Beliefs, &c., are summed up in the mind: and that thus each man’s mind, with its peculiar endowments, natural or supernatural, is still the measure or limit of his cognitions, acquired and acquirable. The Entia Rationis exist relatively to 120Ratio, as the Entia Perceptionis exist relatively to Sense. This is a point upon which Plato himself insists, in this very dialogue. You do not, by producing this fact of innate mental intuitions, eliminate the intuent mind; which must be done in order to establish a negative to the Protagorean principle.21 Each intuitive belief whether correct or erroneous — whether held unanimously by every one semper et ubique, or only held by a proportion of mankind — is (or would be, if proved to exist) a fact of our 121nature; capable of being looked at either on the side of the believing Subject, which is its point of community with all other parts of our nature — or on the side of the Object believed, which is its point of difference or peculiarity. The fact with its two opposite aspects is indivisible. Without Subject, Object vanishes: without Object (some object or other, for this side of the fact is essentially variable), Subject vanishes.
20 See M. Jouffroy, Préface à sa Traduction des Œuvres de Reid, pp. xcvii.-ccxiv.
M. Jouffroy, following in the steps of Kant, declares these à priori beliefs or intuitions to be altogether relative to the human mind. “Kant, considérant que les conceptions de la raison sont des croyances aveugles auxquelles notre esprit se sent fatalement déterminé par sa nature, en conclut qu’elles sont rélatives à cette nature: que si notre nature était autre, elles pourraient être différentes: que par conséquent, elles n’ont aucune valeur absolue: et qu’ainsi notre vérité, notre science, notre certitude, sont une vérité, une science, une certitude, purement subjective, purement humaine — à laquelle nous sommes déterminés à nous fier par notre nature, mais qui ne supporte pas l’examen et n’a aucune valeur objective” (p. clxvii.) … “C’est ce que répéte Kant quand il soutient que l’on ne peut objectiver le subjectif: c’est à dire, faire que la vérité humaine cesse d’être humaine, puisque la raison qui la trouve est humaine. On peut exprimer de vingt manières différentes cette impossibilité: elle reste toujours la même, et demeure toujours insurmontable,” p. cxc. Compare p. xcvii. of the same Preface.
M. Pascal Galuppi (in his Lettres Philosophiques sur les Vicissitudes de la Philosophie, translated from the Italian by M. Peisse, Paris, 1844) though not agreeing in this variety of à priori philosophy, agrees with Kant in declaring the à priori element of cognition to be purely subjective, and the objective element to be à posteriori (Lett. xiv. pp. 337-338), or the facts of sense and experience. “L’ordre à priori, que Kant appelle transcendental, est purement idéal, et dépourvu de toute réalité. Je vis, qu’en fondant la connaissance sur l’ordre à priori, on arrive nécessairement au scepticisme: et je reconnus que la doctrine Écossaise est la mère légitime du Criticisme Kantien, et par conséquent, du scepticisme, qui est la conséquence de la philosophie critique. Je considérai comme de haute importance ce problème de Kant. Il convient de déterminer ce qu’il y a d’objectif, et ce qu’il y a de subjectif, dans la connaissance. Les Empiriques n’admettent dans la connaissance d’autres élémens que les objectifs,” &c.
21 See this point handled in Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. viii. 355-362. We may here cite a remark of Simplikius in his Commentary on the Categories of Aristotle (p. 64, a. in Schol. Brandis). Aristotle (De Animâ, iii. 2, 426, a. 19; Categor. p. 7, b. 23) lays down the doctrine that in most cases Relata or (τὰ πρός τι) are “simul Naturâ, καὶ συναναιρεῖ ἄλληλα”: but that in some Relata this is not true: for example, τὸ ἐπιστητὸν is relative to ἐπιστήμη, yet still it would seem prior to ἐπιστήμη (πρότερον ἂν δόξειε τῆς ἐπιστήμης εἶναι). There cannot be ἐπιστήμη without some ἐπιστητόν: but there may be ἐπιστητὸν without any ἐπιστήμη. There are few things, if any (he says), in which the ἐπιστητὸν (cognoscibile) is simul naturâ with ἐπιστήμη (or cognitio) and cannot be without it.
Upon which Simplikius remarks, What are these few things? Τίνα δὲ τὰ ὀλίγα ἐστίν, ἐφ’ ὧν ἅμα τῷ ἐπιστητῷ ἡ ἐπιστήμη ἐστίν; Τὰ ἄνευ ὕλης, τὰ νοητά, ἅμα τῷ κατ’ ἐνεργείαν ἀεὶ ἐστώσῃ ἐπιστήμη ἔστιν, εἴτε καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν ἐστί τις τοιαύτη ἀεὶ ἄνω μένουσα, … εἴτε καὶ ἐν τῷ κατ’ ἐνεργείαν vῷ εἴ τις καὶ τὴν νόησιν ἐκείνην ἐπιστήμην ἕλοιτο καλεῖν. δύναται δὲ καὶ διὰ τὴν τῶν κοινῶν ὑπόστασιν εἰρῆσθαι, τὴν ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως· ἅμα γὰρ τῇ ὑποστάσει τούτων καὶ ἡ ἐπιστήμη ἐστίν. ἀληθὲς δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀναπλασμάτων τῶν τε ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ καὶ τῶν τεχνιτῶν· ἅμα γὰρ χίμαιρα καὶ ἡ ἐπιστήμη χιμαίρας.
We see from hence that Simplikius recognises Concepts, Abstractions, and Fictions, to be dependent on the Conceiving, Abstracting, Imagining, Mind — as distinguished from objects of Sense, which he does not recognise as dependent in the like manner. He agrees in the doctrine of Protagoras as to the former, but not as to the latter. This illustrates what I have affirmed, That the Protagorean doctrine of “Homo Mensura” is not only unconnected with the other principle (that Knowledge is resolvable into sensible perception) to which Aristotle and Plato would trace it — but that there is rather a repugnance between the two. The difficulty of proving the doctrine, and the reluctance to admit it, is greatest in the case of material objects, least in the case of Abstractions, and General Ideas. Yet Aristotle, in reasoning against the Protagorean doctrine (Metaphysic. Γ. pp. 1009-1010, &c.) treats it like Plato, as a sort of corollary from the theory that Cognition is Sensible Perception.
Simplikius farther observes (p. 65, b. 14) that Aristotle is not accurate in making ἐπιστητὸν correlate with ἐπιστήμη: that in Relata, the potential correlates with the potential, and the actual with the actual. The Cognoscible is correlative, not with actual cognition (ἐπιστήμη) but with potential Cognition, or with a potential Cognoscens. Aristotle therefore is right in saying that there may be ἐπιστητὸν without ἐπιστήμη, but this does not prove what he wishes to establish.
Themistius, in another passage of the Aristotelian Scholia, reasoning against Boethus, observes to the same effect as Simplikius, that in relatives, the actual correlates with the actual, and the potential with the potential:—
Καίτοι, φησί γε ὁ Βοηθός, οὐδὲν κωλύει τὸν ἀριθμὸν εἶναι καὶ δίχα τοῦ ἀριθμοῦντος, ὥσπερ οἶμαι τὸ αἰσθητὸν καὶ δίχα τοῦ αἰσθανομένου· σφάλλεται δέ, ἅμα γὰρ τὰ πρὸς τί, καὶ τὰ δυνάμει πρὸς τὰ δυνάμει· ὥστε εἰ μὴ καὶ ἀριθμητικόν, οὐδὲ τὸ ἀριθμητόν (Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 223, a. p. 393, Schol. Brandis).
Compare Aristotel. Metaphysic. M. 1087, a. 15, about τὸ ἐπίστασθαι δυνάμει and τὸ ἐπίστασθαι ἐνεργείᾳ.
About the essential co-existence of relatives — Sublato uno, tollitur alterum — see also Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, vii. 395, p. 449, Fabric.
Evidence from Plato proving implication of Subject and Object, in regard to the intelligible world.
That this general doctrine is true, not merely respecting the facts of sense, but also respecting the facts of mental conception, opinion, intellection, cognition — may be seen by the reasoning of Plato himself in other dialogues. How, for example, does Plato prove, in his Timæus, the objective reality of Ideas or Forms? He infers them from the subjective facts of his own mind. The subjective fact called Cognition (he argues) is generically different from the subjective fact called True Opinion: therefore the Object correlating with the One must be distinct from the Object correlating with the other: there must be a Noumenon or νοητόν τι correlating with Nous, distinct from the δοξαστόν τι which correlates with δόξα.22 So again, in the Phædon,23 Sokrates proves the pre-existence of the human soul from the fact that there were pre-existent cognizable Ideas: if there were knowable Objects, there must also have been a Subject 122Cognoscens or Cognitionis capax. The two are different aspects of one and the same conception: upon which we may doubtless reason abstractedly under one aspect or under the other, though they cannot be separated in fact. Now Both these two inferences of Plato rest on the assumed implication of Subject and Object.24
22 Plato, Timæus, p. 51 B-E, compare Republic, v. p. 477.
See this reasoning of Plato set forth in Zeller, Die Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. pp. 412-416, ed. 2nd.
Nous, according to Plato (Tim. 51 E), belongs only to the Gods and to a select few among mankind. It is therefore only to the Gods and to these few men that Νοητὰ exist. To the rest of mankind Νοητὰ are non-apparent and non-existent.
23 Plato, Phædon, pp. 76-77. ἴση ἀνάγκη ταῦτά τε (Ideas or Forms) εἶναι, καὶ τὰς ἡμετέρας ψυχὰς πρὶν καὶ ἡμᾶς γεγονέναι — καὶ εἰ μὴ ταῦτα, οὐδὲ τάδε. Ὑπερφυῶς, ἔφη ὁ Σιμμίας, δοκεῖ μοι ἡ αὐτὴ ἀνάγκη εἶναι, καὶ εἰς καλόν γε καταφεύγει ὁ λόγος εἰς τὸ ὁμοίως εἶναι τήν τε ψυχὴν ἡμῶν πρὶν γενέσθαι ἡμᾶς καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν ἣν σὺ νῦν λέγεις.
Compare p. 92 E of the same dialogue with the notes of Wyttenbach and Heindorf — “Haec autem οὐσία Idearum, rerum intelligibilium, αὐτῆς ἐστὶν (sc. τῆς ψυχῆς) ut hoc loco dicitur, est propria et possessio animæ nostræ,” &c.
About the essential implication of Νοῦς with the Νοητά, as well as of τὸ δόξαζον with τὰ δοξαζόμενα, and of τὸ αἰσθανόμενον with τὰ αἰσθητά, see Plutarch, De Animæ Procreat. in Timæo, pp. 1012-1024; and a curious passage from Joannes Philoponus ad Aristot. Physica, cited by Karsten in his Commentatio De Empedoclis Philosophiâ, p. 372, and Olympiodorus ad Platon. Phædon, p. 21. τὸν νοῦν φαμὲν ἀκριβῶς γινώσκειν, διότι αὐτός ἐστι τὸ νοητόν.
Sydenham observes, in a note upon his translation of the Philêbus (note 76, p. 118), “Being Intelligent and Being Intelligible are not only correlatives, but are so in their very essence: neither of them can be at all, without the Being of the other”.
24 I think that the inference in the Phædon is not necessary to prove that conclusion, nor in itself just. For when I speak of Augustus and Antony as having once lived, and as having fought the battle of Actium, it is noway necessary that I should believe myself to have been then alive and to have seen them: nor when I speak of civil war as being now carried on in the United States of America, is it necessary that I should believe myself to be or to have been on the spot as a percipient witness. I believe, on evidence which appears to me satisfactory, that both these are real facts: that is, if I had been at Actium on the day of the battle, or if I were now in the United States, I should see and witness the facts here affirmed. These latter words describe the subjective side of the fact, without introducing any supposition that I have been myself present and percipient.
The Protagorean measure is even more easily shown in reference to the intelligible world than in reference to sense.
In truth, the Protagorean measure or limit is even more plainly applicable to our mental intuitions and mental processes (remembering, imagining, conceiving, comparing, abstracting, combining of hypotheses, transcendental or inductive) than to the matter of our sensible experience.25 In regard to the Entia Rationis, divergence between one theorist and another is quite as remarkable as the divergence between one percipient and another in the most disputable region of Entia Perceptionis. Upon the separate facts of sense, there is a nearer approach to unanimity among mankind, than upon the theories whereby theorising men connect together those facts to their own satisfaction. An opponent of Protagoras would draw his most plausible arguments from the undisputed facts of sense. He would appeal to matter and what are called its primary 123qualities, as refuting the doctrine. For in describing mental intuitions, Mind or Subject cannot well be overlaid or ignored: but in regard to the external world, or material substance with its primary qualities, the objective side is so lighted up and magnified in the ordinary conception and language — and the subjective side so darkened and put out of sight — that Object appears as if it stood single, apart, and independent.
25 Bacon remarks that the processes called mental or intellectual are quite as much relative to man as those called sensational or perceptive. “Idola Tribûs sunt fundata in ipsâ naturâ humanâ. Falso enim asseritur, Sensum humanum esse mensuram rerum: quin contra, omnes perceptiones, tam Sensûs quam Mentis, sunt ex analogiâ hominis, non ex analogiâ Universi.”
Nemesius, the Christian Platonist, has a remark bearing upon this question. He says that the lower animals have their intellectual movements all determined by Nature, which acts alike in all the individuals of the species, but that the human intellect is not wholly determined by Nature; it has a freer range, larger stores of ideas, and more varied combinations: hence its manifestations are not the same in all, but different in different individuals — ἐλεύθερον γάρ τι καὶ αὐτεξούσιον τὸ λογικόν, ὅθεν οὐχ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν πᾶσιν ἔργον ἀνθρώποις, ὡς ἑκάστῳ εἴδει τῶν ἀλόγων ζώων· φύσει γὰρ μόνῃ τὰ τοιαῦτα κινεῖται, τὰ δὲ φύσει ὁμοίως παρὰ πᾶσίν ἐστιν· αἱ δὲ λογικαὶ πράξεις ἄλλαι παρ’ ἄλλοις καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἀνάγκης αἱ αὗται παρὰ πᾶσιν (De Nat. Hom., c. ii. p. 53. ed. 1565).
A man conceives objects, like houses and trees, as existing when he does not actually see or touch them, just as much as when he does see or touch them. He conceives them as existing independent of any actual sensations of his own: and he proceeds to describe them as independent altogether of himself as a Subject — or as absolute, not relative, existences. But this distinction, though just as applied in ordinary usage, becomes inadmissable when brought to contradict the Protagorean doctrine; because the speaker professes to exclude, what cannot be excluded, himself as concipient Subject.26 It is he who conceives 124absent objects as real and existing, though he neither sees nor touches them: he believes fully, that if he were in a certain 125position near them, he would experience those appropriate sensations of sight and touch, whereby they are identified. Though he eliminates himself as a percipient, he cannot eliminate himself as a concipient: i.e., as conceiving and believing. He can conceive no object without being himself the Subject conceiving, nor believe in any future contingency without being himself the Subject believing. He may part company with himself as percipient, but he cannot part company with himself altogether. His conception of an absent external object, therefore, when fully and accurately described, does not contradict the Protagorean doctrine. But it is far the most plausible objection which can be brought against that doctrine, and it is an objection deduced from the facts or cognitions of sense.
26 Bishop Berkeley observes:—
“But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so — there is no difficulty in it. But what is all this, more than framing in your mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them? But do not you yourself perceive or think of them all the while? This therefore is nothing to the purpose. It only shows you have the power of imagining or forming ideas in your mind: but it doth not show that you can conceive it possible the objects of your thought may exist without the mind. To make out this, it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived or unthought of, which is a manifest repugnancy. When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind, taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can and doth conceive bodies existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by or exist in itself.”
Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. xxiii. p. 34, ed. of Berkeley’s Works, 1820. The same argument is enforced in Berkeley’s First Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, pp. 145-146 of the same volume.
I subjoin a passage from the work of Professor Bain on Psychology, where this difficult subject is carefully analysed (The Senses and the Intellect, p. 370). “There is no possible knowledge of the world except in reference to our minds. Knowledge means a state of mind: the knowledge of material things is a mental thing. We are incapable of discussing the existence of an independent material world: the very act is a contradiction. We can speak only of a world presented to our own minds. By an illusion of language we fancy that we are capable of contemplating a world which does not enter into our own mental existence: but the attempt belies itself, for this contemplation is an effort of mind.”
“Solidity, extension, space — the foundation properties of the material world — mean, as has been said above, certain movements and energies of our own bodies, and exist in our minds in the shape of feelings of force, allied with visible and tactile, and other sensible impressions. The sense of the external is the consciousness of particular energies and activities of our own.”
(P. 376). “We seem to have no better way of assuring ourselves and all mankind, that with the conscious movement of opening the eyes there will always be a consciousness of light, than by saying that the light exists as an independent fact, without any eyes to see it. But if we consider the fact fairly we shall see that this assertion errs, not simply in being beyond any evidence that we can have, but also in being a self-contradiction. We are affirming that to have an existence out of our minds, which we cannot know but as in our minds. In words we assert independent existence, while in the very act of doing so we contradict ourselves. Even a possible world implies a possible mind to conceive it, just as much as an actual world implies an actual mind. The mistake of the common modes of expression on this matter is the mistake of supposing the abstractions of the mind to have a separate and independent existence. Instead of looking upon the doctrine of an external and independent world as a generalisation or abstraction grounded on our particular experiences, summing up the past and predicting the future, we have got into the way of maintaining the abstraction to be an independent reality, the foundation, or cause, or origin, of all these experiences.”
To the same purpose Mr. Mansel remarks in his Bampton Lectures on “The Limits of Religious Thought,” page 52:
“A second characteristic of Consciousness is, that it is only possible in the form of a relation. There must be a Subject or person conscious, and an Object or thing of which he is conscious. There can be no consciousness without the union of these two factors; and in that union each exists only as it is related to the other. The subject is a subject only in so far as it is conscious of an object: the object is an object only in so far as it is apprehended by a subject: and the destruction of either is the destruction of consciousness itself. It is thus manifest that a consciousness of the Absolute is equally self-contradictory with that of the Infinite.… Our whole notion of Existence is necessarily relative, for it is existence as conceived by us. But Existence, as we conceive it, is but a name for the several ways in which objects are presented to our consciousness — a general term embracing a variety of relations.… To assume Absolute Existence as an object of thought is thus to suppose a relation existing when the related terms exist no longer. An object of thought exists, as such, in and through its relation to a thinker; while the Absolute, as such, is independent of all relation.”
Dr. Henry More has also a passage asserting the essential correlation on which I am here insisting (Immortality of the Soul, ch. ii. p. 3). And Professor Ferrier, in his Institutes of Metaphysic, has given much valuable elucidation respecting the essential relativity of cognition.
Though this note is already long, I shall venture to add from an eminent German critic — Trendelenburg — a passage which goes to the same point.
“Das Sein ist als die absolute Position erklärt worden. Der Begriff des Seins drücke blos das aus: es werde bei dem einfachen Setzen eines Was sein Bewenden haben. Es hat sich hier die abstracte Vorstellung des Seins nur in eine verwandte Anschauung umgekleidet; denn das Gesetzte steht in dem Raum da; und insofern fordert die absolute Position schon den Begriff des seiendem Etwas, das gesetzt wird. Fragt man weiter, so ist in der absoluten Position schon derjenige mitgedacht, der da setzt. Das Sein wird also nicht unabhängig aus sich selbst bestimmt, sondern zur Erklärung ein Verhältniss zu der Thätigkeit des Gedankens herbeigezogen.
“Aehnlich würde jede von vorn herein versuchte Bestimmung des Denkens ausfallen. Man würde es nur durch einen Bezug zu den Dingen erläutern können, welche in dem Denken Grund und Mass finden. Wir begeben uns daher jeder Erklärung, und setzen eine Vorstellung des Denkens und Seins voraus, in der Hoffnung dass beide mit jedem Schritt der Untersuchung sich in sich selbst bestimmen werden.” “Indem wir Denken und Sein unterscheiden, fragen wir, wie ist es möglich, dass sich im Erkennen Denken und Sein vereinigt? Diese Vereinigung sprechen wir vorläufig als eine Thatsache aus, die das Theoretische wie das Praktische beherrscht.” Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, sect. 3, pp. 103-104, Berlin, 1840.
Object always relative to Subject — Either without the other, impossible. Plato admits this in Sophistes.
I cannot therefore agree with Plato in regarding the Protagorean doctrine — Homo Mensura — as having any dependance upon, or any necessary connection with, the other theory (canvassed in the Theætêtus) which pronounces cognition to be sensible perception. Objects of thought exist in relation to a thinking Subject; as Objects of sight or touch exist in relation to a seeing or touching Subject. And this we shall find Plato himself declaring in the Sophistes (where his Eleatic disputant is introduced as impugning a doctrine substantially the same as that of Plato himself in the Phædon, Timæus, and elsewhere) as well as here in the Theætêtus. In the Sophistes, certain philosophers (called the Friends of Forms or Ideas) are noticed, who admitted that all sensible or perceivable existence (γένεσις — Fientia) was relative to a (capable) sentient or percipient — but denied the relativity of Ideas, and maintained that Ideas, Concepts, Intelligible Entia, were not relative but absolute. The Eleate combats these philosophers, and establishes against them — That the Cogitable or Intelligible existence, Ens Rationis, was just as much relative to an Intelligent or Cogitant subject, as perceivable existence was relative to a Subject capable of perceiving — That Existence, under both varieties, was nothing more than a potentiality, correlating with a counter-potentiality 126(τὸ γνωστὸν with τὸ γνωστικόν, τὸ αἰσθητὸν with τὸ αἰσθητικόν, and never realised except in implication therewith.27
27 Plato, Sophistes, pp. 247-248.
The view taken of this matter by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the third chapter of the first Book of his System of Logic, is very instructive; see especially pp. 65-66 (ed. 4th).
Aristippus (one of the Sokratici viri, contemporary of Plato) and the Kyrenaic sect affirmed the doctrine — ὅτι μόνα τὰ πάθη καταληπτά. Aristokles refutes them by saying that there can be no πάθος without both Object and Subject — ποιοῦν and πάσχον. And he goes on to declare that these three are of necessary co-existence or consubstantiality. Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἀνάγκη γε τρία ταῦτα συνυφίστασθαι — τό τε πάθος αὐτό, καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν, καὶ τὸ πάσχον (ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xiv. 19, 1).
I apprehend that Aristokles by these words does not really refute what Aristippus meant to affirm. Aristippus meant to affirm the Relative, and to decline affirming anything beyond; and in this Aristokles agrees, making the doctrine even more comprehensive by showing that Object as well as Subject are relative also; implicated both with each other and in the πάθος.
Plato’s representation of the Protagorean doctrine in intimate conjunction with the Herakleitean.
This doctrine of the Eleate in the Platonic Sophistes coincides with the Protagorean — Homo Mensura — construed in its true meaning: Object is implicated with, limited or measured by, Subject: a doctrine proclaiming the relativeness of all objects perceived, conceived, known, or felt — and the omnipresent involution of the perceiving, conceiving, knowing, or feeling, Subject: the object varying with the Subject. “As things appear to me, so they are to me: as they appear to you, so they are to you.” This theory is just and important, if rightly understood and explained: but whether Protagoras did so explain or understand it, we cannot say; nor does the language of Plato enable us to make out. Plato passes on from this theory to another, which he supposes Protagoras to have held without distinctly stating it: That there is no Ens distinguishable in itself or permanent, or stationary: that all existences are in perpetual flux, motion, change — acting and reacting upon each other, combining with or disjoining from each other.28
28 Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 D.
Though Plato states the grounds of this theory in his ironical way, as if it were an absurd fancy, yet it accidentally coincides with the largest views of modern physical science. Absolute rest is unknown in nature: all matter is in perpetual movement, molecular as well as in masses.
Relativity of sensible facts, as described by him.
Turning to the special theory of Protagoras (Homo Mensura), and producing arguments, serious or ironical in its defence, Sokrates says — What you call colour has no definite place or existence either within you or without you. It is the result of the passing collision between your eyes and the flux of things suited to act upon them. 127It is neither in the agent nor in the patient, but is something special and momentary generated in passing between the two. It will vary with the subject: it is not the same to you, to another man, to a dog or horse, or even to yourself at different times. The object measured or touched cannot be in itself either great, or white, or hot: for if it were, it would not appear different to another Subject. Nor can the Subject touching or measuring be in itself great, or white, or hot: for if so, it would always be so, and would not be differently modified when applied to a different object. Great, white, hot, denote no positive and permanent attribute either in Object or Subject, but a passing result or impression generated between the two, relative to both and variable with either.29
29 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 153-154. ὃ δὴ ἕκαστον εἶναί φαμεν χρῶμα, οὔτε τὸ προσβάλλον οὔτε τὸ προσβαλλόμενον ἔσται, ἀλλὰ μεταξύ τι ἑκαστῳ ἴδιον γεγονός.
Relations are nothing in the object purely and simply without a comparing subject.
To illustrate this farther (continues Sokrates) — suppose we have here six dice. If I compare them with three other dice placed by the side of them, I shall call the six dice more and double: if I put twelve other dice by the side of them, I shall call the six fewer and half. Or take an old man — and put a growing youth by his side. Two years ago the old man was taller than the youth: now, the youth is grown, so that the old man is the shorter of the two. But the old man, and the six dice, have remained all the time unaltered, and equal to themselves. How then can either of them become either greater or less? or how can either really be so, when they were not so before?30
30 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 154-155. Compare the reasoning in the Phædon, pp. 96-97-101.
Relativity twofold — to the comparing Subject — to another object, besides the one directly described.
The illustration here furnished by Sokrates brings out forcibly the negation of the absolute, and the affirmation of universal relativity in all conceptions, judgments, and predications, which he ascribes to Protagoras and Herakleitus. The predication respecting the six dice denotes nothing real, independent, absolute, inhering in them: for they have undergone no change. It is relative, and expresses a mental comparison made by me or some one else. It is therefore relative in two different senses:— 1. To some other object with which the comparison of the dice is 128made:— 2. To me as comparing Subject, who determine the objects with which the comparison shall be made.31 — Though relativity in both senses is comprehended by the Protagorean affirmation — Homo Mensura — yet relativity in the latter sense is all which that affirmation essentially requires. And this is true of all propositions, comparative or not — whether there be or be not reference to any other object beyond that which is directly denoted. But Plato was here illustrating the larger doctrine which he ascribes to Protagoras in common with Herakleitus: and therefore the more complicated case of relativity might suit his purpose better.
31 The Aristotelian Category of Relation (τὰ πρὸς τί, Categor. p. 6, a. 36) designates one object apprehended and named relatively to some other object — as distinguished from object apprehended and named not thus relatively, which Aristotle considers as per se καθ’ αὑτό (Ethica Nikomach. i. p. 1096, a. 21). Aristotle omits or excludes relativity of the object apprehended to the percipient or concipient subject, which is the sort of relativity directly noted by the Protagorean doctrine.
Occasionally Aristotle passes from relativity in the former sense to relativity in the latter; as when he discusses ἐπιστητὸν and ἐπιστήμη, alluded to in one of my former notes on this dialogue. But he seems unconscious of any transition. In the Categories, Object, as implicated with Subject does not seem to have been distinctly present to his reflection. In the third book of the Metaphysica, indeed, he discusses professedly the opinion of Protagoras; and among his objections against it, one is, that it makes everything relative or πρὸς τί (Metaph. Γ. p. 1011, a. 20, b. 5). This is hardly true in the sense which πρὸς τί bears as one of his Categories: but it is true in the other sense to which I have adverted.
A clear and full exposition of what is meant by the Relativity of Human Knowledge, will be found in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s most recent work, ‘Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,’ ch. ii. pp. 6-15.
Sokrates now re-states that larger doctrine, in general terms, as follows.
Statement of the doctrine of Herakleitus — yet so as to implicate it with that of Protagoras.
The universe is all flux or motion, divided into two immense concurrent streams of force, one active, the other passive; adapted one to the other, but each including many varieties. One of these is Object: the other is, sentient, cognizant, concipient, Subject. Object as well as Subject is, in itself and separately, indeterminate and unintelligible — a mere chaotic Agent or Patient. It is only by copulation and friction with each other that they generate any definite or intelligible result. Every such copulation, between parts adapted to each other, generates a twin offspring: two correlative and inseparable results infinitely diversified, but always born in appropriate pairs:32 a 129definite perception or feeling, on the subjective side — a definite thing perceived or felt, on the objective. There cannot be one of these without the other: there can be no objective manifestation without its subjective correlate, nor any subjective without its objective. This is true not merely about the external senses — touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing — but also about the internal, — hot and cold, pleasure and pain, desire, fear, and all the countless variety of our feelings which have no separate names.33 Each of these varieties of feeling has its own object co-existent and correlating with it. Sight, hearing, and smell, move and generate rapidly and from afar; touch and taste, slowly and only from immediate vicinity: but the principle is the same in all. Thus, e.g., when the visual power of the eye comes into reciprocal action with its appropriate objective agent, the result between them is, that the visual power passes out of its abstract and indeterminate state into a concrete and particular act of vision — the seeing a white stone or wood: while the objective force also passes out of its abstract and indeterminate state into concrete — so that it is no longer whiteness, but a piece of white stone or wood actually seen.34
32 Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. ὡς τὸ πᾶν κίνησις ἦν, καὶ ἄλλο παρὰ τοῦτο οὐδέν, τῆς δὲ κινήσεως δύο εἴδη, πλήθει μὲν ἄπειρον ἑκάτερον, δύναμιν δὲ τὸ μὲν ποιεῖν ἔχον, τὸ δὲ πάσχειν. Ἐκ δὲ τῆς τούτων ὁμιλίας τε καὶ τρίψεως πρὸς ἄλληλα γίγνεται ἔκγονα πλήθει μὲν ἄπειρα, δίδυμα δέ — τὸ μὲν αἰσθητόν, τὸ δὲ αἴσθησις, ἀεὶ συνεκπίπτουσα καὶ γεννωμένη μετὰ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ.
33 Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 B.
34 Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 E. ὁ μὲν ὀφθαλμὸς ἄρα ὄψεως ἔμπλεως ἐγένετο καὶ ὁρᾷ δὴ τότε καὶ ἐγένετο οὔ τι ὄψις ἀλλὰ ὀφθαλμὸς ὁρῶν, τὸ δὲ ξυγγεννῆσαν τὸ χρῶμα λευκότητος περιεπλήσθη καὶ ἐγένετο οὐ λευκότης αὖ ἀλλὰ λευκόν, εἴτε ξύλον εἴτε λίθος εἴτε ὁτιοῦν ξυνέβη χρῆμα χρωσθῆναι τῷ τοιούτῳ χρώματι.
Plato’s conception of the act of vision was — That fire darted forth from the eyes of the percipient and came into confluence or coalescence with fire approaching from the perceived object (Plato, Timæus, pp. 45 C, 67 C).
Agent and Patient — No absolute Ens.
Accordingly, nothing can be affirmed to exist separately and by itself. All existences, come only as twin and correlative manifestations of this double agency. In fact neither of these agencies can be conceived independently and apart from the other: each of them is a nullity without the other.35 If either of them be varied, the result also will vary proportionally: each may be in its turn agent or patient, according to the different partners with which it comes into confluence.36 It is therefore improper to say — Such or such a 130thing exists. Existence absolute, perpetual, and unchangeable is nowhere to be found: and all phrases which imply it are incorrect, though we are driven to use them by habit and for want of knowing better. All that is real is, the perpetual series of changeful and transient conjunctions; each Object, with a certain Subject, — each Subject, with a certain Object.37 This is true not merely of individual objects, but also of those complex aggregates rationally apprehended which receive generic names, man, animal, stone, &c.38 You must not therefore say that any thing is, absolutely and perpetually, good, honourable, hot, white, hard, great — but only that it is so felt or esteemed by certain subjects more or less numerous.39
35 Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. ἐπεὶ καὶ τὸ ποιοῦν εἶναι τι καὶ τὸ πάσχον αὖ τι ἐπὶ ἑνὸς νοῆσαι, ὥς φασιν, οὐκ εἶναι παγίως. Οὔτε γὰρ ποιοῦν ἐστί τι, πρὶν ἂν τῷ πάσχοντι ξυνέλθῃ — οὔτε πάσχον, πρὶν ἂν τῷ ποιοῦντι, &c.
36 Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. τό τέ τινι ξυνελθὸν καὶ ποιοῦν ἄλλῳ αὖ προσπεσὸν πάσχον ἀνεφάνη.
37 Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. οὐδὲν εἶναι ἓν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό, ἀλλά τινι ἀεὶ γίγνεσθαι, τὸ δ’ εἶναι παντάχοθεν ἐξαιρετέον, &c.
38 Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 B. δεῖ δὲ καὶ κατὰ μέρος οὕτω λέγειν καὶ περὶ πολλῶν ἀθροισθέντων, ᾧ δὴ ἀθροίσματι ἄνθρωπόν τε τίθενται καὶ λίθον καὶ ἕκαστον ζῶόν τε καὶ εἶδος.
In this passage I follow Heindorf’s explanation which seems dictated by the last word εἶδος. Yet I am not sure that Plato does really mean here the generic aggregates. He had before talked about sights, sounds, hot, cold, hard, &c., the separate sensations. He may perhaps here mean simply individual things as aggregates or ἀθροίσματα — a man, a stone, &c.
39 Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 E.
Arguments derived from dreams, fevers. &c., may be answered.
The arguments advanced against this doctrine from the phenomena of dreams, distempers, or insanity, admit (continues Sokrates) of a satisfactory answer. A man who is dreaming, sick, or mad, believes in realities different from, and inconsistent with, those which he would believe in when healthy. But this is because he is, under those peculiar circumstances, a different Subject, unlike what he was before. One of the two factors of the result being thus changed, the result itself is changed.40 The cardinal principle of Protagoras — the essential correlation, and indefeasible fusion, of Subject and Object, exhibits itself in a perpetual series of definite manifestations. To say that I (the Subject) perceive, — is to say that I perceive some Object: to perceive and perceive nothing, is a contradiction. Again, if an Object be sweet, it must be sweet to some percipient Subject: sweet, but sweet to no one, is impossible.41 Necessity binds the essence of the percipient to that of something perceived: so that every name which you bestow upon either of them implies some reference to 131the other; and no name can be truly predicated of either, which implies existence (either perpetual or temporary) apart from the other.42
40 Plato, Theætêt. p. 159.
41 Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 A.
42 Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 B. ἔπειπερ ἡμῶν ἡ ἀνάγκη τὴν οὐσίαν συνδεῖ μέν, συνδεῖ δε οὐδενὶ τῶν ἄλλων, οὐδ’ αὖ ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς· ἀλλήλοις δὴ λείπεται συνδεδέσθαι (i. e. τὸν αἰσθανόμενον and τὸ ποιοῦν αἰσθάνεσθαι). Ὤστε εἴτε τις εἶναι τί ὀνομάζει, τινὶ εἶναι, ἢ τινός, ἢ πρός τι, ῥητέον αὐτῷ, εἴτε γίγνεσθαι· αὐτὸ δὲ ἐφ’ αὑτοῦ τι ἢ ὂν ἢ γιγνόμενον οὔτε αὐτῷ λεκτέον, οὔτ’ ἄλλου λέγοντος ἀποδεκτέον.
Compare Aristot. Metaphys. Γ. 6, p. 1011, a. 23.
Exposition of the Protagorean doctrine, as given here by Sokrates is to a great degree just. You cannot explain the facts of consciousness by independent Subject and Object.
Such is the exposition which Sokrates is here made to give, of the Protagorean doctrine. How far the arguments, urged by him in its behalf, are such as Protagoras himself either really urged, or would have adopted, we cannot say. In so far as the doctrine asserts essential fusion and implication between Subject and Object, with actual multiplicity of distinct Subjects — denying the reality either of absolute and separate Subject, or of absolute and separate Object43 — I think it true and instructive. We are reminded that when we affirm any thing about an Object, there is always (either expressed or tacitly implied) a Subject or Subjects (one, many, or all), to whom the Object is what it is declared to be. This is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness, feeling, and cognition, in all their actual varieties. All of them are bi-polar or bi-lateral, admitting of being looked at either on 132the subjective or on the objective side. Comparisons and contrasts, gradually multiplied, between one consciousness and another, lead us to distinguish the one of these points of view from the other. In some cases, the objective view is brought into light and prominence, and the subjective thrown into the dark and put out of sight: in other cases, the converse operation takes place. Sometimes the Ego or Subject is prominent, sometimes the Mecum or Object.44 Sometimes the Objective is as it were divorced from the Subject, and projected outwards, so as to have an illusory appearance of existing apart from and independently of any Subject. In other cases, the subjective view is so exclusively lighted up and conspicuous, that Object disappears, and we talk of a mind conceiving, as if it had no correlative Concept. It is possible, by abstraction, to indicate, to 133name, and to reason about, the one of these two points of view without including direct notice of the other: this is abstraction or logical separation — a mental process useful and largely applicable, yet often liable to be mistaken for real distinctness and duality. In the present case, the two abstractions become separately so familiar to the mind, that this supposed duality is conceived as the primordial and fundamental fact: the actual, bilateral, consciousness being represented as a temporary derivative state, generated by the copulation of two factors essentially independent of each other. Such a theory, however, while aiming at an impracticable result, amounts only to an inversion of the truth. It aims at explaining our consciousness as a whole; whereas all that we can really accomplish, is to explain, up to a certain point, the conditions of conjunction and sequence between different portions of our consciousness. It also puts the primordial in the place of the derivative, and transfers the derivative to the privilege of the primordial. It attempts to find a generation for what is really primordial — the total series of our manifold acts of consciousness, each of a bilateral character, subjective on one side and objective on the other: and it assigns as the generating factors two concepts obtained by abstraction from these very acts, — resulting from multiplied comparisons, — and ultimately exaggerated into an illusion which treats the logical separation as if it were bisection in fact and reality.
43 Aristotle, in a passage of the treatise De Animâ (iii. 1, 2-4-7-8, ed. Trendelenburg, p. 425, b. 25, p. 426, a. 15-25, Bekk.), impugns an opinion of certain antecedent φυσιόλογοι whom he does not specify; which opinion seems identical with the doctrine of Protagoras. These philosophers said, that “there was neither white nor black without vision, nor savour without the sense of taste”. Aristotle says that they were partly right, partly wrong. They were right in regard to the actual, wrong in regard to the potential. The actual manifestation of the perceived is one and the same with that of the percipient, though the two are not the same logically in the view of the reflecting mind (ἡ δὲ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ ἐνέργεια καὶ τῆς αἰσθήσεως ἡ αὐτὴ μέν ἐστι καὶ μία, τὸ δ’ εἶναι οὐ ταὐτὸν αὐταῖς). But this is not true when we speak of them potentially — διχῶς γὰρ λεγομένης τῆς αἰσθήσεως καὶ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ, τῶν μὲν κατὰ δύναμιν τῶν δὲ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν, ἐπί τούτων μὲν συμβαίνει τὸ λεχθέν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν ἑτέρων οὐ συμβαίνει. Ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνοι ἁπλῶς ἔλεγον περὶ τῶν λεγομένων οὐχ ἁπλῶς.
I think that the distinction, which Aristotle insists upon as a confutation of these philosophers, is not well founded. What he states, in very just language, about actual perception is equally true about potential perception. As the present fact of actual perception implicates essentially a determinate percipient subject with a determinate perceived object, and admits of being looked at either from the one point of view or from the other — so the concept of potential perception implicates in like manner an indeterminate perceivable with an indeterminate subject competent to perceive. The perceivable or cogitable has no meaning except in relation to some Capax Percipiendi or Capax Cogitandi.
44 The terms Ego and Mecum, to express the antithesis of these two λόγῳ μόνον χωριστὰ, are used by Professor Ferrier in his very acute treatise, the Institutes of Metaphysic, pp. 93-96. The same antithesis is otherwise expressed by various modern writers in the terms Ego and non-Ego — le moi et le non-moi. I cannot think that this last is the proper way of expressing it. You do not want to negative the Ego, but to declare its essential implication with a variable correlate; to point out the bilateral character of the act of consciousness. The two are not merely Relata secundum dici but Relata secundum esse, to use a distinction recognised in the scholastic logic.
The implication of Subject and Object is expressed in a peculiar manner (though still clearly) by Aristotle in the treatise De Animâ, iii. 8, 1, 431, b. 21. ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα· ἢ γὰρ αἰσθητὰ τὰ ὄντα ἢ νοητά. ἐστὶ δ’ ἡ ἐπιστήμη μὲν τὰ ἐπιστητά πως, ἡ δ’ αἴσθησις τὰ αἰσθητά. The adverb πως (τρόπον τινά, as Simplikius explains it, fol. 78, b. 1) here deserves attention. “The soul is all existing things in a certain way (or looked at under a certain aspect). All things are either Percepta or Cogitata: now Cognition is in a certain sense the Cognita — Perception is the Percepta.” He goes on to say that the Percipient Mind is the Form of Percepta, while the matter of Percepta is without: but that the Cogitant Mind is identical with Cogitata, for they have no matter (iii. 4, 12, p. 430, a. 3, with the commentary of Simplikius p. 78, b. 17, f. 19, a. 12). This is in other words the Protagorean doctrine — That the mind is the measure of all existences; and that this is even more true about νοητὰ than about αἰσθητά. That doctrine is completely independent of the theory, that ἐπιστήμη is αἴσθησις.
It is in conformity with this affirmation of Aristotle (partially approved even by Cudworth — see Mosheim’s Transl. of Intell. Syst. Vol. II. ch. viii. pp. 27-28) — ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστι πάντα — that Mr. John Stuart Mill makes the following striking remark about the number of ultimate Laws of Nature:—
“It is useful to remark, that the ultimate Laws of Nature cannot possibly be less numerous than the distinguishable sensations or other feelings of our nature: those, I mean, which are distinguishable from one another in quality, and not merely in quantity or degree. For example, since there is a phenomenon sui generis called colour, which our consciousness testifies to be not a particular degree of some other phenomenon, as heat, or odour, or motion, but intrinsically unlike all others, it follows that there are ultimate laws of colour …The ideal limit therefore of the explanation of natural phenomena would be to show that each distinguishable variety of our sensations or other states of consciousness has only one sort of cause.” (System of Logic, Book iii. ch. 14, s. 2.)
Plato’s attempt to get behind the phenomena. Reference to a double potentiality — Subjective and Objective.
In Plato’s exposition of the Protagorean theory, the true doctrine held by Protagoras,45 and the illusory explanation (whether belonging to him or to Plato himself), are singularly blended together. He denies expressly 134all separate existence either of Subject or Object — all possibility of conceiving or describing the one as a reality distinct from the other. He thus acknowledges consciousness and cognition as essentially bilateral. Nevertheless he also tries to explain the generation of these acts of consciousness, by the hypothesis of a latens processus behind them and anterior to them — two continuous moving forces, agent and patient, originally distinct, conspiring as joint factors to a succession of compound results. But when we examine the language in which Plato describes these forces, we see that he conceives them only as Abstractions and Potentialities;46 though he ascribes to them a metaphorical copulation and generation. “Every thing is motion (or change): of which there are two sorts, each infinitely manifold: one, having power to act — the other having power to suffer.” Here instead of a number of distinct facts of consciousness, each bilateral — we find ourselves translated by abstraction into a general potentiality of consciousness, also essentially bilateral and multiple. But we ought to recollect, that the Potential is only a concept abstracted from the actual, — and differing from it in this respect, that it includes what has been and what may be, as well as what is. But it is nothing new and distinct by itself: it cannot be produced as a substantive antecedent to the actual, and as if it afforded explanation thereof. The general proposition about motion or change (above cited in the words of Plato), as far as it purports to get behind the fact of consciousness and to assign its cause or antecedent — is illusory. But if considered as a general expression for that fact itself, in the most comprehensive terms — indicating the continuous thread of separate, ever-changing acts of consciousness, each essentially bilateral, or subjective as well 135as objective — in this point of view the proposition is just and defensible.47
45 The elaborate Dissertation of Sir William Hamilton, on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned (standing first in his ‘Discussions on Philosophy’), is a valuable contribution to metaphysical philosophy. He affirms and shows, “That the Unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable: its notion being only a negation of the Conditioned, which last can alone be positively known and conceived” (p. 12); refuting the opposite doctrine as proclaimed, with different modifications, both by Schelling and Cousin.
In an Appendix to this Dissertation, contained in the same volume (p. 608), Sir W. Hamilton not only re-asserts the doctrine (“Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative, conditioned — relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognisable,” &c.) — but affirms farther that philosophers of every school, with the exception of a few late absolute theorisers in Germany, have always held and harmoniously re-echoed the same doctrine.
In proof of such unanimous agreement, he cites passages from seventeen different philosophers.
The first name on his list stands as follows:— “1. Protagoras — (as reported by Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius, &c.) — Man is (for himself) the measure of all things”.
Sir William Hamilton understands the Protagorean doctrine as I understand it, and as I have endeavoured to represent it in the present chapter. It has been very generally misconceived.
I cannot, however, agree with Sir William Hamilton, in thinking that this theory respecting the Unconditioned and the Absolute, has been the theory generally adopted by philosophers. The passages which he cites from other authors are altogether insufficient to prove such an affirmation.
46 Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. τῆς δὲ κινήσεως δύο εἴδη, πλήθει μὲν ἄπειρον ἑκάτερον, δύναμιν δὲ τὸ μὲν ποιεῖν ἔχον, τὸ δὲ πάσχειν.
47 In that distinction, upon which Aristotle lays so much stress, between Actus and Potentia, he declares Actus or actuality to be the Prius — Potentia or potentiality to be the Posterius. See Metaphysica, Θ. 8, 1049, b. 5 seqq.; De Animâ, ii. 4, 415, a. 17. The Potential is a derivative from the Actual — derived by comparison, abstraction, and logical analysis: a Mental concept, helping us to describe, arrange, and reason about, the multifarious acts of sense or consciousness — but not an anterior generating reality.
Turgot observes (Œuvres, vol. iii. pp. 108-110; Article in the Encyclopédie, Existence):—
“Le premier fondement de la notion de l’existence est la conscience de notre propre sensation, et le sentiment du moi qui résulte de cette conscience. La relation nécessaire entre l’être appercevant, et l’être apperçu considéré hors du moi, suppose dans les deux termes la même réalité. Il y a dans l’un et dans l’autre un fondement de cette relation, que l’homme, s’il avoit un langage, pourroit désigner par le nom commun d’existence ou de présence: car ces deux notions ne seroient point encore distinguées l’une de l’autre.…
“Mais il est très-important d’observer que ni la simple sensation des objets présens, ni la peinture que fait l’imagination des objets absens, ni le simple rapport de distance ou d’activité réciproque, commun aux uns et aux autres, ne sont précisément la chose que l’esprit voudroit désigner par le nom général d’existence; c’est le fondement même de ces rapports, supposé commun au moi, à l’objet vu et à l’objet simplement distant, sur lequel tombe véritablement et le nom d’existence et notre affirmation, lorsque nous disons qu’une chose existe. Ce fondement n’est ni ne peut être connu immédiatement, et ne nous est indiqué que par les rapports différents qui le supposent: nous nous en formons cependant une espèce d’idée que nous tirons par voie d’abstraction du témoignage que la conscience nous rend de nous-mêmes et de notre sensation actuelle: c’est-à-dire, que nous transportons en quelque sorte cette conscience du moi sur les objets extérieurs, par une espèce d’assimilation vague, démentie aussitôt par la séparation de tout ce qui caractérise le moi, mais qui ne suffit pas moins pour devenir le fondement d’une abstraction ou d’un signe commun, et pour être l’objet de nos jugemens.”
It is to be remembered, that the doctrine here criticised is brought forward by the Platonic Sokrates as a doctrine not his own, but held by others; among whom he ranks Protagoras as one.
Having thus set forth in his own language, and as an advocate, the doctrine of Protagoras, Sokrates proceeds to impugn it: in his usual rambling and desultory way, but with great dramatic charm and vivacity. He directs his attacks alternately against the two doctrines: 1. Homo Mensura: 2. Cognition is sensible perception.
I shall first notice what he advances against Homo Mensura.
Arguments advanced by the Platonic Sokrates against the Protagorean doctrine. He says that it puts the wise and foolish on a par — that it contradicts the common consciousness. Not every one, but the wise man only, is a measure.
It puts every man (he says) on a par as to wisdom and intelligence: and not only every man, but every horse, dog, frog, and other animal along with him. Each man is a measure for himself: all his judgments and beliefs are true: he is therefore as wise as Protagoras136 and has no need to seek instruction from Protagoras.48 Reflection, study, and dialectic discussion, are superfluous and useless to him: he is a measure to himself on the subject of geometry, and need not therefore consult a professed geometrician like Theodôrus.49
48 Plato, Theætêt. p. 161. Compare Plato, Kratylus, p. 386 C, where the same argument is employed.
49 Plato, Theætêt. p. 169 A.
The doctrine is contradicted (continues Sokrates) by the common opinions of mankind: for no man esteems himself a measure on all things. Every one believes that there are some things on which he is wiser than his neighbour — and others on which his neighbour is wiser than he. People are constantly on the look out for teachers and guides.50 If Protagoras advances an opinion which others declare to be false, he must, since he admits their opinion to be true, admit his own opinion to be false.51 No animal, nor any common man, is a measure; but only those men, who have gone through special study and instruction in the matter upon which they pronounce.52
50 Plato, Theætêt. p. 170.
51 Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 B. Οὐκοῦν τὴν αὑτοῦ ἂν ψευδῆ ξυγχωροῖ, εἰ τὴν τῶν ἡγουμένων αὐτὸν ψεύδεσθαι ὁμολογεῖ ἀληθῆ εἶναι;
52 Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 C.
In matters of present sentiment every man can judge for himself. Where future consequences are involved special knowledge is required.
In matters of present and immediate sensation, hot, cold, dry, moist, sweet, bitter, &c., Sokrates acknowledges that every man must judge for himself, and that what each pronounces is true for himself. So too, about honourable or base, just or unjust, holy or unholy — whatever rules any city may lay down, are true for itself: no man, no city, — is wiser upon these matters than any other.53 But in regard to what is good, profitable, advantageous, healthy, &c., the like cannot be conceded. Here (says Sokrates) one man, and one city, is decidedly wiser, and judges more truly, than another. We cannot say that the judgment of each is true;54 or that what every man or every city anticipates to promise good or profit, will necessarily realise such anticipations. In such cases, not merely present sentiment, but future consequences are involved.
53 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 172 A, 177 E.
54 Plato, Theætêt. p. 172.
Here then we discover the distinction which Plato would 137draw.55 Where present sentiment alone is involved, as in hot and cold, sweet and bitter, just and unjust, honourable and base, &c., there each is a judge for himself, and one man is no better judge than another. But where future consequences are to be predicted, the ignorant man is incapable: none but the professional Expert, or the prophet,56 is competent to declare the truth. When a dinner is on table, each man among the guests can judge whether it is good: but while it is being prepared, none but the cook can judge whether it will be good.57 This is one Platonic objection against the opinion of Protagoras, when he says that every opinion of every man is true. Another objection is, that opinions of different men are opposite and contradictory,58 some of them contradicting the Protagorean dictum itself.
55 Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.
56 Plato, Theætêt. p. 179. εἴ πῃ τοὺς συνόντας ἔπειθεν, ὅτι καὶ τὸ μέλλον ἔσεσθαί τε καὶ δόξειν οὔτε μάντις οὔτε τις ἄλλος ἄμεινον κρίνειεν ἂν ἢ αὐτὸς αὑτῷ.
57 Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.
58 Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 B.
Theodor. Ἐκείνῃ μοι δοκεῖ μάλιστα ἁλίσκεσθαι ὁ λόγος, ἁλισκόμενος καὶ ταύτῃ, ᾖ τὰς τῶν ἄλλων δόξας κυρίας ποιεῖ, αὗται δὲ ἐφάνησαν τοὺς ἐκείνου λόγους οὐδαμῇ ἀληθεῖς ἡγούμεναι.
Sokrat. Πολλαχῇ καὶ ἄλλῃ ἂν τό γε τοιοῦτον ἁλοίη, μὴ πᾶσαν παντὸς ἀληθῆ δόξαν εἶναι· περὶ δὲ τὸ παρὸν ἑκάστῳ πάθος, ἐξ ὧν αἱ αἰσθήσεις καὶ αἱ κατὰ ταύτας δόξαι γίγνονται … Ἴσως δὲ οὐδὲν λέγω, ἀνάλωτοι γάρ, εἰ ἔτυχον, εἰσίν.
Plato, when he impugns the doctrine of Protagoras, states that doctrine without the qualification properly belonging to it. All belief relative to the condition of the believing mind.
Such are the objections urged by Sokrates against the Protagorean doctrine — Homo Mensura. There may have been perhaps in the treatise of Protagoras, which unfortunately we do not possess, some reasonings or phrases countenancing the opinions against which Plato here directs his objections. But so far as I can collect, even from the words of Plato himself when he professes to borrow the phraseology of his opponent, I cannot think that Protagoras ever delivered the opinion which Plato here refutes — That every opinion of every man is true. The opinion really delivered by Protagoras appears to have been59 — That every opinion delivered by every man is true, to that man 138himself. But Plato, when he impugns it, leaves out the final qualification; falling unconsciously into the fallacy of passing (as logicians say) a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter.60 The qualification thus omitted by Plato forms the characteristic feature of the Protagorean doctrine, and is essential to the phraseology founded upon it. Protagoras would not declare any proposition to be true absolutely, or false absolutely. The phraseology belonging to that doctrine is forced upon him by Plato. Truth Absolute there is none, according to Protagoras. All truth is and must be truth relative to some one or more persons, either actually accepting and believing in it, or conceived as potential believers under certain circumstances. Moreover since these believers are a multitude of individuals, each with his own peculiarities — so no truth can be believed in, except under the peculiar measure of the believing individual mind. What a man adopts as true, and what he rejects as false, are conditioned alike by this limit: a limit not merely different in different individuals, but variable and frequently varying in the same individual. You cannot determine a dog, or a horse, or a child 139to believe in the Newtonian astronomy: you could not determine the author of the Principia in 1687 to believe what the child Newton had believed in 1647.61 To say that what is true to one man, is false to another — that what was true to an individual as a child or as a youth, becomes false to him in his advanced years, is no real contradiction: though Plato, by omitting the qualifying words, presents it as if it were such. In every man’s mind, the beliefs of the past have been modified or reversed, and the beliefs of the present are liable to be modified or reversed, by subsequent operative causes: by new supervening sensations, emotions, intellectual comparisons, authoritative teaching, or society, and so forth.
59 Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 A. Οὐκοῦν οὕτω πως λέγει (Protagoras) ὡς οἷα μὲν ἕκαστα ἐμοὶ φαίνεται, τοιαῦτα μέν ἐστιν ἐμοί — οἷα δὲ σοί, τοιαῦτα δὲ αὖ σοί. 158 A. τὰ φαινόμενα ἑκάστῳ ταῦτα καὶ εἶναι τούτῳ ᾧ φαίνεται. 160 C. Ἀληθὴς ἄρα ἐμοὶ ἡ ἐμὴ αἴσθησις· τῆς γὰρ ἐμῆς οὐσίας ἀεί ἐστι· καὶ ἐγὼ κριτὴς κατὰ τὸν Πρωταγόραν τῶν τε ὄντων ἐμοί, ὡς ἔστι, καὶ τῶν μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν.
Comp. also pp. 166 D, 170 A, 177 C.
Instead of saying αἴσθησις (in the passage just cited, p. 160 D), we might with quite equal truth put Ἀληθὴς ἄρα ἐμοὶ ἡ ἐμὴ νόησις· τῆς γὰρ ἐμῆς οὐσίας ἀεί ἔστιν. In this respect αἴσθησις and νόησις are on a par. Νόησις is just as much relative to ὁ νοῶν as αἴσθησις to ὁ αἰσθανόμενος.
Sextus Empiricus adverts to the doctrines of Protagoras (mainly to point out how they are distinguished from those of the Sceptical school, to which he himself belongs) in Pyrrhon. Hypot. i. sects. 215-219; adv. Mathematicos, vii. s. 60-64-388-400. He too imputes to Protagoras both the two doctrines. 1. That man is the measure of all things: that what appears to each person is, to him: that all truth is thus relative. 2. That all phantasms, appearances, opinions, are true. Sextus reasons at some length (390 seq.) against this doctrine No. 2, and reasons very much as Protagoras himself would have reasoned, since he appeals to individual sentiment and movement of the individual mind (οὐκ ὡσαύτως γὰρ κινούμεθα, 391-400). It appears to me perfectly certain that Protagoras advanced the general thesis of Relativity: we see this as well from Plato as from Sextus — καὶ οὕτως εἰσάγει τὸ πρός τι — τῶν πρός τι εἶναι τὴν ἀληθείαν (Steinhart is of opinion that these words τῶν πρός τι εἶναι τὴν ἀληθείαν are an addition of Sextus himself, and do not describe the doctrine of Protagoras; an opinion from which I dissent, and which is contradicted by Plato himself: Steinhart, Einleitung, note 8). If Protagoras also advanced the doctrine — all opinions are true — this was not consistent with his cardinal principle of relativity. Either he himself did not take care always to enunciate the qualifications and limitations which his theory requires, and which in common parlance are omitted — Or his opponents left out the limitations which he annexed, and impugned the opinion as if it stood without any. This last supposition I think the most probable.
The doctrine of Protagoras is correctly given by Sextus in the Pyrrhon. Hypot.
60 Aristotle, in commenting on the Protagorean formula, falls into a similar inaccuracy in slurring over the restrictive qualification annexed by Protagoras. Metaphysic. Γ. p. 1009, a. 6. Compare hereupon Bonitz’s note upon the passage, p. 199 of his edition.
This transition without warning, à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, is among the artifices ascribed by Plato to the Sophists Euthydêmus and Dionysodôrus (Plat. Euthyd. p. 297 D).
61 The argument produced by Plato to discredit the Protagorean theory — that it puts the dog or the horse on a level with man — furnishes in reality a forcible illustration of the truth of the theory.
Mr. James Harris, the learned Aristotelian of the last century, remarks, in his Dialogue on Happiness (Works, ed. 1772, pp. 143-168):—
“Every particular Species is, itself to itself, the Measure of all things in the Universe. As things vary in their relations to it, they vary also in their value. If their value be ever doubtful, it can noway be adjusted but by recurring with accuracy to the natural State of the Species, and to those several Relations which such a State of course creates.”
All exposition and discussion is an assemblage of individual judgments and affirmations. This fact is disguised by elliptical forms of language.
The fact, that all exposition and discussion is nothing more than an assemblage of individual judgments, depositions, affirmations, negations, &c, is disguised from us by the elliptical form in which it is conducted. For example:— I, who write this book — can give nothing more than my own report, as a witness, of facts known to me, and of what has been said, thought, or done by others, — for all which I cite authorities:— and my own conviction, belief or disbelief, as to the true understanding thereof, and the conclusions deducible. I produce the reasons which justify my opinion: I reply to those reasons which have been supposed by others to justify the opposite. It is for the reader to judge how far my reasons appear satisfactory to his mind.62 To deliver my 140own convictions, is all that is in my power: and if I spoke with full correctness and amplitude, it would be incumbent on me to avoid pronouncing any opinion to be true or false simply: I ought to say, it is true to me — or false to me. But to repeat this in every other sentence, would be a tiresome egotism. It is understood once for all by the title-page of the book: an opponent will know what he has to deal with, and will treat the opinions accordingly. If any man calls upon me to give him absolute truth, and to lay down the canon of evidence for identifying it — I cannot comply with the request, any farther than to deliver my own best judgment, what is truth — and to declare what is the canon of evidence which guides my own mind. Each reader must determine for himself whether he accepts it or not. I might indeed clothe my own judgments in oracular and vehement language: I might proclaim them as authoritative dicta: I might speak as representing the Platonic Ideal, Typical Man, — or as inspired by a δαίμων like Sokrates: I might denounce opponents as worthless men, deficient in all the sentiments which distinguish men from brutes, and meriting punishment as well as disgrace. If I used all these harsh phrases, I should only imitate what many authors of repute think themselves entitled to say, about THEIR beliefs and convictions. Yet in reality, I should still be proclaiming nothing beyond my own feelings:— the force of emotional association, and antipathy towards opponents, which had grown round these convictions in my own mind. Whether I speak in accordance with others, or in opposition to others, in either case I proclaim my own reports, feelings and judgments — nothing farther. I cannot escape from the Protagorean limit or measures.63
62 M. Destutt Tracy observes as follows:—
“De même que toutes nos propositions peuvent être ramenées à la forme de propositions énonciatives, parce qu’au fond elles expriment toutes un jugement; de même, toutes nos propositions énonciatives peuvent ensuite être toujours réduites à n’être qu’une de celles-ci: ‘je pense, je sens, ou je perçois, que telle chose est de telle manière, ou que tel être produit tel effet’ — propositions dont nous sommes nous-mêmes le sujet, parce qu’au fond nous sommes toujours le subjet de tous nos jugemens, puisqu’ils n’expriment jamais qu’une impression que nous éprouvons.” (Idéologie: Supplément à la première Section, vol. iv. p. 165, ed. 1825 duodec.)
“On peut même dire que comme nous ne sentons, ne savons, et ne connaissons, rien que par rapport à nous, l’idée, sujet de la proposition, est toujours en définitif notre moi; car quand je dis cet arbre est vert, je dis réellement je sens, je sais, je vois, que cet arbre est vert. Mais précisément parce que ce préambule se trouve toujours et nécessairement compris dans toutes nos propositions, nous le supprimons quand nous voulons; et toute idée peut être le sujet de la proposition.” (Principes Logiques, vol. iv. ch. viii. p. 231.)
63 Sokrates himself states as much as this in the course of his reply to the doctrine of Protagoras, Theætêt. 171 D.: ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν ἀνάγκη, οἶμαι, χρῆσθαι ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς … καὶ τὰ δοκοῦντα ἀεί, ταῦτα λέγειν.
The necessity (ἀνάγκη) to which Sokrates here adverts, is well expressed by M. Degérando. “En jugeant ce que pensent les autres hommes, en comprenant ce qu’ils éprouvent, nous ne sortons point en effet de nous-mêmes, comme on seroit tenté de le croire. C’est dans nos propres idées que nous voyons leurs idées, leurs manières d’être, leur existence même. Le monde entier ne nous est connu que dans une sorte de chambre obscure: et lorsqu’au sortir d’une société nombreuse nous croyons avoir lu dans les esprits et dans les cœurs, avoir observé des caractères, et senti (si je puis dire ainsi) la vie d’un grand nombre d’hommes — nous ne faisons en effet que sortir d’une grande galerie dont notre imagination a fait tous les frais; dont elle a créé tous les personnages, et dessiné, avec plus ou moins de vérité, tous les tableaux.” (Degérando, Des Signes et de l’Art de Penser, vol. i. ch. v. p. 132.)
141Argument — That the Protagorean doctrine equalises all men and animals. How far true. Not true in the sense requisite to sustain Plato’s objection.
To this theory Plato imputes as a farther consequence, that it equalises all men and all animals. No doubt, the measure or limit as generically described, bears alike upon all: but it does not mark the same degree in all. Each man’s bodily efforts are measured or limited by the amount of his physical force: this is alike true of all men: yet it does not follow that the physical force of all men is equal. The dog, the horse, the new-born child, the lunatic, is each a measure of truth to himself: the philosopher is so also to himself: this is alike true, whatever may be the disparity of intelligence: and is rather more obviously true when the disparity is great, because the lower intelligence has then a very narrow stock of beliefs, and is little modifiable by the higher. But though the Protagorean doctrine declares the dog or the child to be a measure of truth — each to himself — it does not declare either of them to be a measure of truth to me, to you, or to any ordinary by-stander. How far any person is a measure of truth to others, depends upon the estimation in which he is held by others: upon the belief which they entertain respecting his character or competence. Here is a new element let in, of which Plato, in his objection to the Protagorean doctrine, takes no account. When he affirms that Protagoras by his equalising doctrine acknowledged himself to be no better in point of wisdom and judgment than a dog or a child, this inference must be denied.64 The Protagorean doctrine is perfectly consistent with great diversities of knowledge, intellect, emotion, and character, between one man and another. Such diversities are recognised in individual belief and estimation, and are thus comprehended in the doctrine. Nor does Protagoras deny that men are teachable and modifiable. The scholar after being taught 142will hold beliefs different from those which he held before. Protagoras professed to know more than others, and to teach them: others on their side also believed that he knew more than they, and came to learn it. Such belief on both sides, noway contradicts the general doctrine here under discussion. What the scholar believes to be true, is still true to him: among those things which he believes to be true, one is, that the master knows more than he: in coming to be taught, he acts upon his own conviction. To say that a man is wise, is to say, that he is wise in some one’s estimation: your own or that of some one else. Such estimation is always implied, though often omitted in terms. Plato remarks very truly, that every one believes some others to be on certain matters wiser than himself. In other words, what is called authority — that predisposition to assent, with which we hear the statements and opinions delivered by some other persons — is one of the most operative causes in determining human belief. The circumstances of life are such as to generate this predisposition in every one’s mind to a greater or less degree, and towards some persons more than towards others.
64 Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 D. ὁ δ’ ἄρα ἐτύγχανεν ὢν εἰς φρόνησιν οὐδὲν βελτίων βατράχου γυρίνου, μὴ ὅτι ἄλλου του ἀνθρώπων. I substitute the dog or horse as illustrations.
Belief on authority is true to the believer himself — The efficacy of authority resides in the believer’s own mind.
Belief on authority is true to the believer himself, like all his other beliefs, according to the Protagorean doctrine: and in acting upon it, — in following the guidance of A, and not following the guidance of B, — he is still a measure to himself. It is not to be supposed that Protagoras ever admitted all men to be equally wise, though Plato puts such an admission into his mouth as an inference undeniable and obvious. His doctrine affirms something altogether different:— that whether you believe yourself to be wise or unwise, in either case the belief is equally your own — equally the result of your own mental condition and predisposition, — equally true to yourself, — and equally an item among the determining conditions of your actions. That the beliefs and convictions of one person might be modified by another, was a principle held by Protagoras not less than by Sokrates: the former employed as his modifying instrument, eloquent lecturing — the latter, dialectical cross-examination. Both of them recognise the belief of the person to whom they address themselves as true to him, yet at the same time as something which may be modified and corrected, 143by appealing to what they thought the better parts of it against the worse.
Protagorean formula — is false, to those who dissent from it.
Again — Sokrates imputes it as a contradiction to Protagoras — “Your doctrine is pronounced to be false by many persons: but you admit that the belief of all persons is true: therefore your doctrine is false”.65 Here also Plato omits the qualification annexed by Protagoras to his general principle — Every man’s belief is true — that is, true to him. That a belief should be true, to one man, and false to another — is not only no contradiction to the formula of Protagoras, but is the very state of things which his formula contemplates. He of course could only proclaim it as true to himself. It is the express purpose of his doctrine to disallow the absolutely true and the absolutely false. His own formula, like every other opinion, is false to those who dissent from it: but it is not false absolutely, any more than any other doctrine. Plato therefore does not make out his charge of contradiction.
65 Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 A. Sextus Empiric. (adv. Mathem. vii. 61) gives a pertinent answer to this objection.
Plato’s argument — That the wise man alone is a measure — Reply to it.
Some men (says Sokrates) have learnt, — have bestowed study on special matters, — have made themselves wise upon those matters. Others have not done the like, but remain ignorant. It is the wise man only who is a measure: the ignorant man neither is so, nor believes himself to be so, but seeks guidance from the wise.66
66 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 171 C, 179 B.
Upon this we may remark — First, that even when the untaught men are all put aside, and the erudites or Experts remain alone — still these very erudites or Experts, the men of special study, are perpetually differing among themselves; so that we cannot recognise one as a measure, without repudiating the authority of the rest.67 If by a measure, Plato means an infallible measure, he will not find it in this way: he is as far from the absolute as before. Next, it is perfectly correct that if any man be known to have studied or acquired experience on special matters, his opinion obtains an authority with others (more or 144fewer), such as the opinion of an ignorant man will not possess. This is a real difference between the graduated man and the non-graduated. But it is a difference not contradicting the theory of Protagoras; who did not affirm that every man’s opinion was equally trustworthy in the estimation of others, but that every man’s opinion was alike a measure to the man himself. The authority of the guide resides in the belief and opinion of those who follow him, or who feel prepared to follow him if necessity arises. A man gone astray on his journey, asks the way to his destination from residents whom he believes to know it, just as he might look at a compass, or at the stars, if no other persons were near. In following their direction, he is acting on his own belief, that he himself is ignorant on the point in question and that they know. He is a measure to himself, both of the extent of his own ignorance, and of the extent of his own knowledge. And in this respect all are alike — every man, woman, child, and animal;68 though they are by no means alike in the estimation of others, as trustworthy authorities.
67 “Nam, quod dicunt omnino, se credere ei quem judicent fuisse sapientem — probarem, si id ipsum rudes et indocti judicare potuissent (statuere enim, qui sit sapiens, vel maximé videtur esse sapientis). Sed, ut potuerint, potuerunt, omnibus rebus auditis, cognitis etiam reliquorum sententiis: judicaverunt autem re semel auditâ, atque ad unius se auctoritatem contulerunt.” (Cicero, Acad. Priora, ii. 3, 9.)
68 Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 E. I transcribe the following from the treatise of Fichte (Beruf des Menschen, Destination de l’Homme; Traduction de Barchou de Penhoën, ch. i. Le Doute, pp. 54-55):—
“De la conscience de chaque individu, la nature se contemplant sous un point de vue différent, il en résulte que je m’appelle moi, et que tu t’appelles toi. Pour toi, je suis hors de toi; et pour moi, tu es hors de moi. Dans ce qui est hors de moi, je me saisis d’abord de ce qui m’avoisine le plus, de ce qui est le plus à ma portée: toi, tu fais de même. Chacun de notre côté, nous allons ensuite au delà. Puis, ayant commencé à cheminer ainsi dans le monde de deux points de départ différens, nous suivons, pendant le reste de notre vie, des routes qui se coupent çà et là, mais qui jamais ne suivent exactement la même direction, jamais ne courent parallèlement l’une à l’autre. Tous les individus possibles peuvent être: par conséquent aussi, tous les points de vue de conscience possibles. La somme de ces consciences individuelles fait la conscience universelle: il n’y a pas d’autre. Ce n’est en effet que dans l’individu que se trouve à la fois et la limitation et la réalité. Dans l’individu la conscience est entièrement déterminée par la nature intime de l’individu. Il n’est donné à personne de savoir autre chose que ce qu’il sait. Il ne pourrait pas davantage savoir les mêmes choses d’une autre façon qu’il ne les sait.”
The same doctrine is enforced with great originality and acuteness in a recent work of M. Eugène Véron, Du Progrès Intellectuel dans l’Humanité, Supériorité des Arts Modernes sur les Arts Anciens (Paris, 1862, Guillaumin). M. Véron applies his general doctrine mainly to the theory of Art and Æsthetics: moreover he affirms more than I admit respecting human progress as a certain and constant matter of fact. But he states clearly, as an universal truth, the relative point of view — the necessary measurement for itself, of each individual mind — and the consequent obligation, on each, to allow to other minds the like liberty. We read, pp. 14-16-17:—
“Cela revient à dire que dans quelque cas que nous supposions, nous ne pouvons sentir que dans la mesure de notre sensibilité, comprendre et juger que dans la mesure de notre intelligence; et que nos facultés étant en perpetuel developpement, les variations de notre personnalité entrainent nécessairement celles de nos jugemens, même quand nous n’en avons pas conscience.… Chaque homme a son esprit particulier. Ce que l’un comprend sans peine, un autre ne le peut saisir; ce qui répugne à l’un, plait à l’autre: ce qui ce me parait odieux, mon voisin l’approuve. Quelque bonne envie que nous semblions avoir de nous perdre dans la foule, de dépouiller notre individualité pour emprunter des jugemens tout faits et des opinions taillées à la mesure et à l’usage du public — il est facile de voir que, tout en ayant l’air de répéter la leçon apprise, nous jugeons à notre manière, quand nous jugeons: que notre jugement, tout en paraissant être celui de tout le monde, n’en reste pas moins personnel, et n’est pas une simple imitation: que cette ressemblance même est souvent plus apparente que réelle: que l’identité extérieure des formules et des expressions ne prouve pas absolument celle de la pensée. Rien n’est élastique comme les mots, et comme les principes généraux dans lesquels on pense enfermer les intelligences. C’est souvent quand le langage est le plus semblable qu’on est le plus loin de s’entendre.
“Du reste, quand même cette ressemblance serait aussi réelle qu’elle est fausse, en quoi prouverait-il l’identité nécessaire des intelligences? Qu’y aurait-il d’étonnant qu’au milieu de ce communisme intellectual qui régit l’éducation de chaque classe, et détermine nos habitudes intellectuelles et morales, les distinctions natives disparussent ou s’atténuassent? Ne faut-il pas plutôt admirer l’opiniâtre vitalité des différences originelles qui résistent à tant de causes de nivellement? L’identité primitive des intelligences n’est qu’une fiction logique sans réalité — une simple abstraction de langage, qui ne repose que sur l’identité du mot avec lui-même. Tout se reduit à la possibilité abstraite des mêmes développemens, dans les mêmes conditions d’hérédité et d’éducation — mais aussi de développemens différens dans des circonstances différentes: c’est à dire, que l’intelligence de chacun n’est identique à celle de tous, qu’au moment où elle n’est pas encore proprement une intelligence.”
145Plato’s argument as to the distinction between present sensation and anticipation of the future.
A similar remark may be made as to Plato’s distinction between the different matters to which belief may apply: present sensation or sentiment in one case — anticipation of future sensations or sentiments, in another. Upon matters of present sensation and sentiment (he argues), such as hot or cold, sweet or bitter, just or unjust, honourable or base, &c., one man is as good a judge as another: but upon matters involving future contingency, such as what is healthy or unhealthy, — profitable and good, or hurtful and bad, — most men judge badly: only a few persons, possessed of special skill and knowledge, judge well, each in his respective province.
The formula of Relativity does not imply that every man believes himself to be infallible.
I for my part admit this distinction to be real and important. Most other persons admit the same.69 In acting upon it, I follow out my belief, — and so do they. This is a general fact, respecting the circumstances which determine individual belief. Like all other causes of belief, it operates relatively to the individual mind, and thus falls under that general canon of relativity, which it is the express purpose of the Protagorean formula to 146affirm. Sokrates impugns the formula of relativity, as if it proclaimed every one to believe himself more competent to predict the future than any other person. But no such assumption is implied in it. To say that a man is a measure to himself, is not to say that he is, or, that he believes himself to be, omniscient or infallible. A sick man may mistake the road towards future health, in many different directions. One patient may over-estimate his own knowledge, — that is one way, but only one among several: another may be diffident, and may undervalue his own knowledge: a third may over-estimate the knowledge of his professional adviser, and thus follow an ignorant physician, believing him to be instructed and competent: a fourth, instead of consulting a physician, may consult a prophet, whom Plato70 here reckons among the authoritative infallible measures in respect to future events: a fifth may (like the rhetor Ælius Aristeides71) disregard the advice of physicians, and follow prescriptions enjoined to him in his own dreams, believing them to be sent by Æsculapius the Preserving God. Each of these persons judges differently about the road to future health: but each is alike a measure to himself: the belief of each is relative to his own mental condition and predispositions. You, or I, may believe that one or other of them is mistaken: but here another measure is introduced — your mind or mine.
69 Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A. πᾶς ἂν ὁμολογοῖ.
70 Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A, where Mr. Campbell observes in his note — “The μάντις is introduced as being ἐπιστήμων of the future generally; just as the physician is of future health and disease, the musician of future harmony,” &c.
71 See the five discourses of the rhetor Aristeides — Ἱερῶν Λόγοι, Oratt. xxiii.-xxvii. — containing curious details about his habits and condition, and illustrating his belief; especially Or. xxiii. p. 462 seqq. The perfect faith which he reposed in his dreams, and the confidence with which he speaks of the benefits derived from acting upon them, are remarkable.
Plato’s argument is untenable — That if the Protagorean formula be admitted, dialectic discussion would be annulled — The reverse is true — Dialectic recognises the autonomy of the Individual mind.
But the most unfounded among all Plato’s objections to the Protagorean formula, is that in which Sokrates is made to allege, that if it be accepted, the work of dialectical discussion is at an end: that the Sokratic Elenchus, the reciprocal scrutiny of opinions between two dialogists, becomes nugatory — since every man’s opinions are right.72 Instead of right, we must add the requisite qualification, here as elsewhere, by reading, right to the man himself. Now, dealing with 147Plato’s affirmation thus corrected, we must pronounce not only that it is not true, but that the direct reverse of it is true. Dialectical discussion and the Sokratic procedure, far from implying the negation of the Protagorean formula, involve the unqualified recognition of it. Without such recognition the procedure cannot even begin, much less advance onward to any result. Dialectic operates altogether by question and answer: the questioner takes all his premisses from the answers of the respondent, and cannot proceed in any direction except that in which the respondent leads him. Appeal is always directly made to the affirmative or negative of the individual mind, which is thus installed as measure of truth or falsehood for itself. The peculiar and characteristic excellence of the Sokratic Elenchus consists in thus stimulating the interior mental activity of the individual hearer, in eliciting from him all the positive elements of the debate, and in making him feel a shock when one of his answers contradicts the others. Sokrates not only does not profess to make himself a measure for the respondent, but expressly disclaims doing so: he protests against being considered as a teacher, and avows his own entire ignorance. He undertakes only the obstetric process of evolving from the respondent mind what already exists in it without the means of escape — and of applying interrogatory tests to the answer when produced: if there be nothing in the respondent’s mind, his art is inapplicable. He repudiates all appeal to authority, except that of the respondent himself.73 Accordingly there 148is neither sense nor fitness in the Sokratic cross-examination, unless you assume that each person, to whom it is addressed, is a measure of truth and falsehood to himself. Implicitly indeed, this is assumed in rhetoric as well as in dialectic: wherever the speaker aims at persuading, he adapts his mode of speech to the predispositions of the hearer’s own mind; and he thus recognises that mind as a measure for itself. But the Sokratic Dialectic embodies the same recognition, and the same essential relativity to the hearer’s mind, more forcibly than any rhetoric. And the Platonic Sokrates (in the Phædrus) makes it one of his objections against orators who addressed multitudes, that they did not discriminate either the specialties of different minds, or the specialties of discourse applicable to each.74
72 Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.
73 Read the animated passage in the conversation with Pôlus: Plato, Gorg. 472, and Theætêt. 161 A, pp. 375, 376.
In this very argument of Sokrates (in the Theætêtus) against the Protagorean theory, we find him unconsciously adopting (as I have already remarked) the very language of that theory, as a description of his own procedure, p. 171 D. Compare with this a remarkable passage in the colloquy of Sokrates with Thrasymachus, in Republic, i. 337 C.
Moreover, the long and striking contrast between the philosopher and the man of the world, which Plato embodies in this dialogue (the Theætêtus, from p. 172 to p. 177), is so far from assisting his argument against Protagoras, that it rather illustrates the Protagorean point of view. The beliefs and judgments of the man of the world are presented as flowing from his mental condition and predispositions: those of the philosopher, from his. The two are radically dissentient: each appears to the other mistaken and misguided. Here is nothing to refute Protagoras. Each of the two is a measure for himself.
Yes, it will be said; but Plato’s measure is right, and that of the man of the world is wrong. Perhaps I may think so. As a measure for myself, I speak and act accordingly. But the opponents have not agreed to accept me any more than Plato as their judge. The case remains unsettled as before.
74 Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E; compare 258 A.
Contrast with the Treatise De Legibus — Plato assumes infallible authority — sets aside Dialectic.
Though Sokrates, and Plato so far forth as follower of Sokrates, employed a colloquial method based on the fundamental assumption of the Protagorean formula — autonomy of each individual mind — whether they accepted the formula in terms, or not; yet we shall find Plato at the end of his career, in his treatise De Legibus, constructing an imaginary city upon the attempted deliberate exclusion of this formula. We shall find him there monopolising all teaching and culture of his citizens from infancy upwards, barring out all freedom of speech or writing by a strict censorship, and severely punishing dissent from the prescribed orthodoxy. But then we shall also find that Plato in that last stage of his life — when he constitutes himself as lawgiver, the measure of truth or falsehood for all his citizens — has at the same time discontinued his early commerce with the Sokratic Dialectics.
Plato in denying the Protagorean formula, constitutes himself the measure for all. Counter-proposition to the formula.
On the whole then, looking at what Plato says about the Protagorean doctrine of Relativity — Homo Mensura — first, his statement what the doctrine really is, next his strictures upon it — we may see that he ascribes to it consequences which it will not fairly carry. He impugns it as if it excluded philosophy and argumentative scrutiny: whereas, on the contrary, it is the only basis upon which philosophy or “reasoned truth” can stand. Whoever denies the Protagorean autonomy149 of the individual judgment, must propound as his counter theory some heteronomy, such as he (the denier) approves. If I am not allowed to judge of truth and falsehood for myself, who is to judge for me? Plato, in the Treatise De Legibus, answers very unequivocally:— assuming to himself that infallibility which I have already characterised as the prerogative of King Nomos: “I, the lawgiver, am the judge for all my citizens: you must take my word for what is true or false: you shall hear nothing except what my censors approve — and if, nevertheless, any dissenters arise, there are stringent penalties in store for them”. Here is an explicit enunciation of the Counter-Proposition,75 necessary to be maintained by those who deny the Protagorean doctrine. If you pronounce a man unfit to be the measure of truth for himself, you constitute yourself the measure, in his place: either directly as lawgiver — or by nominating censors according to your own judgment. As soon as he is declared a lunatic, some other person must be appointed to manage his property for him. You can only exchange one individual judgment for another. You cannot get out of the region of individual judgments, more or fewer in number: the King, the Pope, the Priest, the Judges or Censors, the author of some book, or the promulgator of such and such doctrine. The infallible measure which you undertake to provide, must be found in some person or persons — if it can be found at all: in some person selected by yourself — that is, in the last result, yourself.76
75 Professor Ferrier’s Institutes of Metaphysic exhibit an excellent example of the advantages of setting forth explicitly the Counter-Proposition — that which an author intends to deny, as well as the Proposition which he intends to affirm and prove.
76 Aristotle says (Ethic. Nikomach. x. 1176, a. 15) δοκεῖ δ’ ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς τοιούτοις εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον τῷ σπουδαίῳ. “That is, which appears to be in the judgment of the wise or virtuous man.” The ultimate appeal is thus acknowledged to be, not to an abstraction, but to some one or more individual persons whom Aristotle recognises as wise. That is truth which this wise man declares to be truth. You cannot escape from the Relative by any twist of reasoning.
What Platonic critics call “Der Gegensatz des Seins und des Scheins“ (see Steinhart, Einleit. zum Theætêt. p. 37) is unattainable. All that is attainable is the antithesis between that which appears to one person, and that which appears to one or more others, choose them as you will: between that which appears at a first glance, or at a distance, or on careless inspection — and that which appears after close and multiplied observations and comparisons, after full discussion, &c. Das Sein is that which appears to the person or persons whom we judge to be wise, under these latter favourable circumstances.
Epiktetus, i. 28, 1. Τί ἔστιν αἴτιον τοῦ συγκατατίθεσθαί τινι; Τὸ φαίνεσθαι ὅτι ὑπάρχει. Τῷ οὖν φαινομένῳ ὅτι οὐχ ὑπάρχει, συγκατατίθεσθαι οὐχ οἷόν τε.
150Import of the Protagorean formula is best seen when we state explicitly the counter-proposition.
It is only when the Counter-Proposition to the Protagorean formula is explicitly brought out, that the full meaning of that formula can be discerned. If you deny it, the basis of all free discussion and scrutiny is withdrawn: philosophy, or what is properly called reasoned truth, disappears. In itself it says little.
Unpopularity of the Protagorean formula — Most believers insist upon making themselves a measure for others, as well as for themselves. Appeal to Abstractions.
Yet little as its positive import may seem to be, it clashes with various illusions, omissions, and exigencies, incident to the ordinary dogmatising process. It substitutes the concrete in place of the abstract — the complete in place of the elliptical. Instead of Truth and Falsehood, which present to us the Abstract and impersonal as if it stood alone — the Objective divested of its Subject — we are translated into the real world of beliefs and disbeliefs, individual believers and disbelievers: matters affirmed or denied by some Subject actual or supposable — by you, by me, by him or them, perhaps by all persons within our knowledge. All men agree in the subjective fact, or in the mental states called belief and disbelief; but all men do not agree in the matters believed and disbelieved, or in what they speak of as Truth and Falsehood. No infallible objective mark, no common measure, no canon of evidence, recognised by all, has yet been found. What is Truth to one man, is not truth, and is often Falsehood, to another: that which governs the mind as infallible authority in one part of the globe, is treated with indifference or contempt elsewhere.77 Each man’s belief, though in part determined151 by the same causes as the belief of others, is in part also determined by causes peculiar to himself. When a man speaks of Truth, he means what he himself (along with others, or singly, as the case may be) believes to be Truth; unless he expressly superadds the indication of some other persons believing in it. This is the reality of the case, which the Protagorean formula brings into full view; but which most men dislike to recognise, and disguise from themselves as well as from others in the common elliptical forms of speech. In most instances a believer entirely forgets that his own mind is the product of a given time and place, and of a conjunction of circumstances always peculiar, amidst the aggregate of mankind — for the most part narrow. He cannot be content (like Protagoras) to be a measure for himself and for those whom his arguments may satisfy. This would be to proclaim what some German critics denounce as Subjectivism.78 152He insists upon constituting himself — or some authority worshipped by himself — or some abstraction interpreted by himself — a measure for all others besides, whether assentient or dissentient. That which he believes, all ought to believe.
77 Respecting the grounds and conditions of belief among the Hindoos, Sir William Sleeman (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. xxvi. vol. i. pp. 226-228) observes as follows:—
“Every word of this poem (the Ramaen, Ramayana) the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing, and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of this poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies with the greatest naïveté in the world, ‘Is it not written in the book; and how should it be there written if not true?’ … The greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction, the greater is the charm that it has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or by his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from the men and things of the present day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day, the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without once questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and that not very distant, when it was the same in England and in every other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks and Romans in the days of Sokrates and Cicero; the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.”
78 This is the objection taken by Schwegler, Prantl, and other German thinkers, against the Protagorean doctrine (Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, vol. i. p. 12 seq.; Schwegler, Gesch. der Philos. im Umriss. s. 11, b. p. 26, ed. 5th). I had transcribed from each of these works a passage of some length, but I cannot find room for them in this note.
These authors both say, that the Protagorean canon, properly understood, is right, but that Protagoras laid it down wrongly. They admit the principle of Subjectivity, as an essential aspect of the case, in regard to truth; but they say that Protagoras was wrong in appealing to individual, empirical, accidental, subjectivity of each man at every varying moment, whereas he ought to have appealed to an ideal or universal subjectivity. “What ought to be held true, right, good, &c.,” (says Schwegler) “must be decided doubtless by me, but by me so far forth as a rational, and thinking being. Now my thinking, my reason, is not something specially belonging to me, but something common to all rational beings, something universal; so far therefore as I proceed as a rational and thinking person, my subjectivity is an universal subjectivity. Every thinking person has the consciousness that what he regards as right, duty, good, evil, &c., presents itself not merely to him as such, but also to every rational person, and that, consequently, his judgment possesses the character of universality, universal validity: in one word, Objectivity.”
Here it is explicitly asserted, that wherever a number of individual men employ their reason, the specialities of each disappear, and they arrive at the same conclusions — Reason being a guide impersonal as well as infallible. And this same view is expressed by Prantl in other language, when he reforms the Protagorean doctrine by saying, “Das Denken ist der Mass der Dinge”.
To me this assertion appears so distinctly at variance with notorious facts, that I am surprised when I find it advanced by learned historians of philosophy, who recount the very facts which contradict it. Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man differs most materially from that of another — and the reason of the same person from itself, at different times — in respect of the arguments accepted, the authorities obeyed, the conclusions embraced? The impersonal Reason is a mere fiction; the universal Reason is an abstraction, belonging alike to all particular reasoners, consentient or dissentient, sound or unsound, &c. Schwegler admits the Protagorean canon only under a reserve which nullifies its meaning. To say that the Universal Reason is the measure of truth is to assign no measure at all. The Universal Reason can only make itself known through an interpreter. The interpreters are dissentient; and which of them is to hold the privilege of infallibility? Neither Schwegler nor Prantl are forward to specify who the interpreter is, who is entitled to put dissentients to silence; both of them keep in the safe obscurity of an abstraction — “Das Denken” — the Universal Reason. Protagoras recognises in each dissentient an equal right to exercise his own reason, and to judge for himself.
In order to show how thoroughly incorrect the language of Schwegler and Prantl is, when they talk about the Universal Reason as unanimous and unerring, I transcribe from another eminent historian of philosophy a description of what philosophy has been from ancient times down to the present.
Degérando, Histoire Comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, vol. i. p. 48:— “Une multitude d’hypothèses, élevées en quelque sorte au hasard, et rapidement détruites; une diversité d’opinions, d’autant plus sensible que la philosophie a été plus developpée; des sectes, des partis même, des disputes interminables, des spéculations stériles, des erreurs maintenues et transmises par une imitation aveugle; quelques découvertes obtenues avec lenteur, et mélangées d’idees fausses; des réformes annoncées à chaque siècle et jamais accomplies; une succession de doctrines qui se renversent les unes les autres sans pouvoir obtenir plus de solidité: la raison humaine ainsi promenée dans un triste cercle de vicissitudes, et ne s’élevant à quelques époques fortunées que pour retomber bientôt dans de nouveaux écarts, &c.… les mêmes questions, enfin, qui partagèrent il y a plus de vingt siècles les premiers génies de la Grèce, agitées encore aujourd’hui après tant de volumineux écrits consacrés à les discuter”.
This state of mind in reference to belief is usual with most men, not less at the present day than in the time of Plato and Protagoras. It constitutes the natural intolerance prevalent among mankind; which each man (speaking generally), in the case of his own beliefs, commends and exults in, as a virtue. It flows as a natural corollary from the sentiment of belief, though it may be corrected by reflection and social sympathy. Hence the doctrine of Protagoras — equal right of private judgment to each man for himself — becomes inevitably unwelcome.
Aristotle failed in his attempts to refute the Protagorean formula — Every reader of Aristotle will claim the right of examining for himself Aristotle’s canons of truth.
We are told that Demokritus, as well as Plato and Aristotle, wrote against Protagoras. The treatise of Demokritus is lost: but we possess what the two latter said against the Protagorean formula. In my judgment both 153failed in refuting it. Each of them professed to lay down objective, infallible, criteria of truth and falsehood: Democritus on his side, and the other dogmatical philosophers, professed to do the same, each in his own way — and each in a different way.79 Now the Protagorean formula neither allows nor disallows any one of these proposed objective criteria: but it enunciates the appeal to which all of them must be submitted — the subjective condition of satisfying the judgment of each hearer. Its protest is entered only when that condition is overleaped, and when the dogmatist enacts his canon of belief as imperative, peremptory, binding upon all (allgemeingültig) both assentient and dissentient. I am grateful to Aristotle for his efforts to lay down objective canons in the research of truth; but I claim the right of examining those canons for myself, and of judging whether that, which satisfied Aristotle, satisfies me also. The same right which I claim for myself, I am bound to allow to all others. The general expression of this compromise is, the Protagorean formula. No one demands more emphatically to be a measure for himself, even when all authority is opposed to him, than Sokrates in the Platonic Gorgias.80
79 Plutarch, adv. Kolot. p. 1108.
According to Demokritus all sensible perceptions were conventional, or varied according to circumstances, or according to the diversity of the percipient Subject; but there was an objective reality — minute, solid, invisible atoms, differing in figure, position, and movement, and vacuum along with them. Such reality was intelligible only by Reason. Νόμῳ γλυκύ, νόμῳ πικρόν, νόμῳ θερμόν, νόμῳ ψυχρόν, νόμῳ χροιή· ἐτέῃ δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν. Ἅπερ νομίζεται μὲν εἶναι καὶ δοξάζεται τὰ αἰσθητά, οὐκ ἔστι δὲ κατὰ ἀληθείαν ταῦτα· ἀλλὰ τὰ ἄτομα μόνον καὶ κένον.
Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 135-139; Diog. Laert. ix. 72. See Mullach, Democriti Fragm. pp. 204-208.
The discourse of Protagoras Περὶ τοῦ ὄντος, was read by Porphyry, who apparently cited from it a passage verbatim, which citation Eusebius unfortunately has not preserved (Eusebius, Præpar. Evang. x. 3, 17). One of the speakers in Porphyry’s dialogue (describing a repast at the house of Longinus at Athens to celebrate Plato’s birthday) accused Plato of having copied largely from the arguments of Protagoras — πρὸς τοὺς ἓν τὸ ὂν εἰσάγοντας. Allusion is probably made to the Platonic dialogues Parmenides and Sophistes.
80 Plato, Gorgias, p. 472.
Plato’s examination of the other doctrine — That knowledge is Sensible Perception. He adverts to sensible facts which are different with different Percipients.
After thus criticising the formula — Homo Mensura — Plato proceeds to canvass the other doctrine, which he ascribes to Protagoras along with others, and which he puts into the mouth of Theætêtus — “That knowledge154 is sensible perception”. He connects that doctrine with the above-mentioned formula, by illustrations which exhibit great divergence between one percipient Subject and another. He gives us, as examples of sensible perception, the case of the wind, cold to one man, not cold to another: that of the wine, sweet to a man in health, bitter if he be sickly.81 Perhaps Protagoras may have dwelt upon cases like these, as best calculated to illustrate the relativity of all affirmations: for though the judgments are in reality both equally relative, whether two judges pronounce alike, or whether they pronounce differently, under the same conditions — yet where they judge differently, each stands forth in his own individuality, and the relativity of the judgment is less likely to be disputed.
81 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 152 A, 159 C.
Such is not the case with all the facts of sense. The conditions of unanimity are best found among select facts of sense — weighing, measuring, &c.
But though some facts of sense are thus equivocal, generating dissension rather than unanimity among different individuals — such is by no means true of the facts of sense taken generally.82 On the contrary, it is only these facts — the world of reality, experience, and particulars — which afford a groundwork and assurance of unanimity in human belief, under all varieties of teaching or locality. Counting, measuring, weighing, are facts of sense simple and fundamental, and comparisons of those facts: capable of being so exhibited that no two persons shall either see them differently or mistrust them. Of two persons exposed to the same wind, one may feel cold, and the other not: but both of them will see the barometer or thermometer alike.83 Πάντα μέτρῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ 155καὶ σταθμῷ — would be the perfection of science, if it could be obtained. Plato himself recognises, in more than one place, the irresistible efficacy of weight and measure in producing unanimity; and in forestalling those disputes which are sure to arise where weight and measure cannot be applied.84 It is therefore among select facts of sense, carefully observed and properly compared, that the groundwork of unanimity is to be sought, so far as any rational and universal groundwork for it is attainable. In other words, it is here that we must seek for the basis of knowledge or cognition.
82 Aristotle (Metaphysic. Γ. p. 1010, a. 25 seq.) in arguing against Herakleitus and his followers, who dwelt upon τὰ αἰσθητὰ as ever fluctuating and undefinable, urges against them that this is not true of all αἰσθητά, but only of those in the sublunary region of the Kosmos. But this region is (he says) only an imperceptibly small part of the entire Kosmos; the objects in the vast superlunary or celestial region of the Kosmos were far more numerous, and were also eternal and unchangeable, in constant and uniform circular rotation. Accordingly, if you predicate one or other about αἰσθητὰ generally, you ought to predicate constancy and unchangeability, not flux and variation, since the former predicates are true of much the larger proportion of αἰσθητά. See the Scholia on the above passage of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, and also upon Book A. 991, a. 9.
83 Mr. Campbell, in his Preface to the Theætêtus (p. lxxxiii.), while comparing the points in the dialogue with modern metaphysical views, observes. “Modern Experimental Science is equally distrustful of individual impressions of sense, but has found means of measuring the motions by which they are caused, through the effect of the same motions upon other things besides our senses. When the same wind is blowing one of us feels warm and another cold (Theætêt. p. 152), but the mercury of the thermometer tells the same tale to all. And though the individual consciousness remains the sole judge of the exact impression momentarily received by each person, yet we are certain that the sensation of heat and cold, like the expansion and contraction of the mercury, is in every case dependent on a universal law.”
It might seem from Mr. Campbell’s language (I do not imagine that he means it so) as if Modern Experimental Science had arrived at something more trustworthy than “individual impressions of sense”. But the expansion or contraction of the mercury are just as much facts of sense as the feeling of heat or cold; only they are facts of sense determinate and uniform to all, whereas the feeling of heat or cold is indeterminate and liable to differ with different persons. The certainty about “universal law governing the sensations of heat and cold,” was not at all felt in the days of Plato.
84 Thus in the Philêbus (pp. 55-56) Plato declares that numbering, measuring, and weighing, are the characteristic marks of all the various processes which deserve the name of Arts; and that among the different Arts those of the carpenter, builder, &c., are superior to those of the physician, pilot, husbandman, military commander, musical composer, &c., because the two first-named employ more measurement and a greater number of measuring instruments, the rule, line, plummet, compass, &c.
“When we talk about iron or silver” (says Sokrates in the Platonic Phædrus, p. 263 A-B) “we are all of one mind, but when we talk about the Just and the Good we are all at variance with each other, and each man is at variance with himself”. Compare an analogous passage, Alkibiad. I. p. 109.
Here Plato himself recognises the verifications of sense as the main guarantee for accuracy: and the compared facts of sense, when select and simplified, as ensuring the nearest approach to unanimity among believers.
Arguments of Sokrates in examining this question. Divergence between one man and another arises, not merely from different sensual impressibility, but from mental and associative difference.
A loose adumbration of this doctrine is here given by Plato as the doctrine of Protagoras, in the words — Knowledge is sensible perception. To sift this doctrine is announced as his main purpose;85 and we shall see how he performs the task. Sokr. — Shall we admit, that when we perceive things by sight or hearing, we at the same time know them all? When foreigners talk to us in a strange language, are we to say that we do not hear what they say, or that we both hear 156and know it? When unlettered men look at an inscription, shall we contend that they do not see the writing, or that they both see and know it? Theætêt. — We shall say, under these supposed circumstances, that what we see and hear, we also know. We hear and we know the pitch and intonation of the foreigner’s voice. The unlettered man sees, and also knows, the colour, size, forms, of the letters. But that which the schoolmaster and the interpreter could tell us respecting their meaning, that we neither see, nor hear, nor know. Sokr. — Excellent, Theætêtus. I have nothing to say against your answer.86
85 Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A. εἰς γὰρ τοῦτό που πᾶς ὁ λόγος ἡμῖν ἔτεινε, καὶ τούτου χάριν τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ἄτοπα ταῦτα ἐκινήσαμεν.
86 Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 C.
This is an important question and answer, which Plato unfortunately does not follow up. It brings to view, though without fully unfolding, the distinction between what is really perceived by sense, and what is inferred from such perception: either through resemblance or through conjunctions of past experience treasured up in memory — or both together. Without having regard to such distinction, no one can discuss satisfactorily the question under debate.87 Plato here abandons, moreover, 157the subjective variety of impression which he had before noticed as the characteristic of sense:— (the wind which blows cold, and the wine which tastes sweet, to one man, but not to another). Here it is assumed that all men hear the sounds, and see the written letters alike: the divergence between one man and another arises from the different prior condition of percipient minds, differing from each other in associative and reminiscent power.
87 I borrow here a striking passage from Dugald Stewart, which illustrates both the passage in Plato’s text, and the general question as to the relativity of Cognition. Here, the fact of relative Cognition is brought out most conspicuously on its intellectual side, not on its perceptive side. The fact of sense is the same to all, and therefore, though really relative, has more the look of an absolute; but the mental associations with that fact are different with different persons, and therefore are more obviously and palpably relative. — Dugald Stewart, First Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopæd. Britannica, pp. 66, 8th ed.
“To this reference of the sensation of colour to the external object, I can think of nothing so analogous as the feelings we experience in surveying a library of books. We speak of the volumes piled up on its shelves as treasures or magazines of the knowledge of past ages; and contemplate them with gratitude and reverence as inexhaustible sources of instruction and delight to the mind. Even in looking at a page of print or manuscript, we are apt to say that the ideas we acquire are received by the sense of sight; and we are scarcely conscious of a metaphor when we apply this language. On such occasions we seldom recollect that nothing is perceived by the eye but a multitude of black strokes drawn upon white paper, and that it is our own acquired habits which communicate to these strokes the whole of that significancy whereby they are distinguished from the unmeaning scrawling of an infant. The knowledge which we conceive to be preserved in books, like the fragrance of a rose, or the gilding of the clouds, depends, for its existence, on the relation between the object and the percipient mind: and the only difference between the two cases is, that, in the one, this relation is the local and temporary effect of conventional habits: in the other, it is the universal and the unchangeable work of nature.… What has now been remarked with respect to written characters, may be extended very nearly to oral language. When we listen to the discourse of a public speaker, eloquence and persuasion seem to issue from his lips; and we are little aware that we ourselves infuse the soul into every word that he utters. The case is exactly the same when we enjoy the conversation of a friend. We ascribe the charm entirely to his voice and accents; but without our co-operation, its potency would vanish. How very small the comparative proportion is, which in such cases the words spoken contribute to the intellectual and moral effect, I have elsewhere endeavoured to show.”
Argument — That sensible Perception does not include memory — Probability that those who held the doctrine meant to include memory.
Sokrates turns to another argument. If knowledge be the same thing as sensible perception, then it follows, that so soon as a man ceases to see and hear, he also ceases to know. The memory of what he has seen or heard, upon that supposition, is not knowledge. But Theætêtus admits that a man who remembers what he has seen or heard does know it. Accordingly, the answer that knowledge is sensible perception, cannot be maintained.88
88 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 163, 164.
Here Sokrates makes out a good case against the answer in its present wording. But we may fairly doubt whether those who affirmed the matter of knowledge to consist in the facts of sense, ever meant to exclude memory. They meant probably the facts of sense both as perceived and as remembered; though the wording cited by Plato does not strictly include so much. Besides, we must recollect, that Plato includes in the meaning of the word Knowledge or Cognition an idea of perfect infallibility: distinguishing it generically from the highest form of opinion. But memory is a fallible process: sometimes quite trustworthy — under other circumstances, not so. Accordingly, memory, in a general sense, cannot be put on a level with present perception, nor said to generate what Plato calls knowledge.
Argument from the analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time .
The next argument of Plato is as follows. You can see, and not see, the same thing at the same time: for you may close one of your eyes, and look only with the other. But it is impossible to know a thing, and not 158to know it at the same time. Therefore to know is not the same as to see.89
89 Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 B.
This argument is proclaimed by Plato as a terrible puzzle, leaving no escape.90 Perhaps he meant to speak ironically. In reality, this puzzle is nothing but a false inference deduced from a false premiss. The inference is false, because if we grant the premiss, that it is possible both to see a thing, and not to see it, at the same time — there is no reason why it should not also be possible to know a thing, and not to know it, at the same time. Moreover, the premiss is also false in the ordinary sense which the words bear: and not merely false, but logically impossible, as a sin against the maxim of contradiction. Plato procures it from a true premiss, by omitting an essential qualification. I see an object with my open eye: I do not see it with my closed eye. From this double proposition, alike intelligible and true, Plato thinks himself authorised to discard the qualification, and to tell me that I see a thing and do not see it — passing à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. This is the same liberty which he took with the Protagorean doctrine. Protagoras having said — “Every thing which any man believes is true to that man” — Plato reasons against him as if he had said — “Every thing which any man believes is true”.
90 Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 B. τὸ δεινότατον ἐρώτημα — ἀφύκτῳ ἐρωτήματι, &c.
Mr. Campbell observes upon this passage:— “Perhaps there is here a trace of the spirit which was afterwards developed in the sophisms of Eubulidês”. Stallbaum, while acknowledging the many subtleties of Sokrates in this dialogue, complains that other commentators make the ridiculous mistake (“errore perquam ridiculo”) of accepting all the reasoning of Sokrates as seriously meant, whereas much of it (he says) is mere mockery and sarcasm, intended to retort upon the Sophists their own argumentative tricks and quibbles. — “Itaquè sæpe per petulantiam quandam argutiis indulget (Socrates), quibus isti haudquaquam abstinebant: sæpè ex adversariorum mente disputat, sed ita tamen disputat, ut eos suis ipsorum capiat laqueis; sæpè denique in disputando iisdem artificiis utitur, quibus illi uti consueverant, sicuti etiam in Menone, Cratylo, Euthydemo, fieri meminimus”. (Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Theæt. pp. 12-13, 22-29).
Stallbaum pushes this general principle so far as to contend that the simile of the waxen tablet (p. 191 C), and that of the pigeon-house (p. 200 C), are doctrines of opponents, which Sokrates pretends to adopt with a view to hold them up to ridicule.
I do not concur in this opinion of Stallbaum, which he reproduces in commenting on many other dialogues, and especially on the Kratylus, for the purpose of exonerating Plato from the reproach of bad reasoning and bad etymology, at the cost of opponents “inauditi et indefensi”. I see no ground for believing that Plato meant to bring forward these arguments as paralogisms obviously and ridiculously silly. He produced them, in my judgment, as suitable items in a dialogue of search: plausible to a certain extent, admitting both of being supported and opposed, and necessary to be presented to those who wish to know a question in all its bearings.
159Again, argues Plato,91 you cannot say — I know sharply, dimly, near, far, &c. — but you may properly say, I see sharply, dimly, near, far, &c.: another reason to show that knowledge and sensible perception are not the same. After a digression of some length directed against the disciples of Herakleitus — (partly to expose their fundamental doctrine that every thing was in flux and movement, partly to satirise their irrational procedure in evading argumentative debate, and in giving nothing but a tissue of mystical riddles one after another),92 Sokrates returns back to the same debate, and produces more serious arguments, as follows:—
91 Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 D. The reasonings here given by Plato from the mouth of Sokrates, are compared by Steinhart to the Trug-schlüsse, which in the Euthydêmus he ascribes to that Sophist and Dionysodorus. But Steinhart says that Plato is here reasoning in the style of Protagoras: an assertion thoroughly gratuitous, for which there is no evidence at all (Steinhart, Einleitung zum Theætêt. p. 53).
92 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 179-183. The description which we read here (put into the mouth of the geometer Theodôrus) of the persons in Ephesus and other parts of Ionia, who speculated in the vein of Herakleitus — is full of vivid fancy and smartness, but is for that reason the less to be trusted as accurate.
The characteristic features ascribed to these Herakleiteans are quite unlike to the features of Protagoras, so far as we know them; though Protagoras, nevertheless, throughout this dialogue, is spoken of as if he were an Herakleitean. These men are here depicted as half mad — incapable of continuous attention — hating all systematic speech and debate — answering, when addressed, only in brief, symbolical, enigmatic phrases, of which they had a quiver-full, but which they never condescended to explain (ὥσπερ ἐκ φαρέτρας ῥηματίσκια αἰνιγματώδη ἀνασπῶντες ἀποτοξεύουσιν, see Lassalle, vol. i. pp. 32-39 — springing up by spontaneous inspiration, despising instruction, p. 180 A), and each looking down upon the others as ignorant. If we compare the picture thus given by Plato of the Herakleiteans, with the picture which he gives of Protagoras in the dialogue so called, we shall see that the two are as unlike as possible.
Lassalle, in his elaborate work on the philosophy of Herakleitus, attempts to establish the philosophical affinity between Herakleitus and Protagoras: but in my judgment unsuccessfully. According to Lassalle’s own representation of the doctrine of Herakleitus, it is altogether opposed to the most eminent Protagorean doctrine, Ἄνθρωπος ἑαυτῷ μέτρον — and equally opposed to that which Plato seems to imply as Protagorean — Αἴσθησις = Ἐπιστήμη. The elucidation given by Lassalle of Herakleitus, through the analogy of Hegel, is certainly curious and instructive. The Absolute Process of Herakleitus is at variance with Protagoras, not less than the Absolute Object or Substratum of the Eleates, or the Absolute Ideas of Plato. Lassalle admits that Herakleitus is the entire antithesis to Protagoras, yet still contends that he is the prior stage of transition towards Protagoras (vol. i. p. 64).
Sokrates maintains that we do not see with our eyes, but that the mind sees through the eyes: that the mind often conceives and judges by itself without the aid of any bodily organ.
Sokr. — If you are asked, With what does a man perceive white and black? you will answer, with his eyes: shrill or grave sounds? with his ears. Does it not seem to you more correct to say, that we see through our eyes rather than with our eyes:— that we hear through our ears, not with our ears. Theætêt. — I think it is more 160correct. Sokr. — It would be strange if there were in each man many separate reservoirs, each for a distinct class of perceptions.93 All perceptions must surely converge towards one common form or centre, call it soul or by any other name, which perceives through them, as organs or instruments, all perceptible objects. —
93 Plato, Theætêt. p. 184 D. δεινὸν γάρ που, εἰ πολλαί τινες ἐν ἡμῖν, ὥσπερ ἐν δουρείοις ἵπποις, αἰσθήσις ἐγκαθηνται, ἀλλὰ μὴ εἰς μίαν τινὰ ἰδέαν, εἴτε ψυχὴν εἴτε ὅ, τι δεῖ καλεῖν, πάντα ταῦτα ξυντείνει, ᾗ διὰ τούτων οἷον ὀργάνων αἰσθανόμεθα ὅσα αἰσθητά.
We thus perceive objects of sense, according to Plato’s language, with the central form or soul, and through various organs of the body. The various Percepta or Percipienda of tact, vision, hearing — sweet, hot, hard, light — have each its special bodily organ. But no one of these can be perceived through the organ affected to any other. Whatever therefore we conceive or judge respecting any two of them, is not performed through the organ special to either. If we conceive any thing common both to sound and colour, we cannot conceive it either through the auditory or through the visual organ.94
94 Plato, Theætêt. p. 184-185.
Now there are certain judgments (Sokrates argues) which we make common to both, and not exclusively belonging to either. First, we judge that they are two: that each is one, different from the other, and the same with itself: that each is something, or has existence, and that one is not the other. Here are predicates — existence, non-existence, likeness, unlikeness, unity, plurality, sameness, difference, &c., which we affirm, or deny, not respecting either of these sensations exclusively, but respecting all of them. Through what bodily organ do we derive these judgments respecting what is common to all? There is no special organ: the mind perceives, through itself these common properties.95
95 Plato, Theætêt. p. 185 D. δοκεῖ τὴν ἀρχὴν οὐδ’ εἶναι τοιοῦτον οὐδὲν τούτοις ὄργανον ἴδιον, ὥσπερ ἐκείνοις, ἀλλ’ αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ κοινά μοι φαίνεται περὶ πάντων ἐπισκοπεῖν.
Indication of several judgments which the mind makes by itself — It perceives Existence, Difference, &c.
Some matters therefore there are, which the soul or mind apprehends through itself — others, which it perceives through the bodily organs. To the latter class belong the sensible qualities, hardness, softness, heat, sweetness, &c., which it perceives through the bodily organs;161 and which animals, as well as men, are by nature competent to perceive immediately at birth. To the former class belong existence (substance, essence), sameness, difference, likeness, unlikeness, honourable, base, good, evil, &c., which the mind apprehends through itself alone. But the mind is not competent to apprehend this latter class, as it perceives the former, immediately at birth. Nor does such competence belong to all men and animals; but only to a select fraction of men, who acquire it with difficulty and after a long time through laborious education. The mind arrives at these purely mental apprehensions, only by going over, and comparing with each other, the simple impressions of sense; by looking at their relations with each other; and by computing the future from the present and past.96 Such comparisons and computations are a difficult and gradual attainment; accomplished only by a few, and out of the reach of most men. But without them, no one can apprehend real existence (essence, or substance), or arrive at truth: and without truth, there can be no knowledge.
96 Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 B. Τὴν δέ γε οὐσίαν καὶ ὅ τι ἔστον καὶ τὴν ἐναντιότητα πρὸς ἀλλήλω (of hardness and softness) καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν αὖ τῆς ἐναντιότητος, αὐτὴ ἡ ψυχὴ ἐπανιοῦσα καὶ ξυμβάλλουσα πρὸς ἄλληλα κρίνειν πειρᾶται ἡμῖν … Οὐκοῦν τὰ μὲν εὐθὺς γενομένοις πάρεστι φύσει αἰσθάνεσθαι ἀνθρώποις τε καὶ θηρίοις, ὅσα διὰ τοῦ σώματος παθήματα ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν τείνει· τὰ δὲ περὶ τούτων ἀναλογίσματα, πρός τε οὐσίαν καὶ ὠφελείαν μόγις καὶ ἐν πολλῷ χρόνῳ διὰ πολλῶν πραγμάτων καὶ παιδείας παραγίγνεται, οἷς ἂν καὶ παραγίγνηται.
Sokrates maintains that knowledge is to be found, not in the Sensible Perceptions themselves, but in the comparisons add computations of the mind respecting them.
The result therefore is (concludes Sokrates), That knowledge is not sensible perception: that it is not to be found in the perceptions of sense themselves, which do not apprehend real essence, and therefore not truth — but in the comparisons and computations respecting them, and in the relations between them, made and apprehended by the mind itself.97 Plato declares good and evil, honourable and base, &c., to be among matters most especially relative, perceived by the 162mind computing past and present in reference to future.98
97 Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 D. ἐν μὲν ἄρα τοῖς παθήμασιν οὐκ ἔνι ἐπιστήμη, ἐν δὲ τῷ περὶ ἐκείνων συλλογισμῷ· οὐσίας γὰρ καὶ ἀληθείας ἐνταῦθα μέν, ὡς ἔοικε, δυνατὸν ἅψασθαι, ἐκεῖ δὲ ἀδύνατον. The term συλλογισμὸς is here interesting, before it had received that technical sense which it has borne from Aristotle downwards. Mr. Campbell explains it properly as “nearly equivalent to abstraction and generalisation” (Preface to Theætêtus, p. lxxiv., also note, p. 144).
98 Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 A. καλὸν καὶ αἰσχρόν, καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακόν. Καὶ τούτων μοι δοκεῖ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα πρὸς ἄλληλα σκοπεῖσθαι τὴν οὐσίαν, ἀναλογιζομένη (ἡ ψυχὴ) ἐν ἑαυτῇ τὰ γεγονότα καὶ τὰ παρόντα πρὸς τὰ μέλλοντα.
Base and honourable, evil and good, are here pointed out by Sokrates as most evidently and emphatically relative. In the train of reasoning here terminated, Plato had been combating the doctrine Αἴσθησις = Ἐπιστήμη. In his sense of the word αἴσθησις he has refuted the doctrine. But what about the other doctrine, which he declares to be a part of the same programme — Homo Mensura — the Protagorean formula? That formula, so far from being refuted, is actually sustained and established by this train of reasoning. Plato has declared οὐσία, ἀληθεία, ἐναντιότης, ἀγαθόν, κακόν, &c., to be a distinct class of Objects not perceived by Sense. But he also tells us that they are apprehended by the Mind through its own working, and that they are apprehended always in relation to each other. We thus see that they are just as much relative to the concipient mind, as the Objects of sense are to the percipient and sentient mind. The Subject is the correlative limit or measure (to use Protagorean phrases) of one as well as of the other. This confirms what I observed above, that the two doctrines, 1. Homo Mensura, 2. Αἴσθησις = Ἐπιστήμη, — are completely distinct and independent, though Plato has chosen to implicate or identify them.
Examination of this view — Distinction from the views of modern philosophers.
Such is the doctrine which Plato here lays down, respecting the difference between sensible perception, and knowledge or cognition. From his time to the present day, the same topic has continued to be discussed, with different opinions on the part of philosophers. Plato’s views are interesting, as far as his language enables us to make them out. He does not agree with those who treat sensation or sensible perception (in his language, the two are not distinguished) as a bodily phenomenon, and intelligence as a mental phenomenon. He regards both as belonging to the mind or soul. He considers that the mind is sentient as well as intelligent: and moreover, that the sentient mind is the essential basis and preliminary — universal among men and animals, as well as coæval with birth — furnishing all the matter, upon which the intelligent mind has to work. He says nothing, in this dialogue, about the three distinct souls or minds (rational, courageous, and appetitive), in one and the same body, which form so capital a feature in his Timæus and Republic: nothing about eternal, self-existent, substantial Ideas, or about the pre-existence of the soul and its reminiscence as the process of acquiring knowledge. Nor does he countenance the doctrine of innate ideas, instinctive beliefs, immediate mental intuitions, internal senses, &c., which have been recognised by 163many philosophers. Plato supposes the intelligent mind to work altogether upon the facts of sense; to review and compare them with one another; and to compute facts present or past, with a view to the future. All this is quite different from the mental intuitions and instincts, assumed by various modern philosophers as common to all mankind. The operations, which Plato ascribes to the intelligent mind, are said to be out of the reach of the common man, and not to be attainable except by a few, with difficulty and labour. The distinctive feature of the sentient mind, according to him, is, that it operates through a special bodily organ of sense: whereas the intelligent mind has no such special bodily organ.
Different views given by Plato in other dialogues.
But this distinction, in the first place, is not consistent with Timæus — wherein Plato assigns to each of his three human souls a separate and special region of the bodily organism, as its physical basis. Nor, in the second place, is it consistent with that larger range of observed facts which the farther development of physiology has brought to view. To Plato and Aristotle the nerves and the nervous system were wholly unknown: but it is now ascertained that the optic, auditory, and other nerves of sense, are only branches of a complicated system of sensory and motory nerves, attached to the brain and spinal cord as a centre: each nerve of sense having its own special mode of excitability or manifestation. Now the physical agency whereby sensation is carried on, is, not the organ of sense alone, but the cerebral centre acting along with that organ: whereas in the intellectual and memorial processes, the agency of the cerebral centre and other internal parts of the nervous system are sufficient, without any excitement beginning at the peripheral extremity of the special organ of sense, or even though that organ be disabled. We know the intelligent mind only in an embodied condition: that is, as working along with and through its own physical agency. When Plato, therefore, says that the mind thinks, computes, compares, &c., by itself — this is true only as signifying that it does so without the initiatory stimulus of a special organ of sense; not as signifying that it does so without the central nervous force or currents — an agency essential alike to thought, to sensation, to emotion, and to appetite.
164Plato’s discussion of this question here exhibits a remarkable advance in analytical psychology. The mind rises from Sensation, first to Opinion, then to Cognition.
Putting ourselves back to the Platonic period, we must recognise that the discussion of the theory Αἴσθησις = Ἐπιστήμη, as it is conducted by Plato, exhibits a remarkable advance in psychological analysis. In analysing the mental phenomena, Plato displayed much more subtlety and acuteness than his predecessors — as far at least as we have the means of appreciating the latter. It is convenient to distinguish intellect from sensation (or sensible perception) and emotion, though both of them are essential and co-ordinate parts of our mental system, and are so recognised by Plato. It is also true that the discrimination of our sensations from each other, comparisons of likeness or unlikeness between them, observation of co-existence or sequence, and apprehension of other relations between them, &c., are more properly classified as belonging to intellect than to sense. But the language of psychology is, and always has been, so indeterminate, that it is difficult to say how much any writer means to include under the terms Sense99 — Sensation — Sensible Perception — αἴσθησις. The 165propositions in which our knowledge is embodied, affirm — not sensations detached and isolated, but — various relations of antecedence166 and consequence, likeness, difference, &c., between two or more sensations or facts of sense. We rise thus to a state of mind more complicated than simple sensation: including (along with sensation), association, memory, discrimination, comparison of sensations, abstraction, and generalisation. This is what Plato calls opinion100 or belief; a mental process, which, though presupposing sensations and based upon them, he affirms to be carried on by the mind through itself, not through any special bodily organ. In this respect it agrees with what he calls knowledge or cognition. Opinion or belief is the lowest form, possessed in different grades by all men, of this exclusively mental process: knowledge or cognition is the highest form of 167the same, attained only by a select few. Both opinion, and cognition, consist in comparisons and computations made by the mind about the facts of sense. But cognition (in Plato’s view) has special marks:—
1. That it is infallible, while opinion is fallible. You have it101 or you have it not — but there is no mistake possible.
2. That it apprehends what Plato calls the real essence of things, and real truth, which, on the contrary, Opinion does not apprehend.
3. That the person who possesses it can maintain his own consistency under cross-examination, and can test the consistency of others by cross-examining them (λόγον δοῦναι καὶ δέξασθαι).
99 The discussion in pp. 184-186-186 of the Theætêtus is interesting as the earliest attempt remaining to classify psychological phenomena. What Demokritus and others proposed with the same view — the analogy or discrepancy between τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι and τὸ νοεῖν — we gather only from the brief notices of Aristotle and others. Plato considers himself to have established, that “cognition is not to be sought at all in sensible perception, but in that function, whatever it be, which is predicated of the mind when it busies itself per se (i.e. not through any special bodily organ) about existences” (p. 187 A). We may here remark, as to the dispute between Plato and Protagoras, that Plato here does not at all escape from the region of the Relative, or from the Protagorean formula, Homo Mensura. He passes from Mind Percipient to Mind Cogitant; but these new Entia cogitationis (as his language implies) are still relative, though relative to the Cogitant and not to the Percipient. He reduces Mind Sentient to the narrowest functions, including only each isolated impression of one or other among the five senses. When we see a clock on the wall and hear it strike twelve — we have a visual impression of black from the hands, of white from the face, and an audible impression from each stroke. But this is all (according to Plato) which we have from sense, or which addresses itself to the sentient mind. All beyond this (according to him) is apprehended by the cogitant mind: all discrimination, comparison, and relation — such as the succession, or one, two, three, &c., of the separate impressions, the likeness of one stroke to the preceding, the contrast or dissimilarity of the black with the white — even the simplest acts of discrimination or comparison belong (in Plato’s view) to mental powers beyond and apart from sense; much more, of course, apprehension of the common properties of all, and of those extreme abstractions to which we apply the words Ens and Non-Ens (τό τ’ ἐπὶ πᾶσι κοινὸν καὶ τὸ ἐπὶ τούτοις, ᾧ τὸ ἔστιν ἐπονομάζεις καὶ τὸ οὐκ ἔστιν, p. 185 C).
When Plato thus narrows the sense of αἴσθησις, it is easy to prove that ἐπιστήμη is not αἴσθησις; but I doubt whether those who affirmed this proposition intended what he here refutes. Neither unreflecting men, nor early theorizers, would distinguish the impressions of sense from the feeling of such impressions being successive, distinct from one another, resembling, &c. Mr. John Stuart Mill observes (Logic, Book i. chap. iii. sects. 10-13) — “The simplest of all relations are those expressed by the words antecedent and consequent, and by the word simultaneous. If we say dawn preceded sunrise, the fact in which the two things dawn and sunrise were jointly concerned, consisted only of the two things themselves. No third thing entered into the fact or phenomenon at all, unless indeed we choose to call the succession of the two objects a third thing; but their succession is not something added to the things themselves, it is something involved in them. To have two feelings at all, implies having them either successively or simultaneously. The relations of succession and simultaneity, of likeness and unlikeness, not being grounded on any fact or phenomenon distinct from the related objects themselves, do not admit of the same kind of analysis. But these relations, though not (like other relations) grounded on states of consciousness, are themselves states of consciousness. Resemblance is nothing but our feeling of resemblance: succession is nothing but our feeling of succession.”
By all ordinary (non-theorising) persons, these familiar relations, involved in the facts of sense, are conceived as an essential part of αἴσθησις: and are so conceived by those modern theorists who trace all our knowledge to sense — as well as (probably) by those ancient theorists who defined ἐπιστήμη to be αἴσθησις, and against whom Plato here reasons. These theorists would have said (as ordinary language recognises) — “We see the dissimilarity of the black hands from the white face of the clock; we hear the likeness of one stroke of the clock to another, and the succession of the strokes one, two, three, one after the other”.
The reasoning of Plato against these opponents is thus open to many of the remarks made by Sir William Hamilton, in the notes to his edition of Reid’s works, upon Reid’s objections against Locke and Berkeley: Reid restricted the word Sensation to a much narrower meaning than that given to it by Locke and Berkeley. “Berkeley’s Sensation” (observes S. W. Hamilton) “was equivalent to Reid’s Sensation plus Perception. This is manifest even by the passages adduced in the text” (note to p. 289). But Reid in his remarks omits to notice this difference in the meaning of the same word. The case is similar with Plato when he refutes those who held the doctrine Ἐπιστήμη = Αἴσθησις. The last-mentioned word, in his construction, includes only a part of the meaning which they attributed to it; but he takes no notice of this verbal difference. Sir William Hamilton remarks, respecting M. Royer Collard’s doctrine, which narrows prodigiously the province of Sense, — “Sense he so limits that, if rigorously carried out, no sensible perception, as no consciousness, could be brought to bear”. This is exactly true about Plato’s doctrine narrowing αἴσθησις. See Hamilton’s edit. of Reid, Appendix, p. 844.
Aristotle understands αἴσθησις — αἰσθητικὴ ψυχὴ or ζωή — as occupying a larger sphere than that which Plato assigns to them in the Theætêtus. Aristotle recognises the five separate αἰσθήσεις, each correlating with and perceiving its ἴδιον αἰσθητόν: he also recognises ἡ κοινὴ αἴσθησις — common sensation or perception — correlating with (or perceiving) τὰ κοινὰ αἰσθητά, which are motion, rest, magnitude, figure, number. The κοινὴ αἴσθησις is not a distinct or sixth sense, apart from the five, but a general power inhering in all of them. He farther recognises αἴσθησις as discriminating, judging, comparing, knowing: this characteristic, τὸ κριτοκὸν and γνωστικόν, is common to αἴσθησις, φαντασία, νόησις, and distinguishes them all from appetite — τὸ ὀρεκτικόν, κινητικόν, &c. See the first and second chapters of the third Book of the Treatise De Animâ, and the Commentary of Simplikius upon that Treatise, especially p. 56, b. Aristotle tells us that all animals ἔχει δύναμιν σύμφυτον κριτικήν, ἣν καλοῦσιν αἴσθησιν. Anal. Poster. ii. p. 99, b. 35. And Sir William Hamilton adopts a similar view, when he remarks, that Judgment is implied in every act of Consciousness.
Occasionally indeed Aristotle partitions the soul between νοῦς and ὄρεξις — Intelligence and Appetite — recognising Sense as belonging to the head of Intelligence — see De Motu Animalium, 6, p. 700, b. 20. ταῦτα δὲ πάντα ἀνάγεται εἰς νοῦν καὶ ὄρεξιν· καὶ γὰρ ἡ φαντασία καὶ ἡ αἴσθησις τὴν αὐτὴν τῷ νῷ χώραν ἔχουσι· κριτικὰ γὰρ πάντα. Compare also the Topica, ii. 4, p. 111, a. 18.
It will thus be seen that while Plato severs pointedly αἴσθησις from anything like discrimination, comparison, judgment, even in the most rudimentary form — Aristotle refuses to adopt this extreme abstraction as his basis for classifying the mental phenomena. He recognises a certain measure of discrimination, comparison, and judgment, as implicated in sensible perceptions. Moreover, that which he calls κοινὴ αἴσθησις is unknown to Plato, who isolates each sense, and indeed each act of each sense, as much as possible. Aristotle is opposed, as Plato is, to the doctrine Ἐπιστήμη = Αἴσθησις, but he employs a different manner of reasoning against it. See, inter alia, Anal. Poster. i. 31, p. 87, b. 28. He confines ἐπιστήμη to one branch of the νοητική.
The Peripatetic Straton, the disciple of Theophrastus, denied that there was any distinct line of demarcation between τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι and τὸ νοεῖν: maintaining that the former was impossible without a certain measure of the latter. His observation is very worthy of note. Plutarch, De Solertiâ Animalium, iii. 6, p. 961 A. Καίτοι Στράτωνός γε τοῦ φυσικοῦ λόγος ἐστίν, ἀποδεικνύων ὡς οὐδ’ αἰσθάνεσθαι τοπαράπαν ἄνευ τοῦ νοεῖν ὑπάρχει· καὶ γὰρ γράμματα πολλάκις ἐπιπορευόμενα τῇ ὄψει, καὶ λόγοι προσπίπτοντες τῇ ἀκοιῇ διαλανθάνουσιν ἡμᾶς καὶ διαφεύγουσι πρὸς ἑτέροις τὸν νοῦν ἔχοντας· εἶτ’ αὖθις ἐπανῆλθε καὶ μεταθεῖ καὶ μεταδιώκει τῶν προïεμένων ἕκαστον ἀναλεγόμενος· ᾗ καὶ λέλεκται. Νοῦς ὁρῇ, καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλά· ὡς τοῦ περὶ τὰ ὄμματα καὶ ὦτα πάθους, ἂν μὴ παρῇ τὸ φρονοῦν, αἴσθησιν οὐ ποιοῦντος.
Straton here notices that remarkable fact (unnoticed by Plato and even by Aristotle, so far as I know) in the process of association, that impressions of sense are sometimes unheeded when they occur, but force themselves upon the attention afterwards, and are recalled by the mind in the order in which they occurred at first.
100 Plato, Theæt. p. 187 A. Sokr. ὅμως δὲ τοσοῦτόν γε προβεβήκαμεν, ὥστε μὴ ζητεῖν αὐτὴν (ἐπιστήμην) ἐν αἰσθήσει τοπαράπαν, ἀλλ’ ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ ὀνόματι, ὅ, τι ποτ’ ἔχει ἡ ψυχή, ὅταν αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν πραγματεύηται περὶ τὰ ὄντα. Theæt. Ἀλλὰ μὴν τοῦτό γε καλεῖται, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, δοξάζειν. Sokr. Ὀρθῶς γὰρ οἴει.
Plato is quite right in distinguishing between αἴσθησις and δόξα, looking at the point as a question of psychological classification. It appears to me, however, most probable that those who maintained the theory Ἐπιστήμη = Αἴσθησις, made no such distinction, but included that which he calls δόξα in αἴσθησις. Unfortunately we do not possess their own exposition; but it cannot have included much of psychological analysis.
101 Schleiermacher represents Plato as discriminating Knowledge (the region of infallibility, you either possess it or not) from Opinion (the region of fallibility, true or false, as the case may be) by a broad and impassable line —
“Auch hieraus erwächst eine sehr entscheidende, nur ebenfalls nicht ausdrücklich gezogene, Folgerung, dass die reine Erkenntniss gar nicht auf demselben Gebiet liegen könne mit dem Irrthum — und es in Beziehung auf sie kein Wahr und Falsch gebe, sondern nur ein Haben oder Nicht Haben.” (Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Theæt. p. 176.)
Steinhart (in his Einleit. zum Theæt. p. 94) contests this opinion of Schleiermacher (though he seems to give the same opinion himself, p. 92). He thinks that Plato does not recognise so very marked a separation between Knowledge and Opinion: that he considers Knowledge as the last term of a series of mental processes, developed gradually according to constant laws, and ascending from Sensible Perception through Opinion to Knowledge: that the purpose of the Theætêtus is to illustrate this theory.
Ueberweg, on the contrary, defends the opinion of Schleiermacher and maintains that Steinhart is mistaken (Aechtheit und Zeit. Platon. Schriften, p. 279).
Passages may be produced from Plato’s writings to support both these views: that of Schleiermacher, as well as that of Steinhart. In Timæus, p. 51 E, the like infallibility is postulated for Νοῦς (which there represents ἐπιστήμη) as contrasted with δόξα. But I think that Steinhart ascribes to the Theætêtus more than can fairly be discovered in it. That dialogue is purely negative. It declares that ἐπιστήμη is not αἴσθησις. It then attempts to go a step farther towards the affirmative, by declaring also that ἐπιστήμη is a mental process of computation, respecting the impressions of αἴσθησις — that it is τὸ συλλογίζεσθαι, which is equivalent to τὸ δοξάζειν: compare Phædrus, 249 B. But this affirmative attempt breaks down: for Sokrates cannot explain what τὸ δοξάζειν is, nor how τὸ δοξάζειν ψευδῆ is possible; in fact he says (p. 200 B) that this cannot be explained until we know what ἐπιστήμη is. The entire result of the dialogue is negative, as the closing words proclaim emphatically. On this point many of the commentators agree — Ast, Socher, Stallbaum, Ueberweg, Zeller, &c.
Whether it be true, as Schleiermacher, with several others, thinks (Einl. pp. 184-185), that Plato intends to attack Aristippus in the first part of the dialogue, and Antisthenes in the latter part, we have no means of determining.
This at least is the meaning which Plato assigns to the two words corresponding to Cognition and to Opinion, in the present dialogue, and often elsewhere. But he also frequently employs the word Cognition in a lower and more general signification, not 168restricted, as it is here, to the highest philosophical reach, with infallibility — but comprehending much of what is here treated only as opinion. Thus, for example, he often alludes to the various professional men as possessing Cognition, each in his respective department: the general, the physician, the gymnast, the steersman, the husbandman, &c.102 But he certainly does not mean, that each of them has attained what he calls real essence and philosophical truths — or that any of them are infallible.
102 Compare Plato, Sophistes, pp. 232 E, 233 A.
Plato did not recognise Verification from experience, or from facts of sense, as either necessary or possible.
One farther remark must be made on Plato’s doctrine. His remark — That Cognition consists not in the affections of sense, but in computation or reasoning respecting those affections, (i. e. abstraction, generalisation, &c.) — is both true and important. But he has not added, nor would he have admitted, that if we are to decide whether our computation is true and right, or false and erroneous — our surest way is to recur to the simple facts of sense. Theory must be verified by observation; wherever that cannot be done, the best guarantee is wanting. The facts themselves are not cognition: yet they are the test by which all computations, pretending to be cognitions, must be tried.103
103 See the remarks on the necessity of Verification, as a guarantee for the Deductive Process, in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic, Book iii. ch. xi. s. 8. Newton puts aside his own computation or theory respecting gravity as the force which kept the moon in its orbit, because the facts reported by observers respecting the lunar motions were for some time not in harmony with it. Plato certainly would not have surrendered any συλλογισμὸς under the same respect to observed facts. Aristotle might probably have done so; but this is uncertain.
Second definition given by Theætêtus — That Cognition consists in right or true opinion.
We have thus, in enquiring — What is Knowledge or Cognition? advanced so far as to discover — That it does not consist in sensible perception, but in some variety of that purely mental process which is called opining, believing, judging, conceiving, &c. And here Theætêtus, being called upon for a second definition, answers — That Knowledge consists in right or true opinion. All opinion is not knowledge, because opinion is often false.104
104 Plato, Theæt. p. 187 B. It is scarcely possible to translate δοξάζειν always by the same English word.
Objection by Sokrates — This definition assumes that there are false opinions. But how can false opinions be possible? How can we conceive Non-Ens: or confound together two distinct realities?.
Sokr. — But you are here assuming that there are false opinions? 169How is this possible? How can any man judge or opine falsely? What mental condition is it which bears that name? I confess that I cannot tell: though I have often thought of the matter myself, and debated it with others.105 Every thing comes under the head either of what a man knows, or of what he does not know. If he conceives, it must be either the known, or the unknown. He cannot mistake either one known thing for another known thing: or a known thing for an unknown: or an unknown for a known: or one unknown for another unknown. But to form a false opinion, he must err in one or other of these four ways. It is therefore impossible that he can form a false opinion.106
105 Plato, Theæt. p. 187 C.
106 Plato, Theæt. p. 188.
If indeed a man ascribed to any subject a predicate which was non-existent, this would be evidently a false opinion. But how can any one conceive the non-existent? He who conceives must conceive something: just as he who sees or touches, must see or touch something. He cannot see or touch the non-existent: for that would be to see or touch nothing: in other words, not to see or touch at all. In the same manner, to conceive the non-existent, or nothing, is impossible.107 Theæt. — Perhaps he conceives two realities, but confounds them together, mistaking the one for the other. Sokr. — Impossible. If he conceives two distinct realities, he cannot suppose the one to be the other. Suppose him to conceive, just and unjust, a horse and an ox — he can never believe just to be unjust, or the ox to be the horse.108 If, again, he conceives one of the two alone and singly, neither could he on that hypothesis suppose it to be the other: for that would imply that he conceived the other also.
107 Plato, Theæt. p. 188-189.
108 Plato, Theæt. p. 190.
Waxen memorial tablet in the mind, on which past impressions are engraved. False opinion consists in wrongly identifying present sensations with past impressions.
Let us look again in another direction (continues Sokrates). We have been hasty in our concessions. Is it really impossible for a man to conceive, that a thing, which he knows, is another thing which he does not know? Let us see. Grant me the hypothesis (for the sake of illustration), that each man has in his mind a waxen 170tablet — the wax of one tablet being larger, firmer, cleaner, and better in every way, than that of another: the gift of Mnemosynê, for inscribing and registering our sensible perceptions and thoughts. Every man remembers and knows these, so long as the impressions of them remain upon his tablet: as soon as they are blotted out, he has forgotten them and no longer knows them.109 Now false opinion may occur thus. A man having inscribed on his memorial tablet the impressions of two objects A and B, which he has seen before, may come to see one of these objects again; but he may by mistake identify the present sensation with the wrong past impression, or with that past impression to which it does not belong. Thus on seeing A, he may erroneously identify it with the past impression B, instead of A: or vice versâ.110 False opinion will thus lie, not in the conjunction or identification of sensations with sensations — nor of thoughts (or past impressions) with thoughts — but in that of present sensations with past impressions or thoughts.111
109 Plato, Theæt. p. 191 C. κήρινον ἐκμογεῖον.
110 Plato, Theæt. p. 193-194.
111 Plato, Theæt. p. 195 D.
Sokrates refutes this assumption. Dilemma. Either false opinion is impossible, or else a man may know what he does not know.
Having laid this down, however, Sokrates immediately proceeds to refute it. In point of fact, false conceptions are found to prevail, not only in the wrong identification of present sensations with past impressions or thoughts, but also in the wrong identification of one past impression or thought with another. Thus a man, who has clearly engraved on his memorial tablet the conceptions of five, seven, eleven, twelve, — may nevertheless, when asked what is the sum of seven and five, commit error and answer eleven: thus mistaking eleven for twelve.
We are thus placed in this dilemma — Either false opinion is an impossibility:— Or else, it is possible that what a man knows, he may not know. Which of the two do you choose?112
112 Plato, Theæt. p. 196 C. νῦν δὲ ἤτοι οὐκ ἔστι ψευδὴς δόξα, ἢ ἅ τις οἶδεν, οἷόν τε μὴ εἰδέναι· καὶ τούτων πότερα αἱρεῖ;
He draws distinction between possessing knowledge, and having it actually in hand. Simile of the pigeon-cage with caught pigeons turned into it and flying about.
To this question no answer is given. But Sokrates, — after remarking on the confused and unphilosophical manner in which the debate has been conducted, both he and Theætêtus having perpetually employed the 171words know, knowledge, and their equivalents, as if the meaning of the words were ascertained, whereas the very problem debated is, to ascertain their meaning113 — takes up another path of enquiry. He distinguishes between possessing knowledge, — and having it actually in hand or on his person: which distinction he illustrates by comparing the mind to a pigeon-cage. A man hunts and catches pigeons, then turns them into the cage, within the limits of which they fly about: when he wants to catch any one of them for use, he has to go through a second hunt, sometimes very troublesome: in which he may perhaps either fail altogether, or catch the wrong one instead of the right. The first hunt Sokrates compares to the acquisition of knowledge: the second, to the getting it into his hand for use.114 A man may know, in the first sense, and not know, in the second: he may have to hunt about for the cognition which (in the first sense) he actually possesses. In trying to catch one cognition, he may confound it with another: and this constitutes false opinion — the confusion of two cognita one with another.115
113 Plato, Theæt. p. 196 D.
114 Plato, Theæt. p. 197-198.
115 Plato, Theæt. p. 199 C. ἡ τῶν ἐπιστημῶν μεταλλαγή.
Sokrates refutes this. Suggestion of Theætêtus — That there may be non-cognitions in the mind as well as cognitions, and that false opinion may consist in confounding one with the other. Sokrates rejects this.
Yet how can such a confusion be possible? (Sokrates here again replies to himself.) How can knowledge betray a man into such error? If he knows A, and knows B — how can he mistake A for B? Upon this supposition, knowledge produces the effect of ignorance: and we might just as reasonably imagine ignorance to produce the effects of knowledge.116 — Perhaps (suggests Theætêtus), he may have non-cognitions in his mind, mingled with the cognitions: and in hunting for a cognition, he may catch a non-cognition. Herein may lie false opinion. — That can hardly be (replies Sokrates). If the man catches what is really a non-cognition, he will not suppose it to be such, but to be a cognition. He will believe himself fully to know, that in which he is mistaken. But how is it possible that he should confound a non-cognition with a cognition, or vice 172versâ? Does not he know the one from the other? We must then require him to have a separate cognition of his own cognitions or non-cognitions — and so on ad infinitum.117 The hypothesis cannot be admitted.
116 Plato, Theæt. p. 199 E.
117 Plato, Theæt. p. 200 B.
We cannot find out (continues Sokrates) what false opinion is: and we have plainly done wrong to search for it, until we have first ascertained what knowledge is.118
118 Plato, Theæt. p. 200 C.
He brings another argument to prove that Cognition is not the same as true opinion. Rhetors persuade or communicate true opinion; but they do not teach or communicate knowledge.
Moreover, as to the question, Whether knowledge is identical with true opinion, Sokrates produces another argument to prove that it is not so: and that the two are widely different. You can communicate true opinion without communicating knowledge: and the powerful class of rhetors and litigants make it their special business to do so. They persuade, without teaching, a numerous audience.119 During the hour allotted to them for discourse, they create, in the minds of the assembled dikasts, true opinions respecting complicated incidents of robbery or other unlawfulness, at which none of the dikasts have been personally present. Upon this opinion the dikasts decide, and decide rightly. But they cannot possibly know the facts without having been personally present and looking on. That is essential to knowledge or cognition.120 Accordingly, they have acquired true and right opinions; yet without acquiring knowledge. Therefore the two are not the same.121
119 Plato, Theæt. p. 201 A. οὗτοι γάρ που τῇ ἑαυτῶν τέχνῃ πείθουσιν, οὐ διδάσκοντες, ἀλλὰ δοξάζειν ποιοῦντες ἃ ἂν βούλωνται.
120 Plato, Theæt. p. 201 B-C. Οὐκοῦν ὅταν δικαίως πεισθῶσι δικασταὶ περὶ ὧν ἰδόντι μόνον ἔστιν εἰδέναι, ἄλλως δὲ μή, ταῦτα τότε ἐξ ἀκοῆς κρίνοντες, ἀληθῆ δόξαν λαβόντες, ἄνευ ἐπιστήμης ἔκριναν, ὀρθὰ πεισθέντες, εἴπερ εὖ ἐδίκασαν;
121 The distinction between persuading and teaching — between creating opinion and imparting knowledge — has been brought to view in the Gorgias, and is noted also in the Timæus. As it stands here, it deserves notice, because Plato not only professes to affirm what knowledge is, but also identifies it with sensible perception. The Dikasts (according to Sokrates) would have known the case, had they been present when it occurred, so as to see and hear it: there is no other way of acquiring knowledge.
Hearing the case only by the narration of speakers, they can acquire nothing more than a true opinion. Hence we learn wherein consists the difference between the two. That which I see, hear, or apprehend by any sensible perception, I know: compare a passage in Sophistes, p. 267 A-B, where τὸ γιγνώσκειν is explained in the same way. But that which I learn from the testimony of others amounts to nothing more than opinion; and at best to a true opinion.
Plato’s reasoning here involves an admission of the very doctrine which he had before taken so much pains to confute — the doctrine that Cognition is Sensible Perception. Yet he takes no notice of the inconsistency. An occasion for sneering at the Rhetors and Dikasts is always tempting to him.
So, in the Menon (p. 97 B), the man who has been at Larissa is said to know the road to Larissa; as distinguished from another man who, never having been there, opines correctly which the road is. And in the Sophistes (p. 263) when Plato is illustrating the doctrine that false propositions, as well as true propositions, are possible, and really occur, he selects as his cases, Θεαίτητος κάθηται, Θεαίτητος πέτεται. That one of these propositions is false and the other true, can be known only by αἴσθησις — in the sense of that word commonly understood.
173New answer of Theætêtus — Cognition is true opinion, coupled with rational explanation.
Theætêtus now recollects another definition of knowledge, learnt from some one whose name he forgets. Knowledge is (he says) true opinion, coupled with rational explanation. True opinion without such rational explanation, is not knowledge. Those things which do not admit of rational explanation, are not knowable.122
122 Plato, Theætêt. p. 201 D. τὴν μὲν μετὰ λόγου ἀληθῆ δόξαν ἐπιστήμην εἶναι· τὴν δὲ ἄλογον, ἐκτὸς ἐπιστήμης· καὶ ὧν μὲν μή ἐστι λόγος, οὐκ ἐπιστητὰ εἶναι, οὑτωσὶ καὶ ὀνομάζων, ἂ δ’ ἔχει, ἐπιστητά.
The words οὑτωσὶ καὶ ὀνομάζων are intended, according to Heindorf and Schleiermacher, to justify the use of the word ἐπιστητά, which was then a neologism. Both this definition, and the elucidation of it which Sokrates proceeds to furnish, are announced as borrowed from other persons not named.
Criticism on the answer by Sokrates. Analogy of letters and words, primordial elements and compounds. Elements cannot be explained: compounds alone can be explained.
Taking up this definition, and elucidating it farther, Sokrates refers to the analogy of words and letters. Letters answer to the primordial elements of things; which are not matters either of knowledge, or of true opinion, or of rational explanation — but simply of sensible perception. A letter, or a primordial element, can only be perceived and called by its name. You cannot affirm of it any predicate or any epithet: you cannot call it existing, or this, or that, or each, or single, or by any other name than its own:123 for if you do, you attach to it something extraneous to itself, and then it ceases to be an element. But syllables, words, propositions — i. e., the compounds made up by putting together various letters or elements — admit of being known, explained, and described, by enumerating the component elements. You may indeed conceive them correctly, without being able to explain them or to enumerate their component elements: but then you do not know them. You can only be said to know 174them, when besides conceiving them correctly, you can also specify their component elements124 — or give explanation.
123 Plato, Theæt. pp. 201 E — 202 A. αὐτὸ γὰρ καθ’ αὑτὸ ἕκαστον ὀνομάσαι μόνον εἴη, προσειπεῖν δὲ οὐδὲν ἄλλο δυνατόν, οὔθ’ ὡς ἔστιν, οὔθ’ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν’ ἤδη γὰρ ἂν οὐσίαν ἢ μὴ οὐσίαν αὐτῷ προστίθεσθαι, δεῖν δὲ οὐδὲν προσφέρειν, εἴπερ αὐτὸ ἐκεῖνο μόνον τις ἐρεῖ· ἐπεὶ οὐδὲ τὸ αὐτό, οὐδέ τὸ ἐκεῖνο, οὐδὲ το ἕκαστον, οὐδὲ το μόνον, οὐδὲ τὸ τοῦτο, προσοιστέον, οὐδ’ ἄλλα πολλὰ τοιαῦτα· ταῦτα μὲν γὰρ περιτρέχοντα πᾶσι προσφέρεσθαι, ἕτερα ὄντα ἑκείνων οἷς προστίθεται. Also p. 205 C.
124 Plato, Theæt. p. 202.
Sokrates refutes this criticism. If the elements are unknowable, the compound must be unknowable also.
Having enunciated this definition, as one learnt from another person not named, Sokrates proceeds to examine and confute it. It rests on the assumption (he says), that the primordial elements are themselves unknowable; and that it is only the aggregates compounded of them which are knowable. Such an assumption cannot be granted. The result is either a real sum total, including both the two component elements: or it is a new form, indivisible and uncompounded, generated by the two elements, but not identical with them nor including them in itself. If the former, it is not knowable, because if neither of the elements are knowable, both together are not knowable: when you know neither A nor B you cannot know either the sum or the product of A and B. If the latter, then the result, being indivisible and uncompounded, is unknowable for the same reason as the elements are so: it can only be named by its own substantive name, but nothing can be predicated respecting it.125
125 Plato, Theæt. pp. 203-206.
Nor can it indeed be admitted as true — That the elements are unknowable, and the compound alone knowable. On the contrary, the elements are more knowable than the compound.126
126 Plato, Theæt. p. 206.
Rational explanation may have one of three different meanings. 1. Description in appropriate language. 2. Enumeration of all the component elements in the compound. In neither of these meanings will the definition of Cognition hold.
When you say (continues Sokrates) that knowledge is true opinion coupled with rational explanation, you may mean by rational explanation one of three things. 1. The power of enunciating the opinion in clear and appropriate words. This every one learns to do, who is not dumb or an idiot: so that in this sense true opinion will always carry with it rational explanation. — 2. The power of describing the thing in question by its component elements. Thus Hesiod says that there are a hundred distinct wooden pieces in a waggon: you and I do not know nor can we describe them all: we can distinguish only the more obvious fractions — the wheels, the axle, the body, the yoke, 175&c. Accordingly, we cannot be said to know a waggon: we have only a true opinion about it. Such is the second sense of λόγος or rational explanation. But neither in this sense will the proposition hold — That knowledge is right opinion coupled with rational explanation. For suppose that a man can enumerate, spell, and write correctly, all the syllables of the name Theætêtus — which would fulfil the conditions of this definition: yet, if he mistakes and spells wrongly in any other name, such as Theodôrus, you will not give him credit for knowledge. You will say that he writes Theætêtus correctly, by virtue of right opinion simply. It is therefore possible to have right opinion coupled with rational explanation, in this second sense also, — yet without possessing knowledge.127
127 Plato, Theæt. p. 207-208 B. ἔστιν ἄρα μετὰ λόγου ὀρθὴ δόξα, ἣν οὔπω δεῖ ἐπιστήμην καλεῖν.
Third meaning. To assign some mark, whereby the thing to be explained differs from everything else. The definition will not hold. For rational explanation, in this sense, is already included in true opinion.
3. A third meaning of this same word λόγος or rational explanation, is, that in which it is most commonly understood — To be able to assign some mark whereby the thing to be explained differs from every thing else — to differentiate the thing.128 Persons, who understand the word in this way, affirm, that so long as you only seize what the thing has in common with other things, you have only a true opinion concerning it: but when you seize what it has peculiar and characteristic, you then possess knowledge of it. Such is their view: but though it seems plausible at first sight (says Sokrates), it will not bear close scrutiny. For in order to have a true opinion about any thing, I must have in my mind not only what it possesses in common with other things, but what it possesses peculiar to itself also. Thus if I have a true opinion about Theætêtus, I must have in my mind not only the attributes which belong to him in common with other men, but also those which belong to him specially and exclusively. Rational explanation (λόγος) in this sense is already comprehended in true opinion, and is an essential ingredient in it — not any new element superadded. It will not serve therefore as a distinction between true opinion and knowledge.129
128 Plato, Theætêt. p. 208 C. Ὅπερ ἂν οἱ πολλοὶ εἴποιεν, τὸ ἔχειν τι σημεῖον εἰπεῖν ᾧ τῶν ἁπάντων διαφέρει τὸ ἐρωτηθέν.
129 Plato, Theætêt. p. 209.
176Conclusion of the dialogue — Summing up by Sokrates — Value of the result, although purely negative.
Such is the result (continues Sokrates) of our researches concerning knowledge. We have found that it is neither sensible perception — nor true opinion — nor true opinion along with rational explanation. But what it is, we have not found. Are we still pregnant with any other answer, Theætêtus, or have we brought forth all that is to come? — I have brought forth (replies Theætêtus) more than I had within me, through your furtherance. Well (rejoins Sokrates) — and my obstetric science has pronounced all your offspring to be mere wind, unworthy of being preserved!130 If hereafter you should again become pregnant, your offspring will be all the better for our recent investigation. If on the other hand you should always remain barren, you will be more amiable and less vexatious to your companions — by having a just estimate of yourself and by not believing yourself to know what you really do not know.131
130 Plato, Theætêt. p. 210 B. οὐκοῦν ταῦτα μὲν ἅπαντα ἡ μαιευτικὴ ἡμῖν τέχνη ἀνεμιαῖά φησι γεγενῆσθαι καὶ οὐκ ἄξια τροφῆς;
131 Plato, Theæt. p. 210 C. ἐάν τε γίγνῃ (ἐγκύμων), βελτιόνων ἔσει πλήρης διὰ τὴν νῦν ἐξέτασιν· ἐάν τε κενὸς ἦς, ἧττον ἔσει βαρὺς τοῖς συνοῦσι καὶ ἡμερώτερος, σωφρόνως οὐκ οἰόμενος εἰδέναι ἃ μὴ οἶσθα.
Compare also an earlier passage in the dialogue, p. 187 B.
Remarks on the dialogue. View of Plato. False persuasion of knowledge removed. Importance of such removal.
The concluding observations of this elaborate dialogue deserve particular attention as illustrating Plato’s point of view, at the time when he composed the Theætêtus. After a long debate, set forth with all the charm of Plato’s style, no result is attained. Three different explanations of knowledge have been rejected as untenable.132 No other can be found; nor is any suggestion offered, showing in what quarter we are to look for the true one. What then is the purpose or value of the dialogue? Many persons would pronounce it to be a mere piece of useless ingenuity and elegance: but such is not the opinion of Plato himself. Sufficient gain (in his view) will have been ensured, if Theætêtus has acquired a greater power 177of testing any fresh explanation which he may attempt of this difficult subject: or even if he should attempt none such, by his being disabused, at all events, of the false persuasion of knowing where he is really ignorant. Such false persuasion of knowledge (Plato here intimates) renders a man vexatious to associates; while a right estimate of his own knowledge and ignorance fosters gentleness and moderation of character. In this view, false persuasion of knowledge is an ethical defect, productive of positive mischief in a man’s intercourse with others: the removal of it improves his character, even though no ulterior step towards real and positive knowledge be made. The important thing is, that he should acquire the power of testing and verifying all opinions, old as well as new. This, which is the only guarantee against the delusive self-satisfaction of sham knowledge, must be firmly established in the mind before it is possible to aspire effectively to positive and assured knowledge. The negative arm of philosophy is in its application prior to the positive, and indispensable, as the single protection against error and false persuasion of knowledge. Sokrates is here depicted as one in whom the negative vein is spontaneous and abundant, even to a pitch of discomfort — as one complaining bitterly, that objections thrust themselves upon him, unsought and unwelcome, against conclusions which he had himself just previously taken pains to prove at length.133
132 I have already observed, however, that in one passage of the interrogation carried on by Sokrates (p. 201 A-B, where he is distinguishing between persuasion and teaching) he unconsciously admits the identity between knowledge and sensible perception.
133 See the emphatic passage, p. 195 B-C.
Formation of the testing or verifying power in men’s minds, value of the Theætêtus, as it exhibits Sokrates demolishing his own suggestions.
To form in men’s minds this testing or verifying power, is one main purpose in Plato’s dialogues of Search — and in some of them the predominant purpose; as he himself announces it to be in the Theætêtus. I have already made the same remark before, and I repeat it here; since it is absolutely necessary for appreciating these dialogues of Search in their true bearing and value. To one who does not take account of the negative arm of philosophy, as an auxiliary without which the positive arm will strike at random — half of the Platonic dialogues will teach nothing, and will even appear as enigmas — the Theætêtus among the foremost. Plato excites and strengthens the interior mental wakefulness of the 178hearer, to judge respecting all affirmative theories, whether coming from himself or from others. This purpose is well served by the manner in which Sokrates more than once in this dialogue first announces, proves, and builds up a theory — then unexpectedly changes his front, disproves, and demolishes it. We are taught that it is not difficult to find a certain stock of affirmative argument which makes the theory look well from a distance: we must inspect closely, and make sure that there are no counter-arguments in the background.134 The way in which Sokrates pulls to pieces his own theories, is farther instructive, as it illustrates the exhortation previously addressed by him to Theætêtus — not to take offence when his answers were canvassed and shown to be inadmissible.135
134 Plato, Theætêt. p. 208 E.
135 Plato, Theætêt. p. 151 C.
Comparison of the Philosopher with the Rhetor. The Rhetor is enslaved to the opinions of auditors.
A portion of the dialogue to which I have not yet adverted, illustrates this anxiety for the preliminary training of the ratiocinative power, as an indispensable qualification for any special research. “We have plenty of leisure for investigation136 (says Sokrates). We are not tied to time, nor compelled to march briefly and directly towards some positive result. Engaged as we are in investigating philosophical truth, we stand in pointed contrast with politicians and rhetors in the public assembly or dikastery. We are like freemen; they, like slaves. They have before them the Dikasts, as their masters, to whose temper and approbation they are constrained to adapt themselves. They are also in presence of antagonists, ready to entrap and confute them. The personal interests, sometimes even the life, of an individual are at stake; so that every thing must be sacrificed to the purpose of obtaining a verdict. Men brought up in these habits become sharp in observation and emphatic in expression; but merely with a view to win the assent and approbation of the master before them, as to the case in hand. No free aspirations or spontaneous enlargement can have place in their minds. They become careless of true and sound reasoning — slaves to the sentiment of those whom they address — and adepts in crooked artifice which they take for wisdom.137
136 Plato, Theæt. p. 155. ὡς πάνυ πολλὴν σχολὴν ἄγοντες, πάλιν ἐπανασκεψόμεθα, &c.; also p. 172.
137 Plato, Theætêt. p. 172-173.
I give only an abstract of this eloquent passage, not an exact translation. Steinhart (Einleitung zum Theætêt. p. 37) calls it “a sublime Hymn” (einen erhabenen Hymnus). It is a fine piece of poetry or rhetoric, and shows that Plato was by nature quite as rhetorical as the rhetors whom he depreciates — though he had also, besides, other lofty intellectual peculiarities of his own, beyond these rivals.
179The Philosopher is master of his own debates.
Of all this (continues Sokrates) the genuine philosopher is the reverse. He neither possesses, nor cares to possess, the accomplishments of the lawyer and politician. He takes no interest in the current talk of the city; nor in the scandals afloat against individual persons. He does not share in the common ardour for acquiring power or money; nor does he account potentates either happier or more estimable for possessing them. Being ignorant and incompetent in the affairs of citizenship as well as of common life, he has no taste for club-meetings or joviality. His mind, despising the particular and the practical, is absorbed in constant theoretical research respecting universals. He spares no labour in investigating — What is man in general? and what are the attributes, active and passive, which distinguish man from other things? He will be overthrown and humiliated before the Dikastery by a clever rhetor. But if this opponent chooses to ascend out of the region of speciality, and the particular ground of injustice alleged by A against B — into the general question, What is justice or injustice? Wherein do they differ from each other or from other things? What constitutes happiness and misery? How is the one to be attained and the other avoided? — If the rhetor will meet the philosopher on this elevated ground, then he will find himself put to shame and proved to be incompetent, in spite of all the acute stratagems of his petty mind.138 He will look like a child and become ashamed of himself:139 but the philosopher is noway ashamed of his incompetence for slavish pursuits, while he is passing a life of freedom and leisure among his own dialectics.140
138 Plato, Theæt. pp. 175-176.
139 Plato, Theæt. p. 177 B.
140 Plato, Theæt. p. 175 E.
Purpose of dialogue to qualify for a life of philosophical Search.
In these words of Sokrates we read a contrast between practice and theory — one of the most eloquent passages in the dialogues — wherein Plato throws overboard the ordinary concerns and purposes both of public and private life, admitting that true philosophers are unfit for them. The passage, while it teaches us caution in 180receiving his criticisms on the defects of actual statesmen and men of action, informs us at the same time that he regarded philosophy as the only true business of life — the single pursuit worthy to occupy a freeman.141 This throws light on the purpose of many of his dialogues. He intends to qualify the mind for a life of philosophical research, and with this view to bestow preliminary systematic training on the ratiocinative power. To announce at once his own positive conclusions with their reasons, (as I remarked before) is not his main purpose. A pupil who, having got all these by heart, supposed himself to have completed his course of philosophy, so that nothing farther remained to be done, would fall very short of the Platonic exigency. The life of the philosopher — as Plato here conceives it — is a perpetual search after truth, by dialectic debate and mutual cross-examination between two minds, aiding each other to disembroil that confusion and inconsistency which grows up naturally in the ordinary mind. For such a life a man becomes rather disqualified than prepared, by swallowing an early dose of authoritative dogmas and proofs dictated by his teacher. The two essential requisites for it are, that he should acquire a self-acting ratiocinative power, and an earnest, untiring, interest in the dialectic process. Both these aids Plato’s negative dialogues are well calculated to afford: and when we thus look at his purpose, we shall see clearly that it did not require the presentation of any positive result.
141 Plato, Sophistês, p. 253 C: ἡ τῶν ἐλευθέρων ἐπιστήμη.
Difficulties of the Theætêtus are not solved in any other Dialogue.
The course of this dialogue — the Theætêtus — has been already described as an assemblage of successive perplexities without any solution. But what deserves farther notice is — That the perplexities, as they are not solved in this dialogue, so they are not solved in any other dialogue. The view taken by Schleiermacher and other critics — that Plato lays out the difficulties in one anterior dialogue, in order to furnish the solution in another posterior — is not borne out by the facts. In the Theætêtus, many objections are propounded against the doctrine, That Opinion is sometimes true, sometimes false. Sokrates shows that false opinion is an impossibility: either therefore all 181opinions are true, or no opinion is either true or false. If we turn to the Sophistês, we shall find this same question discussed by the Eleatic Stranger who conducts the debate. He there treats the doctrine — That false opinion is an impossibility and that no opinion could be false — as one which had long embarrassed himself, and which formed the favourite subterfuge of the impostors whom he calls Sophists. He then states that this doctrine of the Sophists was founded on the Parmenidean dictum — That Non-Ens was an impossible supposition. Refuting the dictum of Parmenides (by a course of reasoning which I shall examine elsewhere), he arrives at the conclusion — That Non-Ens exists in a certain fashion, as well as Ens: That false opinions are possible: That there may be false opinions as well as true. But what deserves most notice here, in illustration of Plato’s manner, is — that though the Sophistês142 is announced as a continuation of the Theætêtus (carried on by the same speakers, with the addition of the Eleate), yet the objections taken by Sokrates in the Theætêtus against the possibility of false opinion, are not even noticed in the Sophistês — much less removed. Other objections to it are propounded and dealt with: but not those objections which had arrested the march of Sokrates in the Theætêtus.143 Sokrates and Theætêtus hear the Eleatic Stranger 182discussing this same matter in the Sophistês, yet neither of them allude to those objections against his conclusion which had appeared to both of them irresistible in the preceding dialogue known as Theætêtus. Nor are the objections refuted in any other of the Platonic dialogues.
142 See the end of the Theætêtus and the opening of the Sophistês. Note, moreover, that the Politikus makes reference not only to the Sophistês, but also to the Theætêtus (pp. 258 A, 266 D, 284 B, 286 B).
143 In the Sophistês, the Eleate establishes (to his own satisfaction) that τὸ μὴ ὂν is not ἐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος, but ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος (p. 257 B), that it is one γένος among the various γένη (p. 260 B), and that it (τὸ μὴ ὂν κοινωνεῖ) enters into communion or combination with δόξα, λόγος, φαντασία, &c. It is therefore possible that there may be ψευδὴς δόξα or ψευδὴς λόγος, when you affirm, respecting any given subject, ἕτερα τῶν ὄντων or τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα (p. 263 B-C). Plato considers that the case is thus made out against the Sophist, as the impostor and dealer in falsehoods; false opinion being proved to be possible and explicable.
But if we turn to the Theætêtus (p. 189 seq.), we shall see that this very explication of ψευδὴς δόξα is there enunciated and impugned by Sokrates in a long argument. He calls it there ἀλλοδοξία, ἑτεροδοξία, τὸ ἑτεροδοξεῖν (pp. 189 A, 190 E, 193 D). No man (he says) can mistake one thing for another; if this were so, he must be supposed both to know and not to know the same thing, which is impossible (pp. 196 A, 200 A). Therefore ψευδὴς δόξα is impossible.
Of these objections, urged by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, against the possibility of ἀλλοδοξία, no notice is taken in the Sophistês either by Sokrates, or by Theætêtus, or by the Eleate in the Sophistês. Indeed the Eleate congratulates himself upon the explanation as more satisfactory than he had expected to find (p. 264 B): and speaks with displeasure of the troublesome persons who stir up doubts and contradictions (p. 259 C): very different from the tone of Sokrates in the Theætêtus (p. 195, B-C).
I may farther remark that Plato, in the Republic, reasons about τὸ μὴ ὂν in the Parmenidean sense, and not in the sense which he ascribed to it in the Sophistês, and which he recognises in the Politikus, p. 284 B. (Republic, v. pp. 477 A, 478 C.)
Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 260-270) points out the discrepancy between the doctrines of the Eleate in the Sophistês, and those maintained by Sokrates in other Platonic dialogues; inferring from thence that the Sophistês and Politikus are not compositions of Plato. As between the Theætêtus and the Sophistês, I think a stronger case of discrepancy might be set forth than he has stated; though the end of the former is tied to the beginning of the latter plainly, directly, and intentionally. But I do not agree in his inference. He concludes that the Sophistês is not Plato’s composition: I conclude, that the scope for dissident views and doctrine, within the long philosophical career and numerous dialogues of Plato, is larger than his commentators admit.
Plato considered that the search for Truth was the noblest occupation of life.
Such a string of objections never answered, and of difficulties without solution, may appear to many persons nugatory as well as tiresome. To Plato they did not appear so. At the time when most of his dialogues were composed, he considered that the Search after truth was at once the noblest occupation, and the highest pleasure, of life. Whoever has no sympathy with such a pursuit — whoever cares only for results, and finds the chase in itself fatiguing rather than attractive — is likely to take little interest in the Platonic dialogues. To repeat what I said in Chapter VIII. — Those who expect from Plato a coherent system in which affirmative dogmas are first to be laid down, with the evidence in their favour — next, the difficulties and objections against them enumerated — lastly, these difficulties solved — will be disappointed. Plato is, occasionally, abundant in his affirmations: he has also great negative fertility in starting objections: but the affirmative current does not come into conflict with the negative. His belief is enforced by rhetorical fervour, poetical illustration, and a vivid emotional fancy. These elements stand to him in the place of positive proof; and when his mind is full of them, the unsolved objections, which he himself had stated elsewhere, vanish out of sight. Towards the close of his life (as we shall see in the Treatise De Legibus), the love of dialectic, and the taste for enunciating difficulties even when he could not clear them up, died out within him. He becomes 183ultra-dogmatical, losing even the poetical richness and fervour which had once marked his affirmations, and substituting in their place a strict and compulsory orthodoxy.
Contrast between the philosopher and the practical statesman — between Knowledge and Opinion.
The contrast between the philosopher and the man engaged in active life — which is so emphatically set forth in the Theætêtus144 — falls in with the distinction between Knowledge and Opinion — The Infallible and the Fallible. It helps the purpose of the dialogue, to show what knowledge is not: and it presents the distinction between the two on the ethical and emotional side, upon which Plato laid great stress. The philosopher (or man of Knowledge, i.e. Knowledge viewed on its subjective side) stands opposed to the men of sensible perception and opinion, not merely in regard to intellect, but in regard to disposition, feeling, character, and appreciation of objects. He neither knows nor cares about particular things or particular persons: all his intellectual force, and all his emotional interests, are engaged in the contemplation of Universals or Real Entia, and of the great pervading cosmical forces. He despises the occupations of those around him, and the actualities of life, like the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias:145 assimilating himself as much as possible to the Gods; who have no other occupation (according to the Aristotelian146 Ethics), except that of contemplating and theorising. He pursues these objects not with a view to any ulterior result, but because the pursuit is in itself a life both of virtue and happiness; neither of which are to be found in the region of opinion. Intense interest in speculation is his prominent characteristic. To dwell amidst these contemplations is a self-sufficing life; even without any of the aptitudes or accomplishments admired by the practical men. If the philosopher meddles with their pursuits, he is not merely found incompetent, but also incurs general derision; because his incompetence becomes manifest even to the common-place citizens. But if they meddle with his speculations, they fail not less disgracefully; though their failure is not appreciated by the unphilosophical spectator.
144 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 173-176. Compare Republic, v. pp. 476-477, vii. p. 517.
145 See above, chap. xxiv. p. 355.
146 Ethic. Nikomach. x. 8, p. 1178, b. 9-25.
184The professors of Knowledge are thus divided by the strongest lines from the professors of Opinion. And opinion itself — The Fallible — is, in this dialogue, presented as an inexplicable puzzle. You talk about true and false opinions: but how can false opinions be possible? and if they are not possible, what is the meaning of true, as applied to opinions? Not only, therefore, opinion can never be screwed up to the dignity of knowledge — but the world of opinion itself defies philosophical scrutiny. It is a chaos in which there is neither true nor false; in perpetual oscillation (to use the phrase of the Republic) between Ens and Non-Ens.147
147 Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478-479.
The Theætêtus is more in harmony (in reference to δόξα and ἐπιστήμη) with the Republic, than with the Sophistês and Politikus. In the Politikus (p. 309 C) ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ βεβαιώσεως is placed very nearly on a par with knowledge: in the Menon also, the difference between the two, though clearly declared, is softened in degree, pp. 97-98.
The Alexandrine physician Herophilus attempted to draw, between πρόῤῥησις and πρόγνωσις, the same distinction as that which Plato draws between δόξα and ἐπιστήμη — The Fallible as contrasted with the Infallible. Galen shows that the distinction is untenable (Prim. Commentat. in Hippokratis Prorrhetica, Tom. xvi. p. 487. ed. Kühn).
Bonitz, in his Platonische Studien (pp. 41-78), has given an instructive analysis and discussion of the Theætêtus. I find more to concur with in his views, than in those of Schleiermacher or Steinhart. He disputes altogether the assumption of other Platonic critics, that a purely negative result is unworthy of Plato; and that the negative apparatus is an artifice to recommend, and a veil to conceal, some great affirmative truth, which acute expositors can detect and enunciate plainly (Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Theætêt. p. 124 seq.) Bonitz recognises the result of the Theætêtus as purely negative, and vindicates the worth of it as such. Moreover, instead of denouncing the opinions which Plato combats, as if they were perverse heresies of dishonest pretenders, he adverts to the great difficulty of those problems which both Plato and Plato’s opponents undertook to elucidate: and he remarks that, in those early days, the first attempts to explain psychological phenomena were even more liable to error than the first attempts to explain physical phenomena (pp. 75-77). Such recognition, of the real difficulty of a problem, is rare among the Platonic critics.
185
Persons and circumstances of the two dialogues.
These two dialogues are both of them announced by Plato as forming sequel to the Theætêtus. The beginning of the Sophistês fits on to the end of the Theætêtus: and the Politikus is even presented as a second part or continuation of the Sophistês.1 In all the three, the 186same interlocutors are partially maintained. Thus Sokrates, Theodôrus, and Theætêtus are present in all three: and Theætêtus makes the responses, not only in the dialogue which bears his name, but also in the Sophistês. Both in the Sophistês and Politikus, however, Sokrates himself descends from the part of principal speaker to that of listener: it is he, indeed, who by his question elicits the exposition, but he makes no comment either during the progress of it or at the close. In both the dialogues, the leading and expository function is confided to a new personage introduced by Theodôrus:— a stranger not named, but announced as coming from Elea — the friend and companion of Parmenides and Zeno. Perhaps (remarks Sokrates) your friend may, without your knowledge, be a God under human shape; as Homer tells us that the Gods often go about, in the company of virtuous men, to inspect the good and bad behaviour of mankind. Perhaps your friend may be a sort of cross-examining God, coming to test and expose our feebleness in argument. No (replies Theodôrus) that is not his character. He is less given to 187dispute than his companions. He is far from being a God, but he is a divine man: for I call all true philosophers divine.2
1 At the beginning of the Politikus, Plato makes Sokrates refer both to the Theætêtus and to the Sophistês (p. 258 A). In more than one passage of the Politikus (pp. 266 D, 284 B, 286 B), he even refers to the Sophistês directly and by name, noticing certain points touched in it — a thing very unusual with him. In the Sophistês also (p. 233 B), express reference is made to a passage in the Theætêtus.
See also the allusion in Sophistês (to the appearance of the younger Sokrates as respondent), p. 218 B.
Socher (in his work, Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 258-294) maintains that neither the Sophistês, nor the Politikus, nor the Parmenidês, are genuine works of Plato. He conceives the two dialogues to be contemporary with the Theætêtus (which he holds to have been written by Plato), but to have been composed by some acute philosopher of the Megaric school, conversant with the teachings of Sokrates and with the views of Plato, after the visit of the latter to Megara in the period succeeding the death of Sokrates (p. 268).
Even if we grant the exclusion of Plato’s authorship, the hypothesis of an author belonging to the Megaric school is highly improbable: the rather, since many critics suppose (I think erroneously) that the Megarici are among those attacked in the dialogue. The suspicion that Plato is not the author of Sophistês and Politikus has undoubtedly more appearance of reason than the same suspicion as applied to other dialogues — though I think the reasons altogether insufficient. Socher observes, justly: 1. That the two dialogues are peculiar, distinguished from other Platonic dialogues by the profusion of logical classification, in practice as well as in theory. 2. That both, and especially the Sophistês, advance propositions and conclusions discrepant from what we read in other Platonic dialogues. — But these two reasons are not sufficient to make me disallow them. I do not agree with those who require so much uniformity, either of matter or of manner, in the numerous distinct dialogues of Plato. I recognise a much wider area of admissible divergence.
The plain announcement contained in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Politikus themselves, that the two last are intended as sequel to the first, is in my mind a proof of sameness of authorship, not counterbalanced by Socher’s objections. Why should a Megaric author embody in his two dialogues a false pretence and assurance, that they are sequel of the Platonic Theætêtus? Why should so acute a writer (as Socher admits him to be) go out of his way to suppress his own personality, and merge his fame in that of Plato?
I make the same remark on the views of Suckow (Form der Platonischen Schriften, p. 87, seq., Breslau, 1855), who admits the Sophistes to be a genuine work of Plato, but declares the Politikus to be spurious; composed by some fraudulent author, who wished to give to his dialogue the false appearance of being a continuation of the Sophistes: he admits (p. 93) that it must be a deliberate deceit, if the Politikus be really the work of a different author from the Sophistês; for identity of authorship is distinctly affirmed in it.
Suckow gives two reasons for believing that the Politikus is not by Plato:— 1. That the doctrines respecting government are different from those of the Republic, and the cosmology of the long mythe which it includes different from the cosmology of the Timæus. These are reasons similar to those advanced by Socher, and (in my judgment) insufficient reasons. 2. That Aristotle, in a passage of the Politica (iv. 2, p. 1289, b. 5), alludes to an opinion, which is found in the Politikus in the following terms: ἤδη μὲν οὖν τις ἀπεφήνατο καὶ τῶν πρότερον οὕτως, &c. Suckow maintains that Aristotle could never have alluded to Plato in these terms, and that he must have believed the Politikus to be composed by some one else. But I think this inference is not justified by the premisses. It is noway impossible that Aristotle might allude to Plato sometimes in this vague and general way: and I think that he has done so in other passages of the same treatise (vii. 2, 1324, a. 29 — vii. 7, p. 1327, b. 37).
Ueberweg (Aechtheit der Platon. Schrift. p. 162, seq.) combats with much force the views of Suckow. It would be rash to build so much negative inference upon a loose phrase of Aristotle. That he should have spoken of Plato in this vague manner is much more probable, or much less improbable, than the counter-supposition, that the author of a striking and comprehensive dialogue, such as the Politikus, should have committed a fraud for the purpose of fastening his composition on Plato, and thus abnegating all fame for himself.
The explicit affirmation of the Politikus itself ought to be believed, in my judgment, unless it can be refuted by greater negative probabilities than any which Socher and Suckow produce. I do not here repeat, what I have endeavoured to justify in an earlier chapter of this work, the confidence which I feel in the canon of Thrasyllus; a confidence which it requires stronger arguments than those of these two critics to overthrow.
2 Plato, Sophist. p. 216 B-C.
This Eleate performs the whole task of exposition, by putting questions to Theætêtus, in the Sophistês — to the younger Sokrates in the Politikus. Since the true Sokrates is merely listener in both dialogues, Plato provides for him an additional thread of connection with both; by remarking that the youthful Sokrates is his namesake, and that Theætêtus resembles him in flat nose and physiognomy.3
3 Plato, Politik. p. 257 E.
Relation of the two dialogues to the Theætêtus.
Though Plato himself plainly designates the Sophistês as an intended sequel to the Theætêtus, yet the method of the two is altogether different, and in a certain sense even opposite. In the Theætêtus, Sokrates extracts answers from the full and pregnant mind of that youthful respondent: he himself professes to teach nothing, but only to canvass every successive hypothesis elicited from his companion. But the Eleate is presented to us in the most imposing terms, as a thoroughly accomplished philosopher: coming with doctrines established in his mind,4 and already practised in the task of exposition which Sokrates entreats him to undertake. He is, from beginning to end, affirmative and dogmatical: and if he declines to proceed by continuous lecture, this is only because he is somewhat ashamed to appropriate all the talk to himself.5 He therefore prefers to accept Theætêtus as respondent. But Theætêtus is no longer pregnant, as in the preceding dialogue. He can do no more than give answers signifying assent and dissent, which merely serve to break and diversify the exposition. In fact, the dialogue in the Sophistês and Politikus is assimilated by Plato himself,6 not to that in the Theætêtus, but to that in the last half of the Parmenides; wherein Aristotelês the respondent answers little more than Ay or No, to leading questions from the interrogator.
4 Plato, Sophist. p. 217 B. ἐπεὶ διακηκοέναι γέ φησιν ἱκανῶς καὶ οὐκ ἀμνημονεῖν.
5 Plato, Sophist. pp. 216-217.
6 Plato, Sophist. p. 217 C. The words of Sokrates show that he alludes to the last half of the Parmenidês, in which he is only present as a listener — not to the first half, in which he takes an active part. Compare the Parmenidês, p. 137 C. In this last-mentioned dialogue, Sokrates (then a youth) and Aristotelês are the parallel of Theætêtus and the younger Sokrates in the Sophistês and Politikus. (See p. 135 D.)
188Plato declares that his first purpose is to administer a lesson in logical method: the special question chosen, being subordinate to that purpose.
In noticing the circumlocutory character, and multiplied negative criticism, of the Theætêtus, without any ultimate profit realised in the form of positive result — I remarked, that Plato appreciated dialogues, not merely as the road to a conclusion, but for the mental discipline and suggestive influence of the tentative and verifying process. It was his purpose to create in his hearers a disposition to prosecute philosophical research of their own, and at the same time to strengthen their ability of doing so with effect. This remark is confirmed by the two dialogues now before us, wherein Plato defends himself against reproaches seemingly made to him at the time.7 “To what does all this tend? Why do you stray so widely from your professed topic? Could you not have reached this point by a shorter road?” He replies by distinctly proclaiming — That the process, with its improving influence on the mind, stands first in his thoughts — the direct conclusion of the enquiry, only second: That the special topic which he discusses, though in itself important, is nevertheless chosen principally with a view to its effect in communicating general method and dialectic aptitude: just as a schoolmaster, when he gives out to his pupils a word to be spelt, looks mainly, not to their exactness in spelling that particular word, but to their command of good spelling generally.8 To form inquisitive, testing minds, fond of philosophical debate as a pursuit, and looking at opinions on the negative as well as on the positive side, is the first object in most of Plato’s dialogues: to teach positive truth, is only a secondary object.
7 Plato, Politikus, pp. 283 B, 286-287.
8 Plato, Politikus, p. 285 D.
Ξεν. — Τί δ’ αὖ; νῦν ἡμῖν ἡ περὶ τοῦ πολιτικοῦ ζήτησις ἕνεκα αὐτοῦ τούτου προβέβληται μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ περὶ πάντα διαλεκτικωτέροις γίγνεσθαι;
Νέος Σωκρ. — Καὶ τοῦτο δῆλον ὅτι τοῦ περὶ πάντα.
Again, p. 288 D. τό τε αἶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ προβληθέντος ζήτησιν, ὡς ἂν ῥᾷστα καὶ τάχιστα εὔροιμεν, δεύτερον ἀλλ’ οὐ πρῶτον ὁ λόγος ἀγαπᾷν παραγγέλει, πολὺ δὲ μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτον τὴν μέθοδον αὐτὴν τιμᾷν, τοῦ κατ’ εἴδη δυνατὸν εἶναι διαιρεῖν, &c.
Method of logical Definition and Division.
Both the Sophistes and the Politikus are lessons and specimens of that process which the logical manuals recognise under the names — Definition and Division. What is a Sophist? What is a politician or statesman? What is a philosopher? In the first place — Are the three really distinct189 characters? for this may seem doubtful: since the true philosopher, in his visits of inspection from city to city, is constantly misconceived by an ignorant public, and confounded with the other two.9 The Eleate replies that the three are distinct. Then what is the characteristic function of each? How is he distinguished from other persons or other things? To what class or classes does each belong: and what is the specific character belonging to the class, so as to mark its place in the scheme descending by successive logical subdivision from the highest genus down to particulars? What other professions or occupations are there analogous to those of Sophist and Statesman, so as to afford an illustrative comparison? What is there in like manner capable of serving as illustrative contrast?
9 Plato, Sophist. p. 216 E.
Sokrates tries the application of this method, first, upon a vulgar subject. To find the logical place and deduction of the Angler. Superior classes above him. Bisecting division.
Such are the problems which it is the direct purpose of the two dialogues before us to solve. But a large proportion of both is occupied by matters bearing only indirectly upon the solution. The process of logical subdivision, or the formation of classes in subordination to each other, can be exhibited just as plainly in application to an ordinary craft or profession, as to one of grave importance. The Eleate Stranger even affirms that the former case will be simpler, and will serve as explanatory introduction to the latter.10 He therefore selects the craft of an angler, for which to find a place in logical classification. Does not an angler belong to the general class — men of art or craft? He is not a mere artless, non-professional, private man. This being so, we must distribute the class Arts — Artists, into two subordinate classes: Artists who construct or put together some new substance or compound — Artists who construct nothing new, but are employed in getting, or keeping, or employing, substances already made. Thus the class Artists is bisected into Constructive — Acquisitive. The angler constructs nothing: he belongs to the acquisitive branch. We now bisect this latter branch. Acquirers either obtain by consent, or appropriate without consent. Now the angler is one of the last-mentioned class: which is again bisected into two sub-classes, according as 190the appropriation is by force or stratagem — Fighters and Hunters. The angler is a hunter: but many other persons are hunters also, from whom he must be distinguished. Hunters are therefore divided into, Those who hunt inanimate things (such as divers for sponges, &c.), and Those who hunt living things or animals, including of course the angler among them. The hunters of animals are distinguished into hunters of walking animals, and hunters of swimming animals. Of the swimming animals some are in air, others in water:11 hence we get two classes, Bird-Hunters and Fish-Hunters; to the last of whom the angler belongs. The fish-hunters (or fishermen) again are bisected into two classes, according as they employ nets, or striking instruments of one kind or another, such as tridents, &c. Of the striking fishermen there are two sorts: those who do their work at night by torch-light, and those who work by day. All these day-fishermen, including among them the angler, use instruments with hooks at the end. But we must still make one bisection more. Some of them employ tridents, with which they strike from above downwards at the fishes, upon any part of the body which may present itself: others use hooks, rods, and lines, which they contrive to attach to the jaws of the fish, and thereby draw him from below upward.12 This is the special characteristic of the angler. We have now a class comprehending the anglers alone, so that no farther sub-division is required. We have obtained not merely the name of the angler, but also the rational explanation of the function to which the name is attached.13
10 Plato, Sophist. p. 218 E.
11 Plato, Sophist. p. 220 B. Νευστικοῦ μὴν τὸ μὲν πτηνὸν φῦλον ὁρῶμεν, τὸ δὲ ἔνυδρον.
It deserves notice that Plato here considers the air as a fluid in which birds swim.
12 Plato, Sophist. pp. 219-221.
13 Plato, Sophist. p. 221 A-B. Νῦν ἄρα τῆς ἀσπαλιευτικῆς — οὐ μόνον τοὔνομα, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν λόγον περὶ αὐτὸ τοὔργον, εἰλήφαμεν ἱκανῶς.
Such a lesson in logical classification was at that time both novel and instructive. No logical manuals then existed.
This is the first specimen which Plato gives of a systematic classification descending, by successive steps of bifurcation, through many subordinations of genera and species, each founded on a real and proclaimed distinction — and ending at last in an infima species. He repeats the like process in regard to the Sophist, the Statesman, and other professions to which he compares the one or the other: but it will suffice to have 191given one specimen of his method. If we transport ourselves back to his time, I think that such a view of the principles of classification implies a new and valuable turn of thought. There existed then no treatises on logic; no idea of logic as a scheme of mental procedure; no sciences out of which it was possible to abstract the conception of a regular method more or less diversified. On no subject was there any mass of facts or details collected, large enough to demand some regular system for the purpose of arranging and rendering them intelligible. Classification to a certain extent is of necessity involved, consciously or unconsciously, in the use of general terms. But the process itself had never been made a subject of distinct consciousness or reflection to any one (as far as our knowledge reaches), in the time of Plato. No one had yet looked at it as a process natural indeed to the human intellect, up to a certain point and in a loose manner, — but capable both of great extension and great improvement, and requiring especial study, with an end deliberately set before the mind, in order that it might be employed with advantage to regularise and render intelligible even common and well-known facts. To determine a series of descending classes, with class-names, each connoting some assignable characteristic — to distribute the whole of each class between two correlative sub-classes, to compare the different ways in which this could be done, and to select such membra condividentia as were most suitable for the purpose — this was in the time of Plato an important novelty. We know from Xenophon14 that Sokrates considered Dialectic to be founded, both etymologically and really, upon the distribution of particular things into genera or classes. But we find little or no intentional illustration of this process in any of the conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates: and we are farther struck by the fact that Plato, in the two dialogues which we are here considering, assigns all the remarks on the process of classification, not to Sokrates himself, but to the nameless Eleatic Stranger.
14 Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 12.
Plato describes the Sophist as analogous to an angler. He traces the Sophist by descending subdivision from the acquisitive genus of art.
After giving the generic deduction of the angler from the comprehensive idea of Art, distributed into two sections, constructive and acquisitive, Plato proceeds to notice 192the analogy between the Sophist and an angler: after which he deduces the Sophist also from the acquisitive section of Art. The Sophist is an angler for rich young men.15 To find his place in the preceding descending series, we must take our departure from the bisection — hunters of walking animals, hunters of swimming animals. The Sophist is a hunter of walking animals: which may be divided into two classes, wild and tame. The Sophist hunts a species of tame animals — men. Hunters of tame animals are bisected into such as hunt by violent means (robbers, enslavers, despots, &c.),16 and such as hunt by persuasive means. Of the hunters by means of persuasion there are two kinds: those who hunt the public, and those who hunt individuals. The latter again may be divided into two classes: those who hunt to their own loss, by means of presents, such as lovers, &c., and those who hunt with a view to their own profit. To this latter class belongs the Sophist: pretending to associate with others for the sake of virtue, but really looking to his own profit.17
15 Plato, Sophist. p. 222 A.
16 Plato, Sophist. p. 222 C.
It illustrates the sentiment of Plato’s age respecting classification, when we see the great diversity of particulars which he himself, here as well as elsewhere, ranks under the general name θήρα, hunting — θήρα γὰρ παμπολύ τι πρᾶγμά ἐστι, περιειλημμένον ὀνόματι νῦν σχεδὸν ἑνί (Plato, Legg. viii. 822-823-824, and Euthyd. p. 290 B). He includes both στρατηγικὴ and φθειριστικὴ as varieties of θηρευτική, Sophist. p. 227 B.
Compare also the interesting conversation about θήρα ἀνθρώπων between Sokrates and Theodotê, Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11, 7; and between Sokrates and Kritobulus, ii. 6, 29.
17 Plato, Sophist. p. 223 A.
The Sophist traced down from the same, by a second and different descending subdivision.
Again, we may find the Sophist by descending through a different string of subordinate classes from the genus — Acquisitive Art. The professors of this latter may be bisected into two sorts — hunters and exchangers. Exchangers are of two sorts — givers and sellers. Sellers again sell either their own productions, or the productions of others. Those who sell the productions of others are either fixed residents in one city, or hawkers travelling about from city to city. Hawkers again carry about for sale either merchandise for the body, or merchandise for the mind, such as music, poetry, painting, exhibitions of jugglery, learning, and intellectual accomplishments, and so forth. These latter (hawkers for the mind) may be divided into two sorts: 193those who go about teaching; for money, arts and literary accomplishments — and those who go about teaching virtue for money. They who go about teaching virtue for money are the Sophists.18 Or indeed if they sell virtue and knowledge for money, they are not the less Sophists — whether they buy what they sell from others, or prepare it for themselves — whether they remain in one city or become itinerant.
18 Plato, Sophist. p. 224 B.
A third series of subordinate classes will also bring us down from the genus — Acquisitive Art — down to the infima species — Sophist. In determining the class-place of the angler, we recognised a bisection of acquisitive art into acquirers by exchange, or mutual consent — and acquirers by appropriation, or without consent.19 These latter we divided according as they employed either force or stratagem: contenders and hunters. We then proceeded to bisect the class hunters, leaving the contenders without farther notice. Now let us take up the class contenders. It may be divided into two: competitors for a set prize (pecuniary or honorary), and fighters. The fighters go to work either body against body, violently — or tongue against tongue, as arguers. These arguers again fall into two classes: the pleaders, who make long speeches, about just or unjust, before the public assembly and dikastery: and the dialogists, who meet each other in short question and answer. The dialogists again are divided into two: the private, untrained antagonists, quarrelling with each other about the particular affairs of life (who form a species by themselves, since characteristic attributes may be assigned to them; though these attributes are too petty and too indefinite to have ever received a name in common language, or to deserve a name from us20) — and the trained practitioners or wranglers, who dispute not about particular incidents, but about just and unjust in general, and 194other general matters.21 Of wranglers again there are two sorts: the prosers, who follow the pursuit from spontaneous taste and attachment, not only without hope of gain, but to the detriment of their private affairs, incurring loss themselves, and wearying or bothering their hearers: and those who make money by such private dialogues. This last sort of wrangler is the Sophist.22
19 Plato, Sophist. p. 219 E.
20 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C.
Ξένος. — Τοῦ δὲ ἀντιλογικοῦ, τὸ μὲν ὅσον περὶ τὰ ξυμβολαῖα ἀμφισβητεῖται μέν, εἰκῆ δὲ καὶ ἀτεχνῶς περὶ αὐτὸ πράττεται, ταῦτα θετέον μὲν εἶδος, ἐπείπερ αὐτὸ διέγνωκεν ὡς ἕτερον ὂν ὁ λόγος· ἀτὰρ ἐπωνυμίας οὔθ’ ὑπὸ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἔτυχεν, οὔτε νῦν ὑφ’ ἡμῶν τυχεῖν ἄξιον.
Θεαιτητ. — Ἀληθῆ· κατὰ σμικρὰ γὰρ λίαν καὶ παντοδαπὰ διῄρηται.
These words illustrate Plato’s view of an εἶδος or species. Any distinguishable attributes, however petty, and however multifarious, might be taken to form a species upon; but if they were petty and multifarious, there was no advantage in bestowing a specific name.
21 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. τὸ δέ γε ἔντεχνον, καὶ περὶ δικαίων αὐτῶν καὶ ἀδίκων καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅλως ἀμφισβητοῦν, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἐριστικὸν αὖ λέγειν εἰθίσμεθα;
22 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 E.
The Sophist is traced down, from the genus of separating or discriminating art.
There is yet another road of class-distribution which will bring us down to the Sophist. A great number of common arts (carding wool, straining through a sieve, &c.) have, in common, the general attribute of separating matters confounded in a heap. Of separation there are two sorts: you may separate like from like (this has no established name) — or better from worse, which is called purification. Purification is of two sorts: either of body or of mind. In regard to body, the purifying agents are very multifarious, comprising not only men and animals, but also inanimate things: and thus including many varieties which in common estimation are mean, trivial, repulsive, or ludicrous. But all these various sentiments (observes Plato) we must disregard. We must follow out a real analogy wherever it leads us, and recognise a logical affinity wherever we find one; whether the circumstances brought together be vile or venerable, or some of them vile and some venerable, in the eyes of mankind. Our sole purpose is to improve our intelligence. With that view, all particulars are of equal value in our eyes, provided only they exhibit that real likeness which legitimates them as members of the same class — purifiers of body: the correlate of that other class which we now proceed to study — purifiers of mind.23
23 Plato, Sophist. pp. 226-227. 227 A: τῇ τῶν λόγων μεθόδῳ σπογγιστικῆς ἢ φαρμακοποσίας οὐδὲν ἧττον οὐδέ τι μᾶλλον τυγχάνει μέλον, εἰ τὸ μὲν σμικρά, τὸ δὲ μεγάλα ἡμᾶς ὠφελεῖ καθαῖρον. Τοῦ κτήσασθαι γὰρ ἕνεκεν νοῦν πασῶν τεχνῶν τὸ ξυγγενὲς καὶ τὸ μὴ ξυγγενὲς κατανοεῖν πειρωμένη, τιμᾷ πρὸς τοῦτο, ἐξ ἴσου πάσας, καὶ θάτερα τῶν ἑτέρων κατὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα οὐδὲν ἡγεῖται γελοιότερα, σεμνότερον δέ τι τὸν διὰ στρατημικῆς ἢ φθειριστικῆς δηλοῦντα θηρευτικὴν οὐδὲν νενόμικεν, ἀλλ’ ὡς τὸ πολὺ χαυνότερον. Καὶ δὴ καὶ νῦν, ὅπερ ἤρου, τί προσεροῦμεν ὄνομα ξυμπάσας δυνάμεις, ὅσαι σῶμα εἴτε ἔμψυχον εἴτε ἄψυχον εἰλήχασι καθαίρειν, οὐδὲν αὐτῇ διοίσει, ποῖον τι λεχθὲν εὐπρεπέστατον εἶναι δόξει· μόνον ἐχέτω χωρὶς τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς καθάρσεων πάντα ξυνδῆσαν ὅσα ἄλλο τι καθαίρει. To maintain the equal scientific position of φθειριστική, as two different species under the genus θηρευτική, is a strong illustration.
Compare also Plato, Politikus, p. 266 D.
A similar admonition is addressed (in the Parmenidês, p. 130 E) by the old Parmenides to the youthful Sokrates, when the latter cannot bring himself to admit that there exist εἶδη or Forms of vulgar and repulsive objects, such as θρὶξ and πῆλος. Νεος γὰρ εἶ ἔτι, καὶ οὔπω σοῦ ἀντείληπται φιλοσοφία ὡς ἔτι ἀντιλήψεται κατ’ ἐμὴν δόξαν, ὅτε οὐδὲν αὐτῶν ἀτιμάσεις· νῦν δ’ ἔτι πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀποβλέπεις δόξας διὰ τὴν ἡλικίαν.
See above, ch. xxvii. p. 60, in my review of the Parmenidês.
195In a logical classification, low and vulgar items deserve as much attention as grand ones. Conflict between emotional and scientific classification.
This precept (repeated by Plato also in the Politikus) respecting the principles of classification, deserves notice. It protests against, and seeks to modify, one of the ordinary turns in the associating principles of the human mind. With unreflecting men, classification is often emotional rather than intellectual. The groups of objects thrown together in such minds, and conceived in immediate association, are such as suggest the same or kindred emotions: pleasure or pain, love or hatred, hope or fear, admiration, contempt, disgust, jealousy, ridicule. Community of emotion is a stronger bond of association between different objects, than community in any attribute not immediately interesting to the emotions, and appreciable only intellectually. Thus objects which have nothing else in common, except appeal to the same earnest emotion, will often be called by the same general name, and will be constituted members of the same class. To attend to attributes in any other point of view than in reference to the amount and kind of emotion which they excite, is a process uncongenial to ordinary taste: moreover, if any one brings together, in the same wording, objects really similar, but exciting opposite and contradictory emotions, he usually provokes either disgust or ridicule. All generalizations, and all general terms connoting them, are results brought together by association and comparison of particulars somehow resembling. But if we look at the process of association in an unreflecting person, the resemblances which it fastens upon will be often emotional, not intellectual: and the generalizations founded upon such resemblances will be emotional also.
It is against this natural propensity that Plato here enters his protest, in the name of intellect and science. For the purpose of obtaining a classification founded on real, intrinsic affinities, we 196must exclude all reference to the emotions: we must take no account whether a thing be pleasing or hateful, sublime or mean:24 we must bring ourselves to rank objects useful or grand in the same logical compartment with objects hurtful or ludicrous. We must examine only whether the resemblance is true and real, justifying itself to the comparing intellect: and whether the class-term chosen be such as to comprise all these resemblances, holding them apart (μόνον ἐχέτω χωρὶς) from the correlative and opposing class.25
24 Compare Politikus, p. 266 D; Parmenidês, p. 130 E.
We see that Plato has thus both anticipated and replied to the objection of Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 260-262), who is displeased with the minuteness of this classification, and with the vulgar objects to which it is applied. Socher contends that this is unworthy of Plato, and that it was peculiar to the subtle Megaric philosophers.
I think, on the contrary, that the purpose of illustrating the process of classification was not unworthy of Plato; that it was not unnatural to do this by allusion to vulgar trades or handicraft, at a time when no scientific survey of physical facts had been attempted; that the allusion to such vulgar trades is quite in the manner of Plato, and of Sokrates before him.
Stallbaum, in his elaborate Prolegomena both to the Sophistês and to the Politikus, rejects the conclusion of Socher, and maintains that both dialogues are the work of Plato. Yet he agrees to a certain extent in Socher’s premisses. He thinks that minuteness and over-refinement in classification were peculiarities of the Megaric philosophers, and that Plato intentionally pushes the classification into an extreme subtlety and minuteness, in order to parody their proceedings and turn them into ridicule. (Proleg. ad Sophist. pp. 32-36, ad Politic. pp. 54-55.)
But how do Socher and Stallbaum know that this extreme minuteness of subdivision into classes was a characteristic of the Megaric philosophers? Neither of them produce any proof of it. Indeed Stallbaum himself says, most truly (Proleg. ad Politic. p. 55) “Quæ de Megaricorum arte dialecticâ accepimus, sane quam sunt paucissima”. He might have added, that the little which we do hear about their dialectic, is rather adverse to this supposed minuteness of positive classification, than consonant with it. What we hear is, that they were extremely acute and subtle in contentious disputations — able assailants of the position of a logical opponent. But this talent has nothing to do with minuteness of positive classification: and is even indicative of a different turn of mind. Moreover, we hear about Eukleides, the chief of the Megaric school, that he enlarged the signification of the Summum Genus of Parmenides — the Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν. Eukleides called it Unum, Bonum, Simile et Idem Semper, Deus, &c. But we do not hear that Eukleides acknowledged a series of subordinate Genera or Species, expanding by logical procession below this primary Unum. As far as we can judge, this seems to have been wanting in his philosophy. Yet it is exactly these subordinate Genera or Species, which the Platonic Sophistês and Politikus supply in abundance, and even excess, conformably to the precept laid down by Plato in the Philêbus (p. 14). The words of the Sophistês (p. 216 D) rather indicate that the Eleatic Stranger is declared not to possess the character and attributes of Megaric disputation.
25 Though the advice here given by Plato about the principles of classification is very judicious, yet he has himself in this same dialogue set an example of repugnance to act upon it (Sophist. p. 231 A-B.) In following out his own descending series of partitions, he finds that the Sophist corresponds with the great mental purifier — the person who applies the Elenchus or cross-examining test, to youthful minds, so as to clear out that false persuasion of knowledge which is the great bar to all improvement. But though brought by his own process to this point, Plato shrinks from admitting it. His dislike towards the Sophist will not allow him. “The Sophist is indeed” (he says) “very like to this grand educator: but so also a wolf is very like to a dog — the most savage of animals to the most gentle. We must always be extremely careful about these likenesses: the whole body of them are most slippery. Still we cannot help admitting the Sophist to represent this improving process — that is, the high and true bred Sophist.”
It will be seen that Plato’s remark here about ὁμοιότητες contradicts what he had himself said before (p. 227 B). The reluctance to rank dog and wolf together, in the same class, is an exact specimen of that very mistake which he had been just pointing out for correction. The scientific resemblance between the two animals is very close; but the antithesis of sentiment, felt by men towards the one and the other, is extreme.
197The purifier — a species under the genus discriminator — separates good from evil. Evil is of two sorts; the worst sort is, Ignorance, mistaking itself for knowledge.
After these just remarks on classification generally, the Eleate pursues the subdivision of his own theme. To purify the mind is to get rid of the evil, and retain or improve the good. Now evil is of two sorts — disease (injustice, intemperance, cowardice, &c.) and ignorance. Disease, which in the body is dealt with by the physician, is in the mind dealt with by the judicial tribunal: ignorance (corresponding to ugliness, awkwardness, disability, in the body, which it is the business of the gymnastic trainer to correct) falls under the treatment of the teacher or instructor.26 Ignorance again may be distributed into two heads: one, though special, being so grave as to counterbalance all the rest, and requiring to be set apart by itself — that is — ignorance accompanied with the false persuasion of knowledge.27
26 Plato, Sophist. pp. 228-229.
27 Plat. Soph. p. 229 C. Ἀγνοίας δ’ οὖν μέγα τί μοι δοκῶ καὶ χαλεπὸν ἀφωρισμένον ὁρᾷν εἶδος, πᾶσι τοῖς ἄλλοις αὐτῆς ἀντίσταθμον μέρεσι … Τὸ μὴ κατειδότα τι, δοκεῖν εἰδέναι.
Exhortation is useless against this worst mode of evil. Cross-examination, the shock of the Elenchus, must be brought to bear upon it. This is the sovereign purifier.
To meet this special and gravest case of ignorance, we must recognise a special division of the art of instruction or education. Exhortation, which is the common mode of instruction, and which was employed by our forefathers universally, is of no avail against this false persuasion of knowledge: which can only be approached and cured by the Elenchus, or philosophical cross-examination. So long as a man believes himself to be wise, you may lecture for ever without making impression upon him: you do no good by supplying food when the stomach is sick. But the examiner, questioning him upon those subjects which he professes to know, soon entangles him in contradictions with himself, making him feel with shame and humiliation his own 198real ignorance. After having been thus disabused — a painful but indispensable process, not to be accomplished except by the Elenchus — his mind becomes open and teachable, so that positive instruction may be communicated to him with profit. The Elenchus is the grand and sovereign purification: whoever has not been subjected to it, were he even the Great King, is impure, unschooled, and incompetent for genuine happiness.28
28 Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D-E.
The application of this Elenchus is the work of the Sophist, looked at on its best side. But looked at as he really is, he is a juggler who teaches pupils to dispute about every thing — who palms off falsehood for truth.
This cross-examining and disabusing process, brought to bear upon the false persuasion of knowledge and forming the only antidote to it, is the business of the Sophist looked at on its best side.29 But Plato will not allow the Elenchus, the great Sokratic accomplishment and mission, to be shared by the Sophists: and he finds or makes a subtle distinction to keep them off. The Sophist (so the Eleate proceeds) is a disputant, and teaches all his youthful pupils to dispute about everything as if they knew it — about religion, astronomy, philosophy, arts, laws, politics, and everything else. He teaches them to argue in each department against the men of special science: he creates a belief in the minds of others that he really knows all those different subjects, respecting which he is able to argue and cross-examine successfully: he thus both possesses, and imparts to his pupils, a seeming knowledge, an imitation and pretence of reality.30 He is a sort of juggler: an imitator who palms off 199upon persons what appears like reality when seen from a distance, but what is seen to be not like reality when contemplated closely.31
29 Plato, Sophist. p. 231 B. τῆς δὲ παιδευτικῆς ἁ περὶ τὴν μάταιον δοξοσοφίαν γιγνόμενος ἔλεγχος ἐν τῷ νῦν λόγῳ παραφανέντι μηδὲν ἄλλ’ ἡμῖν εἶναι λεγέσθω πλὴν ἡ γένει γενναία σοφιστική.
30 Plato, Sophist. pp. 232-233 C, 235 A. Sokrates tells us in the Platonic Apology (p. 23 A) that this was the exact effect which his own cross-examination produced upon the hearers: they supposed him to be wise on those topics on which he exposed ignorance in others. The Memorabilia of Xenophon exhibit the same impression as made by the conversation of Sokrates, even when he talked with artisans on their own arts. Sokrates indeed professed not to teach anyone — and he certainly took no fee for teaching. But we see plainly that this disclaimer imposed upon no one; that he did teach, though gratuitously; and that what he taught was, the art of cross-examination and dispute. We learn this not merely from his enemy, Aristophanes, and from the proceedings of his opponents, Kritias and Charikles (Xenoph. Memor. i. 2), but also from his own statement in the Platonic Apology (pp. 23 C. 37 E. 39 B), and from the language of Plato and Xenophon throughout. Plato is here puzzled to make out a clear line of distinction between the Elenchus of Sokrates, and the disputatious arguments of those Sophists whom he calls Eristic — name deserved quite as much by Sokrates as by any of them. Plato here accuses the Sophists of talking upon a great many subjects which they did not know, and teaching their pupils to do the same. This is exactly what Sokrates passed his life in doing, and what he did better than any one — on the negative side.
31 Plato, Sophist. pp. 235-236.
Doubt started by the Eleate. How can it be possible either to think or to speak falsely?
Here however (continues Plato) we are involved in a difficulty. How can a thing appear to be what it is not? How can a man who opines or affirms, opine or affirm falsely — that is, opine or affirm the thing that is not? To admit this, we must assume the thing that is not (or Non-Ens, Nothing) to have a real existence. Such an assumption involves great and often debated difficulties. It has been pronounced by Parmenides altogether inadmissible.32
32 Plato, Sophist. pp. 236 E — 237 A. πάντα ταῦτα ἐστι μεστὰ ἀπορίας ἀεὶ ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν χρόνῳ καὶ νῦν. Ὅπως γὰρ εἰπόντα χρὴ ψευδῆ λέγειν ἢ δοξάζειν ὄντως εἶναι, καὶ τοῦτο φθεγξάμενον ἐναντιολογίᾳ μὴ ξυνέχεσθαι, παντάπασι χαλεπόν … Τετόλμηκεν ὁ λόγος οὗτος ὑποθέσθαι τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι· ψεῦδος γὰρ οὐκ ἂν ἄλλως ἐγίγνετο ὄν.
We have already seen that Plato discussed this same question in the Theætêtus, and that after trying and rejecting many successive hypotheses to show how false supposition, or false affirmation, might be explained as possible, by a theory involving no contradiction, he left the question unsolved. He now resumes it at great length. It occupies more than half33 the dialogue. Near the close, but only then, he reverts to the definition of the Sophist.
33 From p. 236 D to p. 264 D.
He pursues the investigation of this problem by a series of questions.
First, the Eleate states the opinion which perplexes him, and which he is anxious either to refute or to explain away. (Unfortunately, we have no statement of the opinion, nor of the grounds on which it was held, from those who actually held it.) Non-Ens, or Nothing, is not the name of any existing thing, or of any Something. But every one who speaks must speak something: therefore if you try to speak of Non-Ens, you are trying to speak nothing — which is equivalent to not speaking at all.34 Moreover, 200to every Something, you can add something farther: but to Non-Ens, or Nothing, you cannot add any thing. (Non-Entis nulla sunt prædicata.) Now Number is something, or included among the Entia: you cannot therefore apply number, either singular or plural, to Non-Ens: and inasmuch as every thing conceived or described must be either one or many, it is impossible either to conceive or describe Non-Ens. You cannot speak of it without falling into a contradiction.35
34 Plato, Sophist. p. 237 E. The Eleate here recites this opinion, not as his own but as entertained by others, and as one which he did not clearly see through: in Republic (v. p. 478 B-C) we find Sokrates advancing a similar doctrine as his own. So in the Kratylus, where this same topic is brought under discussion (pp. 429 D, 430 A), Kratylus is represented as contending that false propositions were impossible: that propositions, improperly called false, were in reality combinations of sounds without any meaning, like the strokes on a bell.
35 Plato, Sophist. p. 238-239.
The Sophist will reject our definition and escape, by affirming that to speak falsely is impossible. He will require us to make out a rational theory, explaining Non-Ens.
When therefore we characterise the Sophist as one who builds up phantasms for realities — who presents to us what is not, as being like to what is, and as a false substitute for what is — he will ask us what we mean? If, to illustrate our meaning, we point to images of things in mirrors or clear water, he will pretend to be blind, and will refuse the evidence of sense: he will require us to make out a rational theory explaining Non-Ens or Nothing.36 But when we try to do this, we contradict ourselves. A phantasm is that which, not being a true counterpart of reality, is yet so like it as to be mistaken for reality. Quatenus phantasm, it is Ens: quatenus reality, it is Non-Ens: thus the same thing is both Ens, and Non-Ens: which we declared before to be impossible.37 When therefore we accuse the Sophist of passing off phantasms for realities, we suppose falsely: we suppose matters not existing, or contrary to those which exist: we suppose the existent not to exist, or the non-existent to exist But this assumes as done what cannot be done: since we have admitted more than once that Non-Ens can neither be described in language by itself, nor joined on in any manner to Ens.38
36 Plato, Sophist. pp. 239-240. καταγελάσεταί σου τῶν λόγων, ὅταν ὡς βλέποντι λέγῃς αὐτῷ, προσποιούμενος οὔτε κάτοπτρα οὔτε ὕδατα γιγνώσκειν, οὔτε τὸ παράπαν ὄψιν· τὸ δ’ ἐκ τῶν λόγων ἐρωτήσει σε μόνον.
37 Plato, Sophist. p. 240 B.
38 Plato, Sophist. p. 241 B. τῷ γὰρ μὴ ὄντι τὸ ὂν προσάπτειν ἡμᾶς πολλάκις ἀναγκάζεσθαι, διομολογησαμένους νῦν δή που τοῦτο εἶναι πάντων ἀδυνατώτατον.
Stating the case in this manner, we find that to suppose falsely, or affirm falsely, is a contradiction. But there is yet another possible way out of the difficulty (the Eleate continues).
The Eleate turns from Non-Ens to Ens. Theories of various philosophers about Ens.
Let us turn for a moment (he says) from Non-Ens to Ens. 201The various physical philosophers tell us a good deal about Ens. They differ greatly among themselves. Some philosophers represent Ens as triple, comprising three distinct elements, sometimes in harmony, sometimes at variance with each other. Others tell us that it is double — wet and dry — or hot and cold. A third sect, especially Xenophanes and Parmenides, pronounce it to be essentially One. Herakleitus blends together the different theories, affirming that Ens is both many and one, always in process of disjunction and conjunction: Empedokles adopts a similar view, only dropping the always, and declaring the process of disjunction to alternate with that of conjunction, so that Ens is sometimes Many, sometimes One.39
39 Plato, Sophist. p. 242 D-E.
Difficulties about Ens are as great as those about Non-Ens.
Now when I look at these various theories (continues the Eleate), I find that I do not follow or understand them; and that I know nothing more or better about Ens than about Non-Ens. I thought, as a young man, that I understood both: but I now find that I understand neither.40 The difficulties about Ens are just as great as those about Non-Ens. What do these philosophers mean by saying that Ens is double or triple? that there are two distinct existing elements — Hot and Cold — or three? What do you mean by saying that Hot and Cold exist? Is existence any thing distinct from Hot and Cold? If so, then there are three elements in all, not two. Do you mean that existence is something belonging to both and affirmed of both? Then you pronounce both to be One: and Ens, instead of being double, will be at the bottom only One.
40 Plato, Sophist. p. 243 B.
Whether Ens is Many or One? If Many, how Many? Difficulties about One and the Whole. Theorists about Ens cannot solve them.
Such are the questions which the Eleatic spokesman of Plato puts to those philosophers who affirm Ens to be plural: He turns next to those who affirm Ens to be singular, or Unum. Do you mean that Unum is identical with Ens — and are they only two names for the same One and only thing? There cannot be two distinct names belonging to one and the same thing: and yet, if this be not so, one of the names must be the name of nothing. At any rate, if there be only one name and one thing, still the name itself is 202different from the thing — so that duality must still be recognised. Or if you take the name as identical with the One thing, it will either be the name of nothing, or the name of a name.41
41 Plato, Sophist. p. 244 D.
Again, as to the Whole:— is the Whole the same with the Ens Unum, or different from it. We shall be told that it is the same: but according to the description given by Parmenides, the whole is spherical, thus having a centre and circumference, and of course having parts. Now a whole divisible into parts may have unity predicable of it, as an affection or accident in respect to the sum of its parts: but it cannot be the genuine, essential, self-existent, One, which does not admit of parts or division. If Ens be One by accident, it is not identical with One, and we thus have two existent things: and if Ens be not really and essentially the Whole, while nevertheless the Whole exists — Ens must fall short of or be less than itself, and must to this extent be Non-Ens: besides that Ens, and Totum, being by nature distinct, we have more things than One existing. On the other hand, if we assume Totum not to be Ens, the same result will ensue. Ens will still be something less than itself; — Ens can never have any quantity, for each quantum is necessarily a whole in itself — and Ens can never be generated, since everything generated is also necessarily a whole.42
42 Plato, Sophist. p. 245 A-C.
Theories of those who do not recognise a definite number of Entia or elements. Two classes thereof.
Such is the examination which the Eleate bestows on the theories of theories of those philosophers who held one, two, or a definite number of self-existent Entia or elements. His purpose is to show, that even on their schemes, Ens is just as unintelligible, and involves as many contradictions, as Non-Ens. And to complete the same demonstration, he proceeds to dissect the theories of those who do not recognise any definite or specific number of elements or Entia.43 Of these he distinguishes two classes; in direct and strenuous opposition to each other, respecting what constituted Essentia.44
43 Plato, Sophist. p. 245 E.
44 Plato, Sophist. p. 246 A. ἔοικέ γε ἐν αὐτοῖς οἷον γιγαντομαχία τις εἶναι διὰ τὴν ἀμφισβήτησιν περὶ τῆς οὐσίας πρὸς ἀλλήλους.
1. The Materialist Philosophers. 2. The Friends of Forms or Idealists, who recognise such Forms as the only real Entia.
First, the Materialist Philosophers, who recognise nothing 203as existing except what is tangible; defining Essence as identical with Body, and denying all incorporeal essence. Plato mentions no names: but he means (according to some commentators) Leukippus and Demokritus — perhaps Aristippus also. Secondly, other philosophers who, diametrically opposed to the Materialists, affirmed that there were no real Entia except certain Forms, Ideas, genera or species, incorporeal and conceivable only by intellect: that true and real essence was not to be found in those bodies wherein the Materialists sought it: that bodies were in constant generation and disappearance, affording nothing more than a transitory semblance of reality, not tenable45 when sifted by reason. By these last are understood (so Schleiermacher and others think, though in my judgment erroneously) Eukleides and the Megaric school of philosophers.
45 Plato, Sophist. p. 246 B-C. νοητὰ ἄττα καὶ ἀσώματα εἴδη βιαζόμενοι τὴν ἀληθινὴν οὐσίαν εἶναι· τὰ δὲ ἐκείνων σώματα καὶ τὴν λεγομένην ὑπ’ αὐτῶν (i. e. the Materialists) ἀλήθειαν κατὰ σμικρὰ διαθραύοντες ἐν τοῖς λόγοις, γένεσιν ἀντ’ οὐσίας φερομένην τινὰ προσαγορεύουσιν.
Argument against the Materialists — Justice must be something, since it may be either present or absent, making sensible difference — But Justice is not a body.
The Eleate proceeds to comment upon the doctrines held by these opposing schools of thinkers respecting Essence or Reality. It is easier (he says) to deal with the last-mentioned, for they are more gentle. With the Materialists it is difficult, and all but impossible, to deal at all. Indeed, before we can deal with them, we must assume them to be for this occasion better than they show themselves in reality, and ready to answer in a more becoming manner than they actually do.46 These Materialists will admit (Plato continues) that man exists — an animated body, or a compound of mind and body: they will farther allow that the mind of one man differs from that of another:— one is just, prudent, &c., another is unjust and imprudent. One man is just, through the habit and presence of justice: another is unjust, through the habit and presence of injustice. But justice must surely be 204something — injustice also must be something — if each may be present to, or absent from, any thing; and if their presence or absence makes so sensible a difference.47 And justice or injustice, prudence or imprudence, as well as the mind in which the one or the other inheres, are neither visible or tangible, nor have they any body: they are all invisible.
46 Plato, Sophist. p. 246 C. παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἐν εἴδεσιν αὐτὴν (τὴν οὐσίαν) τιθεμένων ῥᾷον· ἡμερώτεροι γάρ· παρὰ δὲ τῶν εἰς σῶμα πάντα ἑλκόντων βίᾳ, χαλεπώτερον· ἴσως δὲ καὶ σχεδὸν ἀδύνατον. Ἀλλ’ ὧδέ μοι δοκεῖ περὶ αὐτῶν δρᾷν … Μάλιστα μέν, εἴ πῃ δυνατὸν ἦν, ἔργῳ βελτίους αὐτοὺς ποιεῖν· εἰ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ἐγχωρεῖ, λόγῳ ποιῶμεν, ὑποτιθέμενοι νομιμώτερον αὐτοὺς ἢ νῦν ἐθέλοντας ἂν ἀποκρίνασθαι.
47 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 A. Ἀλλὰ μὴν τό γε δυνατόν τῳ παραγίγνεσθαι καὶ ἀπογίγνεσθαι, πάντως εἶναί τι φήσουσιν.
At least many of them will concede this point, though not all Ens is common to the corporeal and the incorporeal. Ens is equivalent to potentiality.
Probably (replies Theætêtus) these philosophers would contend that the soul or mind had a body; but they would be ashamed either to deny that justice, prudence, &c., existed as realities — or to affirm that justice, prudence, &c. were all bodies.48 These philosophers must then have become better (rejoins the Eleate): for the primitive and genuine leaders of them will not concede even so much as that. But let us accept the concession. If they will admit any incorporeal reality at all, however small, our case is made out. For we shall next call upon them to say, what there is in common between these latter, and those other realities which have bodies connate with and essential to them — to justify the names real — essence — bestowed upon both.49 Perhaps they would accept the following definition of Ens or the Real — of Essence or Reality. Every thing which possesses any sort of power, either to act upon any thing else or to be acted upon by any thing else, be it only for once or to the smallest degree — every such thing is true and real Ens. The characteristic mark or definition of Ens or the Real is, power or potentiality.50
48 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 B. Ἀποκρίνονται … τὴν μὲν ψυχὴν αὐτὴν δοκεῖν σφίσι σῶμά τι κεκτῆσθαι, φρόνησιν δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἕκαστον ὧν ἠρώτηκας, αἰσχύνονται τὸ τολμᾷν ἢ μηδὲν τῶν ὄντων αὐτὰ ὁμολογεῖν, ἢ πάντ’ εἶναι σώματα διϊσχυρίζεσθαι.
49 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 C-D. εἰ γάρ τι καὶ σμικρὸν ἐθέλουσι τῶν ὄντων συγχωρεῖν ἀσώματον, ἐξαρκεῖ. τὸ γὰρ ἐπί τε τούτοις ἅμα καὶ ἐπ’ ἐκείνοις ὅσα ἔχει σῶμα ξυμφυὲς γεγονός, εἰς ὃ βλέποντες ἀμφότερα εἶναι λέγουσι, τοῦτο αὐτοῖς ῥητέον.
50 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 D-E. λέγω δὴ τὸ καὶ ὁποιανοῦν κεκτημένον δύναμιν, εἴτ’ εἰς τὸ ποιεῖν ἕτερον ὁτιοῦν πεφυκὸς εἴτ’ εἰς τὸ παθεῖν καὶ σμικρότατον ὑπὸ τοῦ φαυλοτάτου, κἂν εἰ μόνον εἰσάπαξ, πᾶν τοῦτο ὄντως εἶναι· τίθεμαι γὰρ ὅρον ὁρίζειν τὰ ὄντα, ὡς ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι πλὴν δύναμις.
Argument against the Idealists — who distinguish Ens from the generated, and say that we hold communion with the former through our minds, with the latter through our bodies and senses.
The Eleate now turns to the philosophers of the opposite school — the Mentalists or Idealists, — whom he terms the friends of Forms, Ideas, or species.51 These men 205(he says) distinguish the generated, transitory and changeable — from Ens or the Real, which is eternal, unchanged, always the same: they distinguish generation from essence. With the generated (according to their doctrine) we hold communion through our bodies and our bodily perceptions: with Ens, we hold communion through our mind and our intellectual apprehension. But what do they mean (continues the Eleate) by this “holding of communion”? Is it not an action or a passion produced by a certain power of agent and patient coming into co-operation with each other? and is not this the definition which we just now laid down, of Ens or the Real.
51 Plato, Sophist. p. 248 A. τοὺς τῶν εἰδῶν φίλους.
Holding communion — What? Implies Relativity. Ens is known by the mind. It therefore suffers or undergoes change. Ens includes both the unchangeable and the changeable.
No — these philosophers will reply — we do not admit your definition as a definition of Ens: it applies only to the generated. Generation does involve, or emanate from, a reciprocity of agent and patient: but neither power nor action, nor suffering, have any application to Ens or the Real. But you admit (says the Eleate) that the mind knows Ens:— and that Ens is known by the mind. Now this knowing, is it not an action — and is not the being known, a passion? If to know is an action, then Ens, being known, is acted upon, suffers something, or undergoes some change, — which would be impossible if we assume Ens to be eternally unchanged. These philosophers might reply, that they do not admit to know as an action, nor to be known as a passion. They affirm Ens to be eternally unchanged, and they hold to their other affirmation that Ens is known by the mind. But (urges the Eleate) can they really believe that Ens is eternally the same and unchanged, — that it has neither life, nor mind, nor intelligence, nor change, nor movement? This is incredible. They must concede that Change, and the Changeable, are to be reckoned as Entia or Realities: for if these be not so reckoned, and if all Entia are unchangeable, no Ens can be an object of knowledge to any mind. But though the changeable belongs to Ens, we must not affirm that all Ens is changeable. There cannot be either intellect or knowledge, without something constant and unchangeable. It is equally necessary to recognise 206something as constant and unchangeable — something else as moving and changeable: Ens or reality includes alike one and the other. The true philosopher therefore cannot agree with those “Friends of Forms” who affirm all Ens or Reality to be at rest and unchangeable, either under one form or under many:— still less can he agree with those opposite reasoners, who maintain all reality to be in perpetual change and movement. He will acknowledge both and each — rest and motion — the constant and the changeable — as making up together total reality or Ens Totum.
Motion and rest are both of them Entia or realities. Both agree in Ens. Ens is a tertium quid — distinct from both. But how can anything be distinct from both?
Still, however, we have not got over our difficulties. Motion and Rest are contraries; yet we say that each and both are Realities or Entia. In what is it that they both agree? Not in moving, nor in being at rest, but simply in existence or reality. Existence or reality therefore must be a tertium quid, apart from motion and rest, not the sum total of those two items. Ens or the Real is not, in its own proper nature, either in motion or at rest, but is distinct from both. Yet how can this be? Surely, whatever is not in motion, must be at rest — whatever is not at rest, must be in motion. How can any thing be neither in motion nor at rest; standing apart from both?52
52 Plato, Sophist. p. 250 C.
Here the Eleate breaks off without solution. He declares his purpose to show, That Ens is as full of puzzle as Non-Ens,
Here the Eleate breaks off his enquiry, without solving the problems which he has accumulated. My purpose was (he says53) to show that Ens was just as full of difficulties and embarrassments as Non-Ens. Enough has been said to prove this clearly. When we can once get clear of obscurity about Ens, we may hope to be equally successful with Non-Ens.
53 Plato, Sophist. p. 250 D.
Argument against those who admit no predication to be legitimate, except identical. How far Forms admit of intercommunion with each other.
Let us try (he proceeds) another path. We know that it is a common practice in our daily speech to apply many different predicates to one and the same subject. We say of the same man, that he is fair, tall, just, brave, &c., and several other epithets. Some persons deny our right to do this. They say that the predicate ought always to be identical with 207the subject: that we can only employ with propriety such propositions as the following — man is man — good is good, &c.: that to apply many predicates to one and the same subject is to make one thing into many things.54 But in reply to these opponents, as well as to those whom we have before combated, we shall put before them three alternatives, of which they must choose one. 1. Either all Forms admit of intercommunion one with the other. 2. Or no Forms admit of such intercommunion. 3. Or some Forms do admit of it, and others not. Between these three an option must be made.55
54 Plato, Sophist. p. 251 B. ὡς ἀδύνατον τά τε πολλὰ ἓν καὶ τὸ ἓν πολλὰ εἶναι, &c.
55 Plato, Sophist. p. 251 E.
No intercommunion between any distinct forms. Refuted. Common speech is inconsistent with this hypothesis.
If we take the first alternative — that there is no intercommunion of Forms — then the Forms motion and rest can have no intercommunion with the Forms, essence or reality. In other words, neither motion nor rest exist: and thus the theory both of those who say that all things are in perpetual movement, and of those who say that all things are in perpetual rest, becomes unfounded and impossible. Besides, these very men, who deny all intercommunion of Forms, are obliged to admit it implicitly and involuntarily in their common forms of speech. They cannot carry on a conversation without it, and they thus serve as a perpetual refutation of their own doctrine.56
56 Plato, Sophist. p. 252 D.
Reciprocal intercommunion of all Forms — inadmissible.
The second alternative — that all Forms may enter into communion with each other — is also easily refuted. If this were true, motion and rest might be put together: motion would be at rest, and rest would be in motion — which is absurd. These and other forms are contrary to each other. They reciprocally exclude and repudiate all intercommunion.57
57 Plato, Sophist. p. 252 E.
Some Forms admit of intercommunion, others not. This is the only admissible doctrine. Analogy of letters and syllables.
Remains only the third alternative — that some forms admit of intercommunion — others not. This is the real truth (says the Eleate). So it stands in regard to letters and words in language: some letters come together in words frequently and conveniently — others rarely and 208awkwardly — others never do nor ever can come together. The same with the combination of sounds to obtain music. It requires skill and art to determine which of these combinations are admissible.
Art and skill are required to distinguish what Forms admit of intercommunion, and what Forms do not. This is the special intelligence of the Philosopher, who lives in the bright region of Ens: the Sophist lives in the darkness of Non-Ens.
So also, in regard to the intercommunion of Forms, skill and art are required to decide which of them will come together, and which will not. In every special art and profession the case is similar: the ignorant man will fail in deciding this question — the man of special skill alone will succeed. — So in regard to the intercommunion of Forms or Genera universally with each other, the comprehensive science of the true philosopher is required to decide.58 To note and study these Forms, is the purpose of the philosopher in his dialectics or ratiocinative debate. He can trace the one Form or Idea, stretching through a great many separate particulars; he can distinguish it from all different Forms: he knows which Forms are not merely distinct from each other, but incapable of alliance and reciprocally repulsive — which of them are capable of complete conjunction, the one circumscribing and comprehending the other — and which of them admit conjunction partial and occasional with each other.59 The philosopher thus keeps close to the Form of eternal and unchangeable Ens or Reality — a region of such bright light that the eyes of the vulgar cannot clearly see him: while the Sophist on the other hand is also difficult to be seen, but for an opposite reason — from the darkness of that region of Non-Ens or Non-Reality wherein he carries on his routine-work.60
58 Plato, Sophist. p. 253 B. ἆρ’ οὐ μετ’ ἐπιστήμης τινὸς ἀναγκαῖον διὰ τῶν λόγων πορεύεσθαι τὸν ὀρθῶς μέλλοντα δείξειν ποῖα ποίοις συμφωνεῖ τῶν γενῶν καὶ ποῖα ἄλληλα οὐ δέχεται;
59 Plato, Sophist. p. 253 D-E.
60 Plato, Sophist. p. 254 A. Ὁ δέ γε φιλόσοφος, τῇ τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ διὰ λογισμῶν προσκείμενος ἰδέᾳ, διὰ τὸ λαμπρὸν αὖ τῆς χώρας οὐδαμῶς εὐπέτης ὀφθῆναι· τὰ γὰρ τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ψυχῆς ὄμματα καρτερεῖν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀφορῶντα ἀδύνατα.
He comes to enquire what Non-Ens is. He takes for examination five principal Forms — Motion — Rest — Ens — Same — Different.
We have still to determine, however (continues Plato), what this Non-Ens or Non-Reality is. For this purpose we will take a survey, not of all Forms or Genera, but of some few the most important. We will begin with the two before noticed — Motion and Rest 209( = Change and Permanence), which are confessedly irreconcileable and reciprocally exclusive. Ens however enters into partnership with both: for both of them are, or exist.61 This makes up three Forms or Genera — Motion, Rest, Ens: each of the three being the same with itself, and different from the other two. Here we have pronounced two new words — Same — Different.62 Do these words designate two other Forms, over and above the three before-named, yet necessarily always intermingling in partnership with those three, so as to make five Forms in all? Or are these two — Same and Different — essential appendages of the three before-named? This last question must be answered in the negative. Same and Different are not essential appendages, or attached as parts, to Motion, Rest, Ens. Same and Different may be predicated both of Motion and of Rest: and whatever can be predicated alike of two contraries, cannot be an essential portion or appendage of either. Neither Motion nor Rest therefore are essentially either Same or Different: though both of them partake of Same or Different — i.e., come into accidental co-partnership with one as well as the other.63 Neither can we say that Ens is identical with either Idem or Diversum. Not with Idem — for we speak of both Motion and Rest as Entia or Existences: but we cannot speak of them as the same. Not with Diversum — for different is a name relative to something else from which it is different, but Ens is not thus relative. Motion and Rest are or exist, each in itself: but each is different, relatively to the other, and to other things generally. Accordingly we have here five Forms or Genera — Ens, Motion, Rest, Idem, Diversum: each distinct from and independent of all the rest.64
61 Plato, Sophist. p. 254 D. τὸ δέ γε ὂν μικτὸν ἀμφοῖν· ἐστὸν γὰρ ἄμφω που.
62 Plato, Sophist. p. 254 E. τί ποτ’ αὖ νῦν οὕτως εἰρήκαμεν τό τε ταὐτὸν καὶ θάτερον; πότερα δύο γένη τινὲ αὐτώ, τῶν μὲν τριῶν ἄλλω, &c.
63 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 B. μετέχετον μὴν ἄμφω ταὐτοῦ καὶ θατέρου … Μὴ τοίνυν λέγωμεν κίνησίν γ’ εἶναι ταὐτὸν ἢ θάτερον, μηδ’ αὖ στάσιν.
64 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 D.
Form of Diversum pervades all the others.
This Form of Diversum or Different pervades all the others: for each one of them is different from the others, not through any thing in its own nature, but because it partakes of the Form of Difference.65 Each of the five is different from others: or, to express the same fact 210in other words, each of them is not any one of the others. Thus motion is different from rest, or is not rest: but nevertheless motion is or exists, because it partakes of the Form — Ens. Again, Motion is different from Idem: it is not the Same: yet nevertheless it is the same, because it partakes of the nature of Idem, or is the same with itself. Thus then both predications are true respecting motion: it is the same: it is not the same, because it partakes of or enters into partnership with both Idem and Diversum.66 If motion in any way partook of Rest, we should be able to talk of stationary motion: but this is impossible: for we have already said that some Forms cannot come into intercommunion — that they absolutely exclude each other.
65 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 E. καὶ διὰ πάντων γε αὐτὴν φήσομεν εἶναι διεληλυθυῖαν (τὴν θατέρου φύσιν) ἓν ἕκαστον γὰρ ἕτερον εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων, οὐ διὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ φύσιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τῆς ἰδέας τῆς θατέρου.
66 Plato, Sophist. p. 256 A. τὴν κίνησιν δὴ ταὐτόν τ’ εἶναι καὶ μὴ ταὐτὸν ὁμολογητέον καὶ οὐ δυσχεραντέον, &c.
Motion is different from Diversum, or is not Diversum. Motion is different from Ens — in other words, it is Non-Ens. Each of these Forms is both Ens and Non-Ens.
Again, Motion is different not only from Rest, and from Idem, but also from Diversum itself. In other words, it is both Diversum in a certain way, and also not Diversum: different and not different.67 As it is different from Rest, from Idem, from Diversum — so also it is different from Ens, the remaining one of the five forms or genera. In other words Motion is not Ens, — or is Non-Ens. It is both Ens, and Non-Ens: Ens, so far as it partakes of Entity or Reality — Non-Ens, so far as it partakes of Difference, and is thus different from Ens as well as from the other Forms.68 The same may be said of the other Forms, — Rest, Idem, Diversum: each of them is Ens, because it partakes of entity or reality: each of them is also Non-Ens, or different from Ens, because it partakes of Difference. Moreover, Ens itself is different from the other four, and so far as these others go, it is Non-Ens.69
67 Plato, Sophist. p. 256 C. οὐχ ἕτερον ἀρ’ ἐστί πῃ καὶ ἕτερον κατὰ τὸν νῦν δὴ λόγον.
68 Plato, Sophist. p. 256 D. οὐκοῦν δὴ σαφῶς ἡ κίνησις ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὂν, ἐπείπερ τοῦ ὄντος μετέχει;
69 Plato, Sophist. p. 257 A. καὶ τὸ ὄν ἄρ’ ἡμῖν, ὅσα περ ἔστι τὰ ἄλλα, κατὰ τοσαῦτα οὐκ ἔστιν· ἐκεῖνα γὰρ οὐκ ὂν ἓν μὲν αὐτό ἐστιν, ἀπέραντα δὲ τὸν ἀριθμὸν τἄλλα οὐκ ἔστιν αὖ.
By Non-Ens, we do not mean anything contrary to Ens — we mean only something different from Ens. Non-Ens is a real Form, as well as Ens.
Now note the consequence (continues the Eleate). When we speak of Non-Ens, we do not mean any thing contrary to Ens, but only something different from Ens. When we call any thing not great, we do not affirm it 211to be the contrary of great, or to be little: for it may perhaps be simply equal: we only mean that it is different from great.70 A negative proposition, generally, does not signify anything contrary to the predicate, but merely something else distinct or different from the predicate.71 The Form of Different, though of one and the same general nature throughout, is distributed into many separate parts or specialties, according as it is attached to different things. Thus not beautiful is a special mode of the general Form or Genus Different, placed in antithesis with another Form or Genus, the beautiful. The antithesis is that of one Ens or Real thing against another Ens or Real thing: not beautiful, not great, not just, exist just as much and are quite as real, as beautiful, great, just. If the Different be a real Form or Genus, all its varieties must be real also. Accordingly Different from Ens is just as much a real Form as Ens itself:72 and this is what we mean by Non-Ens:— not any thing contrary to Ens.
70 Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B. Ὁπόταν τὸ μὴ ὂν λέγωμεν, ὡς ἔοικεν, οὐκ ἐναντίον τι λέγομεν τοῦ ὄντος, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον μόνον . . . Οἷον ὅταν εἰπωμέν τι μὴ μέγα, τότε μᾶλλόν τί σοι φαινόμεθα τὸ σμικρὸν ἢ τὸ ἴσον δηλοῦν τῷ ῥήματι.
Plato here means to imply that τὸ σμικρὸν is the real contrary of τὸ μέγα. When we say μὴ μέγα, we do not necessarily mean σμικρόν — we may mean ἴσον. Therefore τὸ μὴ μέγα does not (in his view) imply the contrary of μέγα.
71 Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B. Οὐκ ἄρ’ ἐναντίον, ὅταν ἀπόφασις λέγηται, σημαίνειν συγχωρησόμεθα, τοσοῦτον δὲ μόνον, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων τι μηνύει τὸ μὴ καὶ τὸ οὐ προτιθέμενα τῶν ἐπιόντων ὀνομάτων, μᾶλλον δὲ τῶν πραγμάτων περὶ ἄττ’ ἂν κέηται τὰ ἐπιφθεγγόμενα ὕστερον τῆς ἀποφάσεως ὀνόματα.
72 Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B. ἡ τῆς θατέρου μορίου φύσεως καὶ τῆς τοῦ ὄντος πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀντικειμένων ἀντιθεσις οὐδὲν ἦττον, εἰ θέμις εἰπεῖν αὐτοῦ τοῦ ὄντος οὐσία ἐστίν· οὐκ ἐναντίον ἐκείνῳ σημαίνουσα, ἀλλὰ τοσοῦτον μόνον, ἕτερον ἐκείνου.
The Eleate claims to have refuted Parmenides, and to have shown both that Non-Ens is a real Form, and also what it is.
Here then the Eleate professes to have found what Non-Ens is: that it is a real substantive Form, numerable among the other Forms, and having a separate constant nature of its own, like not beautiful, not great:73 that it is real and existent, just as much as Ens, beautiful, great, &c. Disregarding the prohibition of Parmenides, we have shown (says he) not only that Non-Ens exists, but also what it is. Many Forms or Genera enter into partnership or communion with each other; and Non-Ens is the partnership between Ens and 212Diversum. Diversum, in partnership with Ens, is (exists), in consequence of such partnership:— yet it is not that with which it is in partnership, but different therefrom — and being thus different from Ens, it is clearly and necessarily Non-Ens: while Ens also, by virtue of its partnership with Diversum, is different from all the other Forms, or is not any one of them, and to this extent therefore Ens is Non-Ens. We drop altogether the idea of contrariety, without enquiring whether it be reasonably justifiable or not: we attach ourselves entirely to the Form — Different.74
73 Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B-C. τὸ μὴ ὂν βεβαίως ἐστὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ φύσιν ἔχον … ἐνάριθμον τῶν πολλῶν ὄντῶν εἶδος ἕν.
74 Plato, Sophist. pp. 258 E — 259 A. ἡμεῖς γὰρ περὶ μὲν ἐναντίου τινὸς αὐτῷ χαίρειν πάλαι λέγομεν, εἴτ’ ἔστιν εἴτε μὴ λόγον ἔχον ἢ καὶ παντάπασιν ἄλογον, &c.
τὸ μὲν ἕτερον μετασχὸν τοῦ ὄντος ἔστι μὲν διὰ ταύτην τὴν μέθεξιν, οὐ μὴν ἐκεῖνο γε οὖ μέτεσχεν, ἀλλ’ ἕτερον, ἕτερον δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ὄν ἐστι σαφέστατα ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι μὴ ὄν, &c.
The theory now stated is the only one, yet given, which justifies predication as a legitimate process, with a predicate different from the subject.
Let those refute this explanation, who can do so (continues the Eleate), or let them propose a better of their own, if they can: if not, let them allow the foregoing as possible.75 Let them not content themselves with multiplying apparent contradictions, by saying that the same may be in some particular respect different, and that the different may be in some particular respect the same, through this or the other accidental attribute.76 All these sophisms lead but to make us believe — That no one thing can be predicated of any other — That there is no intercommunion of the distinct Forms one with another, no right to predicate of any subject a second name and the possession of a new attribute — That therefore there can be no dialectic debate or philosophy, which is all founded upon such intercommunion of Forms.77 We have shown that Forms do 213really come into conjunction, so as to enable us to conjoin, truly and properly, predicate with subject, and to constitute proposition and judgment as taking place among the true Forms or Genera. Among these true Forms or Genera, Non-Ens is included as one.78
75 Plato, Sophist. p. 259 A-C. ὃ δὲ νῦν εἰρήκαμεν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ὄν, ἢ πεισάτω τις ὡς οὐ καλῶς λέγομεν ἐλέγξας, ἢ μέχρι περ ἂν ἀδυνατῇ, λεκτέον καὶ ἐκεῖνῳ καθάπερ ἡμεῖς λέγομεν … τὸ ταῦτα ἐάσαντα ὡς δυνατά.…
The language of the Eleate here is altogether at variance with the spirit of Plato in his negative or Searching Dialogues. To say, as he does, “Either accept the explanation which I give, or propose a better of your own” — is a dilemma which the Sokrates of the Theætêtus, and other dialogues, would have declined altogether. The complaint here made by the Eleate, against disputants who did nothing but propound difficulties — is the same as that which the hearers of Sokrates made against him (see Plato, Philêbus, p. 20 A, where the remark is put into the mouth, not of an opponent, but of a respectful young listener); and many a reader of the Platonic Parmenidês has indulged in the complaint.
76 Plato, Sophist. p. 259 D. ἐκείνῃ καὶ κατ’ ἐκεῖνο ὅ φησι τούτων πεπονθέναι πότερον.
77 Plato, Sophist. p. 259 B, E. διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν. 252 B: οἱ μηδὲν ἐῶντες κοινωνίᾳ παθήματος ἑτέρου θάτερον προσαγορεύειν.
78 Plato, Sophist. p. 260 A. πρὸς τὸ τὸν λόγον ἡμῖν τῶν ὄντων ἕν τι γενῶν εἶναι. 258 B: τὸ μὴ ὂν βεβαίως ἐστὶ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἔχον.
Enquiry, whether the Form of Non-Ens can come into intercommunion with the Forms of Proposition, Opinion, Judgment.
The Eleate next proceeds to consider, whether these two Genera or Forms — Proposition, Judgment, Opinion, on the one hand, and Non-Ens on the other — are among those which may or do enter into partnership and conjunction with each other. For we have admitted that there are some Forms which cannot come into partnership; and the Sophist against whom we are reasoning, though we have driven him to concede that Non-Ens is a real Form, may still contend that it is one of those which cannot come into partnership with Proposition, Judgment, Opinion — and he may allege that we can neither embody in language, nor in mental judgment, that which is not.79
79 Plato, Sophist. p. 260 C-D-E.
Analysis of a Proposition. Every Proposition must have a noun and a verb — it must be proposition of Something. False propositions, involve the Form of Non-Ens, in relation to the particular subject.
Let us look attentively what Proposition, Judgment, Opinion, are. As we said about Forms and letters, so about words: it is not every combination of words which is possible, so as to make up a significant proposition. A string of nouns alone will not make one, nor a string of verbs alone. To compose the simplest proposition, you must put together at least one noun and one verb, in order to signify something respecting things existing, or events past, present, and future.80 Now every proposition must be a proposition about something, or belonging to a certain subject: every proposition must also be of a certain quality.81 Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying. Here are two propositions, both belonging to the same subject, but with opposite qualities: the former true, the latter false. The true proposition affirms respecting Theætêtus real things as they are; the false proposition affirms respecting him things 214different from real, or non-real, as being real. The attribute of flying is just as real in itself as the attribute of sitting: but as respects Theætêtus, or as predicated concerning him, it is different from the reality, or non-real.82 But still Theætêtus is the subject of the proposition, though the predicate flying does not really belong to him: for there is no other subject than he, and without a subject the proposition would be no proposition at all. When therefore different things are affirmed as the same, or non-realities as realities, respecting you or any given subject, the proposition so affirming is false.83
80 Plato, Sophist. pp. 261-262.
81 Plato, Sophist. p. 262 E. λόγον ἀναγκαῖον, ὅταν περ ᾖ, τινὸς εἶναι λόγον· μὴ δέ τινος ἀδύνατον … Οὐκοῦν καὶ ποῖόν τινα αὐτὸν εἶναι δεῖ;
82 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 B Ὄντων δέ γε ὄντα ἕτερα περὶ σοῦ.
That is, ἕτερα τῶν ὄντων, — being the explanation given by Plato of τὰ μὴ ὄντα.
83 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 D.
Opinion, Judgment, Fancy, &c., are akin to Proposition, and may be also false, by coming into partnership with the Form Non-Ens.
As propositions may be true or false, so also opinion or judgment or conception, may be true or false: for opinion or judgment is only the concluding result of deliberation or reflection — and reflection is the silent dialogue of the mind with itself: while conception or phantasy is the coalescence or conjunction of opinion with present perception.84 Both opinion and conception are akin to proposition. It has thus been shown that false propositions, and false opinions or judgments, are perfectly real, and involve no contradiction: and that the Form or Genus — Proposition, Judgment, Opinion — comes properly and naturally into partnership with the Form Non-Ens.
84 Plato, Sophist. pp. 263-264. 264 A-B: Οὐκοῦν ἔπειπερ λόγος ἀληθὴς ἦν καὶ ψευδής, τούτων δ’ ἐφάνη διάνοια μὲν αὐτῆς πρὸς ἑαυτὴν ψυχῆς διάλογος, δόξα δὲ διανοίας ἀποτελεύτησις, φαίνεται δὲ ὃ λέγομεν (φαντασία) σύμμιξις αἰσθήσεως καὶ δόξης, ἀνάγκη δὴ καὶ τούτων τῷ λόγῳ ξυγγενῶν ὄντων ψευδῆ τε αὐτῶν ἔνια καὶ ἐνίοτε εἶναι;
This was the point which Plato’s Eleate undertook to prove against Parmenides, and against the plea of the Sophist founded on the Parmenidean doctrine.
It thus appears that Falsehood, imitating Truth, is theoretically possible, and that there may be a profession, like that of the Sophist, engaged in producing it.
Here Plato closes his general philosophical discussion, and reverts to the process of logical division from which he had deviated. In descending the predicamental steps, to find the logical place of the Sophist, Plato had reached a point where he assumed Non-Ens, together215 with false propositions and judgments affirming Non-Ens. To which the Sophist is conceived as replying, that Non-Ens was contradictory and impossible, and that no proposition could be false. On these points Plato has produced an elaborate argument intended to refute him, and to show that there was such a thing as falsehood imitating truth, or passing itself off as truth: accordingly, that there might be an art or profession engaged in producing such falsehood.
Logical distribution of Imitators — those who imitate what they know, or what they do not know — of these last, some sincerely believe themselves to know, others are conscious that they do not know, and designedly impose upon others.
Now the imitative profession may be distributed into those who know what they imitate — and those who imitate without knowing.85 The man who mimics your figure or voice, knows what he imitates: those who imitate the figure of justice and virtue often pass themselves off as knowing it, yet do not really know it, having nothing better than fancy or opinion concerning it. Of these latter again — (i.e. the imitators with mere opinion, but no knowledge, respecting that which sincerely they imitate) — there are two classes: one, those who sincerely mistake their own mere opinions for knowledge, and are falsely persuaded that they really know: the other class, those who by their perpetual occupation in talking, lead us to suspect and apprehend that they are conscious of not knowing things, which nevertheless they discuss before others as if they did know.86
85 Plato, Sophist. p. 267 A-D.
86 Plato, Sophist. p. 268 A. τὸ δὲ θατέρου σχῆμα, διὰ τὴν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις κυλίνδησιν, ἔχει πολλὴν ὑποψίαν καὶ φόβον ὡς ἀγνοεῖ ταῦτα ἃ πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους ὡς εἰδὼς ἐσχημάτισται.
Last class divided — Those who impose on numerous auditors by long discourse, the Rhetor — Those who impose on select auditors, by short question and answer, making the respondent contradict himself — the Sophist.
Of this latter class, again, we may recognise two sections: those who impose upon a numerous audience by long discourses on public matters: and those who in private, by short question and answer, compel the person conversing with them to contradict himself.87 The man of long discourse is not the true statesman, but the popular orator: the man of short discourse, but without any real knowledge, is not the truly wise 216man, since he has no real knowledge — but the imitator of the wise man, or Sophist.
87 Plato, Sophist. p. 268 B. τὸν μὲν δημοσίᾳ τε καὶ μακροῖς λόγοις πρὸς πλήθη δυνατὸν εἰρωνεύεσθαι καθορῶ· τὸν δὲ ἰδίᾳ τε καὶ βραχέσι λόγοις ἀναγκάζοντα τὸν προσδιαλεγόμενον ἐναντιολογεῖν αὐτὸν αὐτῷ.
Dialogue closed. Remarks upon it. Characteristics ascribed to a Sophist.
We have here the conclusion of this abstruse and complicated dialogue, called Sophistês. It ends by setting forth, as the leading characteristics of the Sophist — that he deals in short question and answer so as to make the respondent contradict himself: That he talks with small circles of listeners, upon a large variety of subjects, on which he possesses no real knowledge: That he mystifies or imposes upon his auditors; not giving his own sincere convictions, but talking for the production of a special effect. He is ἐναντιοποιολογικὸς and εἴρων, to employ the two original Platonic words, neither of which is easy to translate.
These characteristics may have belonged to other persons, but they belonged in an especial manner to Sokrates himself.
I dare say that there were some acute and subtle disputants in Athens to whom these characteristics belonged, though we do not know them by name. But we know one to whom they certainly belonged: and that was, Sokrates himself. They stand manifest and prominent both in the Platonic and in the Xenophontic dialogues. The attribute which Xenophon directly predicates about him, that “in conversation he dealt with his interlocutors just as he pleased,”88 is amply exemplified by Plato in the Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthyphron, Lachês, Charmides, Lysias, Alkibiadês I. and II., Hippias I. and II., &c. That he cross-examined and puzzled every one else without knowing the subjects on which he talked, better than they did — is his own declaration in the Apology. That the 217Athenians regarded him as a clever man mystifying them — talking without sincere persuasion, or in a manner so strange that you could not tell whether he was in jest or in earnest — overthrowing men’s established convictions by subtleties which led to no positive truth — is also attested both by what he himself says in the Apology, and by other passages of Plato and Xenophon.89
88 Xen. Memor. i. 2, 14, τοῖς δὲ διαλεγομένοις αὐτῷ πᾶσι χρώμενον ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ὅπως βούλοιτο.
Compare, to the same purpose, i. 4, 1, where we are told that Sokrates employed his colloquial Elenchus as a means of chastising (κολαστηρίου ἕνεκα) those who thought that they knew every thing: and the conversation of Sokrates with the youthful Euthydêmus, especially what is said by Xenophon at the close of it (iv. 4, 39-40).
The power of Sokrates to vanquish in dialogue the persons called Sophists, and to make them contradict themselves in answering — is clearly brought out, and doubtless intentionally brought out, in some of Plato’s most consummate dialogues. Alkibiades says, in the Platonic Protagoras (p. 336), “Sokrates confesses himself no match for Protagoras in long speaking. If Protagoras on his side confesses himself inferior to Sokrates in dialogue, Sokrates is satisfied.”
89 Plato, Apolog. p. 37 E. ἐάν τε γὰρ λέγω, ὅτι τῷ θεῷ ἀπειθεῖν τοῦτ’ ἔστιν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ’ ἀδύνατον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, οὐ πείσεσθέ μοι ὡς εἰρωνευομένῳ.
Xen. Memor. iv. 4, 9. ἀρκεῖ γὰρ (says Hippias to Sokrates), ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων καταγελᾷς, ἐρωτῶν καὶ ἐλέγχων πάντας, αὐτὸς δὲ οὐδενὶ θέλων ὑπέχειν λόγον, οὐδὲ γνώμην ἀποφαίνεσθαι περὶ οὐδενός. See also Memorab. iii. 5, 24.
Compare a striking passage in Plato’s Menon, p. 80 A; also Theætêt. p. 149; and Plutarch, Quæst. Platonic. p. 1000.
The attribute εἰρωνεία, which Plato here declares as one of the main characteristics of the Sophists, is applied to Sokrates in a very special manner, not merely in the Platonic dialogues, but also by Timon in the fragments of his Silli remaining — Αὐτὴ ἐκείνη ἡ εἰωθυῖα εἰρωνεία Σωκράτους (Plato, Repub. i. p. 337 A); and again — προὔλεγον ὅτι σὺ ἀποκρίνασθαι μὲν οὐκ ἐθελησοις, εἰρωνεύσοιο δὲ καὶ πάντα μᾶλλον ποιήσοις ἢ ἀποκρίνοιο, εἴ τις τί σε ἐρωτᾷ. So also in the Symposion, p. 216 E, Alkibiades says about Sokrates εἰρωνευόμενος δὲ καὶ παίζων πάντα τὸν βίον πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους διατελεῖ. And Gorgias, p. 489 E. In another part of the Gorgias (p. 481 B), Kallikles says, “Tell me, Chærephon, does Sokrates mean seriously what he says, or is he bantering?” σπουδάζει ταῦτα Σωκράτης ἢ παίζει; Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, &c., do not seem to have been εἴρωνες at all, as far as our scanty knowledge goes.
The words εἴρων, εἰρωνικός, εἰρωνεία seem to include more than is implied in our words irony, ironical. Schleiermacher translates the words ἁπλοῦν μιμήτην, εἰρωνικὸν μιμήτην, at the end of the Sophistês, by “den ehrlichen, den Schlauen, Nachahmer”; which seems to me near the truth, — meaning one who either speaks what he does not think, or evades speaking what he does think, in order to serve some special purpose.
The conditions enumerated in the dialogue (except the taking of a fee) fit Sokrates better than any other known person.
Moreover, if we examine not merely the special features assigned to the Sophist in the conclusion of the dialogue, but also those indicated in the earlier part of it, we shall find that many of them fit Sokrates as well as they could have fitted any one else. If the Sophists hunted after rich young men,90 Sokrates did the same; seeking opportunities for conversation with them by assiduous frequentation of the palæstræ, as well as in other ways. We see this amply attested by Plato and Xenophon:91 we see farther that Sokrates announces 218it as a propensity natural to him, and meritorious rather than otherwise. Again, the argumentative dialogue — disputation or eristic reduced to an art, and debating on the general theses of just and unjust, which Plato notes as characterising the Sophists92 — belonged in still higher perfection to Sokrates. It not only formed the business of his life, but is extolled by Plato elsewhere,93 as the true walk of virtuous philosophy. But there was undoubtedly this difference between Sokrates and the Sophists, that he conversed and argued gratuitously, delighting in the process itself: while they both asked and received money for it. Upon this point, brought forward by Plato both directly and with his remarkable fertility in multiplying indirect allusions, the peculiarity of the Sophist is made mainly to turn. To ask or receive a fee for communicating knowledge, virtue, aptitude in debate, was in the view of Sokrates and Plato a grave enormity: a kind of simoniacal practice.94
90 Plato, Sophist. p. 223. νέων πλουσίων καὶ ἐνδόξων θήρα.
91 In the opening words of the Platonic Protagoras, we read as a question from the friend or companion of Sokrates, Πόθεν, ὦ Σώκρατες, φαίνει; ἢ ἀπὸ κυνηγεσίου τοῦ περὶ τὴν Ἀλκιβιάδου ὥραν;
See also the opening of the Charmides, Lysis, Alkibiadês I., and the speech of Alkibiades in the Symposion.
Compare also Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 2, 1-2-6, with the commencement of the Platonic Protagoras; in which the youth Hippokrates, far from being run after by the Sophist Protagoras, is described as an enthusiastic admirer of that Sophist from reputation alone, and as eagerly soliciting Sokrates to present him to Protagoras (Protag. pp. 310-311).
92 Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. Τὸ δέ γε ἔντεχνον καὶ περὶ δικαίων αὐτων καὶ ἀδίκων καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅλως ἀμφισβητοῦν.
Spengel says truly — in his Συναγωγὴ Τεχνῶν p. 40 — “Quod si sermo et locus hic esset de Sophistarum doctrinâ et philosophiâ, odium quod nunc vulgo in eos vertunt, majore ex parte sine causâ et ratione esse conceptum, eosque laude magis quam vituperatione dignos esse censendos — haud multâ cum operâ exponi posset. Sic, quo proscinduntur convicio, juvenes non nisi magno pretio eruditos esse, levissimum est: immo hoc sophistas suæ ipsorum scientiæ satis confisos esse neque eam despexisse, docet: et vitium, si modo vitium dicendum, commune est vel potius ortum optimis lyricæ poeseos asseclis, Simonide, Pindaro, aliis.”
93 Plato, Theætet. p. 175 C.
94 It is to be remembered, however, that Plato, though doubtless exacting no fee, received presents from rich admirers like Dion and Dionysius: and there were various teachers who found presents more lucrative than fees. “M. Antonius Guipho, fuisse dicitur ingenii magni, memoriæ singularis, nec minus Graicé, quam Latino, doctus: præterea comi fucilique naturâ, nec unquam de mercedibus pactus — eoque plura ex liberalitate discentium consecutus.” (Sueton. De Illustr. Grammat. 7.)
The art which Plato calls “the thoroughbred and noble Sophistical Art” belongs to Sokrates and to no one else. The Elenchus was peculiar to him. Protagoras and Prodikus were not Sophists in this sense.
We have seen also that Plato assigns to what he terms “the thoroughbred and noble Sophistic Art” (ἡ γένει γενναία σοφιστικὴ), the employment of the Elenchus, for the purpose of destroying, in the minds of others, that false persuasion of existing knowledge which was the radical impediment to their imbibing acquisitions of real knowledge from the teacher.95 Here Plato draws 219a portrait not only strikingly resembling Sokrates, but resembling no one else. As far as we can make out, Sokrates stood alone in this original conception of the purpose of the Elenchus, and in his no less original manner of working it out. To prove to others that they knew nothing, is what he himself represents to be his mission from the Delphian oracle. Sokrates is a Sophist of the most genuine and noble stamp: others are Sophists, but of a more degenerate variety. Plato admits the analogy with reluctance, and seeks to attenuate it.96 We may remark, however, that according to the characteristic of the true Sophist here given by Plato, Protagoras and Prodikus were less of Sophists than Sokrates. For though we know little of the two former, yet there is good reason to believe, That the method which they generally employed was, that of continuous and eloquent discourse, lecture, exhortation: that disputation by short question and answer was less usual with them, and was not their strong point: and that the Elenchus, in the Sokratic meaning, can hardly be said to have been used by them at all. Now Plato, in this dialogue, tells us that the true and genuine Sophist renounces the method of exhortation as unprofitable; or at least employs it only subject to the condition of having previously administered the Elenchus with success, as his own patent medicine.97 Upon this definition, Sokrates is more truly a Sophist than either Protagoras or Prodikus: neither of whom, so far as we know, made it their business to drive the respondent to contradictions.
95 Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D. πρὶν ἂν ἐλέγχων τις τὸν ἐλεγχόμενον εἰς αἰσχύνην καταστήσας, τὰς τοῖς μαθήμασιν ἐμποδίους δόξας ἐξελών, καθαρὸν ἀποφήνῃ καὶ ταῦτα ἡγούμενον, ἅπερ οἶδεν εἰδέναι μόνα, πλείω δὲ μή.
96 Plato, Sophist. p. 231 C.
97 Plato, Sophist. p. 230 E.
Universal knowledge — was professed at that time by all Philosophers — Plato, Aristotle, &c.
Again, Plato tells us that the Sophist is a person who disputes about all matters, and pretends to know all matters: respecting the invisible Gods, respecting the visible Gods, Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, &c., respecting transcendental philosophy, generation and essence — and respecting all civil, social, and political questions — and respecting special arts. On all these miscellaneous topics, according to Plato, the Sophists pretended to be themselves instructed, and to qualify their disciples for arguing on all of them.
220Now it is possible that the Sophists of that day may have pretended to this species of universal knowledge; but most certainly Plato and Aristotle did the same. The dialogues of Plato embrace all that wide range of topics which he tells us that the Sophists argued about, and pretended to teach. In an age when the amount of positive knowledge was so slender, it was natural for a clever talker or writer to fancy that he knew every thing. In reference to every subject then discussed, an ingenious mind could readily supply deductions from both hypotheses — generalities ratiocinative or imaginative — strung together into an apparent order sufficient for the exigencies of hearers. There was no large range of books to be studied; no stock of facts or experience to be mastered. Every philosopher wove his own tissue of theory for himself, without any restraint upon his intellectual impulse, in regard to all the problems then afloat. What the theories of the Sophists were, we do not know: but Plato, author of the Timæus, Republic, Leges, Kratylus, Menon — who affirmed the pre-existence as well as post-existence of the mind, and the eternal self-existence of Ideas — has no fair ground for reproaching them with blamable rashness in the extent and diversity of topics which they presumed to discuss. They obtained indeed (he says justly) no truth or knowledge, but merely a fanciful semblance of knowledge — an equivocal show or imitation of reality.98 But Plato himself obtains nothing more in the Timæus: and we shall find Aristotle pronouncing the like condemnation on the Platonic self-existent Ideas. If the Sophists professed to be encyclopedists, this was an error natural to the age; and was the character of Grecian philosophy generally, even in its most illustrious manifestations.
98 Plato, Sophistês, p. 233 C. δοξαστικὴν ἄρα τινὰ περὶ πάντων ἐπιστήμην ὁ σοφιστὴς ἡμῖν, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀληθείαν ἔχων ἀναπέφανται. 234 B: μιμήματα καὶ ὁμώνυμα τῶν ὄντων.
When the Eleate here says about the Sophists (p. 233 B), δοκοῦσι πρὸς ταῦτα ἐπιστημόνως ἔχειν αὐτοὶ πρὸς ἅπερ ἀντιλέγουσιν, this is exactly what Sokrates, in the Platonic Apology, tells us about the impression made by his own dialectics or refutative conversation, Plato, Apolog. p. 23 A.
ἐκ ταύτησι δὴ τῆς ἐξετάσεως πολλαὶ μὲν ἀπέχθειαί μοι γεγόνασι καὶ οἷαι χαλεπώταται καὶ βαρύταται, ὥστε πολλὰς διαβολὰς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν γεγονέναι, ὄνομά τε τοῦτο λέγεσθαι, σοφὸς εἶναι· οἶονται γάρ με ἑκάστοθ’ οἱ παρόντες ταῦτ’ εἶναι σοφὸν ἃ ἂν ἄλλον ἐξελέγξω.
Inconsistency of Plato’s argument in the Sophistês. He says that the Sophist is a disputatious man who challenges every one for speaking falsehood. He says also that the Sophist is one who maintains false propositions to be impossible.
Having traced the Sophist down to the character of a man of delusion and imposture, passing off appearance as if it were reality, and falsehood as if it were truth — Plato 221(as we have seen) suddenly turns round upon himself, and asks how such a character is possible. He represents the Sophist as maintaining that no man could speak falsely99 — that a false proposition was self-contradictory, inasmuch as Non-Ens was inconceivable and unutterable. I do not see how the argument which Plato here ascribes to the Sophist, can be reconciled with the character which he had before given of the Sophist — as a man who passed his life in disputation and controversy; which involves the perpetual arraigning of other men’s opinions as false. A professed disputant may perhaps be accused of admitting nothing to be true: but he cannot well be charged with maintaining that nothing is false.
99 Plato, Sophist. pp. 240-241. Compare 260 E.
Reasoning of Plato about Non-Ens — No predications except identical.
To pass over this inconsistency, however — the reasoning of Plato himself on the subject of Non-Ens is an interesting relic of ancient speculation. He has made for himself an opportunity of canvassing, not only the doctrine of Parmenides, who emphatically denied Non-Ens — but also the opposite doctrine of other schools. He farther comments upon a different opinion, advanced by other philosophers — That no proposition can be admitted, in which the predicate is different from the subject: That no proposition is true or valid, except an identical proposition. You cannot say, Man is good: you can only say, Man is Man, or Good is good. You cannot say — Sokrates is good, brave, old, stout, flat-nosed, &c., because you thereby multiply the one Sokrates into many. One thing cannot be many, nor many things one.100
100 Plato, Sophist. p. 251 B-C. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 14 C.
Misconception of the function of the copula in predication.
This last opinion is said to have been held by Antisthenes, one of the disciples of Sokrates. We do not know how he explained or defended it, nor what reserves he may have admitted to qualify it. Plato takes no pains to inform us on this point. He treats the opinion with derision, as an absurdity. We may conceive it as one of the many errors arising from a misconception of the purpose and function of the copula in predication. Antisthenes 222probably considered that the copula implied identity between the predicate and the subject. Now the explanation or definition of man is different from the explanation or definition of good: accordingly, if you say, Man is good, you predicate identity between two different things: as if you were to say Two is Three, or Three is Four. And if the predicates were multiplied, the contradiction became aggravated, because then you predicated identity not merely between one thing and another different thing, but between one thing and many different things. The opinion of Antisthenes depends upon two assumptions — That each separate word, whether used as subject or as predicate, denotes a Something separate and existent by itself: That the copula implies identity. Now the first of these two assumptions is not unfrequently admitted, even in the reasonings of Plato, Aristotle, and many others: while the latter is not more remarkable than various other erroneous conceptions which have been entertained, as to the function of the copula.
No formal Grammar or Logic existed at that time. No analysis or classification of propositions before the works of Aristotle.
What is most important to observe is — That at the time which we are here discussing, there existed no such sciences either grammar or formal logic. There was a copious and flexible language — a large body of literature, chiefly poetical — and great facility as well as felicity in the use of speech for the purposes of communication and persuasion. But no attempt had yet been made to analyse or theorise on speech: to distinguish between the different functions of words, and to throw them into suitable classes: to generalise the conditions of good or bad use of speech for proving a conclusion: or to draw up rules for grammar, syntax, and logic. Both Protagoras and Prodikus appear to have contributed something towards this object, and Plato gives various scattered remarks going still farther. But there was no regular body either of grammar or of formal logic: no established rules or principles to appeal to, no recognised teaching, on either topic. It was Aristotle who rendered the important service of filling up this gap. I shall touch hereafter upon the manner in which he proceeded: but the necessity of laying down a good theory of predication, and precepts respecting the employment of propositions in reasoning, is best shown by such misconceptions as this 223of Antisthenes; which naturally arise among argumentative men yet untrained in the generalities of grammar and logic.
Plato’s declared purpose in the Sophistês — To confute the various schools of thinkers — Antisthenes, Parmenides, the Materialists, &c.
Plato announces his intention, in this portion of the Sophistês, to confute all these different schools of thinkers, to whom he has made allusion.101 His first purpose, in reasoning against those who maintained Non-Ens to be an incogitable absurdity, is, to show that there are equal difficulties respecting Ens: that the Existent is just as equivocal and unintelligible as the Non-Existent. Those who recognise two co-ordinate and elementary principles (such as Hot and Cold) maintain that both are really existent, and call them both, Entia. Here (argues Plato) they contradict themselves: they call their two elementary principles one. What do they mean by existence, if this be not so?
101 Plato, Sophist. p. 251 C-D. Ἵνα τοίνυν πρὸς ἅπαντας ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος ᾖ τοὺς πώποτε περὶ οὐσίας καὶ ὁτιοῦν διαλεχθέντας, ἔστω καὶ πρὸς τούτους καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους, ὅσοις ἔμπροσθεν διειλέγμεθα, τὰ νῦν ὡς ἐν ἐρωτήσει λεχθησόμενα.
Then again, Parmenides — and those who affirm that Ens Totum was essentially Unum, denying all plurality — had difficulties on their side to surmount. Ens could not be identical with Unum, nor was the name Ens, identical with the thing named Ens. Moreover, though Ens Unum was Totum, yet Totum was not identical with Ens or with Unum. Totum necessarily implied partes: but the Unum per se was indivisible or implied absence of parts. Though it was true therefore that Ens was both Unum and Totum, these two were both of them essentially different from Ens, and belonged to it only by way of adjunct accident. Parmenides was therefore wrong in saying that Unum alone existed.
Plato’s refutation throws light upon the doctrine of Antisthenes.
The reasoning here given from Plato throws some light upon the doctrine just now cited from Antisthenes. You cannot say (argues Plato against the advocates of duality) that two elements (Hot and Cold) are both of them Entia or Existent, because by so doing you call them one. You cannot say (argues Antisthenes) that Sokrates is good, brave, old, &c., because by such speech you call one thing three. Again, in controverting the doctrine of Parmenides,224 Plato urges, That Ens cannot be Unum, because it is Totum (Unum having no parts, while Totum has parts): but it may carry with it the accident Unum, or may have Unum applied to it as a predicate by accident. Here again, we have difficulties similar to those which perplexed Antisthenes. For the same reason that Plato will not admit, That Ens is Unum — Antisthenes will not admit, That Man is good. It appeared to him to imply essential identity between the predicate and the subject.
All these difficulties and others to which we shall come presently, noway peculiar to Antisthenes — attest the incomplete formal logic of the time: the want of a good theory respecting predication and the function of the copula.
Plato’s argument against the Materialists.
Pursuing the purpose of establishing his conclusion (viz. That Ens involved as many perplexities as Non-Ens), Plato comes to the two opposite sects:— 1. Those (the Materialists) who recognised bodies and nothing else, as the real Entia or Existences. 2. Those (the Friends of Forms, the Idealists) who maintained that incorporeal and intelligible Forms or Species were the only real existences; and that bodies had no existence, but were in perpetual generation and destruction.102
102 Plato, Sophist. p. 246 B.
Respecting the first, Plato says that they must after all be ashamed not to admit, that justice, intelligence, &c., are something real, which may be present or absent in different individual men, and therefore must exist apart from all individuals. Yet justice and intelligence are not bodies. Existence therefore is something common to body and not-body. The characteristic mark of existence is, power or potentiality. Whatever has power to act upon any thing else, or to be acted on by any thing else, is a real Ens or existent something.103
103 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 D-E. λέγω δὴ τὸ καὶ ὁποιανοῦν κεκτημένον δύναμιν, εἴτ’ εἰς τὸ ποιεῖν ἕτερον ὁτιοῦν πεφυκὸς εἴτ’ εἰς τὸ παθεῖν καὶ σμικρότατον ὑπὸ τοῦ φαυλοτάτου, κἂν εἰ μόνον εἰσάπαξ, πᾶν τοῦτο ὄντως εἶναι· τίθεμαι γὰρ ὅρον ὁρίζειν τὰ ὄντα, ὡς ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι πλὴν δύναμις.
Reply open to the Materialists.
Unfortunately we never know any thing about the opponents of Plato, nor how they would have answered his objection — except so much as he chooses to tell us. But it appears to me that the opponents whom he is here 225confuting would have accepted his definition, and employed it for the support of their own opinion. “We recognise (they would say) just men, or hard bodies, as existent, because they conform to your definition: they have power to act and be acted upon. But justice, apart from just men — hardness, apart from hard bodies — has no such power: they neither act upon any thing, nor are acted on by any thing: therefore we do not recognise them as existent.” According to their view, objects of perception acted on the mind, and therefore were to be recognised as existent: objects of mere conception did not act on the mind, and therefore had not the same claim to be ranked as existent: or at any rate they acted on the mind in a different way, which constitutes the difference between the real and unreal. Of this difference Plato’s definition takes no account.104
104 Plato, Sophist. p. 247 E. τὸ καὶ ὁποιανοῦν κεκτημένον δύναμιν, &c.
Plato’s argument against the Idealists or Friends of Forms. Their point of view against him.
Plato now presents this same definition to the opposite class of philosophers: to the Idealists, or partisans of the incorporeal — or of self-existent and separate Forms. These thinkers drew a marked distinction between the Existent and the Generated — between Ens and Fiens — τὸ ὂν and τὸ γιγνόμενον. Ens or the Existent was eternal and unchangeable: Fiens or the Generated was always in change or transit, coming or going. We hold communion (they said) with the generated or transitory, through our bodies and sensible perceptions: we hold communion with unchangeable Ens through our mind and by intellection. They did not admit the definition of existence just given by Plato. They contended that that definition applied only to Fiens or to the sensible world — not to Ens or the intelligible world.105 Fiens had power to act and be acted upon, and existed only under the condition of being so: that is, its existence was only temporary, conditional, relative: it had no permanent or absolute existence at all. Ens was the real existent, absolute and independent — neither acting upon any thing nor being acted upon. They considered that Plato’s definition was not a definition of Existence, or the Absolute: but rather of Non-Existence, or the Relative.
105 Plato, Sophist. p. 248 C.
226Plato argues — That to know, and be known, is action and passion, a mode of relativity.
But (asks Plato in reply) what do you mean by “the mind holding communion” with the intelligible world? You mean that the mind knows, comprehends, conceives, the intelligible world: or in other words, that the intelligible world (Ens) is known, is comprehended, is conceived, by the mind. To be known or conceived, is to be acted on by the mind.106 Ens, or the intelligible world, is thus acted upon by the mind, and has a power to be so acted upon: which power is, in Plato’s definition here given, the characteristic mark of existence. Plato thus makes good his definition as applying to Ens, the world of intelligible Forms — not less than to Fiens, the world of sensible phenomena.
106 Plato, Sophist. p. 248 D. εἰ προσομολογοῦσι τὴν μὲν ψυχὴν γινώσκειν, τὴν δ’ οὐσίαν γιγνώσκεσθαι … Τί δέ; τὸ γινώσκειν ἢ γιγνώσκεσθαι φατὲ ποίημα ἢ πάθος ἢ ἀμφότερον;
The definition of existence, here given by Plato, and the way in which he employs it against the two different sects of philosophers — Materialists and Idealists — deserves some remark.
Plato’s reasoning — compared with the points of view of both.
According to the Idealists or Immaterialists, Plato’s definition of existence would be supposed to establish the case of their opponents the Materialists, who recognised nothing as existing except the sensible world: for Plato’s definition (as the Idealists thought) fitted the sensible world, but fitted nothing else. Now these Idealists did not recognise the sensible world as existent at all. They considered it merely as Fiens, ever appearing and vanishing. The only Existent, in their view, was the intelligible world — Form or Forms, absolute, eternal, unchangeable, but neither visible nor perceivable by any of the other senses. This is the opinion against which Plato here reasons, though in various other dialogues he gives it as his own opinion, or at least, as the opinion of his representative spokesman.
In this portion of the present dialogue (Sophistês) the point which he makes is, to show to the Idealists, or Absolutists, that their Forms are not really absolute, or independent of the mind: that the existence of these forms is relative, just as much as that of the sensible world. The sensible world exists relatively to our senses, really or potentially exercised: the intelligible world 227exists relatively to our intelligence, really or potentially exercised. In both cases alike, we hold communion with the two worlds: the communion cannot be left out of sight, either in the one case or in the other. The communion is the entire and fundamental fact, of which the Subject conceiving and the Object conceived, form the two opposite but inseparable faces — the concave and convex, to employ a favourite illustration of Aristotle. Subject conceiving, in communion with Object conceived, are one and the same indivisible fact, looked at on different sides. This is, in substance, what Plato urges against those philosophers who asserted the absolute and independent existence of intelligible Forms. Such forms (he says) exist only in communion with, or relatively to, an intelligent mind: they are not absolute, not independent: they are Objects of intelligence to an intelligent Subject, but they are nothing without the Subject, just as the Subject is nothing without them or some other Object. Object of intelligence implies an intelligent Subject: Object of sense implies a sentient Subject. Thus Objects of intelligence, and Objects of sense, exist alike relatively to a Subject — not absolutely or independently.
The argument of Plato goes to an entire denial of the Absolute, and a full establishment of the Relative.
This argument, then, of Plato against the Idealists is an argument against the Absolute — showing that there can be no Object of intelligence or conception without its obverse side, the intelligent or concipient Subject. The Idealists held, that by soaring above the sensible world into the intelligible world, they got out of the region of the Relative into that of the Absolute. But Plato reminds them that this is not the fact. Their intelligible world is relative, not less than the sensible; that is, it exists only in communion with a mind or Subject, but with a Cogitant or intelligent Subject, not a percipient Subject.
Coincidence of his argument with the doctrine of Protagoras in the Theætêtus.
The argument here urged by Plato coincides in its drift and result with the dictum of Protagoras — Man is the measure of all things. In my remarks on the Theætêtus,107 I endeavoured to make it appear that the Protagorean dictum was really a negation of the Absolute, of the Thing in itself, of the Object without a Subject:— 228and an affirmation of the Relative, of the Thing in communion with a percipient or concipient mind, of Object implicated with Subject — as two aspects or sides of one and the same conception or cognition. Though Plato in the Theætêtus argued at length against Protagoras, yet his reasoning here in the Sophistês establishes by implication the conclusion of Protagoras. Here Plato impugns the doctrine of those who (like Sokrates in his own Theætêtus) held that the sensible world alone was relative, but that the intelligible world or Forms were absolute. He shows that the latter were no less relative to a mind than the former; and that mind, either percipient or cogitant, could never be eliminated from “communion” with them.
107 See my notice of the Theætêtus, in the chapter immediately preceding, where I have adverted to Plato’s reasoning in the Sophistês.
The Idealists maintained that Ideas or Forms were entirely unchangeable and eternal. Plato here denies this, and maintains that ideas were partly changeable, partly unchangeable.
These same Idealist philosophers also maintained — That Forms, or the intelligible world, were eternally the same and unchangeable. Plato here affirms that this ideas or opinion is not true: he contends that the intelligible world includes both change and unchangeableness, motion and rest, difference and sameness, life, mind, intelligence, &c. He argues that the intelligible world, whether assumed as consisting of one Form or of many Forms, could not be regarded either as wholly changeable or wholly unchangeable: it must comprise both constituents alike. If all were changeable, or if all were unchangeable, there could be no Object of knowledge; and, by consequence, no knowledge.108 But the fact that there is knowledge (cognition, conception), is the fundamental fact from which we must reason; and any conclusion which contradicts this must be untrue. Therefore the intelligible world is not all homogeneous, but contains different and even opposite Forms — change and unchangeableness — motion and rest — different and same.109
108 Plato, Sophist. p. 249 B. ξυμβαίνει δ’ οὖν ἀκινήτων τε ὄντων νοῦν μηδενὶ περὶ μηδενὸς εἶναι μηδαμοῦ.
109 Plato, Sophist. p. 249 C.
Plato’s reasoning against the Materialists.
Let us now look at Plato’s argument, and his definition of existence, as they bear upon the doctrine of the opposing Materialist philosophers, whom he states to have held that bodies alone existed, and that the Incorporeal did not exist:— in other words that all real existence was concrete and particular: that the abstract 229(universals, forms, attributes) had no real existence, certainly no separate existence. As I before remarked, it is not quite clear what or how much these philosophers denied. But as far as we can gather from Plato’s language, what they denied was, the existence of attributes apart from a substance. They did not deny the existence of just and wise men, but the existence of justice and wisdom, apart from men real or supposable.
Difference between Concrete and Abstract, not then made conspicuous. Large meaning here given by Plato to Ens — comprehending not only objects of Perception, but objects of Conception besides.
In the time of Plato, distinction between the two classes of words, Concrete and Abstract, had not become so clearly matter of reflection as to be noted by two appropriate terms: in fact, logical terminology was yet in its first rudiments. It is therefore the less matter of wonder that Plato should not here advert to the relation between the two, or to the different sense in which existence might properly be predicable of both. He agrees with the materialists or friends of the Concrete, in affirming that sensible objects, Man, Horse, Tree, exist (which the Idealists or friends of the Abstract denied): but he differs from them by saying that other Objects, super-sensible and merely intelligible, exist also — namely, Justice, Virtue, Whiteness, Hardness, and other Forms or Attributes. He admits that these last-mentioned objects do not make themselves manifest to the senses; but they do make themselves manifest to the intelligence or the conception: and that is sufficient, in his opinion, to authenticate them as existent. The word existent, according to his definition (as given in this dialogue), includes not only all that is or may be perceived, but also all that is or may be known by the mind; i.e., understood, conceived, imagined, talked or reasoned about. Existent, or Ens, is thus made purely relative: having its root in a Subject, but ramifying by its branches in every direction. It bears the widest possible sense, co-extensive with Object universally, either of perception or conception. It includes all fictions, as well as all (commonly called) realities. The conceivable and the existent become equivalent.
Narrower meaning given by Materialists to Ens — they included only Objects of Perception. Their reasoning as opposed to Plato.
Now the friends of the Concrete, against whom Plato reasons, used the word existent in a narrower sense, as comprising only the concretes of the sensible world. They probably admitted the existence of the abstract, 230along with and particularised in the concrete: but they certainly denied the separate existence of the Abstract — i.e., of Forms, Attributes, or classes, apart from particulars. They would not deny that many things were conceivable, more or less dissimilar from the realities of the sensible world: but they did not admit that all those conceivable things ought to be termed existent or realities, and put upon the same footing as the sensible world. They used the word existent to distinguish between Men, Horses, Trees, on the one hand — and Cyclopes, Centaurs, Τραγέλαφοι, &c., on the other. A Centaur is just as intelligible and conceivable as either a man or a horse; and according to this definition of Plato, would be as much entitled to be called really existent. The attributes of man and horse are real, because the objects themselves are real and perceivable: the class man and the class horse is real, for the same reason: but the attributes of a Centaur, and the class Centaurs, are not real, because no individuals possessing the attributes, or belonging to the class, have ever been perceived, or authenticated by induction. Plato’s Materialist opponents would here have urged, that if he used the word existent or Ens in so wide a sense, comprehending all that is conceivable or nameable, fiction as well as reality — they would require some other words to distinguish fiction from reality — Centaur from Man: which is what most men mean when they speak of one thing as non-existent, another thing as existent. At any rate, here is an equivocal sense of the word Ens — a wider and a narrower sense — which, we shall find frequently perplexing us in the ancient metaphysics; and which, when sifted, will often prove, that what appears to be a difference of doctrine, is in reality little more than a difference of phraseology.110
110 Plato here aspires to deliver one definition of Ens, applying to all cases. The contrast between him and Aristotle is shown in the more cautious procedure of the latter, who entirely renounces the possibility of giving any one definition fitting all cases. Aristotle declares Ens to be an equivocal word (ὁμώνυμον), and discriminates several different significations which it bears: all these significations having nevertheless an analogical affinity, more or less remote, with each other. See Aristot. Metaphys. Δ. 1017, a. 7, seq.; vi. 1028, a. 10.
It is declared by Aristotle to be the question first and most disputed in Philosophia Prima, Quid est Ens? καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ ζητούμενον καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπορούμενον, τοῦτο ἐστι, τίς ἡ οὐσία (p. 1028, b. 2). Compare, B. 1001, a. 6, 31.
This subject is well treated by Brentano, in his Dissertation Ueber die Bedeutung des Seienden im Aristoteles. See pp. 49-50 seq., of that work.
Aristotle observes truly, that these most general terms are the most convenient hiding-places for equivocal meaning (Anal. Post. ii. 97, b. 29).
The analogical varieties of Ens or Essence are graduated, according to Aristotle: Complete, Proper, typical, οὐσία, stands at the head: there are then other varieties more or less approaching to this proper type: some of them which μικρὸν ἢ οὐθὲν ἔχει τοῦ ὄντος. (Metaphys. vi. 1029, b. 9.)
231Different definitions of Ens — by Plato — the Materialists, the Idealists.
This enquiry respecting Ens is left by Plato professedly unsettled; according to his very frequent practice. He pretends only to have brought it to this point: that Ens or the Existent is shown to present as many difficulties and perplexities as Non-Ens or the non-existent.111 I do not think that he has shown thus much; for, according to his definition, Non-Ens is an impossibility: the term is absolutely unmeaning: it is equivalent to the Unknowable or Inconceivable — as Parmenides affirmed it to be. But he has undoubtedly shown that Ens is in itself perplexing: which, instead of lightening the difficulties about Non-Ens, aggravates them: for all the difficulties about Ens must be solved, before you can pretend to understand Non-Ens. Plato has shown that Ens is used in three different meanings:—
1. According to the Materialists, it means only the concrete and particular, including all the attributes thereof, essential and accidental.
2. According to the Idealists or friends of Forms, it means only Universals, Forms, and Attributes.
3. According to Plato’s own definition here given, it means both the one and the other: whatever the mind can either perceive or conceive: whatever can act upon the mind in any way, or for any time however short. It is therefore wholly relative to the mind: yet not exclusively to the perceiving mind (as the Materialists said), nor exclusively to the conceiving mind (as the friends of Forms said): but to both alike.
111 Plato, Sophist. p. 250 E.
Plato’s views about Non-Ens examined.
Here is much confusion, partly real but principally verbal, about Ens. Plato proceeds to affirm, that the difficulty about Non-Ens is no greater, and that it admits of being elucidated. The higher Genera or Forms (he says) are such that some of them will combine or enter into communion with each other, wholly or partially, others will not, 232but are reciprocally exclusive. Motion and Rest will not enter into communion, but mutually exclude each other: neither of them can be predicated of the other. But each or both of them will enter into communion with Existence, which latter may be predicated of both. Here are three Genera or Forms: motion, rest, and existence. Each of them is the same with itself, and different from the other two. Thus we have two new distinct Forms or Genera — Same and Different — which enter into communion with the preceding three, but are in themselves distinct from them.112 Accordingly you may say, motion partakes of (or enters into communion with) Diversum, because motion differs from rest: also you may say, motion partakes of Idem, as being identical with itself: but you cannot say, motion is different, motion is the same; because the subject and the predicate are essentially distinct and not identical.113
112 In the Timæus (pp. 35-36-37), Plato declares these three elements — Ταὐτόν, Θάτερον, Οὐσία — to be the three constituent elements of the cosmical soul, and of the human rational soul.
113 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 B.
Μετέχετον μὴν ἄμφω (κίνησις καὶ στάσις) ταὐτοῦ καὶ θατέρου.…
Μὴ τοίνυν λέγωμεν κίνησιν γ’ εἶναι ταὐτὸν ἢ θάτερον, μηδ’ αὖ στάσιν. He had before said — Ἀλλ’ οὔ τι μὴν κίνησίς γε καὶ στάσις οὐθ’ ἕτερον οὔτε ταὐτόν ἐστιν (p. 255 A).
Plato here says, It is true that κίνησις μετέχει ταὐτοῦ, but it is not true that κίνησίς ἐστι ταὐτόν. Again, p. 259 A. τὸ μὲν ἕτερον μετασχὸν τοῦ ὄντος ἔστι μὲν διὰ ταύτην τὴν μέθεξιν, οὐ μὴν ἐκεῖνό γε οὖ μετέσχεν ἀλλ’ ἕτερον. He understands, therefore, that ἐστι, when used as copula, implies identity between the predicate and the subject.
This is the same point of view from which Antisthenes looked, when he denied the propriety of saying Ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἀγαθός — Ἄνθρωπός ἐστι κακός: and when he admitted only identical propositions, such as Ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος — Ἄγαθός ἐστιν ἀγαθός. He assumed that ἐστι, when intervening between the subject and the predicate, implies identity between them; and the same assumption is made by Plato in the passage now before us. Whether Antisthenes would have allowed the proposition — Ἄνθρωπος μετέχει κακίας, or other propositions in which ἐστι does not appear as copula, we do not know enough of his opinions to say.
Compare Aristotel. Physic. i. 2, 185, b. 27, with the Scholia of Simplikius, p. 330, a. 331, b. 18-28, ed. Brandis.
Some things are always named or spoken of per se, others with reference to something else. Thus, Diversum is always different from something else: it is relative, implying a correlate.114 In 233this, as well as in other points, Diversum (or Different) is a distinct Form, Genus, or Idea, which runs through all other things whatever. Each thing is different from every other thing: but it differs from them, not through any thing in its own nature, but because it partakes of the Form or Idea of Diversum or the Different.115 So, in like manner, the Form or Idea of Idem (or Same) runs through all other things: since each thing is both different from all others, and is also the same with itself.
114 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 C-D. τῶν ὄντων τὰ μὲν αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά, τά δὲ πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀεὶ λέγεσθαι . . . Τὸ δ’ ἕτερον ἀεὶ πρὸς ἕτερον . . . Νῦν δὲ ἀτεχνῶς ἡμῖν ὅ, τι περ ἂν ἕτερον ᾖ, συμβέβηκεν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἑτέρου τοῦτο ὅπερ ἐστὶν εἶναι. These last words partly anticipate Aristotle’s explanation of τὰ πρός τι (Categor. p. 6, a. 38).
Here we have, for the first time so far as I know (certainly anterior to Aristotle), names relative and non-relative, distinguished as classes, and contrasted with each other. It is to be observed that Plato here uses λέγεσθαι and εἶναι as equivalent; which is not very consistent with the sense which he assigns to ἐστιν in predication: see the note immediately preceding.
115 Plato, Sophist. p. 255 E. πέμπτον δὴ τὴν θατέρου φύσιν λεκτέον ἐν τοῖς εἴδεσιν οὖσαν, ἐν οἷς προαιρούμεθα … καὶ διὰ πάντων γε αὐτὴν αὐτῶν φήσομεν εἶναι διεληλυθυῖαν· ἓν ἕκαστον γὰρ ἕτερον εἶναι τῶν ἄλλων οὐ διὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μετέχειν τῆς ἰδέας τῆς θατέρου.
His review of the select Five Forms.
Now motion is altogether different from rest Motion therefore is not rest. Yet still motion is, because it partakes of existence or Ens. Accordingly, motion both is and is not.
Again, motion is different from Idem or the Same. It is therefore not the same. Yet still motion is the same; because every thing partakes of identity, or is the same with itself. Motion therefore both is the same and is not the same. We must not scruple to advance both these propositions. Each of them stands on its own separate ground.116 So also motion is different from Diversum or The Different; in other words, it is not different, yet still it is different. And, lastly, motion is different from Ens, in other words, it is not Ens, or is non-Ens: yet still it is Ens, because it partakes of existence. Hence motion is both Ens, and Non-Ens.
116 Plato, Sophist. pp. 255-256.
Here we arrive at Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens, τὸ μὴ ὂν: the main problem which he is now setting to himself. Non-Ens is equivalent to, different from Ens. It is the Form or Idea of Diversum, considered in reference to Ens. Every thing is Ens, or partakes of entity, or existence. Every thing also is different from Ens, or partakes of difference in relation to Ens: it is thus Non-Ens. Every thing therefore is at the same time both Ens, and Non-Ens. Nay, Ens itself, inasmuch as it is different from all other things, is Non-Ens in reference to them. It is Ens only as one, in reference to itself: but it is Non-Ens an infinite number of times, in reference to all other things.117
117 Plato, Sophist. pp. 256-257.
Plato’s doctrine — That Non-Ens is nothing more than different from Ens.
When we say Non-Ens, therefore (continues Plato), we do not 234mean any thing contrary to Ens, but merely something different from Ens. When we say Not-great, we nothing do not mean any thing contrary to Great, but only something different from great. The negative generally, when annexed to any name, does not designate any thing contrary to what is meant by that name, but something different from it. The general nature or Form of difference is disseminated into a multitude of different parts or varieties according to the number of different things with which it is brought into communion: Not-great, Not-just, &c., are specific varieties of this general nature, and are just as much realities as great, just. And thus Non-Ens is just as much a reality as Ens being not contrary, but only that variety of the general nature of difference which corresponds to Ens. Non-Ens, Not-great, Not-just, &c., are each of them permanent Forms, among the many other Forms or Entia, having each a true and distinct nature of its own.118
118 Plato, Sophist. p. 258 C. ὅτι τὸ μὴ ὂν βεβαίως ἐστὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ φύσιν ἔχον … οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν κατὰ ταὐτὸν ἦν τε καὶ ἔστιν μὴ ὄν, ἐνάριθμον τῶν πολλῶν ὄντων εἶδος ἕν.
I say nothing about contrariety (concludes Plato), or about any thing contrary to Ens; nor will I determine whether Non-Ens in this sense be rationally possible or not. What I mean by Non-Ens is a particular case under the general doctrine of the communion or combination of Forms: the combination of Ens with Diversum, composing that which is different from Ens, and which is therefore Non-Ens. Thus Ens itself, being different from all other Forms, is Non-Ens in reference to them all, or an indefinite number of times119 (i.e. an indefinite number of negative predications may be made concerning it).
119 Plato, Sophist. pp. 258 E-259 A. ἡμεῖς γὰρ περὶ μὲν ἐναντίου τινὸς αὐτῷ (τῷ ὄντι) χαίρειν πάλαι λέγομεν, εἴτ’ ἔστιν εἴτε μὴ λόγον ἔχον ἢ καὶ παντάπασιν ἄλογον· ὃ δὲ νῦν εἰρήκαμεν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ὄν, &c.
Non-Ens being thus shown to be one among the many other Forms, disseminated among all the others, and entering into communion with Ens among the rest — we have next to enquire whether it enters into communion with the Form of Opinion and Discourse. It is the communion of the two which constitutes false opinion and false proposition: if therefore such communion be possible, false opinion and false proposition are possible, which is the point that Plato is trying to prove.120
120 Plato, Sophist. p. 260 B.
235Communion of Non-Ens with proposition — possible and explicable.
Now it has been already stated (continues Plato) that some Forms or Genera admit of communion with each other, others do not. In like manner some words admit of communion with each other — not others. Those alone admit of communion, which, when put together, make up a proposition significant or giving information respecting Essence or Existence. The smallest proposition must have a noun and a verb put together: the noun indicating the agent, the verb indicating the act. Every proposition must be a proposition concerning something, or must have a logical subject: every proposition must also be of a certain quality. Let us take (he proceeds) two simple propositions: Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying.121 Of both these two, the subject is the same: but the first is true, the second is false. The first gives things existing as they are, respecting the subject: the second gives respecting the subject, things different from those existing, or in other words things non-existent, as if they did exist.122 A false proposition is that which gives things different as if they were the same, and things non-existent as if they were existent, respecting the subject.123
121 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 A. Θεαίτητος κάθηται … Θεαίτητος πέτεται.
122 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 B. λέγει δὲ αὐτῶν (τῶν λόγων of the two propositions) ὁ μὲν ἀληθὴς τὰ ὄντα, ὡς ἐστι περὶ σοῦ … Ὁ δὲ δὴ ψευδὴς ἕτερα τῶν ὄντων … Τὰ μὴ ὄντ’ ἄρα ὡς ὄντα λέγει … Ὄντων δέ γε ὄντα ἕτερα περὶ σοῦ. Πολλὰ μὲν γὰρ ἔφαμεν ὄντα περὶ ἕκαστον εἶναί που, πολλὰ δὲ οὐκ ὄντα.
123 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 D. Περὶ δὴ σοῦ λεγόμενα μέντοι θάτερα ὡς τὰ αὐτά, καὶ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα, παντάπασιν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡ τοιαύτη σύνθεσις ἔκ τε ῥημάτων γιγνομένη καὶ ὀνομάτων ὄντως τε καὶ ἀληθῶς γίγνεσθαι λόγος ψευδής.
It is plain that this explanation takes no account of negative propositions: it applies only to affirmative propositions.
Imperfect analysis of a proposition — Plato does not recognise the predicate.
The foregoing is Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens. Before we remark upon it, let us examine his mode of analysing a proposition. He conceives the proposition as consisting of a noun and a verb. The noun marks the logical subject, but he has no technical word equivalent to subject: his phrase is, that a proposition must be of something or concerning something. Then again, he not only has no word to designate the predicate, but he does not even seem to conceive the predicate as distinct and separable: it stands along with the copula embodied in the verb. The two essentials of a proposition, as he states them, are — That it should have a certain subject — That it should be of a certain quality, 236true or false.124 This conception is just, as far as it goes: but it does not state all which ought to be known about proposition, and it marks an undeveloped logical analysis. It indicates moreover that Plato, not yet conceiving the predicate as a distinct constituent, had not yet conceived the copula as such: and therefore that the substantive verb ἔστιν had not yet been understood by him in its function of pure and simple copula. The idea that the substantive verb when used in a proposition must mark existence or essence, is sufficiently apparent in several of his reasonings.
124 Since the time of Aristotle, the quality of a proposition has been understood to designate its being either affirmative or negative: that being formal, or belonging to its form only. Whether affirmative or negative, it may be true or false: and this is doubtless a quality, but belonging to its matter, not to its form. Plato seems to have taken no account of the formal distinction, negative or affirmative.
I shall now say a few words on Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens. It is given at considerable length, and was, in the judgment of Schleiermacher, eminently satisfactory to Plato himself. Some of Plato’s expressions125 lead me to suspect that his satisfaction was not thus unqualified: but whether he was himself satisfied or not, I cannot think that the explanation ought to satisfy others.
125 Plato, Sophistês, p. 259 A-B. Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Sophistes, vol. iv. p. 134, of his translation of Plato.
Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens is not satisfactory — Objections to it.
Plato here lays down the position — That the word Not signifies nothing more than difference, with respect to that other word to which it is attached. It does not signify (he says) what is contrary; but simply what is different. Not-great, Not-beautiful — mean what is different from great or beautiful: Non-Ens means, not what is contrary to Ens, but simply what is different from Ens.
First, then, even if we admit that Non-Ens has this latter meaning and nothing beyond — yet when we turn to Plato’s own definition of Ens, we shall find it so all-comprehensive, that there can be absolutely nothing different from Ens:— these last words can have no place and no meaning. Plato defines Ens so as to include all that is knowable, conceivable, thinkable.126 One portion of this total differs from another: but there can be nothing which differs from it all. The Form or nature of Diversum (to 237use Plato’s phrase) as it is among the knowable or conceivable, is already included in the total of Ens, and comes into communion (according to the Platonic phraseology) with one portion of that total as against another portion. But with Ens as a whole, it cannot come into communion, for there is nothing apart from Ens. Whenever we try to think of any thing apart from Ens, we do by the act of thought include it in Ens, as defined by Plato. Different from great — different from white (i.e. not great, not white, sensu Platonico) is very intelligible: but Different from Ens, is not intelligible: there is nothing except the inconceivable and incomprehensible: the words professing to describe it, are mere unmeaning sound. Now this is just127 what Parmenides said about Non-Ens. Plato’s definition of Ens appears to me to make out the case of Parmenides about Non-Ens; and to render the Platonic explanation — different from Ens — open to quite as many difficulties, as those which attach to Non-Ens in the ordinary sense.
126 Plato, Sophist. pp. 247-248.
127 Compare Kratylus, 430 A.
Secondly, there is an objection still graver against Plato’s explanation. When he resolves negation into an affirmation of something different from what is denied, he effaces or puts out of sight one of the capital distinctions of logic. What he says is indeed perfectly true: Not-great, Not-beautiful, Non-Ens, are respectively different from great, beautiful, Ens. But this, though true, is only a part of the truth; leaving unsaid another portion of the truth which, while equally essential, is at the same time special and characteristic. The negative not only differs from the affirmative, but has such peculiar meaning of its own, as to exclude the affirmative: both cannot be true together. Not-great is certainly different from great: so also, white, hard, rough, just, valiant, &c, are all different from great. But there is nothing in these latter epithets to exclude the co-existence of great. Theætêtus is great — Theætêtus is white; in the second of these two propositions I affirm something respecting Theætêtus quite different from what I affirm in the first, yet nevertheless noway excluding what is affirmed in the first.128 The two propositions may both 238be true. But when I say — Theætêtus is dead — Theætêtus is not dead: here are two propositions which cannot both be true, from the very form of the words. To explain not-great, as Plato does, by saying that it means only something different from great,129 is to suppress this peculiar meaning and virtue of the negative, whereby it simply excludes the affirmative, without affirming any thing in its place. Plato is right in saying that not-great does not affirm the contrary of great, by which he means little.130 The negative does not affirm any thing: it simply denies. Plato seems to consider the negative as a species of affirmative:131 only affirming something different from what is affirmed by the term which it accompanies. Not-Great, Not-Beautiful, Not-Just — he declares to be Forms just as real and distinct as Great, Beautiful, Just: only different from these latter. This, in my opinion, is a conception logically erroneous. Negative stands opposed to affirmative, as one of the modes of distributing both terms and propositions. A purely negative term cannot stand alone in the subject of a proposition: Non-Entis nulla sunt prædicata — was 239the scholastic maxim. The apparent exceptions to this rule arise only from the fact, that many terms negative in their form have taken on an affirmative signification.
128 Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês (p. 281, p. 785, Stallbaum), says, with reference to the doctrine laid down by Plato in the Sophistês, ὅλως γὰρ αἱ ἀποθάσεις ἐγγονοί εἰσι τῆς ἑτερότητος τῆς νοερᾶς· διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ οὐχ ἵππος, ὅτι ἕτερον — καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἄνθρωπος, ὅτι ἄλλο.
Proklus here adopts and repeats Plato’s erroneous idea of the negative proposition and its function. When I deny that Caius is just, wise, &c., my denial does not intimate simply that I know him to be something different from just, wise; for he may have fifty different attributes, co-existent and consistent with justice and wisdom.
To employ the language of Aristotle (see a pertinent example, Physic. i. 8, 191, b. 15, where he distinguishes τὸ μὴ ὂν καθ’ αὑτὸ from τὸ μὴ ὂν κατὰ συμβεβηκός), we may say that it is not of the essence of the Different to deny or exclude that from which it is different: the Different may deny or exclude, but that is only by accident — κατὰ συμβεβηκός. Plato includes, in the essence of the Different, that which belongs to it only by accident.
Aristotle in more than one place distinguishes διαφορὰ from ἐναντίωσις — not always in the same language. In Metaphysic. I. p. 1055 a. 33, he considers that the root of all ἐναντίωσις is ἕξις and στέρησις, understood in the widest sense, i.e. affirmative and negative. See Bonitz, not. ad loc., and Waitz, ad Categor. p. 12, a. 26. The last portion of the treatise Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας was interpreted by Syrianus with a view to uphold Plato’s opinion here given in the Sophistes (Schol. ad Aristot. p. 136, a. 15 Brandis).
129 Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B. οὐκ ἐναντίον ἐκείνῳ σημαίνουσα, ἀλλὰ τοσοῦτον μόνον, ἕτερον ἐκείνου.
If we look to the Euthydêmus we shall see that this confusion between what is different from A, and what is incompatible with or exclusive of A, is one of the fallacies which Plato puts into the mouth of the two Sophists Euthydêmus and Dionysodôrus, whom he exhibits and exposes in that dialogue. Ἄλλο τι οὖν ἕτερος, ἦ δ’ ὅς (Dionysodorus), ὢν λίθου, οὐ λίθος εἶ; καὶ ἕτερος ὢν χρυσοῦ, οὐ χρυσὸς εἶ; Ἔστι ταῦτα. Οὐκοῦν καὶ ὁ Χαιρέδημος, ἔφη, ἕτερος ὢν πατρός, οὐκ ἂν πατὴρ εἴη; (Plat. Euthydem. p. 298 A).
130 Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B.
131 Plato, Sophist. pp. 257 E, 258 A.
Ὄντος δὴ πρὸς ὂν ἀντίθεσις, ὡς ἔοικ’, εἶναι ξυμβαίνει τὸ μὴ καλόν.…
Ὁμοίως ἄρα τὸ μὴ μέγα, καὶ τὸ μέγα αὐτὸ εἶναι λεκτέον.
Plato distinctly recognises here Forms or Ideas τῶν ἀποφάσεων, which the Platonists professed not to do, according to Aristotle, Metaphys. A. 990, b. 13 — see the instructive Scholia of Alexander, p. 565, a. Brandis.
Plato’s view of the negative is erroneous. Logical maxim of contradiction.
The view which Plato here takes of the negative deserves the greater notice, because, if it were adopted, what is called the maxim of contradiction would be divested of its universality. Given a significant proposition with the same subject and the same predicate, each taken in one and the same signification — its affirmative and its negative cannot both be true. But if by the negative, you mean to make a new affirmation, different from that contained in the affirmative — the maxim just stated cannot be broadly maintained as of universal application: it may or may not be valid, as the case happens to stand. The second affirmation may be, as a matter of fact, incompatible with the first: but this is not to be presumed, from the mere fact that it is different from the first: proof must be given of such incompatibility.
Examination of the illustrative propositions chosen by Plato — How do we know that one is true, the other false?
We may illustrate this remark by looking at the two propositions which Plato gives as examples of true and false. Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying. Both the examples are of affirmative propositions: and it seems clear that Plato, in all this reasoning, took no account of negative propositions: those which simply deny, affirming nothing. The second of these propositions (says Plato) affirms what is not, as if it were, respecting the subject But how do we know this to be so? In the form of the second proposition there is nothing to show it: there is no negation of any thing, but simply affirmation of a different positive attribute. Although it happens, in this particular case, that the two attributes are incompatible, and that the affirmation of the one includes the negation of the other — yet there is nothing in the form of either proposition to deny the other:— no formal incompatibility between them. Both are alike affirmative, with the same subject, but different predicates. These two propositions therefore do not serve to illustrate the real nature of the negative, which consists precisely in this formal incompatibility. The proper negative belonging to the proposition — Theætêtus is sitting down — would be, Theætêtus is not sitting down. Plato ought to maintain, if he followed out his previous 240argument, that Not-Sitting down is as good a Form as Sitting-down, and that it meant merely — Different from Sitting down. But instead of doing this Plato gives us a new affirmative proposition, which, besides what it affirms, conceals an implied negation of the first proposition. This does not serve to illustrate the purpose of his reasoning — which was to set up the formal negative as a new substantive attribute, different from its corresponding affirmative. As between the two, the maxim of contradiction applies: both cannot be true. But as between the two propositions given in Plato, that maxim has no application: they are two propositions with the same subject, but different predicates; which happen in this case to be, the one true, the other false — but which are not formally incompatible. The second is not false because it differs from the first; it has no essential connection with the first, and would be equally false, even if the first were false also.
The function of the negative is to deny. Now denial is not a species of affirmation, but the reversal or antithesis of affirmation: it nullifies a belief previously entertained, or excludes one which might otherwise be entertained, — but it affirms nothing. In particular cases, indeed, the denial of one thing may be tantamount to the affirmation of another: for a man may know that there are only two suppositions possible, and that to shut out the one is to admit the other. But this is an inference drawn in virtue of previous knowledge possessed and contributed by himself: another man without such knowledge would not draw the same inference, nor could he learn it from the negative proposition per se. Such then is the genuine meaning of the negative; from which Plato departs, when he tells us that the negative is a kind of affirmation, only affirming something different — and when he illustrates it by producing two affirmative propositions respecting the same subject, affirming different attributes, the one as matter of fact incompatible with the other.
Necessity of accepting the evidence of sense.
But how do we know that the first proposition — Theætêtus is sitting down — affirms what is:— and that the second proposition — Theætêtus is flying — affirms what is not? If present, our senses testify to us the truth of the first, and the falsehood of the second: if absent, we have the testimony of a witness, combined with our own past experience 241attesting the frequency of facts analogous to the one, and the non-occurrence of facts analogous to the other. When we make the distinction, then, — we assume that what is attested by sense or by comparisons and inductions from the facts of sense, is real, or is: and that what is merely conceived or imagined, without the attestation of sense (either directly or by way of induction), is not real, or is not. Upon this assumption Plato himself must proceed, when he takes it for granted, as a matter of course, that the first proposition is true, and the second false. But he forgets that this assumption contradicts the definition which, in this same dialogue,132 he had himself given of Ens — of the real or the thing that is. His definition was so comprehensive, as to include not only all that could be seen or felt, but also all that had capacity to be known or conceived by the mind: and he speaks very harshly of those who admit the reality of things perceived, but refuse to admit equal reality to things only conceived. Proceeding then upon this definition, we can allow no distinction as to truth or falsehood between the two propositions — Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying: the predicate of the second affirms what is, just as much as the predicate of the first: for it affirms something which, though neither perceived nor perceivable by sense, is distinctly conceivable and conceived by the mind. When Plato takes for granted the distinction between the two, that the first affirms what is, and the second what is not — he unconsciously slides into that very recognition of the testimony of sense (in other words, of fact and experience), as the certificate of reality, which he had so severely denounced in the opposing materialist philosophers: and upon the ground of which he thought himself entitled, not merely to correct them as mistaken, but to reprove them as wicked and impudent.133
132 Plato, Sophist. pp. 247 D-E, 248 D-E.
133 Plato, Sophist. p. 246 D.
Errors of Antisthenes — depended partly on the imperfect formal logic of that day.
I have thus reviewed a long discussion — terminating in a conclusion which appears to me unsatisfactory — of the meaning and function of the negative. I hardly think that Plato would have given such an explanation of it, if he had had the opportunity of studying the Organon of Aristotle. Prior to Aristotle, the principles and distinctions of formal logic were hardly 242at all developed; nor can we wonder that others at that time fell into various errors which Plato scornfully derides, but very imperfectly rectifies. For example, Antisthenes did not admit the propriety of any predication, except identical, or at most essential, predication: the word ἔστιν appeared to him incompatible with any other. But we perceive in this dialogue, that Plato also did not conceive the substantive verb as performing the simple function of copula in predication: on the contrary he distinguishes ἔστιν, as marking identity between subject and predicate — from μετέχει, as marking accidental communion between the two. Again, there were men in Plato’s day who maintained that Non-Ens (τὸ μὴ ὂν) was inconceivable and impossible. Plato, in refuting these philosophers, gives a definition of Ens (τὸ ὂν), which puts them in the right — fails in stating what the true negative is — and substitutes, in place of simple denial, a second affirmation to overlay and supplant the first.
Doctrine of the Sophistês — contradicts that of other Platonic dialogues.
To complete the examination of this doctrine of the Sophistês, respecting Non-Ens, we must compare it with the doctrine on the same subject laid down in other Platonic dialogues. It will be found to contradict, very distinctly, the opinion assigned by Plato to Sokrates both in the Theætêtus and in the fifth Book of the Republic:134 where Sokrates deals with Non-Ens in its usual 243sense as the negation of Ens: laying down the position that Non-Ens can be neither the object of the cognizing Mind, nor the object of the opining (δοξάζων) or cogitant Mind: that it is uncognizable and incogitable, correlating only with Non-Cognition or Ignorance. Now we find that this doctrine (of Sokrates, in Theætêtus and Republic) is the very same as that which is affirmed, in the Sophistês, to be taken up by the delusive Sophist: the same as that which the Eleate spends much ingenuity in trying to refute, by proving that Non-Ens is not the negation of Ens, but only that which differs from Ens, being itself a particular variety of Ens. It is also the same doctrine as is declared, both by the Eleate in the Sophistês and by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, to imply as an undeniable consequence, that the falsehood of any proposition is impossible. “A false proposition is that which speaks the thing that is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν). But this is an impossibility. You can neither know, nor think, nor speak, the thing that is not. You cannot know without knowing something: you cannot speak without speaking something (i. e. something that is).” Of this consequence — which is expressly announced as included in the doctrine, both by the Eleate in the Sophistês and by the Platonic Sokrates in the Theætêtus — no notice is taken in the Republic.135
134 Plato, Republic, v. pp. 477-478. Theætêt. pp. 188-189. Parmenidês, pp. 160 C, 163 C. Euthydêmus, p. 284 B-C.
Aristotle (De Interpretat. p. 21, a. 22) briefly expresses his dissent from an opinion, the same as what is given in the Platonic Sophistês — that τὸ μὴ ὄν is ὄν τι. He makes no mention of Plato, but Ammonius in the Scholia alludes to Plato (p. 129, b. 20, Schol. Bekk.).
We must note that the Eleate in the Sophistês states both opinions respecting τὸ μὴ ὄν: first that which he refutes — next that which he advances. The Scholiast may, therefore, refer to both opinions, as stated in the Sophistês, though one of them is stated only for the purpose of being refuted.
We may contrast with these views of Plato (in the Sophistês) respecting τὸ μὴ ὄν, as not being a negation τοῦ ὄντος, but simply a something ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος, the different views of Aristotle about τὸ μὴ ὄν, set forth in the instructive Commentary of M. Ravaisson, Essai sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, p. 360.
“Le non-être s’oppose à l’être, comme sa négation: ce n’est donc pas, non plus que l’être, une chose simple; et autant il y a de genres de l’être, autant il faut que le non-être ait de genres. Cependant l’opposition de l’être et du non-être, différente, en realité, dans chacune des catégories, est la même dans toutes par sa forme. Dans cette forme, le second terme n’exprime pas autre chose que l’absence du premier. Le rapport de l’être et du non-être consiste donc dans une pure contradiction: dernière forme à laquelle toute opposition doit se ramener.”
Aristotle seems to allude to the Sophistês, though not mentioning it by its title, in three passages of the Metaphysica — E. 1026, b. 14; K. 1064, b. 29; N. 1089, a. 5 (see the note of Bonitz on the latter passage) — perhaps also elsewhere (see Ueberweg, pp. 153-154). Plato replied in one way, Leukippus and Demokritus in another, to the doctrine of Parmenides, who banished Non-Ens as incogitable. Leukippus maintained that Non-Ens equivalent to τὸ κενόν, and that the two elements of things were τὸ πλῆρες and τὸ κενόν, for which he used the expressions δὲν and οὐδέν. Plato replied as we read in the Sophistês: thus both he and Leukippus tried in different ways to demonstrate a positive nature and existence for Non-Ens. See Aristot. Metaph. A. 985, b. 4, with the Scholia, p. 538, Brandis. The Scholiast cites Plato ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ, which seems a mistake for ἐν τῷ Σοφίστῃ.
135 Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 264-265) is upon this point more satisfactory than the other Platonic commentators. He points out — not only without disguise, but even with emphasis — the discrepancies and contradictions between the doctrines ascribed to the Eleate in the Sophistês, and those ascribed to Sokrates in the Republic, Phædon, and other Platonic dialogues. These are the main premisses upon which Socher rests his inference, that the Sophistês is not the composition of Plato. I do not admit his inference: but the premisses, as matters of fact, appear to me undeniable. Stallbaum, in his Proleg. to the Sophistês, p. 40 seq., attempts to explain away these discrepancies — in my opinion his remarks are obscure and unsatisfactory. Various other commentators, also holding the Sophistês to be a genuine work of Plato, overlook or extenuate these premisses, which they consider unfavourable to that conclusion. Thus Alkinous, in his Εἰσαγωγή, sets down the explanation of τὸ μὴ ὂν which is given in the Sophistês, as if it were the true and Platonic explanation, not adverting to what is said in the Republic and elsewhere (Alkin. c. 35, p. 189 in the Appendix Platonica annexed to the edition of Plato by K. F. Hermann). The like appears in the Προλεγόμενα τῆς Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφίας: c. 21, p. 215 of the same edition. Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês, speaks in much the same manner about τὸ μὴ ὂν — considering the doctrine advanced and defended by the Eleate in the Sophistês, to represent the opinion of Plato (p. 785 ed. Stallbaum; see also the Commentary of Proklus on the Timæus, b. iii. p. 188 E, 448 ed. Schneid.). So likewise Simplikius and the commentators on Aristotle, appear to consider it — see Schol. ad Aristotel. Physica, p. 332, a. 8, p. 333, b., 334, a., 343, a. 5. It is plain from these Scholia that the commentators were much embarrassed in explaining τὸ μὴ ὄν. They take the Sophistês as if it delivered Plato’s decisive opinion upon that point (Porphyry compares what Plato says in the Timæus, but not what he says in the Republic or in Theætêtus, p. 333, b. 25); and I think that they accommodate Plato to Aristotle, in such manner as to obscure the real antithesis which Plato insists upon in the Sophistês — I mean the antithesis according to which Plato excludes what is ἐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος and admits only what is ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος.
Ritter gives an account (Gesch. der Philos. part ii. pp. 288-289) of Plato’s doctrine in the Sophistês respecting Non-Ens; but by no means an adequate account. K. F. Hermann also omits (Geschichte und System der Platonischen Philos. pp. 504-505-507) to notice the discrepancy between the doctrine of the Sophistês, and the doctrine of the Republic, and Theætêtus, respecting τὸ μὴ ὄν — though he pronounces elsewhere that the Republic is among the most indisputably positive of all Plato’s compositions (p. 536).
Again, the doctrine maintained by the Eleate in the Sophistês respecting Ens, as well as respecting Ideas or Forms, is in other ways inconsistent with what is laid down in other Platonic dialogues. The Eleate in the Sophistês undertakes to refute two different classes of opponents; first, the Materialists, of whom he speaks with derision and antipathy — secondly, others of very opposite doctrines, whom he denominates the Friends of Ideas or Forms, speaking of them in terms of great respect. Now by these Friends of Forms or Ideas, Schleiermacher conjectures that Plato intends to denote the Megaric philosophers. M. Cousin, and most other critics (except Ritter), have taken up this opinion. But to me it seems that Socher is right in declaring the doctrine, ascribed to these Friends of Ideas, to be the very same as that which is laid down by Plato himself in other important dialogues — Republic, Timæus, Phædon, Phædrus, Kratylus, &c. — and which is generally understood as that of the Platonic Ideas.136 In all these dialogues, the capital contrast and antithesis 245is that between Ens or Entia on one side, and Fientia (the transient, ever generated and ever perishing), on the other: between the eternal, unchangeable, archetypal Forms or Ideas — and the ever-changing flux of particulars, wherein approximative likeness of these archetypes is imperfectly manifested. Now it is exactly this antithesis which the Friends of Forms in the Sophistês are represented as upholding, and which the Eleate undertakes to refute.137 We shall find Aristotle, over and over again, impugning the total separation or demarcation between Ens and Fientia (εἴδη — γένεσις — χωριστά), both as the characteristic dogma, and the untenable dogma, of the Platonic philosophy: it is exactly the same issue which the Eleate in the Sophistês takes with the Friends of Forms. He proves that Ens is just as full of perplexity, and just as difficult to understand, as Non-Ens:138 whereas, in the other Platonic dialogues, Ens is 246constantly spoken of as if it were plain and intelligible. In fact, he breaks down the barrier between Ens and Fientia, by including motion, change, the moving or variable, among the world of Entia.139 Motion or Change belongs to Fieri; and if it be held to belong to Esse also (by recognising a Form or Idea of Motion or Change, as in the Sophistês), the antithesis between the two, which is so distinctly declared in other Platonic dialogues, disappears.140
136 Socher, p. 266; Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Sophistes, p. 134; Cousin, Œuvres de Platon, vol. xi. 517, notes.
Schleiermacher gives this as little more than a conjecture; and distinctly admits that any man may easily suppose the doctrine ascribed to these Friends of Forms to be Plato’s own doctrine — “Nicht zu verwundern wäre es, wenn Mancher auf den Gedanken käme, Platon meinte hier sich selbst und seine eigene Lehre,” &c.
But most of the subsequent critics have taken up Schleiermacher’s conjecture (that the Megarici are intended), as if it were something proved and indubitable.
It is curious that while Schleiermacher thinks that the opinions of the Megaric philosophers are impugned and refuted in the Sophistês, Socher fancies that the dialogue was composed by a Megaric philosopher, not by Plato. Ueberweg (Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 275-277) points out as explicitly as Socher, the discrepancy between the Sophistês and several other Platonic dialogues, in respect to what is said about Forms or Ideas. But he draws a different inference: he infers from it a great change in Plato’s own opinion, and he considers that the Sophistês is later in its date of composition than those other dialogues which it contradicts. I think this opinion about the late composition of the Sophistês, is not improbable; but the premisses are not sufficient to prove it.
My view of the Platonic Sophistês differs from the elaborate criticism on it given by Steinhart (Einleitung zum Soph. p. 417 seq.) Moreover, there is one assertion in that Einleitung which I read with great surprise. Steinhart not only holds it for certain that the Sophistes was composed after the Parmenidês, but also affirms that it solves the difficulties propounded in the Parmenidês — discusses the points of difficulty “in the best possible way” (“in der wünschenwerthesten Weise” (pp. 470-471).
I confess I cannot find that the difficulties started in the Parmenidês are even noticed, much less solved, in the Sophistês. And Steinhart himself tells that the Parmenidês places us in a circle both of persons and doctrines entirely different from those of the Sophistês (p. 472). It is plain also that the other Platonic commentators do not agree with Steinhart in finding the Sophistês a key to the Parmenidês: for most of them (Ast, Hermann, Zeller, Stallbaum, Brandis, &c.) consider the Parmenidês to have been composed at a later date than the Sophistês (as Steinhart himself intimates; compare his Einleitung zum Parmenides, p. 312 seq.). Ueberweg, the most recent enquirer (posterior to Steinhart), regards the Parmenidês as the latest of all Plato’s compositions — if indeed it be genuine, of which he rather doubts. (Aechtheit der Platon. Schrift. pp. 182-183.)
M. Mallet (Histoire de l’École de Megare, Introd. pp. xl.-lviii., Paris, 1845) differs from all the three opinions of Schleiermacher, Ritter, and Socher. He thinks that the philosophers, designated as Friends of Forms, are intended for the Pythagoreans. His reasons do not satisfy me.
137 Plato, Sophist. pp. 246 B, 248 B. The same opinion is advanced by Sokrates in the Republic, v. p. 479 B-C. Phædon, pp. 78-79. Compare Sophist, p. 248 C with Symposion, p. 211 B. In the former passage, τὸ πάσχειν is affirmed of the Ideas: in the latter passage, τὸ πάσχειν μηδέν.
138 Plato, Sophist. p. 245 E. Yet he afterwards talks of τὸ λαμπρὸν τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ as contrasted with τὸ σκοτεινὸν τοῦ μὴ ὄντος, p. 254 A, which seems not consistent.
139 Plato, Sophist. p. 249 B. “Ipsæ ideæ per se simplices sunt et immutabiles: sunt æternæ, ac semper fuerunt ab omni liberæ mutatione,” says Stallbaum ad Platon. Republ. v. p. 476; see also his Prolegg. to the Parmenidês, pp. 39-40. This is the way in which the Platonic Ideas are presented in the Timæus, Republic, Phædon, &c., and the way in which they are conceived by the εἰδῶν φίλοι in the Sophistês, whom the Eleate seeks to confute.
Zeller’s chapter on Plato seems to me to represent not so much what we read in the separate dialogues, as the attempt of an able and ingenious man to bring out something like a consistent and intelligible doctrine which will do credit to Plato, and to soften down all the inconsistencies (see Philos. der Griech. vol. ii. pp. 394-415-429 ed. 2nd).
140 See a striking passage about the unchangeableness of Forms or Ideas in the Kratylus, p. 439 D-E; also Philêbus, p. 15.
In the Parmenidês (p. 132 D) the supposition τὰ εἴδη ἐστάναι ἐν τῇ φύσει is one of those set up by Sokrates and impugned by Parmenides. Nevertheless in an earlier passage of that dialogue Sokrates is made to include κίνησις and στάσις among the εἴδη (p. 129 E). It will be found, however, that when Parmenides comes to question Sokrates, What εἴδη do you recognise? attributes and subjects only (the latter with hesitation) are included: no such thing as actions, processes, events — τὸ ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν (p. 130). In Republic vii. 529 D, we find mention made of τὸ ὂν τάχος and ἡ οὖσα βραδύτης, which implies κίνησις as among the εἴδη. In Theætêt. pp. 152 D, 156 A, κίνησις is noted as the constituent and characteristic of Fieri — τὸ γιγνόμενον — which belongs to the domain of sensible perception, as distinguished from permanent and unchangeable Ens.
The persons whom Plato here attacks as Friends of Forms are those who held the same doctrine as Plato himself espouses in Phædon, Republic, &c.
If we examine the reasoning of the Eleate, in the Sophistês, against the persons whom he calls the Friends of Forms, we shall see that these latter are not Parmenideans only, but also Plato himself in the Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere. We shall also see that the ground, taken up by the Eleate, is much the same as that which was afterwards taken up by Aristotle against the Platonic Ideas. Plato, in most of his dialogues, declares Ideas, Forms, Entia, to be eternal substances distinct and apart from the flux and movement of particulars: yet he also declares, nevertheless, that particulars have a certain communion or participation with the Ideas, and are discriminated and denominated according to such participation. Aristotle controverts both these doctrines: 247first, the essential separation of the two, which he declares to be untrue: next, the participation or coming together of the two separate elements — which he declares to be an unmeaning fiction or poetical metaphor, introduced in order to elude the consequences of the original fallacy.141 He maintains that the two (Entia and Fientia — Universals and Particulars) have no reality except in conjunction and implication together; though they are separable by reason (λόγῳ χωριστὰ — τῷ εἰναι, χωριστά) or abstraction, and though we may reason about them apart, and must often reason about them apart.142 Now it is this implication and conjunction of the Universal with its particulars, which is the doctrine of the Sophistês, and which distinguishes it from other Platonic dialogues, wherein the Universal is transcendentalized — lodged in a separate world from particulars. No science or intelligence is possible (says the Eleate in the Sophistês) either upon the theory of those who pronounce all Ens to be constant and unchangeable, or upon that of those who declare all Ens to be fluent and variable. We must recognise both together, the constant and the variable, as equally real and as making up the totality of Ens.143 This result, though not stated in the language which Aristotle would have employed, coincides very nearly with the Aristotelian doctrine, in one of the main points on which Aristotle distinguishes his own teaching from that of his master.
141 Aristot. Metaphys. A. 991-992.
142 Aristot. Metaph. vi. 1038, a-b. The Scholion of Alexander here (p. 763, b. 36, Brandis) is clearer than Aristotle himself. Τὸ προκείμενόν ἐστι δεῖξαι ὡς οὐδὲν τῶν καθόλου οὐσία ἔστιν· οὔτε γὰρ ὁ καθόλου ἄνθρωπος ἢ ὁ καθόλου ἵππος, οὔτε ἄλλο οὐδέν· ἀλλ’ ἕκαστον αὐτων διανοίας ἀπόμαξίς ἐστιν ἀπὸ τῶν καθ’ ἕκαστα καὶ πρώτως καὶ μάλιστα λεγομένων οὐσιῶν καὶ ὁμοίωμα.
143 Plato, Sophist. p. 249 C-D. Τῷ δὴ φιλοσόφῳ καὶ ταῦτα μάλιστα τιμῶντι πᾶσα ἀνάγκη διὰ ταῦτα μήτε τῶν ἓν ἢ καὶ τὰ πολλὰ εἴδη λεγόντων τὸ πᾶν ἑστηκὸς ἀποδέχεσθαι, τῶν τε αὖ πανταχῇ τὸ ὂν κινοῦντων μηδὲ τὸ παράπαν ἀκούειν· ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν τῶν παίδων εὐχήν, ὅσα ἀκίνητά τε καὶ κεκινημένα, τὸ ὄν τε καὶ τὸ πᾶν, ξυναμφότερα λέγειν.
Ritter states the result of this portion of the Sophistês correctly. “Es bleibt uns als Ergebniss aller dieser Untersuchungen über das Seyn, dass die Wahrheit sowohl des Werdens, als auch des beharrlichen Seyns, anerkannt werden müsse” (Geschichte der Philos. ii. p. 281).
The Sophistês recedes from the Platonic point of view, and approaches the Aristotelian.
That the Eleate in the Sophistes recedes from the Platonic point of view and approaches towards the Aristotelian, will be seen also if we look at the lesson of logic which he gives to Theætêtus. In his analysis of a proposition — and in discriminating such conjunctions of 248words as are significant, from such as are insignificant — he places himself on the same ground as that which is travelled over by Aristotle in the Categories and the treatise De Interpretatione. That the handling of the topic by Aristotle is much superior, is what we might naturally expect from the fact that he is posterior in time. But there is another difference between the two which is important to notice. Aristotle deals with this topic, as he does with every other, in the way of methodical and systematic exposition. To expound it as a whole, to distribute it into convenient portions each illustrating the others, to furnish suitable examples for the general principles laid down — are announced as his distinct purposes. Now Plato’s manner is quite different. Systematic exposition is not his primary purpose: he employs it up to a certain point, but as means towards another and an independent purpose — towards the solution of a particular difficulty, which has presented itself in the course of the dialogue. — “Nosti morem dialogorum.” Aristotle is demonstrative: Plato is dialectical. In our present dialogue (the Sophistês), the Eleate has been giving a long explanation of Non-Ens; an explanation intended to prove that Non-Ens was a particular sort of Ens, and that there was therefore no absurdity (though Parmenides had said that this was absurdity) in assuming it as a passable object of Cognition, Opination, Affirmation. He now goes a step further, and seeks to show that it is, actually and in fact, an object of Opination and Affirmation.144 It is for this purpose, and for this purpose only, that he analyses a proposition, specifies the constituent elements requisite to form it, and distinguishes one proposition from another.
144 Plato, Sophist. p. 261 D.
Accordingly, the Eleate, — after pointing out that neither a string of nouns repeated one after the other, nor a string of verbs so repeated, would form a significant proposition, — declares that the conjunction of a noun with a verb is required to form one; and that opination is nothing but that internal mental process which the words of the proposition express. The smallest proposition must combine a noun with a verb:— the former signifying the agent, the latter, the action or thing done.145 Moreover, 249the proposition must be a proposition of something; and it must be of a certain quality. By a proposition of something, Plato means, that what is called technically the subject of the proposition (in his time there were no technical terms of logic) must be something positive, and cannot be negative: by the quality of the proposition, he means that it must be either true or false.146
145 Plato, Sophist. p. 262 C.
146 Plato, Sophist. p. 262 E. Λόγον ἀναγκαῖον, ὅταν περ ᾖ, τινὸς εἶναι λόγον, μὴ δέ τινος, ἀδύνατον … Οὐκοῦν καὶ ποιόν τινα αὐτὸν εἶναι δεῖ; Compare p. 237 E.
In the words here cited Plato unconsciously slides back into the ordinary acceptation of μή τι: that is, to μὴ in the sense of negation. If we adopt that peculiar sense of μή, which the Eleate has taken so much pains to prove just before in the case of τὸ μὴ ὂν (that is, if we take μὴ as signifying not negation but simply difference), the above argument will not hold. If τίς signifies one subject (A), and μή τις signifies simply another subject (B) different from A (ἕτερον), the predicate ἀδύνατον cannot be affirmed. But if we take μή τις in its proper sense of negation, the ἀδύνατον will be so far true that οὐκ ἄνθρωπος, οὐ Θεαίτητος, cannot be the subject of a proposition. Aristotle says the same in the beginning of the Treatise De Interpretatione (p. 16, a. 30).
Aristotle assumes without proof, that there are some propositions true, others false.
This early example of rudimentary grammatical or logical analysis, recognising only the two main and principal parts of speech, is interesting as occurring prior to Aristotle; by whom it is repeated in a manner more enlarged, systematic,147 and instructive. But Aristotle assumes, without proof and without supposing that any one will dispute the assumption — that there are some propositions true, other propositions false: that a name or noun, taken separately, is neither true nor false:148 that propositions (enunciations) only can be true or false.
147 Aristotel. De Interpr. init. with Scholia of Ammonius, p. 98, Bekk.
148 In the Kratylus of Plato Sokrates maintains that names may be true or false as well as propositions, pp. 385 D, 431 B.
Plato in the Sophistês has undertaken an impossible task — He could not have proved, against his supposed adversary, that there are false propositions.
The proceeding of Plato in the Sophistês is different. He supposes a Sophist who maintains that no proposition either is false or can be false, and undertakes to prove against him that there are false propositions: he farther supposes this antagonist to reject the evidence of sense and visible analogies, and to acknowledge no proof except what is furnished by reason and philosophical deduction.149 Attempting, under these restrictions, to prove his point, Plato’s Eleatic disputant rests entirely upon the peculiar meaning which he professes to have shown to attach to Non-Ens. He 250applies this to prove that Non-Ens may be predicated as well as Ens: assuming that such predication of Non-Ens constitutes a false proposition. But the proof fails. It serves only to show that the peculiar meaning ascribed by the Eleate to Non-Ens is inadmissible. The Eleate compares two distinct propositions — Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying. The first is true: the second is false. Why? Because (says the Eleate) the first predicates Ens, the second predicates Non-Ens, or (to substitute his definition of Non-Ens) another Ens different from the Ens predicated in the first.150 But here the reason assigned, why the second proposition is false, is not the real reason. Many propositions may be assigned, which predicate attributes different from the first, but which are nevertheless quite as much true as the first. I have already observed, that the reason why the second proposition is false is, because it contradicts the direct testimony of sense, if the persons debating are spectators: if they are not spectators, then because it contradicts the sum total of their previous sensible experience, remembered, compared, and generalised, which has established in them the conviction that no man does or can fly. If you discard the testimony of sense as unworthy of credit (which Plato assumes the Sophist to do), you cannot prove that the second proposition is false — nor indeed that the first proposition is true. Plato has therefore failed in giving that dialectic proof which he promised. The Eleate is forced to rely (without formally confessing it), on the testimony of sense, which he had forbidden Theætêtus to invoke, twenty pages before.151 The long intervening piece of dialectic about Ens and Non-Ens is inconclusive for his purpose, and might have been omitted. The proposition — Theætêtus is flying — does undoubtedly predicate attributes which are not as if they were,152 and is thus 251false. But then we must consult and trust the evidence of our perception: we must farther accept are not in the ordinary sense of the words, and not in the sense given to them by the Eleate in the Platonic Sophistês. His attempt to banish the specific meaning of the negative particle, and to treat it as signifying nothing more than difference, appears to me fallacious.153
149 Plato, Sophist. p. 240 A. It deserves note that here Plato presents to us the Sophist as rejecting the evidence of sense: in the Theætêtus he presents to us the Sophist as holding the doctrine ἐπιστήμη = αἴσθησις. How these propositions can both be true respecting the Sophists as a class I do not understand. The first may be true respecting some of them; the second may be true respecting others; respecting a third class of them, neither may be true. About the Sophists in a body there is hardly a single proposition which can be safely affirmed.
150 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 C.
151 Theætêtus makes this attempt and is checked by the Eleate, pp. 239-240. It is in p. 261 A that the Eleate begins his proof in refutation of the supposed Sophist — that δόξα and λόγος may be false. The long interval between the two is occupied with the reasoning about Ens and Non-Ens.
152 Plato, Sophist. p. 263 E. τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα λεγόμενα, &c.
The distinction between these two propositions, the first as true, the second as false (Theætêtus is sitting down, Theætêtus is flying), is in noway connected with the distinction which Plato had so much insisted upon before respecting the intercommunion of Forms, Ideas, General Notions, &c., that some Forms will come into communion with each other, while others will not (pp. 252-253).
There is here no question of repugnancy or intercommunion of Forms: the question turns upon the evidence of vision, which informs us that Theætêtus is sitting down and not standing up or flying. If any predicate be affirmed of a subject, contrary to what is included in the definition of that subject, then indeed repugnancy of Forms might be urged.
153 Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B.
What must be assumed in all dialectic discussion.
In all reasoning, nay in all communication by speech, you must assume that your hearer understands the meaning of what is spoken: that he has the feelings of belief and disbelief, and is familiar with those forms of the language whereby such feelings are expressed: that there are certain propositions which he believes — in other words, which he regards as true: that there are certain other propositions which he disbelieves, or regards as false: that he has had experience of the transition from belief to disbelief, and vice versâ — in other words, of having fallen into error and afterwards come to perceive that it was error. These are the mental facts realised in each man and assumed by him to be also realised in his neighbours, when communication takes place by speech. If a man could be supposed to believe nothing, and to disbelieve nothing; — if he had no forms of speech to express his belief, disbelief, affirmation, and denial — no information could be given, no discussion would be possible. Every child has to learn this lesson in infancy; and a tedious lesson it undoubtedly is.154 Antisthenes (who composed several dialogues) and the other 252disputants of whom we are now speaking, must have learnt the lesson as other men have: but they find or make some general theory which forbids them to trust the lesson when learnt. It was in obedience to some such theory that Antisthenes discarded all predication except essential predication, and discarded also the form suited for expressing disbelief — the negative proposition: maintaining, That to contradict was impossible. I know no mode of refuting him, except by showing that his fundamental theory is erroneous.
154 Aristotel. Metaphys. vii. 1043, b. 25. ὥστε ἡ ἀπορία ἣν οἱ Ἀντισθένειοι καὶ οἱ οὕτως ἀπαίδευτοι ἠπόρουν, ἔχει τινὰ καιρόν, &c.
Compare respecting this paradox or θέσις of Antisthenes, the scholia of Alexander on the passage of Aristotle’s Topica above cited, p. 259, b. 15, in Schol. Bekk.
If Antisthenes admitted only identical predications, of course τὸ ἀντιλόγειν became impossible. I have endeavoured to show, in a previous note on this dialogue, that a misconception (occasionally shared even by Plato) of the function of the copula, lay at the bottom of the Antisthenean theory respecting identical predication. Compare Aristotel. Physic. i. p. 185, b. 28, together with the Scholia of Simplikius, pp. 329-330, ed. Bekk., and Plato, Sophistês, p. 245.
Discussion and theorising presuppose belief and disbelief, expressed in set forms of words. They imply predication, which Antisthenes discarded.
Discussion and theorising can only begin when these processes, partly intellectual, partly emotional, have become established and reproducible portions of the train of mental association. As processes, they are common to all men. But though two persons agree in having expressed the feeling of belief, and in expressing that feeling by one form of proposition — also in having the feeling of disbelief, and in expressing it by another form of proposition — yet it does not follow that the propositions which these two believe or disbelieve are the same. How far such is the case must be ascertained by comparison — by appeal to sense, memory, inference from analogy, induction, feeling, consciousness, &c. The ground is now prepared for fruitful debate: for analysing the meaning, often confused and complicated, of propositions: for discriminating the causes, intellectual and emotional, of belief and disbelief, and for determining how far they harmonise in one mind and another: for setting out general rules as to sequence, or inconsistency, or independence, of one belief as compared with another. To a certain extent, the grounds of belief and disbelief in all men, and the grounds of consistency or inconsistency between some beliefs and others, will be found to harmonise: they can be embodied in methodical forms of language, and general rules can be laid down preventing in many cases inadvertence or erroneous combination. It is at this point that Aristotle takes up rational grammar and logic, with most profitable effect. But he is obliged to postulate (what Antisthenes professed to discard) predication, not merely identical, but also accidental as well as essential — together with names and propositions both negative and affirmative.155253 He cannot avoid postulating thus much: though he likewise postulates a great deal more, which ought not to be granted.
155 See the remarks in Aristotel. Metaphys. Γ. 1005, b. 2, 1006, a. 6. He calls it ἀπαιδευσία — ἀπαιδευσία τῶν ἀναλυτικῶν — not to be able to distinguish those matters which can be proved and require to be proved, from those matters which are true, but require no proof and are incapable of being proved. But this distinction has been one of the grand subjects of controversy from his day down to the present day; and between different schools of philosophers, none of whom would allow themselves to deserve the epithet of ἀπαίδευτοι.
Aristotle calls Antisthenes and his followers ἀπαίδευτοι, in the passage cited in the preceding note.
Precepts and examples of logical partition, illustrated in the Sophistês.
The long and varied predicamental series, given in the Sophistês, illustrates the process of logical partition, as Plato conceived it, and the definition of a class-name founded thereupon. You take a logical whole, and you subtract from it part after part until you find the quæsitum isolated from every thing else.156 But you must always divide into two parts (he says) wherever it can be done: dichotomy or bipartition is the true logical partition: should this be impracticable, trichotomy, or division into the smallest attainable number of parts, must be sought for.157 Moreover, the bipartition must be made according to Forms (Ideas, Kinds): the parts which you recognise must be not merely parts, but Forms: every form is a part, but every part is not a form.158 Next, you must draw the line of division as nearly as you can through the middle of the dividendum, so that the parts on both sides may be nearly equal: it is in this way that your partition is most likely to coincide with forms on both sides of the line.159 This is the longest way of proceeding, but the safest. It is a logical mistake to divide into two parts very unequal: you may find a form on one side of the line, but you obtain none on the other side. Thus, it is bad classification to distribute the human race into Hellênes + Barbari: the Barbari are of infinite number and diversity, having no one common form to which the name can apply. It is also improper to distribute Number into the myriad on side, and all other numbers on the other — for a similar reason. You ought to distribute the human 254race into the two forms, Male — Female: and number into the two, Odd — Even.160 So also, you must not divide gregarious creatures into human beings on one side, and animals on the other; because this last term would comprise numerous particulars utterly disparate. Such a classification is suggested only by the personal feeling of man, who prides himself upon his intelligence. But if the classification were framed by any other intelligent species, such as Cranes,161 they would distinguish Cranes on the one side from animals on the other, including Man as one among many disparate particulars under animal.
156 Plato, Politikus, p. 268 D. μέρος ἀεὶ μέρους ἀφαιρουμένους ἐπ’ ἄκρον ἐφικνεῖσθαι τὸ ζητούμενον.
Ueberweg thinks that Aristotle, when he talks of αἱ γεγραμμέναι διαιρέσεις alludes to these logical distributions in the Sophistês and Politikus (Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 153-154).
157 Politik. p. 287 C.
158 Politik. p. 263 C.
159 Politik. pp. 262 B, 265 A. δεῖ μεσοτομεῖν ὡς μάλιστα, &c.
160 Politikus, p. 262 D-E.
161 Politikus, p. 262 D. σεμνῦνον αὑτὸ ἑαυτό, &c.
Recommendation of logical bipartition.
The above-mentioned principle — dichotomy or bipartition into two equal or nearly equal halves, each resting upon a characteristic form — is to be applied as far as it will go. Many different schemes of partition upon this principle may be found, each including forms subordinated one to the other, descending from the more comprehensive to the less comprehensive. It is only when you can find no more parts which are forms, that you must be content to divide into parts which are not forms. Thus after all the characteristic forms, for dividing the human race, have been gone through, they may at last be partitioned into Hellênes and Barbari, Lydians and non-Lydians, Phrygians and non-Phrygians: in which divisions there is no guiding form at all, but only a capricious distribution into fractions with separate names162 — meaning by capricious, a distribution founded on some feeling or circumstance peculiar to the distributor, or shared by him only with a few others; such as the fact, that he is himself a Lydian or a Phrygian, &c.
162 Politikus, p. 262 E. Λυδοὺς δὲ ἢ Φρύγας ἤ τινας ἑτέρους πρὸς ἅπαντας τάττων ἀπόσχιζοι τότε, ἡνίκα ἀποροῖ γένος ἄμα καὶ μέρος εὑρίσκειν ἑκάτερον τῶν σχισθέντων.
Precepts illustrated by the Philêbus.
These precepts in the Sophistês and Politikus, respecting the process of classification, are illustrated by an important passage of the Philêbus:163 wherein Plato tells us that the constitution of things includes the Determinate and the Indeterminate implicated with each other, and requiring study to disengage them. Between the highest One, Form, or Genus — and the lowest array of indefinite particulars — 255there exist a certain number of intermediate Ones or Forms, each including more or fewer of these particulars. The process of study or acquired cognition is brought to bear upon these intermediate Forms: to learn how many there are, and to discriminate them in themselves as well as in their position relative to each other. But many persons do not recognise this: they apprehend only the Highest One, and the Infinite Many, not looking for any thing between: they take up hastily with some extreme and vague generality, below which they know nothing but particulars. With knowledge thus imperfect, you do not get beyond contentious debate. Real, instructive, dialectic requires an understanding of all the intermediate forms. But in descending from the Highest Form downwards, you must proceed as much as possible in the way of bipartition, or if not, then of tripartition, &c.: looking for the smallest number of forms which can be found to cover the whole field. When no more forms can be found, then and not till then, you must be content with nothing better than the countless indeterminate particulars.
163 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 16-17.
The notes of Dr. Badham upon this passage in his edition of the Philêbus, p. 11, should be consulted as a just correction of Stallbaum in regard to πέρας and τῶν ἓν ἐκείνων.
This instructive passage of the Philêbus — while it brings to view a widespread tendency of the human mind, to pass from the largest and vaguest generalities at once into the region of particulars, and to omit the distinctive sub-classes which lie between — illustrates usefully the drift of the Sophistês and Politikus. In these two last dialogues it is the method itself of good logical distribution which Plato wishes to impress upon his readers: the formal part of the process.164 With this view, he not only makes the process intentionally circuitous and diversified, but also selects by preference matters of common sensible experience, though in themselves indifferent, such as the art of weaving,165 &c.
164 He states this expressly, Politik. p. 286 D.
165 Plato, Politik. p. 285 D.
Importance of founding logical Partition on resemblances perceived by sense.
The reasons given for this preference deserve attention. In these common matters (he tells us) the resemblances upon which Forms are founded are perceived by sense, and can be exhibited to every one, so that the form is readily understood and easily discriminated. The general terms can there be explained by reference to sense. But in regard to incorporeal matters, the 256higher and grander topics of discussion, there is no corresponding sensible illustration to consult. These objects can be apprehended only by reason, and described only by general terms. By means of these general terms, we must learn to give and receive rational explanations, and to follow by process of reasoning from one form to another. But this is more difficult, and requires a higher order of mind, where there are no resemblances or illustrations exposed to sense. Accordingly, we select the common sensible objects as an easier preparatory mode of a process substantially the same in both.166
166 Plato, Politik. pp. 285 E — 286 A. τοὺς πλείστους λέληθεν ὅτι τοῖς μὲν τῶν ὄντων ῥᾳδίως καταμαθεῖν αἰσθηταί τινες ὁμοιότητες πεφύκασιν, ἃς οὐδὲν χαλεπὸν δηλοῦν, ὅταν αὐτῶν τις βουλήθῃ τῷ λόγον αἰτοῦντι περὶ του, μὴ μετὰ πραγμάτων ἀλλὰ χωρὶς λόγου ῥᾳδίως ἐνδείξασθαι· τοῖς δ’ αὖ μεγίστοις οὖσι καὶ τιμιωτάτοις οὐκ ἔστιν εἴδωλον οὐδὲν πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους εἰργασμένον ἐναργῶς, οὗ δειχθέντος, &c.
About the εἴδωλον εἰργασμένον ἐναργῶς, which is affirmed in one of these two cases and denied in the other, compare a striking analogy in the Phædrus, p. 250 A-E.
Province of sensible perception — is not so much narrowed by Plato here as it is in the Theætêtus.
This explanation given by Plato, in itself just, deserves to be compared with his view of sensible objects as knowable, and of sense as a source of knowledge. I noticed in a preceding chapter the position which Sokrates is made to lay down in the Theætêtus,167 — That (αἴσθησις) sensible perception reaches only to the separate impressions of sense, and does not apprehend the likeness and other relations between them. I have also noticed the contrast which he establishes elsewhere between Esse and Fieri: i.e., between Ens which alone (according to him) is knowable, and the perpetual flux of Fientia which is not knowable at all, but is only matter of opinion or guess-work. Now in the dialogue before us, the Politikus, there is no such marked antithesis between opinion and knowledge. Nor is the province of αἴσθησις so strictly confined: on the contrary, Plato here considers sensible perception as dealing with Entia, and as appreciating resemblances and other relations between them. It is by an attentive study and comparison of these facts of sense that Forms are detected. “When a man (he says) has first perceived by sense the points of communion between the Many, he must not desist from attentive observation until he has discerned in that communion all the differences which reside in Forms: and when 257he has looked at the multifarious differences which are visible among these Many, he must not rest contented until he has confined all such as are really cognate within one resemblance, tied together by the essence of one common Form.”168
168 Plato, Politikus, p. 285 B. δέον, ὅταν μὲν τὴν τῶν πολλῶν τις πρότερον αἴσθηται κοινωνίαν, μὴ προαφίστασθαι πρὶν ἂν ἐν αὐτῇ τὰς διαφορὰς ἴδῃ πάσας ὁπόσαι περ ἐν εἴδεσι κεῖνται· τὰς δὲ αὖ παντοδαπὰς ἀνομοιότητας, ὅταν ἐν πλήθεσιν ὀφθῶσι, μὴ δυνατὸν εἶναι δυσωπούμενον παύεσθαι, πρὶν ἂν ξύμπαντα τὰ οἰκεῖα ἐντὸς μιᾶς ὁμοιότητος ἕρξας γένους τινὸς οὐσίᾳ περιβάληται.
Comparison of the Sophistês with the Phædrus.
These passages may be compared with others of similar import in the Phædrus.169 Plato here considers the Form, not as an Entity per se separate from and independent of the particulars, but as implicated in and with the particulars: as a result reached by the mind through the attentive observation and comparison of particulars: as corresponding to what is termed in modern language abstraction and generalisation. The self-existent Platonic Ideas do not appear in the Politikus:170 which approximates rather to the Aristotelian doctrine:— that is, the doctrine of the universal, logically distinguishable from its particulars, but having no reality apart from them (χωριστὰ λόγῳ μόνον). But in other dialogues of Plato, the separation between the two is made as complete as possible, especially in the striking passages of the Republic: wherein we read that the facts of sense are a delusive juggle — that we must turn our back upon them and cease to study them — and that we must face about, away from the sensible world, to contemplate Ideas, the separate and unchangeable furniture of the intelligible world — and that the whole process of acquiring true Cognition, consists in passing from the higher to the lower Forms or Ideas, without any misleading illustrations of sense.171 Here, in the Sophistês and Politikus, instead of having the Universal behind our backs when the particulars are before our faces, we see it in and amidst particulars: the illustrations of sense, instead of deluding us, being declared to conduce, 258wherever they can be had, to the clearness and facility of the process.172 Here, as well as in the Phædrus, we find the process of Dialectic emphatically recommended, but described as consisting mainly in logical classification of particulars, ascending and descending divisions and conjunctions, as Plato calls them173 — analysis and synthesis. We are enjoined to divide and analyse the larger genera into their component species until we come to the lowest species which can no longer be divided: also, conversely, to conjoin synthetically the subordinate species until the highest genus is attained, but taking care not to omit any of the intermediate species, in their successive gradations.174 Throughout all this process, as described both in the Phædrus and in the Politikus, the eye is kept fixed upon the constituent individuals. The Form is studied in and among the particulars which it comprehends: the particulars are looked at in groups put together suitably to each comprehending Form. And in both dialogues, marked stress is laid upon the necessity of making the division dichotomous; as well as according to Forms, and not according to fractions which are not legitimate Forms.175 Any other method, we are told, would be like the wandering of a blind man.
169 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249 C, 265 D-E.
170 This remark is made by Stallbaum in his Prolegg. ad Politicum, p. 81; and it is just, though I do not at all concur in his general view of the Politikus, wherein he represents the dialogue as intended to deride the Megaric philosophers.
171 See the Republic, v. pp. 476-479, vi. pp. 508-510-511, and especially the memorable simile about the cave and the shadows within it, in Book vii. pp. 518-519, together with the περιαγωγὴ which he there prescribes — ἀπὸ τοῦ γιγνομένου εἰς τὸ ὄν — and the remarks respecting observations in astronomy and acoustics, p. 529.
172 Compare the passage of the Phædrus (p. 263 A-C) where Plato distinguishes the sensible particulars on which men mostly agree, from the abstractions (Just and Unjust, &c., corresponding with the ἀσώματα, κάλλιστα, μέγιστα, τιμιώτατα, Politikus, p. 286 A) on which they are perpetually dissenting.
173 Plato, Phædrus, p. 266 B. τούτων δὴ ἔγωγε αὐτός τε ἐραστὴς τῶν διαιρέσεων καὶ συναγωγῶν … τοὺς δυναμένους αὐτὸ δρᾷν … καλῶ διαλεκτικούς. The reason which Sokrates gives in the Phædrus for his attachment to dialectics, that he may become competent in discourse and in wisdom (ἵν’ οἷός τε ὦ λέγειν καὶ φρονεῖν), is the same as that which the Eleate assigns in recommendation of the logical exercises in the Politikus.
174 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 271 D, 277 B. ὁρισάμενός τε πάλιν κατ’ εἴδη μέχρι τοῦ ἀτμήτου τέμνειν ἐπιστήθῃ.
175 Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265 E, 270 E. ἐοίκοι ἂν ὥσπερ τυφλοῦ πορείᾳ.
What distinguishes the Sophistês and Politikus from most other dialogues of Plato, is, that the method of logical classification is illustrated by setting the classifier to work upon one or a few given subjects, some in themselves trivial, some important. Though the principles of the method are enunciated in general terms, yet their application to the special example is kept constantly before us; so that we are never permitted, much less required, to divorce the Universal from its Particulars.
Comparison of the Politikus with the Parmenidês.
As a dialogue illustrative of this method, the Politikus (as I 259have already pointed out) may be compared to the Phædrus: in another point of view, we shall find instruction in comparing it to the Parmenidês. This last too is a dialogue illustrative of method, but of a different variety of method.
Variety of method in dialectic research — Diversity of Plato.
What the Sophistês and Politikus are for the enforcement of logical classification, the Parmenidês is for another part of the philosophising process — laborious evolution of all the consequences deducible from the affirmative as well as from the negative of every hypothesis bearing upon the problem. And we note the fact, that both in the Politikus and Parmenidês, Plato manifests the consciousness that readers will complain of him as prolix, tiresome, and wasting ingenuity upon unprofitable matters.176 In the Parmenidês, he even goes the length of saying that the method ought only to be applied before a small and select audience; to most people it would be repulsive, since they cannot be made to comprehend the necessity for such circuitous preparation in order to reach truth.177
176 Plato, Politikus, p. 283 B. πρὸς δὴ τὸ νόσημα τὸ τοιοῦτον, and the long series of questions and answers which follows to show that the prolixity is unavoidable, pp. 285 C, 286 B-E.
177 Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 D-E.
The Politikus by itself, apart from the Sophistês.
I have examined in the preceding sections both that which the Sophistês and Politikus present in common — (viz. a lesson, as well as a partial theory, of the logical processes called Definition and Division) — and that which Sophistês presents apart from the Politikus. I now advert to two matters which we find in the Politikus, but not in the Sophistês. Both of them will be found to illustrate the Platonic mode of philosophising.
Views of Plato on mensuration. Objects measured against each other. Objects compared with a common standard. In each Art, the purpose to be attained is the standard.
I. Plato assumes, that there will be critics who blame the two dialogues as too long and circuitous; excessive in respect of prolixity. In replying to those objectors,1 he enquires, What is meant by long or short — excessive or deficient — great or little? Such expressions denote mensuration or comparison. But there are two varieties of mensuration. We may measure two objects one against the other: the first will be called great or greater, in relation to the second — the second will be called little or less in relation to the first. But we may also proceed in a different way. We may assume some third object as a standard, and then measure both the two against it: declaring the first to be great, greater, excessive, &c., because it exceeds the standard — and the second to be little, less, deficient, &c., because it falls short of the standard. Here then are two judgments or estimations altogether different from each other, and yet both denoted by the same words great and little: two distinct essences (in Platonic261 phrase) of great and little, or of greatness and littleness.2 The art of mensuration has thus two varieties. One includes arithmetic and geometry, where we simply compare numbers and magnitudes with each other, determining the proportions between them: the other assumes some independent standard; above which is excess, and below which is deficiency. This standard passes by different names according to circumstances: the Moderate, Becoming, Seasonable, Proper, Obligatory, &c.3 Such a standard is assumed in every art — in every artistic or scientific course of procedure. Every art has an end to be attained, a result to be produced; which serves as the standard whereby each preparatory step of the artist is measured, and pronounced to be either excessive or deficient, as the case may be.4 Unless such a standard be assumed, you cannot have regular art or science of any kind; neither in grave matters, nor in vulgar matters — neither in the government of society, nor in the weaving of cloth.5
1 The treatment of this subject begins, Politik. p. 283 C, where Plato intimates that the coming remarks are of wide application.
2 Plato, Politik. p. 283 E. δίττας ἄρα ταύτας οὐσίας καὶ κρίσεις τοῦ μεγάλου καὶ τοῦ σμικροῦ θετέον.
3 Plato, Politik. p. 284 E. τὸ μέτριον, τὸ πρέπον, τὸν καιρόν, τὸ δέον, &c.
The reader will find these two varieties of mensuration, here distinguished by Plato, illustrated in the “two distinct modes of appreciating weight” (the Absolute and the Relative), described and explained by Professor Alexander Bain in his work on The Senses and The Intellect, 3rd edition, p. 93. This explanation forms an item in the copious enumeration given by Mr. Bain of the fundamental sensations of our nature.
4 Plato, Politik. p. 283 D. κατὰ τὴν τῆς γενέσεως ἀναγκαίαν οὐσίαν. — 284 A-C. πρὸς τὴν τοῦ μετρίου γένεσιν.
5 Plato, Politik. p. 284 C.
Purpose in the Sophistês and Politikus is — To attain dialectic aptitude. This is the standard of comparison whereby to judge whether the means employed are suitable.
Now what is the end to be attained, by this our enquiry into the definition of a Statesman? It is not so much to solve the particular question started, as to create in ourselves dialectic talent and aptitude, applicable to every thing. This is the standard with reference to which our enquiry must be criticised — not by regard to the easy solution of the particular problem, or to the immediate pleasure of the hearer. And if an objector complains, that our exposition is too long or our subject-matters too vulgar — we shall require him to show that the proposed end might have been attained with fewer words and with more solemn illustrations. If he cannot show this, we shall disregard his censure as inapplicable.6
6 Plato, Politik. pp. 286 D, 287 A. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 36 D.
262Plato’s defence of the Politikus against critics. Necessity that the critic shall declare explicitly what his standard of comparison is.
The above-mentioned distinction between the two varieties of mensuration or comparison, is here given by Plato, simply to serve as a defence against critics who censured the peculiarities of the Politikus. It is not pursued into farther applications. But it deserves notice, not merely as being in itself just and useful, but as illustrating one of the many phases of Plato’s philosophy. It is an exhibition of the relative side of Plato’s character, as contra-distinguished from the absolute or dogmatical: for both the two, opposed as they are to each other, co-exist in him and manifest themselves alternately. It conveys a valuable lesson as to the apportionment of praise and blame. “When you blame me” (he says to his critics), “you must have in your mind some standard of comparison upon which the blame turns. Declare what that standard is:— what you mean by the Proper, Becoming, Moderate, &c. There is such a standard, and a different one, in every different Art. What is it here? You must choose this standard, explain what it is, and adhere to it when you undertake to praise or blame.” Such an enunciation (thoroughly Sokratic7) of the principle of relativity, brings before critics the fact — which is very apt to be forgotten — that there must exist in the mind of each some standard of comparison, varying or unvarying, well or ill understood: while at the same time it enforces upon them the necessity of determining clearly for themselves, and announcing explicitly to others, what that standard is. Otherwise the propositions, affirming comparison, can have no uniform meaning with any two debaters, nor even with the same man at different times.
7 Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 8, 7, iii. 10, 12.
Comparison of Politikus with Protagoras, Phædon, Philêbus, &c.
To this relative side of Plato’s mind belong his frequent commendations of measurement, numbering, computation, comparison, &c. In the Protagoras,8 he describes the art of measurement as the main guide and protector of human life: it is there treated as applicable to the correct estimation of pleasures and pains. In the Phædon,9 it is again extolled: though the elements to be calculated are there specified differently. In the Philêbus, the 263antithesis of Πέρας and Ἄπειρον (the Determinant or Limit, and the Indeterminate or Infinite) is one of the leading points of the dialogue. We read in it moreover a bipartite division of Mensuration or Arithmetic,10 which is quite different from the bipartite division just cited out of the Politikus. Plato divides it there (in the Philêbus) into arithmetic for theorists, and arithmetic for practical life: besides which, he distinguishes the various practical arts as being more or less accurate, according as they have more or less of measurement and sensible comparison in them. Thus the art of the carpenter, who employs measuring instruments such as the line and rule — is more accurate than that of the physician, general, pilot, husbandman, &c., who have no similar means of measuring. This is a classification quite different from what we find in the Politikus; yet tending in like manner to illustrate the relative point of view, and its frequent manifestation in Plato. In the Politikus, he seeks to refer praise and blame to a standard of measurement, instead of suffering them to be mere outbursts of sentiment unsystematic and unanalysed.
8 Plato, Protagor. p. 357 B.
9 Plato, Phædon, p. 69 B.
10 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 25 C, 27 D, 57. δύο ἀριθμητικαὶ καὶ δύο μετρητικαί … τὴν διδυμότητα ἔχουσαι ταύτην, ὀνόματος δὲ ἑνὸς κεκοινωμέναι.
This same bipartition, however, is noticed in another passage of the Politikus, p. 258 D-E.
Definition of the statesman, or Governor. Scientific competence. Sokratic point of departure. Procedure of Plato in subdividing.
II. The second peculiarity to which I call attention in the Politikus, is the definition or description there furnished of the character so-called: that is, the Statesman, the King, Governor, Director, or Manager, of human society. At the outset of the dialogue, this person is declared to belong to the Genus — Men of Science or of Art (the two words are faintly distinguished in Plato). It is possession of the proper amount of scientific competence which constitutes a man a Governor: and which entitles him to be so named, whether he actually governs any society or not.11 (This point of departure is purely Sokratic: for in the Memorabilia of Xenophon,12 Sokrates makes the same express declaration.) The King knows, but does not act: yet he is not a simple critic or spectator — he gives orders: and those orders are not suggested 264to him by any one else (as in the case of the Herald, the Keleustês, and others),13 but spring from his own bosom and his own knowledge. From thence Plato carries us through a series of descending logical subdivisions, until we come to define the King as the shepherd and feeder of the flock of human beings.14 But many other persons, besides the King, are concerned in feeding the human flock, and will therefore be included in this definition: which is thus proved to be too large, and to require farther qualification and restriction.15 Moreover the feeding of the human flock belongs to others rather than to the King. He tends and takes care of the flock, but does not feed it: hence the definition is, in this way also, unsuitable.16
11 Plato, Politikus, pp. 258 B, 259 B.
12 Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 9, 10.
13 Plato, Politik. p. 260 C-E. τὸ μὲν τῶν βασιλέων γένος εἰς τὴν αὐτεπιτακτικὴν θέντες, &c.
14 Plato, Politik. pp. 267 B, 268 C.
15 Plato, Politik. p. 268.
16 Plato, Politik. p. 275 D-E.
King during the Saturnian period, was of a breed superior to the people — not so any longer.
Our mistake (says Plato) was of this kind. In describing the King or Governor, we have unconsciously fallen upon the description of the King, such as he was in the Saturnian period or under the presidency of Kronus; and not such as he is in the present period. Under the presidency of Kronus, each human flock was tended and governed by a divine King or God, who managed every thing for it, keeping it happy and comfortable by his own unassisted agency: the entire Kosmos too, with its revolutions, was at that time under the immediate guidance of a divine mover. But in the present period this divine superintendance is withdrawn: both the entire Kosmos, and each separate portion of it, is left to its own movement, full of imperfection and irregularity. Each human flock is now tended not by a divine King, as it was then; but by a human King, much less perfect, less effective, less exalted above the constituent members. Now the definition which we fell upon (says Plato) suited the King of the Saturnian period; but does not suit the King of the present or human period.17 At the first commencement of the present period, the human flock, left to themselves without superintendance from the Gods, suffered great misery: but various presents from some Gods (fire from Prometheus, arts from Hephæstus and Athênê, plants and seeds from Dêmêtêr) 265rendered their condition more endurable, though still full of difficulty and hardship.18
17 Plato, Politik. pp. 274 A-275 B.
18 Plato, Politik. p. 274 C.
Plato embodies these last-mentioned comparisons in an elaborate and remarkable mythe — theological, cosmical, zoological, social — which occupies six pages of the Politikus (268 D — 274 E). Meiners and Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 273-275) point out that the theology of Plato in this fable differs much from what we read in the Phædon, Republic, &c.: and Socher insists upon such discrepancy as one of his arguments against the genuineness of the Politikus. I have already observed that I do not concur in his inference. I do not expect uniformity of doctrine in the various Platonic dialogues: more especially on a subject so much beyond experience, and so completely open to the conjectures of a rich imagination, as theology and cosmogony. In the Sophistês, pp. 242-243, Plato had talked in a sort of contemptuous tone about those who dealt with philosophical doctrine in the way of mythe, as a proceeding fit only for boys: (not unlike the manner of Aristotle, when he speaks of οἱ μυθικῶς σοφιζόμενοι — τὰ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς, Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 15-18, Λ. 1071, b. 27): while here, in the Politikus, he dilates upon what he admits to be a boyish mythe, partly because a certain portion of it may be made available in illustration of his philosophical purpose, partly because he wishes to enliven the monotony of a long-continued classification. Again, in the Phædrus (p. 229 C), the Platonic Sokrates is made to censure as futile any attempt to find rational explanations for the popular legends (σοφίζεσθαι): but here, in the Politikus, the Eleate expressly adapts his theory about the backward and forward rotation of the Kosmos to the explanation of the popular legends — about earthborn men, and about Helios turning back his chariot, in order to escape the shocking spectacle of the Thyestean banquet: which legends, when so explained, Plato declares that people would be wrong to disbelieve (οἱ νῦν ὑπὸ πολλῶν οὐκ ὀρθῶς ἀπιστοῦνται, pp. 271 B, 268 A, B, C).
The differences of doctrine and handling, between the various Platonic dialogues, are facts not less worthy to be noted than the similarities. Here, in the mythe of the Politikus, we find a peculiar theological view, and a very remarkable cosmical doctrine — the rotation and counter-rotation of the Kosmos. The Kosmos is here declared (as in the Timæus) to be a living and intelligent Subject; having received these mental gifts from its Demiurgus. But the Kosmos is also Body as well as Mind; so that it is incapable of that constant sameness or uniformity which belongs to the Divine: Body having in itself an incurable principle of disorder (p. 269 D). The Kosmos is perpetually in movement; but its movement is only rotatory or circular in the same place: which is the nearest approximation to uniformity of movement. It does not always revolve by itself; nor is it always made to revolve by the Divine Steersman (κυβερνήτης, p. 272 E), but alternately the one and the other. This Divine Steersman presides over its rotation for a certain time, and along with him many subordinate Deities or Dæmons; until an epoch fixed by some unassigned destiny has been reached (p. 272 E). Then the Steersman withdraws from the process to his own watch-tower (εἰς τὴν αὐτοῦ περιωπὴν), and the other Deities along with him. The Kosmos, being left to itself, ceases to revolve in the same direction, and begins its counter rotation; revolving by itself backwards, or in the contrary direction. By such violent revulsion many of the living inhabitants of the Kosmos are destroyed. The past phenomena are successively reproduced, but in an inverse direction — the old men go back to maturity, boyhood, infancy, death: the dead are born again, and pass through their lives backwards from age to infancy. Yet the counter-rotation brings about not simply an inverted reproduction of past phenomena, but new phenomena also: for we are told that the Kosmos, when left to itself, did tolerably well as long as it remembered the Steersman’s direction, but after a certain interval became forgetful and went wrong, generating mischief and evil: so that the Steersman was at last forced to put his hand again to the work, and to impart to it a fresh rotation in his own direction (p. 273 B-D). The Kosmos never goes satisfactorily, except when the hand of the Steersman is upon it. But we are informed that there are varieties of this divine administration: one named the period of Kronus or Saturn; another that of Zeus, &c. The present is the period of Zeus (p. 272 B). The period of Kronus was one of spontaneous and universal abundance, under the immediate superintendence of the Deity. This Divine Ruler was infinitely superior to the subjects whom he ruled, and left nothing to be desired. But now, in the present period of Zeus, men are under human rule, and not divine: there is no such marked superiority of the Ruler to his subjects. The human race has been on the point of becoming extinct; and has only been saved by beneficent presents from various Gods — fire from Prometheus, handicraft from Hephæstus and Athênê (pp. 272 C, 274 C).
All this prodigious bulk of mythical invention (θαυμαστὸς ὄγκος, p. 277 B) seems to be introduced here for the purpose of illustrating the comparative ratio between the Ruler and his subjects; and the material difference in this respect between King and Shepherd — between the government of mankind by kings, and that of flocks and herds by the herdsman. In attempting to define the True and Genuine Ruler (he lays it down), we can expect nothing better than a man among other men; but distinguished above his fellows, so far as wisdom, dialectic, and artistic accomplishment, can confer superiority.
There is much in this copious mythe which I cannot clearly understand or put together: nor do I derive much profit from the long exposition of it given by Stallbaum (Proleg. ad Polit. pp. 100-128). We cannot fairly demand either harmonious consistency or profound meaning in the different features of an ingenious fiction. The hypothesis of a counter-rotation of the Kosmos (spinning like a top, ἐπὶ σμικροτάτου βαῖνον ποδὸς ἰέναι, p. 270 A), with an inverted reproduction of past phenomena, appears to me one of the most singular fancies in the Greek mythology. I cannot tell how far it may have been suggested by any such statement as that of the Egyptian priests (Herodot. ii. 142). I can only repeat the observation made by Phædrus to the Platonic Sokrates, in the dialogue Phædrus (p. 275 A): “You, Sokrates, construct easily enough Egyptian tales, or any other tales that you please”.
266Distinction of causes Principal and Causes Auxiliary. The King is the only Principal Cause, but his auxiliaries pretend to be principal also.
The human King, whom we shall now attempt to define, tends the human flock; but there are other persons also who assist in doing so, and without whose concurrent agency he could not attain his purpose. We may illustrate this by comparing with him the weaver of woollen garments: who requires many subsidiary and preparatory processes, performed by agents different from himself (such as the carder of wool, the spinner, and the manufacturer of the instruments for working the loom) to enable him to finish his work. In all matters, important as well as vulgar, two separate processes or arts, or contributory persons, are to be distinguished: Causes and Co-Causes, i.e., Principal Causes, and Concurrent, Auxiliary, Co-efficient, Subordinate, Causes.19 The King, like the Weaver, is distinguishable, from other agents helping towards the same end, as a Principal Cause from Auxiliary Causes.20 The Causes auxiliary to the King, in so far as they are inanimate, may be distributed roughly under seven heads (bipartition being here 267impracticable) — Implements, Vessels, Vehicles, Protections surrounding the Body, Recreative Objects, Raw Material of every variety, Nutritive Substances, &c.21 Other auxiliary Causes are, the domestic cattle, bought slaves, and all descriptions of serving persons; being often freemen who undertake, for hire, servile occupations and low trades. There are moreover ministerial officers of a higher grade: heralds, scribes, interpreters, prophets, priests, Sophists, rhetors; and a great diversity of other functionaries, military, judicial, forensic, dramatic, &c., who manage different departments of public affairs, often changing from one post to another.22 But these higher ministerial functionaries differ from the lower in this — That they pretend to be themselves the directors and managers of the government, not recognising the genuine King: whereas the truth is, that they are only ministerial and subordinate to him:— they are Concurrent Causes, while he is the only real or principal Cause.23
19 Plato, Politik. p. 281 D-E.
20 Plato, Politik. p. 287 D.
21 Plato, Politik. pp. 288-289.
22 Plato, Politik. pp. 290-291 B. Plato describes these men by comparing them to lions, centaurs, satyrs, wild beasts, feeble and crafty. This is not very intelligible, but I presume that it alludes to the variety of functions, and the frequent alternation of functions. I cannot think that such an obscure jest deserves Stallbaum’s compliment:— “Ceterum lepidissima hæc est istorum hominum irrisio, qui cum leonibus, Centauris, Satyris, aliisque monstris comparantur”. Plato repeats it p. 303 C.
23 Plato, Politik. p. 291 C.
Plato does not admit the received classification of government. It does not touch the point upon which all true distinction ought to be founded — Scientific or Unscientific.
Our main object now (says the Eleate) is to distinguish this Real Cause from the subordinate Causes which are mistaken for its partners and equals:— the genuine and intelligent Governor, from those who pretend falsely to be governors, and are supposed often to be such.24 We cannot admit the lines of distinction, which are commonly drawn between different governments, as truly logical: at least they are only subordinate to ours. Most men distinguish the government of one, or a few, or the many: government of the poor or of the rich: government according to law, or without law:— by consent, or by force. The different names current, monarchy or despotism, aristocracy, or oligarchy, &c., correspond to these definitions. But we hold that these definitions do not touch the true characteristic: which is to be found in Science, Knowledge, Intelligence, Art or scientific268 procedure, &c., and in nothing else. The true government of mankind is, the scientific or artistic: whether it be carried on by one, or a few, or many — whether by poor or rich, by force or consent — whether according to law, or without law.25 This is the right and essential characteristic of genuine government:— it is government conducted according to science or art. All governments not conforming to this type are only spurious counterfeits and approaches to it, more or less defective or objectionable.26
24 Plato, Politik. p. 292 D.
25 Plato, Politik. pp. 292 C, 293 B.
26 Plato, Politik. p. 293 E. ταύτην τότε καὶ κατὰ τοὺς τοιούτους ὅρους ἡμῖν μόνην ὀρθὴν πολιτείαν εἶναι ῥητέον, ὅσας δὲ ἄλλας λέγομεν, οὐ γνησίας οὐδ’ ὄντως οὔσας λεκτέον.
Unscientific governments are counterfeits. Government by any numerous body must be counterfeit. Government by the one scientific man is the true government.
Looking to the characteristic here suggested, the Eleate pronounces that all numerous and popular governments must be counterfeits. There can be no genuine government except by One man, or by a very small number at most. True science or art is not attainable by many persons, whether rich or poor: scarcely even by a few, and probably by One alone; since the science or art of governing men is more difficult than any other science or art.27 But the government of this One is the only true and right government, whether he proclaims laws or governs without law, whether he employs severity or mildness — provided only he adheres to his art, and achieves its purpose, the good and improvement of the governed.28 He is like the true physician, who cuts and burns patients, when his art commands, for the purpose of curing them. He will not be disposed to fetter himself by fixed general laws: for the variety of situations and the fluctuation of circumstances, is so perpetual, that no law can possibly fit all cases. He will recognise no other law but his art.29 If he lays down any general formula or law, it will only be from necessity, because he cannot be always at hand to watch and direct each individual case: but he will not hesitate to depart from his own formula whenever Art enjoins it.30 That alone is base, evil, unjust, which he with his political Science or Art declares to be so. If in any particular case he departs from his 269own declaration, and orders such a thing to be done — the public have no right to complain that he does injustice. No patient can complain of his physician, if the latter, acting upon the counsels of his art, disregards a therapeutic formula.31 All the acts of the true Governor are right, whether according or contrary to law, so long as he conducts himself with Art and Intelligence — aiming exclusively to preserve the people, and to render them better instead of worse.32
27 Plato, Politik. pp. 292 D-E, 297 B, 300 E.
28 Plato, Politik. p. 293 B-E.
29 Plato, Politik. p. 297 A. οὐ γράμματα τιθεὶς ἀλλὰ τὴν τέχνην νόμον παρεχόμενος.
30 Plato, Politik. pp. 300 C, 295 B-C.
31 Plato, Politik. p. 296 C-D.
32 Plato, Politik. p. 297 A.
Fixed laws, limiting the scientific Governor, are mischievous, as they would be for the physician and the steersman. Absurdity of determining medical practice by laws, and presuming every one to know it.
How mischievous would it be (continues the Eleate) if we prescribed by fixed laws how the physician or the steersman should practise their respective arts: if we held them bound to peremptory rules, punishing them whenever they departed from those rules, and making them accountable before the Dikastery, when any one accused them of doing so: if we consecrated these rules and dogmas, forbidding all criticism or censure upon them, and putting to death the free enquirer as a dreaming, prosy, Sophist, corrupting the youth and inciting lawless discontent!33 How absurd, if we pretended that every citizen did know, or might or ought to know, these two arts; because the matters concerning them were enrolled in the laws, and because no one ought to be wiser than the laws?34 Who would think of imposing any such fetters on other arts, such as those of the general, the painter, the husbandman, the carpenter, the prophet, the cattle-dealer? To impose them would be to render life, hard as it is even now, altogether intolerable. Yet these are the trammels under which in actual cities the political Art is exercised.35
33 Plato, Politik. pp. 298-299. 299 B: Καὶ τοίνυν ἔτι δεήσει θέσθαι νόμον ἐπὶ πᾶσι τούτοις, ἄν τις κυβερνητικὴν καὶ τὸ ναυτικὸν ἢ τὸ ὑγιεινὸν καὶ ἰατρικῆς ἀληθείαν … ζητῶν φαίνηται παρὰ τὰ γράμματα καὶ σοφιζόμενος ὁτιοῦν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, πρῶτον μὲν μήτε ἰατρικὸν αὐτὸν μήτε κυβερνητικὸν ὀνομάζειν, ἀλλὰ μετεωρόλογον ἀδολέσχην τινὰ σοφιστὴν εἶθ’ ὡς διαφθείροντα ἄλλους νεωτέρους καὶ ἀναπείθοντα ἐπιτίθεσθαι κυβερνητικῇ, &c.
34 Plato, Polit. p. 299 C. ἂν δὲ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὰ γεγραμμένα δόξῃ πείθειν εἴτε νέους εἴτε πρεσβύτας, κολάζειν τοῖς ἐσχάτοις. Οὐδὲν γὰρ δεῖν τῶν νόμων, εἶναι σοφώτερον· οὐδένα γὰρ ἀγνοεῖν τό τε ἰατρικὸν καὶ τὸ ὑγιεινὸν οὐδὲ τὸ κυβερνητικὸν καὶ ναυτικόν· ἐξεῖναι γὰρ τῷ βουλομένῳ μανθάνειν γεγραμμένα καὶ πάτρια ἔθη κείμενα.
35 Plato, Polit. p. 299 D-E. ὥστε ὁ βίος, ὡν καὶ νῦν χαλεπός, εἰς τὸν χρόνον ἐκεῖνον ἀβίωτος γίγνοιτ’ ἂν τὸ παράπαν.
Government by fixed laws is better than lawless government by unscientific men, but worse than lawless government by scientific men. It is a second-best.
Such are the mischiefs inseparable, in greater or less degree, 270from fixed and peremptory laws. Yet grave as these mischiefs are, there are others yet graver, which such laws tend to obviate. If the magistrate appointed to guard and enforce the laws, ventures to break or contravene them, simulating, but not really possessing, the Art or Science of the genuine Ruler — he will make matters far worse. The laws at any rate are such as the citizens have been accustomed to, and such as give a certain measure of satisfaction. But the arbitrary rule of this violent and unscientific Governor is a tyranny:36 which is greatly worse than the laws. Fixed laws are thus a second-best:37 assuming that you cannot obtain a true scientific, artistic, Governor. If such a man could be obtained, men would be delighted to live under him. But they despair of ever seeing such a character, and they therefore cling to fixed laws, in spite of the numerous concomitant mischiefs.38 These mischiefs are indeed so serious, that when we look at actual cities, we are astonished how they get on under such a system; and we cannot but feel how firm and deeply rooted a city naturally is.39
36 Plato, Politik. p. 300 A-B, 301 B-C.
37 Plato, Politik. p. 300 C. δεύτερος πλοῦς.
38 Plato, Politik. p. 301 D.
39 Plato, Polit. p. 302 A. ἢ ἐκεῖνο ἡμῖν θαυμαστέον μᾶλλον, ὡς ἰσχυρόν τι πόλις ἐστὶ φύσει;
Comparison of unscientific governments. The one despot is the worse. Democracy is the least bad, because it is least of a government.
We see therefore (the Eleate goes on) that there is no true polity — nothing which deserves the name of a genuine political society — except the government of one chief, scientific or artistic. With him laws are superfluous and even inconvenient. All other polities are counterfeits: factions and cabals, rather than governments:40 delusions carried on by tricksters and conjurers. But among these other polities or sham polities, there is a material difference as to greater or less badness: and the difference turns upon the presence or absence of good laws. Thus, the single-headed government, called monarchy (assuming the Prince not to be a man of science or art) is the 271best of all the sham-polities, if the Prince rules along with and in observance of known good laws: but it is the worst of them all, if he rules without such laws, as a despot or tyrant. Oligarchy, or the government of a few — if under good laws, is less good than that of the Prince under the same circumstances — if without such laws, is less bad than that of the despot. Lastly, the government of the many is less good under the one supposition — and less bad under the other. It is less effective, either for good or for evil. It is in fact less of a government: the administrative force being lost by dissipation among many hands for short intervals; and more free play being thus left to individuals. Accordingly, assuming the absence of laws, democracy is the least bad or most tolerable of the six varieties of sham-polity. Assuming the presence of laws, it is the worst of them.41
40 Plato, Polit. pp. 302-303 B-C. τοὺς κοινωνοὺς τούτων τῶν πολιτειῶν πασῶν, πλὴν τῆς ἐπιστήμονος, ἀφαιρετέον ὡς οὐκ ὄντας πολιτικοὺς ἀλλὰ στασιαστικούς, καὶ εἰδώλων μεγίστων προστάτας ὄντας καὶ αὐτοὺς εἶναι τοιούτους, μεγίστους δὲ ὄντας μιμητὰς καὶ γόητας μεγίστους γίγνεσθαι τῶν σοφιστῶν σοφιστάς.
41 Plato, Polit. p. 302 B. τίς δὴ τῶν οὐκ ὀρθῶν πολιτειῶν τούτων ἥκιστα χαλεπὴ συζῆν, πασῶν χαλεπῶν οὐσῶν, καὶ τίς βαρυτάτη; Also p. 303 A-B.
The true governor distinguished from the General, the Rhetor, &c. They are all properly his subordinates and auxiliaries.
We have thus severed the genuine scientific Governor from the unworthy counterfeits by whom his agency is mimicked in actual society. But we have still to sever him from other worthier functionaries, analogous and cognate, with whom he co-operates; and to show by what characteristic he is distinguished from persons such as the General, the Judge, the Rhetor or Persuader to good and just objects. The distinction is, that all these functions, however honourable functions, are still nevertheless essentially subordinate and ministerial, assuming a sovereign guidance from some other quarter to direct them. Thus the General may, by his strategic art, carry on war effectively; but he must be directed when, and against whom, war is to be carried on. The Judge may decide quarrels without fear, antipathy, or favour: but the general rules for deciding them must be prescribed to him by a higher authority. So too the Rhetor may apply his art well, to persuade people, or to work upon their emotions, without teaching them: but he must be told by some one else, when and on what occasions persuasion is suitable, and when force must be employed instead of it.42 Each of these functionaries must learn, what his own art 272will not teach him, the proper seasons, persons, and limitations, among and under which his art is to be applied. To furnish such guidance is the characteristic privilege and duty of the scientific chief, for which he alone is competent. He does not act himself, but he originates, directs, and controls, all the real agents and agencies. Without him, none of them are available or beneficial towards their special ends. He alone can judge of their comparative value, and of the proper reasons for invoking or restraining their interference.43
42 Plato, Polit. pp. 304-305.
43 Plato, Polit. p. 305 D. τὴν γὰρ ὄντως οὖσαν βασιλικὴν οὐκ αὐτὴν δεῖ πράττειν, ἀλλ’ ἄρχειν τῶν δυναμένων πράττειν, γιγνώσκουσαν τὴν ἀρχήν τε καὶ ὁρμὴν τῶν μεγίστων ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν ἐγκαιρίας τε πέρι καὶ ἀκαιρίας, τὰς δ’ ἄλλας τὰ προσταχθέντα δρᾷν.
What the scientific Governor will do. He will aim at the formation of virtuous citizens. He will weave together the energetic virtues with the gentle virtues. Natural dissidence between them.
The great scientific Governor being thus defined, and logically distinguished from all others liable to be confounded with him, Plato concludes by a brief statement what his principal functions are. He will aim at ensuring among his citizens the most virtuous characters and the best ethical combinations. Like the weaver (to whom he has been already assimilated) he will put together the great political web or tissue of improved citizenship, intertwining the strong and energetic virtues (the warp) with the yielding and gentler virtues (the woof).44 Both these dispositions are parts or branches of virtue; but there is a natural variance or repulsion between them.45 Each of them is good, in proper measure and season: each of them is bad, out of measure and season. The combination of both, in due proportion, is indispensable to form the virtuous citizen: and that combination it is the business of the scientific Governor to form and uphold. It is with a view to this end that he must set at work all the agents of teaching and education, and must even interfere to arrange the intermarriages of the citizens; not allowing the strong and courageous families to form alliance with each other, lest the breed should in time become too violent — nor the gentle and quiet families to do the like, lest the offspring should degenerate into stupidity.46
44 Plato, Polit. pp. 306-307. τὴν βασιλικὴν συμπλοκήν.
45 Plato, Polit. pp. 306 A-B, 307 C, 308 B.
46 Plato, Polit. pp. 308-309-310.
If a man sins by excess of the energetic element, he is to be killed or banished: if of the gentle, he is to be made a slave. The Governor must keep up in the minds of the citizens an unanimous standard of ethical orthodoxy.
All persons, who, unable to take on this conjunction, sin by an 273excess of the strong element, manifesting injustice or irreligion — must be banished or put to death:47 all who sin by excess of the feebler element, exhibiting stupidity and meanness, must be degraded into slavery. Above all things, the scientific Governor must himself dictate, and must implant and maintain, in the minds of all his citizens, an authoritative standard of orthodox sentiment respecting what is just, honourable, good — and the contrary.48 If this be ensured, and if the virtues naturally discordant be attempered with proper care, he will make sure of a friendly and harmonious community, enjoying as much happiness as human affairs admit.49
47 Plato, Polit. p. 309 A.
48 Plato, Polit. pp. 309 C, 310 E.
49 Plato, Polit. p. 311 B-C.
Remarks — Sokratic Ideal — Title to govern mankind derived exclusively from scientific superiority in an individual person.
I have thus given a brief abridgment of the main purpose of the Politikus, and of the definition which Plato gives of the True Governor and his function. I proceed to make a few remarks upon it.
Plato’s theory of government is founded upon the supposition of perfect knowledge — scientific or artistic intelligence — in the person of the Governor: a partial approach, through teaching and acquired knowledge, to that immense superiority of the Governor over the Governed, which existed in the Saturnian period. It is this, and this alone, which constitutes, in his estimation, the title to govern mankind. The Governor does not himself act: he directs the agency of others: and the directions are dictated by his knowledge. I have already observed that Sokrates had himself enunciated the doctrine — Superior scientific competence (the special privilege of a professor or an artist) is the only legitimate title to govern.
Different ways in which this ideal is worked out by Plato and Xenophon. The man of speculation and the man of action.
From Sokrates the idea passed both to Plato and to Xenophon: and the contrast between the two is shown forcibly by the different way in which they deal with it. Xenophon has worked it out on a large 274scale, in the Cyropædia — on a small scale, in the Œconomicus. Cyrus in the former, Ischomachus in the latter, knows better than any one else what is to be done, and gives orders accordingly. But both the one and the other are also foremost in action, setting example as well as giving orders to others. Now Plato, while developing the same idea, draws a marked line of distinction between Science and Practice:— between direction and execution.50 His scientific Governor does not act at all, but he gives orders to all the different men of action, and he is the only person who knows on what occasions and within what limits each agent should put forth his own special aptitude. Herein we discern one of the distinctions between these two viri Socratici: Xenophon, the soldier and man of action — Plato, the speculative philosopher. Xenophon conceives the conditions of the True Governor in a larger way than Plato, for he includes among them the forward and energetic qualities requisite for acting on the feelings of the subject Many, and for disposing them to follow orders with cheerfulness and zeal:51 whereas Plato makes abstraction of this part of the conditions, and postulates obedience on the part of the many as an item in his fundamental hypothesis. Indeed he perpetually presents us with the comparison of the physician, who cuts and burns for the purpose of ultimate cure. Plato either neglects, or assumes as a matter of course, the sentiments of the persons commanded, or the conditions of willing obedience; while Xenophon dwells upon the maintenance of such sentiments as one of the capital difficulties in the problem of government. And we perceive a marked contrast between the unskilful proceedings of Plato, when he visited Dionysius II. at Syracuse, illustrating his (Plato’s) inaptitude for dealing with a real situation — and the judicious management of Xenophon, when acting as one of the leaders of the Cyreian army under circumstances alike unexpected and perilous.
50 Plato, Polit. pp. 259 C-D, 305 D.
51 See the preface to Xenophon’s Cyropædia; also Cyropæd. i. 6, 20; and his Œcon. c. 21, and c. 13, 4, where we see the difference between the Xenophontic idea, and the Platonic idea, of ὁ ἀρχικὸς ἀνθρώπων, οἱ θεῖοι καὶ ἀγαθοὶ καὶ ἐπιστήμονες ἄρχοντες.
The theory in the Politikus is the contradiction to that theory which is assigned to Protagoras in the Protagoras.
Plato here sets forth the business of governing as a special art, 275analogous to the special art of the weaver, the steersman, the physician. Now in each special art, the requisite knowledge and competence is possessed only by the one or few artists who practise them. The knowledge possessed by such one or few, suffices for all the remaining community; who benefit by it, but are altogether ignorant on the matter, and follow orders blindfold. As this one Artist is the only competent person for the task, so he is assumed quâ Artist, to be infallible in the performance of the task — never to go wrong, nor to abuse his power, nor to aim at any collateral end.52 Such is Plato’s theory of government in the Politikus. But if we turn to the Protagoras, we shall find this very theory of government explicitly denied, and a counter-theory affirmed, in the discourse put into the mouth of Protagoras. That Sophist is made to distinguish the political or social art, upon which the possibility of constituting or keeping up human society depends, from all other arts (manual, useful, linguistic), by this express characteristic: All other arts were distributed among mankind in such manner, that knowledge and skill were confined to an exclusive few, whose knowledge, each in his own special department, sufficed for the service of all the rest, not favoured with the like knowledge — but the political or social art was distributed (by order of Zeus to Hermes) on a principle quite opposite. It was imparted to every member of society without exception. If it had been granted only to a few, and not to all, society could not have held together. Justice and the sense of shame (Temperance or Moderation), which are the bonds of the city and the fruits of the political art, must be instilled into every man. Whoever cannot take on and appropriate them (Zeus proclaims it as his law), must be slain as a nuisance or distemper of the city.53
52 Compare Plato, Republic, i. pp. 340-341.
53 Plato, Protag. pp. 322, 325 A.
Points of the Protagorean theory — rests upon common sentiment.
Such we have seen to be the theory enunciated by the Platonic Protagoras (in the dialogue so-called) respecting the political or social art. It pervades all the members of society, as a common and universal attribute, though each man has his own specialty besides. It was thus distributed at the outset by Zeus. It stands 276embodied in the laws and in the unwritten customs, so that one man may know it as well as another. Every man makes open profession of knowing and possessing it:— which he cannot do with any special art. Fathers enforce it on their children by rewards and punishments, schoolmasters and musicians impart it by extracts from the poets: the old teach it to the young: nay every man, far from desiring to monopolise it for himself, is forward in teaching it to others: for it is the interest of every one that his neighbour should learn it. Since every one thus teaches it, there are no professed or special teachers: yet there are still some few who can teach it a little better than others — and among those few I (says Protagoras) am one.54
54 Plato, Protag. pp. 327-328.
Counter-Theory in the Politikus. The exigencies of the Eleate in the Politikus go much farther than those of Protagoras.
Whoever compares the doctrine of the Politikus55 with the portion of the Protagoras56 to which I have just referred, will see that they stand to each other as theory and counter-theory. The theory in the Politikus sets aside (intentionally or not) that in the Protagoras. The Platonic Protagoras, spokesman of King Nomos, represents common sense, sentiment, sympathies and antipathies, written laws, and traditional customs known to all as well as reverenced by the majority: the Platonic Politikus repudiates all these, as preposterous fetters to the single Governor who monopolises all political science and art. Let us add too, that the Platonic Protagoras (whom many commentators teach us to regard as a person of exorbitant arrogance and pretensions) is a very modest man compared to the Eleate in the Platonic Politikus. For the former accepts all the written laws and respected customs around him, — admits that most others know them, in the main, as well as he, — and only professes to have acquired a certain amount of superior skill in impressing them upon others: whereas the latter sets them all aside, claims for himself an uncontradicted monopoly of social science and art, and postulates an extent of blind submission from society such as has never yet been yielded in history.
55 Plato, Politik. p. 301 E.
The portion of this dialogue, from p. 296 to p. 302, enunciates the doctrine of which I have given a brief abstract in the text.
56 Plato, Protag. pp. 321-328.
The Eleate complains that under the Protagorean theory no adverse criticism is allowed. The dissenter is either condemned to silence or punished.
The Eleate here complains of it as a hardship, that amidst a 277community actually established and existing, directed by written laws, traditional customs and common sentiment (the Protagorean model), — he, the political artist, is interdicted from adverse criticism and outspoken censure of the legal and consecrated doctrines. If he talks as one wiser than the laws, or impugns them as he thinks that they deserve, or theorises in his own way respecting the doctrines which they sanction — he is either laughed to scorn as a visionary, prosing, Sophist — or hated, and perhaps punished, as a corrupter of youth; as a person who brings the institutions of society into contempt, and encourages violators of the law.57
57 Plato, Politik. p. 299 B. ἂν τις . . . ζητῶν φαίνηται παρὰ τὰ γράμματα καὶ σοφιζόμενος ὁτιοῦν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα.
In the seventh book of Republic (p. 520 B), Plato describes the position of the philosopher in an established society, springing up by his own internal force, against the opposition of all the social influences — αὐτόματοι γὰρ ἐμφύονται ἀκούσης τῆς ἐν ἑκάστῃ (πόλει) πολιτείας, &c.
Intolerance at Athens, not so great as elsewhere. Plato complains of the assumption of infallibility in existing societies, but exacts it severely in that which he himself constructs.
The reproach implied in these phrases of Plato is doubtless intended as an allusion to the condemnation of Sokrates. It is a reproach well-founded against that proceeding of the government of Athens:— and would have been still better founded against other contemporary governments. That the Athenians were intolerant, is not to be denied: but they were less intolerant than any of their contemporaries. Nowhere else except at Athens could Sokrates have gone on until seventy years of age talking freely in the market-place against the received political and religious orthodoxy. There was more free speech (παῤῥησία)58 at Athens than in any part of the contemporary world. Plato, Xenophon, and the other companions of Sokrates, proclaimed by lectures and writings that they thought themselves wiser than the laws of Athens: yet though the Gorgias was intended as well as adapted to bring into hatred and contempt both those laws and the persons who administered them, the Athenian Rhetors never indicted Plato for libel. Upon this point, we can 278only speak comparatively: for perfect liberty of proclaiming opinions neither does now exist, nor ever has existed, any where. Most men have no genuine respect for the right of another to form and express an opinion dissentient from theirs: if they happen to hate the opinion, they account it a virtue to employ as much ill-usage or menace as will frighten the holder thereof into silence. Plato here points out in emphatic language,59 the deplorable consequences of assuming infallibility and perfection for the legal and customary orthodoxy of the country, and prohibiting free censure by dissentient individuals. But this is on the supposition that the laws and customs are founded only on common sense and traditional reverence:— and that the scientific Governor is among the dissenters. Plato’s judgment is radically different when he supposes the case reversed:— when King Nomos is superseded by the scientific Professor of whom Plato dreams, or by a lawgiver who represents him. We shall observe this when we come to the Treatise de Legibus, in which Plato constitutes an orthodoxy of his own, prohibiting free dissent by restrictions and penalties stricter than any which were known to antiquity. He cannot recognise an infallible common sense: but he has no scruple in postulating an infallible scientific dictator, and in enthroning himself as such. Though well aware that reasoned truth presents itself to different philosophers in different versions, he does not hesitate to condemn those philosophers who differ from him, to silence or to something worse.
58 See Euripides, Ion, 671.
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ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν μ’ ἡ τεκοῦσ’ εἴη γυνή,
ὥς μοι γένοιτο μητρόθεν παῤῥησία. |
Also Euripid. Hippolyt. 424, and Plato, Gorgias, p. 461 E, where Sokrates says to Polus — δεινὰ μέντ’ ἂν πάθοις, εἰ Ἀθήναζε ἀφικόμενος, οὖ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, πλείστη ἐστὶν ἐξουσία τοῦ λέγειν, ἔπειτα σὺ ἐνταῦθα τούτου μόνος ἀτυχήσαις, &c.
59 Plato, Polit. p. 299 E.
Theory of the Politikus — distinguished three gradations of polity. Gigantic individual force the worst.
It will appear then that the Platonic Politikus distinguishes three varieties and gradations of social constitution.
1. Science or Art. Systematic Construction from the beginning, based upon Theory. — That which is directed by the constant supervision of a scientific or artistic Ruler. This is the only true or legitimate polity. Represented by Plato in Republic. Illustrated by the systematic scheme of weights, measures, apportionment of years, months, and days, in calendar — put together on scientific principles by the French Convention in 1793 — as contrasted with the various local, incoherent, growths, which had obtained recognition through custom or arbitrary preference of unscientific superiors.
2792. Common Sense. Unsystematic Aggregate of Customs, accepted in an Actual Society. — That which is directed by written laws and fixed traditional customs, known to every one, approved by the common sense of the community, and communicated as well as upheld by the spontaneous teaching of the majority. King Nomos.
This stands for the second best scheme: the least objectionable form of degeneracy — yet still a degeneracy. It is the scheme set forth by the Platonic Protagoras, in the dialogue so called. Represented with improvements by Plato in Treatise De Legibus.
3. Gigantic Individual Force. — That in which some violent individual — not being really scientific or artistic, but perhaps falsely pretending to be so — violates and tramples under foot the established laws and customs, under the stimulus of his own exorbitant ambition and unmeasured desires.
This is put forward as the worst scheme of all: as the greatest depravation of society, and the greatest forfeiture of public as well as private happiness. We have here the proposition which Pôlus and Kalliklês are introduced as defending in the Gorgias, and Thrasymachus in the Republic. In both dialogues, Sokrates undertakes to expose it. The great benefit conferred by King Nomos, is, that he protects society against the maximum of evil.
Comparison of the Politikus with the Republic. Points of analogy and difference.
Another interesting comparison may be made: that between the Politikus and the Republic. We must remember that the Politikus is announced by Plato as having two purposes. 1. To give a lesson in the method of definition and division. 2. To define the characteristic of the person bearing the name of Politikus, distinguishing him from all others, analogous or disparate. — The method is here more prominent than the doctrine.
But in the Republic, no lesson of method is attempted; the doctrine stands alone and independent of it. We shall find however that the doctrine is essentially the same. That which the Politikus lays down in brief outline, is in the Republic amplified and enlarged; presented with many variations and under different points of view, yet, still at the bottom, the same doctrine, both as to affirmation and negation. The Republic affirms (as the Politikus does) the exclusive legitimacy of science, art, intelligence, &c., as the initiatory and omnipotent authority over all 280the constituent members of society: and farther, that such intelligence can have no place except in one or a few privileged persons. The Republic (like the Politikus) presents to us the march of society with its Principal Cause — its concurrent or Auxiliary Causes — and its inferior governable mass or matter, the human flock, indispensable and co-essential as a part of the whole scheme. In the Republic, the Cause is represented by the small council of philosophical Elders: the concurrent causes, by the Guardians or trained soldiers: the inferior matter, by the remaining society, which is distributed among various trades, providing for the subsistence and wants of all. The explanation of Justice (which is the ostensible purpose of the Republic) is made to consist in the fact — That each one of these several parts does its own special work — nothing more — nothing less. Throughout all the Republic, a constant parallelism is carried on (often indeed overstrained) between the community and the individual man. In the one as well as in the other, Plato recognises the three constituent elements, all essential as co-operators, but each with its own special function: in the individual, he recognises three souls (encephalic, thoracic, and abdominal) as corresponding to Elders, Guardians, and Producers, in the community. Here are the same features as those given in outline in the Politikus: but the two higher features of the three appear greatly expanded in the Republic: the training and conditions proper for the philosophic Artist or Governor, and for his auxiliaries the Guardians, being described and vindicated at great length. Moreover, in the Republic, Plato not only repeats the doctrine60 that the right of command belongs to every art in its own province and over its own subject-matter (which is the cardinal point in the Politikus) — but he farther proclaims that each individual neither can exercise, nor ought to exercise, more than one art. He allows no double men or triple men61 — “Quam quisque novit artem, in eâ se exerceat”. He would not have respected the Xenophontic Cyrus or Ischomachus. He carries the principle of specialization to its extreme point. His Republic 281is an aggregate of special artists and professional aptitudes: among whom the Governor is only one, though the first and rarest. He sets aside the common basis of social endowments essential to every man: upon which each man’s specialty is superinduced in the theory of the Platonic Protagoras. The only common quality which Plato admits is, — That each man, and each of the three souls composing each man, shall do his own business and his own business only: this is his definition of Justice, in the Republic.62
60 Plato, Republ. i. p. 342 C. Ἀλλὰ μὴν ἄρχουσι γε αἱ τέχναι καὶ κρατοῦσιν ἐκείνου οὖ περ εἰσὶ τέχναι.
61 Plato, Republ. ii. pp. 370 B, 374 B — 395-397 E. οὐκ ἔστι διπλοῦς ἀνηρ παρ’ ἡμῖν οὐδὲ πολλαπλοῦς, ἐπειδὴ ἕκαστος ἓν πράττει (p. 397 E).
62 Plato, Republ. iv. p. 433.
Comparison of the Politikus with the Kratylus. Dictatorial, constructive, science or art, common to both: applied in the former to social administration — in the latter to the formation and modification of names.
Lastly, I will illustrate the Politikus by comparison with the Kratylus, which will be treated in the next chapter. The conception of dictatorial science or art, which I have stated as the principal point in the Politikus, appears again in the Kratylus applied to a different subject — naming, or the imposition of names. Right and legitimate name-giving is declared to be an affair of science or art, like right and legitimate polity: it can only be performed by the competent scientific or artistic name-giver, or by the lawgiver considered in that special capacity. The second title of the dialogue Kratylus is Περὶ Ὀνομάτων Ὀρθότητος — On the Rectitude or legitimacy of names. What constitutes right and legitimate Name-giving? In like manner, we might provide a second title for the Politikus — Περὶ Πολιτείας Ὀρθότητος — On the rectitude or legitimacy of polity or sociality. What constitutes right or legitimate sociality?63 Plato answers — It is the constant dictation and supervision of art or science — or of the scientific, artistic, dictator, who alone knows both the End and the means. This alone is right and true sociality — or sociality as it ought to be. So, if we read the Kratylus, we find Plato defining in the same way right Name-giving — or name-giving282 as it ought to be. It is when each name is given by an artistic name-constructor, who discerns the Form of the name naturally suitable in each particular case, and can embody it in appropriate letters and syllables.64 A true or right name signifies by likeness to the thing signified.65 The good lawgiver discerns this likeness: but all lawgivers are not good: the bad lawgiver fancies that he discerns it, but is often mistaken.66 It would be the ideal perfection of language, if every name could be made to signify by likeness to the thing named. But this cannot be realised: sufficient likenesses cannot be found to furnish an adequate stock of names. In the absence of such best standard, we are driven to eke out language by appealing to a second-best, an inferior and vulgar principle approximating more or less, to rectitude — that is, custom and convention.67
63 The exact expression occurs in Politikus, pp. 293 E, 294 A. νῦν δὲ ἤδη φανερὸν ὅτι τοῦτο βουλησόμεθα, τὸ περὶ τῆς τῶν ἄνευ νόμων ἀρχόντων ὀρθότητος διελθεῖν ἡμᾶς.
The ὀρθή, ἀληθινή, γνησία, πολιτεία are phrases employed several times — pp. 292 A-C, 293 B-E, 296 E, 297 B-D. 300 D-E: ὁ ἀληθινός, ὁ ἔντεχνος. 300 E: τὴν ἀληθινὴν ἐκείνην, τὴν τοῦ ἑνὸς μετὰ τέχνης ἄρχοντος πολιτείαν. 302 A-E.
Plato sometimes speaks as if a bad πολιτεία were no πολιτεία at all — as if a bad νόμος were no νόμος at all. See above, vol. ii. ch. xiv. pp. 88, where I have touched on this point in reviewing the Minos. This is a frequent and perplexing confusion, but purely verbal. Compare Aristotel. Polit. iii. 2. p. 1276, a. 1, where he deals with the like confusion — ἆρ’ εἰ μὴ δικαίως πολίτης, οὐ πολίτης;
64 Plato, Kratylus, p. 388 E. Οὔκ ἄρα παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ὄνομα θέσθαι ἔστιν, ἀλλά τινος ὀνοματουργού· οὗτος δ’ ἔστιν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὁ νομοθέτης, ὃς δὴ τῶν δημιουργῶν σπανιώτατος ἐν ἀνθρώποις γίγνεται. Compare Politik. p. 292 D.
65 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 430, 431 D, 430 C.
66 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 431 E, 436 B.
67 Plato, Kratyl. p. 435 B-C.
So in the Protagoras (p. 328 A) we find the Platonic Protagoras comparing the self-originated and self-sustaining traditional ethics, to the traditional language — τίς διδάσκαλός ἐστι τοῦ Ἑλληνίζειν;
We see thus that in the Kratylus also, as well as in the Politikus, the systematic dictation of the Man of Science or Art is pronounced to be the only basis of complete rectitude. Below this, and far short of it, yet still indispensable as a supplement in real life — is, the authority of unsystematic custom or convention; not emanating from any systematic constructive Artist, but actually established (often, no one knows how) among the community, and resting upon their common sentiment, memory, and tradition.
Courage and Temperance are assumed in the Politikus. No notice taken of the doubts and difficulties raised in Lachês and Charmidês.
This is the true Platonic point of view, considering human affairs in every department, the highest as well as the lowest, as subjects of Art and Science: specialization of attributes and subdivision of function, so that the business of governing falls to the lot of one or a few highly qualified Governors: while the social edifice is assumed to have been constructed from the beginning by one of these Governors, with a view to consistent, systematic, predetermined ends — instead of that incoherent aggregate68 which is consecrated under the empire of law 283and custom. Here in the Politikus, we read that the great purpose of the philosophical Governor is to train all the citizens into virtuous characters: by a proper combination of Courage and Temperance, two endowments naturally discordant, yet each alike essential in its proper season and measure. The interweaving of these two forms the true Regal Web of social life.69
68The want of coherence, or of reference to any common and distinct End, among the bundle of established Νόμιμα is noted by Aristotle, Polit. vii. 2, 1324, b. 5: διὸ καὶ τῶν πλείστων νομίμων χύδην, ὡς εἰπεῖν κειμένων παρὰ τοῖς πλείστοις, ὅμως, εἴ πού τι πρὸς ἓν οἱ νόμοι βλέπουσι, τοῦ κρατεῖν στοχάζονται Κρήτῃ πρὸς τοὺς πολέμους συντέτακται σχεδὸν ἢ τε παιδεία καὶ τὸ τῶν νόμων πλῆθος.
Custom and education surround all prohibitions with the like sanctity — both those most essential to the common security, and those which emanate from capricious or local antipathy — in the minds of docile citizens.
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Ἶσόν τοι κυάμους τε φαγεῖν, κεφαλάς τε τοκήων.
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Aristotle dissents from Plato on the point of always vesting the governing functions in the same hands. He considers such a provision dangerous and intolerable to the governed.
Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 1264, b. 6.
69 Plato, Polit. p. 306 A. βασιλικὴ συμπλοκή, &c.
Schleiermacher in his Introduction to the Politikus (pp. 254-256) treats this βασιλικὴ συμπλοκὴ as a poor and insignificant function, for the political Artist determined and installed by so elaborate a method and classification. But the dialogue was already so long that Plato could not well lengthen it by going into fuller details. Socher points out (Ueber Platon’s Schrift. p. 274) discrepancies between the Politikus on one side, and Protagoras and Gorgias on the other — which I think are really discoverable, though I do not admit the inference which he draws from them.
Such is the concluding declaration of the accomplished Eleatic expositor, to Sokrates and the other auditors. But this suggests to us another question, when we revert to some of the Platonic dialogues handled in the preceding pages. What are Virtue, Courage, Temperance? In the Menon, the Platonic Sokrates had proclaimed, that he did not himself know what virtue was: that he had never seen any one else who did know: that it was impossible to say how virtue could be communicated, until you knew what virtue was — and impossible to determine any one of the parts of virtue, until virtue had been determined as a whole. In the Charmidês, Sokrates had affirmed that he did not know what Temperance was; he then tested several explanations thereof, propounded by Charmides and Kritias: but ending only in universal puzzle and confessed ignorance. In the Lachês, he had done the same with Courage: not without various expressions of regret for his own ignorance, and of surprise at those who talked freely about generalities which they had never probed to the bottom. Perplexed by these doubts and difficulties — which perplexed yet more all his previous hearers, the modest beauty of 284Charmides and the mature dignity of Nikias and Laches — Sokrates now finds himself in presence of the Eleate, who talks about Virtue, Temperance, Courage, &c., as matters determinate and familiar. Here then would have been the opportunity for Sokrates to reproduce all his unsolved perplexities, and to get them cleared up by the divine Stranger who is travelling on a mission of philosophy. The third dialogue, to be called the Philosophus, which Plato promises as sequel to the Sophistês and Politikus, would have been well employed in such a work of elucidation.
Purpose of the difficulties in Plato’s Dialogues of Search — To stimulate the intellect of the hearer. His exposition does not give solutions.
This, I say, is what we might have expected, if Plato had corresponded to the picture drawn by admiring commentators: if he had merely tied knots in one dialogue, in order to untie them in another. But we find nothing of the kind, nor is such a picture of Plato correct. The dialogue Philosophus does not exist, and probably was never written. Respecting the embarrassments of the Menon, Lachês, Charmidês, Alkibiadês I., Protagoras, Euthyphron — Sokrates says not a word — οὐδὲ γρύ — to urge them upon the attention of the Eleate: who even alludes with displeasure to contentious disputants as unfair enemies. For the right understanding of these mysterious but familiar words — Virtue, Courage, Temperance — we are thrown back upon the common passive, unscientific, unreasoning, consciousness: or upon such measure and variety of it as each of us may have chanced to imbibe from the local atmosphere, unassisted by any special revelation from philosophy. At any rate, the Eleate furnishes no interpretative aid. He employs the words, as if the hearers understood them of course, without the slightest intimation that any difficulty attaches to them. Plato himself ignores all the difficulties, when he is putting positive exposition into the mouth of the Eleate. Puzzles and perplexities belong to the Dialogues of Search; in which they serve their purpose, if they provoke the intellect of the hearer to active meditation and effort, for the purpose of obtaining a solution.
The dialogue entitled Kratylus presents numerous difficulties to the commentators: who differ greatly in their manner of explaining, First, What is its main or leading purpose? Next, How much of it is intended as serious reasoning, how much as mere caricature or parody, for the purpose of exposing and reducing to absurdity the doctrines of opponents? Lastly, who, if any, are the opponents thus intended to be ridiculed?
Persons and subjects of the dialogue Kratylus — Sokrates has no formed opinion, but is only a Searcher with the others.
The subject proposed for discussion is, the rectitude or inherent propriety of names. How far is there any natural adaptation, or special fitness, of each name to the thing named? Two disputants are introduced who invoke Sokrates as umpire. Hermogenes asserts the negative of the question; contending that each name is destitute of natural significance, and acquires its meaning only from the mutual agreement and habitual usage of society.1 Kratylus on the contrary maintains the doctrine that each name has a natural rectitude 286or fitness for its own significant function:— that there is an inherent bond of connection, a fundamental analogy or resemblance between each name and the thing signified. Sokrates carries on the first part of the dialogue with Hermogenes, the last part with Kratylus.2 He declares more than once, that the subject is one on which he is ignorant, and has formed no conclusion: he professes only to prosecute the search for a good conclusion, conjointly with his two companions.3
1 In the arguments put into the mouth of Hermogenes, he is made to maintain two opinions which are not identical, but opposed. 1. That names are significant by habit and convention, and not by nature. 2. That each man may and can give any name which he pleases to any object (pp. 384-385).
The first of these two opinions is that which is really discussed here: impugned in the first half of the dialogue, conceded in the second. It is implied that names are to serve the purpose of mutual communication and information among persons living in society; which purpose they would not serve if each individual gave a different name to the same object. The second opinion is therefore not a consequence of the first, but an implied contradiction of the first.
He who says that the names Horse and Dog are significant by convention, will admit that at the outset they might have been inverted in point of signification; but he will not say that any individual may invert them at pleasure, now that they are established. The purposes of naming would no longer be answered, if this were done.
2 The question between Hermogenes and Kratylus was much debated among the philosophers and literary men throughout antiquity (Aul. Gell. x. 4). Origen says (contra Celsum, i. c. 24) — λόγος βαθὺς καὶ ἀπόῤῥητος ὁ περὶ φύσεως ὀνομάτων, πότερον, ὡς οἴεται Ἀριστοτέλης, θέσει εἶναι τὰ ὀνόματα, ἢ, ὡς νομίζουσιν οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, φύσει.
Aristotle assumes the question in favour of θέσει, in his treatise De Interpretatione, without any reasoning, against the Platonic Kratylus; but his commentators, Ammonius and Boethius, note the controversy as one upon which eminent men in antiquity were much divided.
Plato connects his opinion, that names have a natural rectitude of signification, with his general doctrine of self-existent, archetypal, Forms or Ideas. The Stoics, and others who defended the same opinion afterwards, seem to have disconnected it from this latter doctrine.
3 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C, 391 A.
Argument of Sokrates against Hermogenes — all proceedings of nature are conducted according to fixed laws — speaking and naming among the rest.
Sokrates, refuting Hermogenes, lays down the following doctrines.4 If propositions are either true or false, names, which are parts of propositions, must be true or false also.5 Every thing has its own fixed and determinate essence, not relative to us nor varying according to our fancy or pleasure, but existing per se as nature has arranged.6 All agencies either by one thing upon other things, or by other things upon it, are in like manner determined by nature, independent of our will and choice. If we intend to cut or burn any substance, we must go to work, not according to our 287own pleasure, but in the manner that nature prescribes: by attempting to do it contrary to nature, we shall do it badly or fail altogether.7 Now speaking is one of these agencies, and naming is a branch of speaking: what is true of other agencies is true of these also — we must name things, not according to our own will and pleasure, but in the way that nature prescribes that they shall be named.8 Farther, each agency must be performed by its appropriate instrument: cutting by the axe, boring by the gimlet, weaving by the bodkin. The name is the instrument of naming, whereby we communicate information and distinguish things from each other. It is a didactic instrument: to be employed well, it must be in the hands of a properly qualified person for the purpose of teaching.9 Not every man, but only the professional craftsman, is competent to fabricate the instruments of cutting and weaving. In like manner, not every man is competent to make a name: no one is competent except the lawgiver or the gifted name-maker, the rarest of all existing artists.10
4 Aristot. De Interpretat. ii. 1-2: Ὄνομα μὲν οὖν ἐστὶ φωνὴ σημαντικὴ κατὰ συνθήκην ἄνευ χρόνου … τὸ δὲ κατὰ συνθήκην, ὅτι φύσει τῶν ὀνομάτων οὐδέν ἐστιν, &c.
This is the same doctrine which Plato puts into the mouth of Hermogenes (Kratylus, p. 384 E), and which Sokrates himself, in the latter half of the dialogue, admits as true to a large extent: that is, he admits that names are significant κατὰ συνθήκην, though he does not deny that they are or may be significant φύσει.
Τὸ ἀπὸ ταὐτομάτου (p. 397 A) is another phrase for expressing the opinion opposed to ὀνομάτων ὀρθότης.
5 Plato, Kratyl. p. 385.
Here too, Aristotle affirms the contrary: he says (with far more exactness than Plato) that propositions alone are true or false; and that a name taken by itself is neither. (De Interpret. i. 2.)
The mistake of Plato in affirming Names to be true or false, is analogous to that which we read in the Philêbus, where Pleasures are distinguished as true and false.
6 Plato, Kratyl. p. 386 D. δῆλον δὴ ὅτι αὐτὰ αὑτῶν οὐσίαν ἔχοντά τινα βέβαιόν ἐστι τὰ πράγματα, οὐ πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὐδὲ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν, ἐλκόμενα ἄνω καὶ κάτω τῷ ἡμετέρῳ φαντάσματι, ἀλλὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ πρὸς τὴν αὑτων οὐσίαν ἔχοντα ᾗπερ πέφυκεν.
7 Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 A.
8 Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. Οὐκοῦν καὶ τὸ ὀνομάζειν πρᾶξις τίς ἐστιν, εἴπερ καὶ τὸ λέγειν πρᾶξις τις ἦν περὶ τὰ πράγματα; … Αἱ δὲ πράξεις ἐφάνησαν ἡμῖν οὐ πρὸς ἡμᾶς οὖσαι, ἀλλ’ αὑτῶν τινα ἰδίαν φύσιν ἔχουσαι; … Οὐκοῦν καὶ ὀνομαστέον ᾗ πέφυκε τὰ πράγματα ὀνομάζειν τε καὶ ὀνομάζεσθαι, καὶ ᾧ, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ᾗ ἂν ἡμεῖς βουληθῶμεν, εἴπερ τι τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν μέλλει ὁμολογούμενον εἶναι; καὶ οὕτω μὲν ἂν πλέον τι ποιοῖμεν καὶ ὀνομάζοιμεν, ἄλλως δὲ οὔ;
Speaking and naming are regarded by Plato as acts whereby the thing (spoken of or) named is acted upon or suffers. So in the Sophistês (p. 248) he considers Knowing as an act performed, whereby the thing known suffers. Deuschle (Die Platonische Sprach-philosophie, p. 59, Marpurg. 1859) treats this comparison made by Plato between naming and material agencies, as if it were mere banter — and even indifferent banter. Schleiermacher in his note thinks it seriously meant and Platonic; and I fully agree with him (Schl. p. 456).
9 Plato, Kratyl. p. 388 C. Ὄνομα ἄρα διδασκαλικόν τί ἐστιν ὄργανον, καὶ διακριτικὸν τῆς οὐσίας, ὥσπερ κερκὶς ὑφάσματος. See Boethius ap. Schol. ad Aristot. Interp. p. 108, a. 40. Aristotle (De Interpr. iv. 3) says: ἔστι δὲ λόγος ἅπας μὲν σημαντικός, οὐχ ὡς ὄργανον δέ, ἀλλὰ κατὰ συνθήκην. Several even of the Platonic critics consider Plato’s choice of the metaphor ὄργανον as inappropriate: but modern writers on logic and psychology often speak of names as “instruments of thought”.
10 Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 A. ὁ νομοθέτης, ὃς δὴ τῶν δημιουργῶν σπανιώτατος ἐν ἀνθρῶποις γίγνεται.
The name is a didactic instrument; fabricated by the law-giver upon the type of the Name-Form, and employed as well as appreciated, by the philosopher.
To what does the lawgiver look when he frames a name? Compare the analogy of other instruments. The artisan who constructs a bodkin or shuttle for weaving, has present to his mind as a model, the Idea or Form of the bodkin — the self-existent bodkin of Nature herself. If a broken shuttle is to be replaced, it is this Idea or type, not the actual broken instrument,288 which he seeks to copy. Whatever may be the variety of web for which the shuttle is destined, he modifies the new instrument accordingly: but all of them must embody the Form or Idea of the shuttle. He cannot choose another type according to his own pleasure: he must embody the type, prescribed by nature, in the iron, wood, or other material of which the instrument is made.11
11 Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 B-C. αὐτὸ ὁ ἔστι κερκίς … πάσας μὲν δεῖ τὸ τῆς κερκίδος ἔχειν εἶδος … οὐχ οἷον ἂν αὐτὸς βουλήθη, ἀλλ’ οἷον ἐπεφύκει.
So about names: the lawgiver, in distributing names, must look to the Idea, Form, or type — the self-existent name of Nature — and must embody this type, as it stands for each different thing, in appropriate syllables. The syllables indeed may admit of great variety, just as the material of which the shuttle is made may be diversified: but each aggregate of syllables, whether Hellenic or barbaric, must embody the essential Name-Idea or Type.12 The lawgiver13 ought to know, enumerate, and classify all the sorts of things on the one hand, and all the varieties of letters or elements of language on the other; distinguishing the special significative power belonging to each letter. He ought then to construct his words, and adapt each to signify that with which it is naturally connected. Who is to judge whether this process has been well or ill performed? Upon that point, the judge is, the professional man who uses the instrument. It is for the working weaver to decide whether the shuttle given to him is well or ill made. To have a good ship and rudder, it must be made by a professional builder, and appreciated by a professional pilot or steersman. In like manner, the names constructed by the lawgiver must be appreciated by the man who is qualified by training or study to use names skilfully: that is, by the dialectician or philosopher, competent to ask and answer questions.14
12 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 389 D, 390 A. τὸ ἑκάστῳ φύσει πεφυκὸς ὄνομα τὸν νομοθέτην ἐκεῖνον εἰς τοὺς φθόγγους καὶ τὰς συλλαβὰς δεῖ ἐπίστασθαι τιθέναι, καὶ βλέποντα πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐκεῖνο ὃ ἔστιν ὄνομα, πάντα τὰ ὀνόματα ποιεῖν τε καὶ τίθεσθαι, εἰ μέλλει κύριος εἶναι ὀνομάτων θέτης.…
Οὕτως ἀξιώσεις καὶ τὸν νομοθέτην τόν τε ἐνθάδε καὶ τὸν ἐν τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἕως ἂν τὸ τοῦ ὀνόματος εἶδος ἀποδιδῷ τὸ προσῆκον ἑκάστῳ ἐν ὁποιαισοῦν συλλαβαῖς, οὐδὲν χείρω νομοθέτην εἶναι τὸν ἐνθάδε ἢ τὸν ὁπουοῦν ἄλλοθι;
13 Plato, Kratyl. p. 424 D-E.
14 Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 C.
289Names have an intrinsic aptitude for signifying one thing and not another.
It is the fact then, though many persons may think it ridiculous, that names — or the elementary constituents and letters, of which names are composed — have each an intrinsic and distinctive aptitude, fitting them to signify particular things.15 Names have thus a standard with reference to which they are correct or incorrect. If they are to be correct, they cannot be given either by the freewill of an ordinary individual, or even by the convention of all society. They can be affixed only by the skilled lawgiver, and appreciated only by the skilled dialectician.
15 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425-426.
Forms of Names, as well as Forms of things nameable — essence of the Nomen, to signify the Essence of its Nominatum.
Such is the theory here laid down by Sokrates respecting Names. It is curious as illustrating the Platonic vein of speculation. It enlarges to an extreme point Plato’s region of the absolute and objective. Not merely each thing named, but each name also, is in his view an Ens absolutum; not dependent upon human choice — not even relative (so he alleges) to human apprehension. Each name has its own self-existent Idea, Form, or Type, the reproduction or copy of which is imperative. The Platonic intelligible world included Ideas of things, and of names correlative to them: just as it included Ideas of master and slave correlative to each other. It contained Noumena of names, as well as Noumena of things.16 The essence of the name was, to be significant of the essence of the thing named: though such significance admitted of diversity, multiplication, or curtailment, in the letters or syllables wherein it was embodied.17 The name became significant, by imitation or resemblance: that name was right, the essence of which imitated the essence of the thing named.18 The vocal mimic imitates 290sounds, the painter imitates the colours: the name-giver imitates in letters or syllables, the essence of colours, sounds, and every thing else which is nameable.
16 Plato, Parmenid. p. 133 E.
17 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393 D, 432.
18 Plato, Kratyl. p. 422 D. τῶν ὀνομάτων ἡ ὀρθότης τοιαύτη τις ἐβούλετο εἶναι, οἷα δηλοῦν οἷον ἕκαστόν ἐστι τῶν ὄντων. — 423 D: οὐ καὶ οὐσία δοκεῖ σοι εἶναι ἑκάστῳ, ὥσπερ καὶ χρῶμα καὶ ἃ νῦν δὴ ἐλέγομεν; πρῶτον αὐτῷ τῷ χρώματι καὶ τῇ φωνῇ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐσία τις ἑκατέρῳ αὐτῶν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν, ὅσα ἠξίωται ταύτης τῆς προσρήσεως τοῦ εἶναι; … Τί οὖν; εἴ τις αὐτὸ τοῦτο μιμεῖσθαι δύναιτο, ἑκάστου τὴν οὐσίαν, γράμμασί τε καὶ συλλαβαῖς, ἆρ’ οὐκ ἂν δηλοῖ ἕκαστον ὃ ἔστιν; Compare p. 433.
The story given by Herodotus (ii. 2) about the experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, is curious. He wished to find out whether the Egyptians or the Phrygians were the oldest or first of mankind: he accordingly caused two children to be brought up without having a word spoken to them, with a view to ascertain what language they would come to by nature. At the age of two years they uttered the Phrygian word signifying bread. Psammetichus was then satisfied that the Phrygians were the first of mankind.
This story undoubtedly proceeds upon the assumption that there is one name which naturally suggests itself for each object. But when M. Renan says that the assumption is the same “as Plato has developed with so much subtlety in the Kratylus,” I do not agree with him. The Absolute Name-Form or Essence, discernible only by the technical Lawgiver, is something very different. See M. Renan, De l’Origine du Langage, ch. vi. p. 146, 2nd ed.
Another point here is peculiar to Plato. The Name-Giver must provide names such as can be used with effect by the dialectician or philosopher: who is the sole competent judge whether the names have genuine rectitude or not.19 We see from hence that the aspirations of Plato went towards a philosophical language fit for those who conversed with forms or essences: something like (to use modern illustrations) a technical nomenclature systematically constructed for the expositions of men of science: such as that of Chemistry, Botany, Mineralogy, &c. Assuredly no language actually spoken among men, has ever been found suitable for this purpose without much artificial help.20
19 Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 D. Respecting the person called ὁ διαλεκτικός, whom Plato describes as grasping Ideas, or Forms, Essences, and employing nothing else in his reasoning — λόγον διδοὺς καὶ λαμβάνων τῆς οὐσίας — see Republic, vi. p. 511 B, vii. pp. 533-534-537 C.
20 Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 A. ὁ περὶ ὀνομάτων τεχνικός, &c.
Exclusive competence of a privileged lawgiver, to discern these essences, and to apportion names rightly.
As this theory of naming is a deduction from Plato’s main doctrine of absolute or self-existing Ideas, so it also illustrates (to repeat what was said in the last chapter) his recognition of professional skill and of competence vested exclusively in a gifted One or Few: which he ranks as the sole producing cause of Good or the Best, setting it in contrast with those two causes which he considers as productive of Evil, or at any rate of the Inferior or Second-Best: 1. The One or Few, who are ungifted and unphilosophical: perhaps ambitious pretenders. 2. The spontaneous, unbespoken inspirations, conventions, customs, or habits, which grow up without formal mandate among the community. To find the right name of each thing, is no light matter, nor within the competence of any one or many ordinary men. It can only be done by one of the few privileged lawgivers. Plato even glances at the necessity of a superhuman 291name-giver: though he deprecates the supposition generally, as a mere evasion or subterfuge, introduced to escape the confession of real ignorance.21
21 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397, 425, 438.
Counter-Theory, which Sokrates here sets forth and impugns — the Protagorean doctrine — Homo Mensura.
In laying down the basis of his theory respecting names, Plato states another doctrine as opposed to it: viz., the Protagorean doctrine — Man is the Measure of all things. I have already said something about this doctrine, in reviewing the Theætêtus, where Plato impugns it: but as he here impugns it again, by arguments in part different — a few words more will not be misplaced.
The doctrine of Protagoras maintains that all things are relative to the percipient, cogitant, concipient, mind: that all Object is implicated with a Subject: that as things appear to me, so they are to me — as they appear to you, so they are to you. Plato denies this, and says: “All things have a fixed essence of their own, absolutely and in themselves, not relative to any percipient or cogitant — nor dependent upon any one’s appreciative understanding, or emotional susceptibility, or will. Things are so and so, without reference to us as sentient or cogitant beings: and not only the things are thus independent and absolute, but all their agencies are so likewise — agencies either by them or upon them. Cutting, burning, speaking, naming, &c., must be performed in a certain determinate way, whether we prefer it or not. A certain Name belongs, by Nature or absolutely, to a certain thing, whether we choose it or not: it is not relative to any adoption by us, either individually or collectively.”
This Protagorean theory is here set forth by the Platonic Sokrates as the antithesis or counter-theory, to that which he is himself advancing, viz. — That Names are significant by nature and not by agreement of men:— That each Nomen is tied to its Nominatum by a natural and indissoluble bond. His remarks imply, that those who do not accept this last-mentioned theory must agree with Protagoras. But such an antithesis is noway necessary: since (not to speak of Hermogenes himself in this very dialogue) we find also that Aristotle — who maintains that Names are significant by convention and not by nature — dissents292 also from the theory of Protagoras: and would have rested his dissent from it on very different grounds.
Objection by Sokrates — That Protagoras puts all men on a level as to wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance.
This will show us — what I have already remarked in commenting on the Theætêtus — that Plato has not been very careful in appreciating the real bearing of the Protagorean doctrine. He impugns it here by the same argument which we also read in the Theætêtus. “Everyone admits” (he says) “that there are some men wise and good — others foolish and wicked. Now if you admit this, you disallow the Protagorean doctrine. If I contend that as things appear to me, so they truly are to me — as things appear to you or to him, so they truly are to you or to him — I cannot consistently allow that any one man is wiser than any other. Upon such a theory, all men are put upon the same level of knowledge or ignorance.”
But the premisses of Plato here do not sustain his inference.
Objection unfounded — What the Protagorean theory really affirms — Belief always relative to the believer’s mind.
The Protagorean doctrine is, when stated in its most general terms, — That every man is and must be his own measure of truth or falsehood — That what appears to him true, is true to him, however it may appear to others — That he cannot by any effort step out of or beyond his own individual belief conviction, knowledge — That all his Cognita, Credita, Percepta, Cogitata, &c., imply himself as Cognoscens, Credens, Percipiens, Cogitans, inseparably and indivisibly — That in affirming an object, he himself is necessarily present as affirming subject, and that Object and Subject are only two sides of the same indivisible fact22 — That though there are some 293matters which all men agree in believing, there is no criterion at once infallible and universally recognised, in matters where they dissent: moreover, the matters believed are just as much relative where all agree, as where some disagree.
22 M. Destutt Tracy observes, Logique, ch. ix. p. 347, ed. 1825:
“En effet, on ne saurait trop le redire, chacun de nous, et même tout être animé quelconque, est pour lui-même le centre de tout. Il ne perçoit par un sentiment direct et une conscience intime, que ce qui affecte et émeut sa sensibilité. Il ne conçoit et ne connaît son existence que par ce qu’il sent, et celle des autres êtres que parce qu’ils lui font sentir. Il n’y a de réel pour lui que ses perceptions, ses affections, ses idées: et tout ce qu’il peut jamais savoir, n’est toujours que des consequences et des combinaisons de ces premières perceptions ou idees.”
The doctrine of the Sceptical philosophers, is explicitly announced by Sextus Empiricus as his personal belief: that which appears true to him, as far as his enquiry had reached. The passage deserves to be cited.
Sextus Empir. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. i. Sect. 197-199.
Ὅταν οὖν εἴπῃ ὁ σκεπτικὸς “οὐδὲν ὁρίζω” … τοῦτό φησι λέγων τὸ ἑαυτῷ φαινόμενον περὶ τῶν προκειμένων, οὐκ ἀπαγγελτικῶς, μετὰ πεποιθήσεως ἀποφαινόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὃ πάσχει, διηγούμενος.… Καὶ ὥσπερ ὁ λέγων “περιπατῶ,” οὕτως ὁ λέγων “πάντα ἐστὶν ἀόριστα” συσσημαίνει καθ’ ἡμᾶς τὸ ὡς πρὸς ἐμε ἢ ὡς ἐμοὶ φαίνεται· ὡς εἶναι τὸ λεγόμενον τοιοῦτον “ὅσα ἐπηλθον τῶν δογματικῶς ζητουμένων, τοιαῦτά μοι φαίνεται, ὡς μηδὲν αὐτῶν τοῦ μαχομένου προὔχειν μοὶ δοκεῖν κατὰ πίστιν ἢ ἀπιστίαν”.
Each man believes others to be wiser on various points than himself — Belief on authority — not inconsistent with the affirmation of Protagoras.
This doctrine is not refuted by the fact, that every man believes others to be wiser than himself on various points. A man is just as much a measure to himself when he acts upon the advice of others, or believes a fact upon the affirmation of others, as when he judges upon his own unassisted sense or reasoning. He is a measure to himself when he agrees with others, as much as when he disagrees with them. Opinions of others, or facts attested by others, may count as materials determining his judgment; but the judgment is and must be his own. The larger portion of every man’s knowledge rests upon the testimony of others; nevertheless the facts thus reported become portions of his knowledge, generating conclusions in him and relatively to him. I believe the narrative of travellers, respecting parts of the globe which I have never seen: I adopt the opinion of A a lawyer, and of B a physician, on matters which I have not studied: I understand facts which I did not witness, from the description of those who did witness them. In all these cases the act of adoption is my own, and the grounds of belief are relative to my state of mind. Another man may mistrust completely the authorities which I follow: just as I mistrust the authority of Mahomet or Confucius, or various others, regarded as infallible by a large portion of mankind. The grounds of belief are to a certain extent similar, to a certain extent dissimilar, in different men’s minds. Authority is doubtless a frequent ground of belief; but it is essentially variable and essentially relative to the believer. Plato himself, in many passages, insists emphatically upon the dissensions in mankind respecting the question — “Who are the good and wise men?” He tells us that the true philosopher is accounted by the bulk of mankind foolish and worthless.
Analogy of physical processes (cutting and burning) appealed to by Sokrates — does not sustain his inference against Protagoras.
294In the Kratylus, Sokrates says (and I agree with him) that there are laws of nature respecting the processes of cutting and burning: and that any one who attempts to cut or burn in a way unconformable to those laws, will fail in his purpose. This is true, but it proves nothing against Protagoras. It is an appeal to a generalization from physical facts, resting upon experience and induction — upon sensation and inference which we and others, Protagoras as well as Plato, have had, and which we believe to be common to all. We know this fact, or have a full and certain conviction of it; but we are not brought at all nearer to the Absolute (i.e., to the Object without Subject) which Plato’s argument requires. The analogy rather carries us away from the Absolute: for cutting and burning, with their antecedent conditions, are facts of sense: and Plato himself admits, to a great extent, that the facts of sense are relative. All experience and induction, and all belief founded thereupon, are essentially relative. The experience may be one common to all mankind, and upon which all are unanimous:23 but it is not the less relative to each individual295 of the multitude. What is relative to all, continues to be relative to each: the fact that all sentient individuals are in this respect alike, does not make it cease to be relative, and become absolute. What I see and hear in the theatre is relative to me, though it may at the same time be relative to ten thousand other spectators, who are experiencing like sensations. Where all men think or believe alike, it may not be necessary for common purposes to distinguish the multiplicity of individual thinking subjects: yet the subjects are nevertheless multiple, and the belief, knowledge, or fact, is relative to each of them, whether all agree, or whether beliefs are many and divergent. We cannot suppress ourselves as sentient or cogitant subjects, nor find any locus standi for Object pure and simple, apart from the ground of relativity. And the Protagorean dictum brings to view these subjective conditions, as being essential, no less than the objective, to belief and disbelief.
23 Proklus, in his Scholia on the Kratylus, p. 32, ed. Boisson, cites the argument used by Aristotle against Plato on this very subject of names — τὰ μὲν φύσει, παρὰ πᾶσι τὰ αὐτά· τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα οὐ παρὰ πᾶσι τὰ αὐτά· ὤστε τὰ φύσει ὄντα οὔκ ἐστιν ὀνόματα, καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα οὐκ εἰσι φύσει. Ammonius ad Aristot. De Interpretat. p. 100, a. 28, Schol. Bekk. Sextus Empiricus adv. Mathemat. i. 145-147, p. 247, Fab.
Plato had assimilated naming to cutting and burning. Aristotle denies the analogy: he says that cutting and burning are the same to all, or are by nature: naming is not the same to all, and is therefore not by nature.
We find here the test pointed out to distinguish what is by nature (that which Plato calls the οὐσίαν βέβαιον τῶν πραγμάτων — p. 386 E), — viz. That it is the same to all or among all. What it is to one individual, it is to another also. There are a multitude of different judging subjects, but no dissentient subjects: myself, and in my belief all other subjects, are affected alike. This is the true and real Objective: a particular fact of sense, where Subject is not eliminated altogether, but becomes a constant quantity, and therefore escapes separate notice. An Objective absolute (i.e., without Subject altogether) is an impossibility.
In the Aristotelian sense of φύσει, it would be correct to say that Language, or Naming in genere, is natural to man. No human society has yet been found without some language — some names — some speech employed and understood by each individual member. But many different varieties of speech will serve the purpose, not indeed with equal perfection, yet tolerably: enough to enable a society to get on. The uniformity (τὸ φύσει) here ceases. To a certain extent, the objects and agencies which are named, are the same in all societies: to a certain extent different. If we were acquainted with all the past facts respecting the different languages which have existed or do exist on the globe, we should be able to assign the reason which brought each particular Nomen into association with its Nominatum. But this past history is lost.
Reply of Protagoras to the Platonic objections.
Protagoras would have agreed with Plato as to combustion — that there were certain antecedent conditions under which he fully expected it, and certain other conditions under which he expected with confidence that it would not occur. Only he would have declared this (assuming him to speak conformably to his own theory) to be his own full belief and conviction, derived from certain facts and comparisons of sense, which he also knew to be shared by most other persons. He would have pronounced farther, that those who held opposite opinions were in his judgment wrong: but he would have recognised that their opinion was true to themselves, and that their belief must be relative to causes operating upon their minds. Farthermore, he would have pointed out, that combustion itself, with its antecedents, were facts of sense, relative to individual sentients and observers, remembering and comparing what they had observed. This would have been the testimony of Protagoras (always assuming him to speak in conformity with his own theory), but it would not have satisfied Plato: who would have required a peremptory, absolute affirmation, discarding all relation to observers or observed facts, and leaving no scope for error or fallibility.
Sentiments of Belief and Disbelief, common to all men — Grounds of belief and disbelief, different with different men and different ages.
Those who agree with Plato on this question, impugn the 296doctrine of Protagoras as effacing all real, intrinsic, distinction between truth and falsehood. Such objectors make it a charge against Protagoras, that he does not erect his own mind into a peremptory and infallible measure for all other minds.24 He expressly recognises the distinction, so far as his own mind is concerned: he admits that other men recognise it also, each for himself. Nevertheless, to say that all men recognise one and the same objective distinction between truth and falsehood, would be to contradict palpable facts. Each man has a standard, an ideal of truth in his own mind: but different men have different standards. The grounds of belief, though in part similar with all men, are to a great extent dissimilar also: they are dissimilar even with the same man, at different periods of his life and circumstances. What all men have in common is the feeling of belief and the feeling of disbelief: the matters believed or disbelieved, as well as the ideal standard to which any new matter presented for belief or disbelief is referred, differ considerably. By rational discussion — by facts and reasonings set forth on both sides, as in the Platonic dialogues — opinions may be overthrown or modified: dissentients may be brought into agreement, or at least each may be rendered more fully master of the case on both sides. But this dialectic, the Platonic question and answer, is itself an appeal to the free action of the individual mind. The questioner starts from premisses conceded by the respondent. He depends upon the acquiescence of the respondent for every step taken in advance. Such a proceeding is relative, not absolute: coinciding with the Protagorean formula rather than with the Platonic negation of it.25 No man ever claimed the right of individual judgment more emphatically than Sokrates: no man was ever more special in adapting his persuasions to the individual persons with whom he conversed.
24 To illustrate the impossibility of obtaining any standard absolute and purely objective, without reference to any judging Subject, I had transcribed a passage from Steinthal’s work on the Classification of Human languages; but I find it too long for a note.
Steinthal, Charakteristik der Hauptsächlichen Typen des Sprachbaues, 2nd ed. Berlin, 1860, pp. 313-314-315.
25 See the striking passages in the Gorgias, pp. 472 B, 474 B, 482 B; Theætêtus, p. 171 D.
Also in proclaiming the necessity of specialty of adaptation to individual minds — Plat. Phædr. pp. 271-272, 277 B.
297Protagoras did not affirm, that Belief depended upon the will or inclination of each individual but that it was relative to the circumstances of each individual mind.
The grounds of belief, according to Protagoras, relative to the individual, are not the same with all men at all times. But it does not follow (nor does Protagoras appear to have asserted) that they vary according to the will or inclination of the individual. Plato, in impugning this doctrine, reasons as if these two things were one and the same — as if, according to Protagoras, a man believed whatever he chose.26 This, however, is not an exact representation of the doctrine “Homo Mensura”: which does not assert the voluntary or the arbitrary, but simply the relative as against the absolute. What a man believes does not depend upon his own will or choice: it depends upon an aggregate of circumstances, partly peculiar to himself, partly common to him with other persons more or fewer in number:27 upon his 298age, organisation, and temperament — his experience, education, historical and social position — his intellectual powers and acquirements — his passions and sentiments of every kind, &c. These and other ingredients — analogous, yet neither the same nor combined in the same manner, even in different individuals of the same time and country, much less in those of different times and countries — compose the aggregate determining grounds of belief or disbelief in every one. Each man has in his mind an ideal standard of truth and falsehood: but that ideal standard, never exactly the same in any two men, nor in the same man at all times, often varies in different men to a prodigious extent. Now it is to this standard in the man’s own mind that those reasoners refer who maintain that belief is relative. They do not maintain, that it is relative simply to his wishes, or that he believes and disbelieves what he chooses.
26 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 387-389, where πρὸς ἡμᾶς is considered as equivalent to ὡς ἂν ἡμεῖς βουλώμεθα — ᾗ ἂν ἡμεῖς βουλήθωμεν — both of them being opposed to οἷον ἐπεφύκει — τὸ κατὰ φύσιν — ἰδίαν αὐτῶν φύσιν ἔχουσαι.
The error here noted is enumerated by by Mr. John Stuart Mill, among the specimens of Fallacies of Confusion, in his System of Logic, Book v. ch. vii. § 1: “The following is an argument of Descartes to prove, in his à priori manner, the being of a God. The conception, says he, of an infinite Being proves the real existence of such a Being. For if there is not really any such Being, I must have made the conception: but if I could make it, I can also unmake it — which evidently is not true: therefore there must be, externally to myself, an archetype from which the conception was derived. In this argument (which, it may be observed, would equally prove the real existence of ghosts and of witches) the ambiguity is in the pronoun I; by which, in one place, is to be understood my will — in another, the laws of my nature. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, had no original without, the conclusion would unquestionably follow that I made it — that is, the laws of my nature must have somehow evolved it: but that my will made it, would not follow. Now when Descartes afterwards adds that I cannot unmake the conception, he means that I cannot get rid of it by an act of my will — which is true, but is not the proposition required. I can as much unmake this conception as I can any other: no conception which I have once had, can I ever dismiss by mere volition: but what some of the laws of my nature have produced, other laws, or those same laws in other circumstances, may, and often do, subsequently efface.”
27 To show how constantly this Protagorean dictum is misconceived, as if Protagoras had said that things were to each individual what he was pleased or chose to represent them as being, I transcribe the following passage from Lassalle’s elaborate work on Herakleitus (vol. ii. p. 381):— “Des Protagoras Prinzip ist es, dass überhaupt Nichts Objektives ist; dass vielmehr alles Beliebige was Einem scheint, auch für ihn sei. Dies Selbstsetzen des Subjekts ist die einzige Wahrheit der Dinge, welche an sich selbst Nichts Objektives haben, sondern zur gleichgültigen Fläche geworden sind, auf die das Subjekt willkührlich und beliebig seine Charaktere schreibt.”
Protagoras does not (as is here asserted) deny the Objective: he only insists on looking at it in conjunction with, or measured by, some Subject; and that Subject, not simply as desiring or preferring, but clothed in all its attributes.
Facts of sense — some are the same to all sentient subjects, others are different to different subjects. Grounds of unanimity.
When Plato says that combustibility and secability of objects are properties fixed and determinate,28 this is perfectly true, as meaning that a certain proportion of the facts of sense affect in the same way the sentient and appreciative powers of each individual, determining the like belief in every man who has ever experienced them. Measuring and weighing are sensible facts of this character: seen alike by all, and conclusive proofs to all. But this implies, to a certain point, fundamental299 uniformity in the individual sentients and judges. Where such condition is wanting — where there is a fundamental difference in the sensible apprehension manifested by different individuals — the unanimity is wanting also. Such is the case in regard to colours and other sensations: witness the peculiar vision of Dalton and many others. The unanimity in the first case, the discrepancy in the second, is alike an aggregate of judgments, each individual, distinct, and relative. You pronounce an opponent to be in error: but if you cannot support your opinion by evidence or authority which satisfies his senses or his reason, he remains unconvinced. Your individual opinion stands good to you; his opinion stands good to him. You think that he ought to believe as you do, and in certain cases you feel persuaded that he will be brought to that result by future experience, which of course must be relative to him and to his appreciative powers. He entertains the like persuasion in regard to you.
28 When Plato asserts not only that Objects are absolute and not relative to any Subject — but that the agencies or properties of Objects are also absolute — he carries the doctrine farther than modern defenders of the absolute. M. Cousin, in the eighth and ninth Lectures of his Cours d’Hist. de la Philosophie Morale au 18me Siècle, lays down the contrary, maintaining that objects and essences alone are absolute, though unknowable; but that their agencies are relative and knowable.
“Nous savons qu’il exists quelque chose hors de nous, parceque nous ne pouvons expliquer nos perceptions sans les rattacher à des causes distinctes de nous mêmes: nous savons de plus que ces causes, dont nous ne connaissons pas d’ailleurs l’essence, produisent les effets les plus variables, les plus divers, et même les plus contraires, selon qu’elles rencontrent telle nature ou telle disposition du sujet. Mais savons-nous quelque chose de plus? et même, vu le caractère indéterminé des causes que nous concevons dans les corps, y-a-t-il quelque chose de plus à savoir? Y-a-t-il lieu de nous enquérir si nous percevons les choses telles qu’elles sont? Non, évidemment.… Je ne dis pas que le problème est insoluble: je dis qu’il est absurde, et renferme une contradiction. Nous ne savons pas ce que ces causes sont en elles-mêmes, et la raison nous défend de chercher à les connaître: mais il est bien évident à priori qu’elles ne sont pas en elles-mêmes ce qu’elles sont par rapport à nous, puisque la présence du sujet modifie nécessairement leur action. Supprimez tout sujet sentant, il est certain que ces causes agiraient encore, puisqu’elles continueraient d’exister: mais elles agiraient autrement; elles seraient encore des qualités et des propriétés, mais qui ne ressembleraient à rien de ce que nous connaissons. Le feu ne manifesterait plus aucune des propriétés que nous lui connaissons: que serait-il? C’est ce que nous ne saurons jamais. C’est d’ailleurs peut-être un problème qui ne répugne pas seulement à la nature de notre esprit mais à l’essence même des choses. Quand même en effet on supprimerait par la pensée tous les sujets sentants, il faudrait encore admettre que nul corps ne manifesterait ses propriétés autrement qu’en relation avec un sujet quelconque, et dans ce cas ses propriétés ne seraient encore que relatives: en sorte qu’il me paraît fort raisonnable d’admettre que les propriétés déterminées des corps n’existent pas indépendamment d’un sujet quelconque.” (2de Partie, 8me Leçon, pp. 216-218, ed. Danton et Vacherot, Bruxelles, 1841.)
Sokrates exemplifies his theory of the Absolute Name or the Name-Form. He attempts to show the inherent rectitude of many existing names. His etymological transitions.
It is thus that Sokrates, in the first half of the Kratylus, lays down his general theory that names have a natural and inherent propriety: and that naming is a process which cannot be performed except in one way. He at the same time announces that his theory rests upon a principle opposed to the “Homo Mensura” of Protagoras. He then proceeds to illustrate his doctrine by exemplification of many particular names, which are alleged to manifest a propriety of signification in reference to the persons or matters to which they are applied. Many of these are proper names, but some are common names or appellatives. Plato regards the 300proper names as illustrating, even better than the common, the doctrine of inherent rectitude in naming: especially the names of the Gods, with respect to the use of which Plato was himself timidly scrupulous — and the names reported by Homer as employed by the Gods themselves. We must remember that nearly all Grecian proper names had some meaning: being compounds or derivatives from appellative nouns.
The proper names are mostly names of Gods or Heroes: then follow the names of the celestial bodies (conceived as Gods), of the elements, of virtues and vices, &c. All of them, however, both the proper and the common names, are declared to be compound, or derivative; presupposing other simple and primitive names from which they are formed.29 Sokrates declares the 301fundamental theory on which the primitive roots rest; and indicates the transforming processes, whereby many of the names are deduced or combined from their roots. But these processes, though sometimes reasonable enough, are in a far greater number of instances forced, arbitrary, and fanciful. The transitions of meaning imagined, and the structural transformations of words, are alike strange and violent.30
29 See the Introduction to Pape’s Wörterbuch der Griechischen Eigennamen.
Thus Proklus observes:— “The recklessness about proper names, is shown in the case of the man who gave to his son the name of Athanasius” (Proklus, Schol. ad Kratyl. p. 5, ed. Boiss.) Proklus adopts the distinction between divine and human names, citing the authority of Plato in Kratylus. The words of Proklus are remarkable, ad Timæum, ii. p. 197. Schneid. Οἰκεῖα γάρ ἐστιν ὀνόματα πάσῃ τάξει τῶν πραγμάτων, θεῖα μὲν τοῖς θείοις, διανοητὰ δὲ τοῖς διανοητοῖς, δοξαστὰ δὲ τοῖς δοξαστοῖς. See Timæus, p. 29 B. Compare also Kratylus, p. 400 E, and Philêbus, p. 12 C.
When Plato (Kratylus, pp. 391-392; compare Phædrus, p. 252 A) cites the lines of Homer mentioning appellations bestowed by the Gods, I do not understand him, as Gräfenhahn and others do, to speak in mockery, but bonâ fide. The affirmation of Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromat. i. 104) gives a probable account of Plato’s belief:— Ὁ Πλάτων καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς διαλεκτὸν ἀπονέμει τινά, μάλιστα μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνειράτων τεκμαιρόμενος καὶ τῶν χρησμῶν. See Gräfenhahn, Gesch. der Klassischen Philologie, vol. i. p. 176.
When we read the views of some learned modern philologists, such as Godfrey Hermann, we cannot be surprised that many Greeks in the Platonic age should believe in an ὀρθότης ὀνομάτων applicable to their Gods and Heroes:— “Unde intelligitur, ex nominibus naturam et munia esse cognoscenda Deorum: Nec Deorum tantum, sed etiam heroum, omninoque rerum omnium, nominibus quæ propria vocantur appellatarum” (De Mythologia Græcorum Antiquissimâ — in Opuscula, vol. ii. p. 167).
|
“Bei euch, Ihr Herrn, kann man das Wesen
Gewöhnlich aus dem Namen lesen,” &c. Goethe, Faust. |
See a remarkable passage in Plutarch, adv. Kolôten, c. 22, p. 1119 E, respecting the essential rectitude and indispensable employment of the surnames and appellations of the Gods.
The supposition of a mysterious inherent relation, between Names and the things named, has found acceptance among expositors of many different countries.
M. Jacob Salvador (Histoire des Institutions de Moïse, Liv. x., ch. ii.; vol. iii. p. 136) says respecting the Jewish Cabbala:— “Que dirai-je de leur Cabale? mot signifiant aussi tradition. Elle se composait originairement de tous les principes abstraits qui ne se répandent pas chez le vulgaire: elle tomba bientôt dans la folie. Cacher quelques idées metaphysiques sous les figures les plus bizarres, et prendre ensuite une peine infinie pour retrouver ces idées premières: s’imaginer qu’il existe entre les noms et les choses une corrélation inévitable, et que la contexture littérale des livres sacrés par exemple, doit éclairer sur l’essence même et sur tous les secrets du Dieu qui les a dictés: tourmenter dès-lors chaque phrase, chaque mot, chaque lettre, avec la même ardeur qu’on en met de nos jours à décomposer et à recomposer tous les corps de la nature: enfin, après avoir établi la corrélation entre les mots et les choses, croire qu’en changeant, disposant, combinant, ces mots, on traverse de prétendus canaux d’influence qui les unissent à ces choses, et qu’on agit sur elles: voilà, ce me semble, les principales prétentions de cette espèce de science occulte, échappée de l’Égypte, qui a dévoré beaucoup de bons esprits, et qui, d’une part, donne la main à la théologie, d’autre part, à l’astrologie et aux combinaisons magiques.”
30 I cite various specimens of the etymologies given by Plato:—
1. Ἀγαμέμνων — ὁ ἀγαστὸς κατὰ τὴν ἐπιμονήν — in consequence of his patience in remaining (μονὴ) with his army before Troy (p. 395 A).
2. Ἀτρεὺς — κατὰ τὸ ἀτειρές, καὶ κατὰ τὸ ἄτρεστον, καὶ κατὰ τὸ ἀτηρόν (p. 395 C).
3. Πέλοψ — ὁ τὸ ἐγγὺς (πέλας) μόνον ὁρῶν καὶ τὸ παραχρῆμα (p. 395 D).
4. Τάνταλος — ταλάντατος (p. 395 E).
5. Ζεὺς — Δία — Ζῆνα — δι’ ὃν ζῆν ἀεὶ πᾶσι τοῖς ζῶσιν ὑπάρχει — ut proprie unum debuerit esse vocabulum Διαζῆνα. Stallbaum, ad. p. 396 A. Proklus admired these etymologies (ad Timæum, ii. p. 226, ed. Schneid.).
6. Οἱ θεοὶ — Sun, Moon, Earth, Stars, Uranus — ἅτε αὐτὰ ὁρωντες πάντα ἀεὶ ἰόντα δρόμῳ καὶ θέοντα, ἀπὸ ταύτης τῆς φύσεως τῆς τοῦ θεῖν θεοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπονομάσαι (p. 397 D).
7. Δαίμονες — ὅτι φρόνιμοι καὶ δαήμονες ἦσαν, δαίμονας αὐτοὺς ὠνόμασεν (Hesiod) (p. 398 B).
8. Ἤρως — either from ἔρως, as one sprung from the union of Gods with human females: or from ἐρωτᾷν or εἴρειν, — from oral or rhetorical attributes, as being ῥήτορες καὶ ἐρωτητικοί (p. 398 D).
9. Δίφιλος — Διῒ φίλος (p. 399 B).
10. Ἄνθρωπος — ὁ ἀναθρῶν ἃ ὄπωπεν (p. 399 C).
11. Ψυχὴ — a double derivation is proposed: first, τὸ ἀνάψυχον, next, a second, i.e. ψυχὴ = φυσέχη, ἢ φύσιν ὀχεῖ καὶ ἔχει, which second is declared to be τεχνικώτερον, and the former to be ridiculous (pp. 399 E, 400 A-B).
12. Σῶμα = τὸ σῆμα τῆς φυχῆς, because the soul is buried in the body. Or σῶμα, that is, preserved or guarded, by the body as by an exterior wall, in order that it may expiate wrongs of a preceding life (p. 400 C).
13. The first imposer of names was a philosopher who followed the theory of Herakleitus — perpetual flux of everything. Pursuant to this theory he gave to various Gods the names Kronos, Rhea, Tethys, &c., all signifying flux (p. 402 A-D).
14. Various derivations of the names Poseidon, Hades or Pluto, Persephonê or Pherrephatta, &c., are given (pp. 404-405); also of Apollo, so as to fit on to the four functions of the last-named God, μουσική, μαντική, ἰατρική, τοξική (p. 405).
15. Μοῦσα — μουσικὴ, from μῶσθαι (recognised in Liddell and Scott from μάω p. 406 A). Ἀφροδίτη from ἀφροῦ γένεσιν, the Hesiodic derivation (p. 406 B-D).
16. Ἀὴρ — ὅτι αἴρει τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς — ἢ ὅτι ἀεὶ ῥεῖ — ἢ ὅτι πνεῦμα ἐξ αὐτοῦ γίγνεται ῥέοντος — quasi ἀητόῤῥουν. Αἰθὴρ — ὅτι ἀεὶ θεῖ περὶ τὸν ἀέρα ῥέων (p. 410 B).
17. Φρόνησις — φορᾶς καὶ ῥοῦ νόησις ὑπολαβεῖν φορᾶς. This and the following are put as derivatives from the Herakleitean theory (p. 411 D-E). Νόησις = τοῦ νέου ἔσις. Σωφροσύνη — σωτηρία φρονήσεως. This is recognised by Aristotle in the Nikom. Ethica, vi. 5.
18. Ἐπιστήμη = ἐπιστημένη — ὡς φερομένοις τοῖς πράγμασιν ἑπομένης τῆς ψυχῆς (p. 412 A).
19. Δικαιοσύνη — ἐπὶ τῇ τοῦ δικαίου συνέσει (p. 412 C).
20. Κακία = τὸ κακῶς ἰόν. Δειλία — τῆς ψυχῆς δεσμὸς ἰσχυρός — ὃ δεῖ λίαν. Ἀρετὴ = ἀειρείτη — that which has an easy and constant flux, or perhaps αἱρετή (p. 415 B-D). Αἰσχρὸν = τὸ ἀεισχοροῦν — τὸ ἀεὶ ἴσχον τὸν ῥοῦν (p. 416 B). Σύμφερὸν = τὴ ἅμα φορὰν τῆς ψυχῆς μετὰ τῶν πραγμάτων (p. 417 A). Λυσιτέλουν = τὸ τῆς φορᾶς λύον τὸ τέλος (p. 417 C-E). Βλαβερὸν = τὸ βλάπτον τὸν ῥοῦν.
The names of favourable import are such as designate facility of the universal flux, according to the Herakleitean theory. The names of unfavourable import designate obstruction of the flux.
21. Ζυγὸν = δυογόν (p. 418 D).
22. Εὐφροσύνη — ἀπὸ τοῦ εὖ πράγμασι τὴν ψυχὴν ξυμφέρεσθαι = εὐφεροσύνη (p. 419 D).
23. Θυμὸς — ἀπὸ τῆς θύσεως καὶ ζέσεως τῆς ψυχῆς. Ἐπιθυμία — ἡ ἐπὶ τὸν θυμὸν ἰοῦσα δύναμις (p. 419 E).
24. Τὸ ὄν = τὸ οὖ τυγχάνει ζήτημα, τὸ ὄνομα. Ὀνομαστὸν = ὄν, οὖ μάσμα ἐστίν. (Μάσμα = ζήτημα: μαίεσθαι = ζητεῖν) (p. 421 A).
25. Ἀληθεία — θεία ἄλη, or ἡ θεία τοῦ ὄντος φορά. Ψεῦδος from εὕδειν, with ψῖ prefixed, as being the opposite of movement and flux (p. 421 B-C).
26. Several derivations of names are given by Sokrates, as founded upon the theory opposed to Herakleitus — i.e., the theory that things were not in perpetual flux, but stationary:—
Ἐπιστήμη — ὅτι ἵστησιν ἡμῶν ἐπὶ τοῖς πράγμασι τὴν ψυχήν.
Ἱστορία — ὅτι ἵστησι τὸν ῥοῦν.
Πιστὸν — ἱστᾷν παντάπασι σημαίνει.
Μνήμη — μονὴ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ (437 A-C).
27. We found before that some names of good attributes were founded on the Herakleitean theory. But there are also names of bad attributes founded on it.
Ἀμαθία = ἡ τοῦ ἅμα θεῷ ἰόντος πορεία.
Ἀκολασία = ἡ ἀκολουθία τοῖς πράγμασιν (p. 437 C).
Sokrates contrasts the two theories of στάσις and κίνησις, and says that he believes the first Name-Givers to have apportioned names in conformity to the theory of κίνησις, but that he thinks they were mistaken in adopting that theory (p. 439 C).
302These transitions appear violent to a modern reader. They did not appear so to readers of Plato until this century. Modern discovery, that they are intended as caricatures to deride the Sophists.
Such is the light in which these Platonic etymologies appear to a modern critic. But such was not the light in which they appeared either to the ancient Platonists, or to critics earlier than the last century. The Platonists even thought them full of mysterious and recondite wisdom. Dionysius of Halikarnassus highly commends Plato for his speculations on etymology, especially in the Kratylus.31 Plutarch cites some of the most singular etymologies in the Kratylus as serious and instructive. The modesty of the Protagorean formula becomes here especially applicable: for so complete has been the revolution of opinion, that the Platonic etymologies are now treated by most critics as too absurd to have been seriously intended by Plato, even as conjectures. It is called 303“a valuable discovery of modern times” (so Schleiermacher32 terms it) that Plato meant all or most of them as mere parody 304and caricature. We are now told that it was not Plato who misconceived the analogies, conditions, and limits, of etymological transition, but others; whom Plato has here set himself to expose and ridicule, by mock etymologies intended to parody those which they had proposed as serious. If we ask who the persons thus ridiculed were, we learn that they were the Sophists, Protagoras, or Prodikus, with others; according to Schleiermacher, Antisthenes among them.33
31 Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verb. a. 16, p. 196, Schaefer. τὰ κράτιστα δὲ νέμω, ὡς πρώτῳ τὸν ὑπὲρ ἐτυμολογίας εἰσάγοντι λόγον, Πλάτωνι τῷ Σωκρατικῷ, πολλαχῇ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοθι, μάλιστα δὲ ἐν τῷ Κρατύλῳ.
About Plato’s etymologies, as seriously intended, see Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, p. 375 C-D-E, with the note of Wyttenbach. Harris, in his Hermes (pp. 369-370-407), alludes to the etymologies of Plato in the Kratylus as being ingenious, though disputable, but not at all as being derisory caricatures. Indeed the etymology of Scientia, which he cites from Scaliger, p. 370, is quite as singular as any in the Kratylus. Sydenham (Notes to the translation of Plato’s Philêbus, p. 35) calls the Kratylus “a dialogue, in which is taught the nature of things, as well the permanent as the transient, from a supposed etymology of names and words.
I find, in the very instructive comments of Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch (Part iv. ch. 24, p. 250), a citation from St. Augustine, illustrating the view which I believe Plato to have taken of these etymologies: “Quo loco prorsus non arbitror prætereundum, quod pater Valerius animadvertit admirans, in quorundam rusticanorum (i.e., Africans, near Carthage) collocutione. Cum enim alter alteri dixisset Salus — quæsivit ab eo, qui et Latiné nosset et Punicé, quid esset Salus: responsum est, Tria. Tum ille agnoscens cum gaudio, salutem nostram esse Trinitatem, convenientiam linguarum non fortuitu sic sonuisse arbitratus est, sed occultissimâ dispensatione divinæ providentiæ — ut cum Latiné nominatur Salus, à Punicis intelligantur Tria — et cum Punici linguâ suâ Tria nominant, Latiné intelligatur Salus … Sed hæc verborum consonantia, sive provenerit sive provisa sit, non pugnaciter agendum est ut ei quisque consentiat, sed quantum interpretantis elegantiam hilaritas audientis admittit.”
So in the etymologies of the Kratylus: Plato follows out threads of analogy, which, with indulgent hearers, he reckons will be sufficient for proof: and which, even when not accepted as proof, will be pleasing to the fancy of unbelieving hearers, as they are to his own. There is no intention to caricature: no obvious absurdities piled up with a view to caricature.
32 Schleiermacher, Introduction to Kratylus, vol. iv. p. 6: “Dagegen ist viel gewonnen durch die Entdeckung neuerer Zeiten,” &c. To the same purpose, Zeller, Phil. d. Griech., part ii. p. 402, edit. 2nd, and Brandis, Gesch. Gr. Röm. Phil., part ii. sect. cvii. p. 285.
Stallbaum, Prolegg. ad Platon. Cratylum, p. 4, says: “Quod mirum est non esse ab iis animadversum, qui Platonem putaverunt de linguæ et vocabulorum origine hoc libro suam sententiam explicare voluisse. Isti enim adeo nihil senserunt irrisionis, ut omnia atque singula pro philosophi decretis venditarint, ideoque ei absurdissima quæque commenta affinxerint. Ita Menagius.… Nec Tiedemannus Argum, Dial. Plat. multo rectius judicat. Irrisionem primi senserunt Garnierius et Tennemann.” &c. Stallbaum, moreover, is perpetually complaining in his notes, that the Etymological Lexicons adopt Plato’s derivations as genuine. Ménage (ad Diogen. Laert. iii. 25) declares most of the etymologies of Plato in the Kratylus to be ψευδέτυμα, but never hints at the supposition that they are intended as caricatures. During the centuries between Plato and Ménage, men had become more critical on the subject of etymology: in the century after Ménage, they had become more critical still, as we may see by the remarks of Turgot on the etymologies of Ménage himself.
The following are the remarks of Turgot, in the article ‘Etymologie’ (Encycl. Franc. in Turgot’s collected works, vol. iii. p. 33): “Ménage est un exemple frappant des absurdités dans lesquelles on tombe, en adoptant sans choix ce que suggère la malheureuse facilité de supposer tout ce qui est possible: car il est très vrai qu’il ne fait aucune supposition dont la possibilité ne soit justifiée par des exemples. Mais nous avons prouvé qu’en multipliant à volonté les altérations intermédiaires, soit dans le son, soit dans la signification, il est aisé de dériver un mot quelconque de tout autre mot donné: c’est le moyen d’expliquer tout, et dès-lors de ne rien expliquer; c’est le moyen aussi de justifier tous les mépris de l’ignorance.”
Steinhart (Einleitung zum Kratylus, pp. 551-552) agrees with Stallbaum to a certain extent, that Plato in the Kratylus intended to mock and caricature the bad etymologists of his own day; yet also that parts of the Kratylus are seriously intended. And he declares it almost impossible to draw a line between the serious matter and the caricature.
It appears to me that the Platonic critics here exculpate Plato from the charge of being a bad etymologist, only by fastening upon him another intellectual defect quite as serious.
Dittrich, in his Dissertation De Cratylo Platonis, Leipsic, 1841, adopts the opinion of Schleiermacher and the other critics, that the etymological examples given in this dialogue, though Sokrates announces them as proving and illustrating his own theory seriously laid down, are really bitter jests and mockery, intended to destroy it — “hanc sententiam facetissimis et irrisione plenis exemplis, dum comprobare videtur, reverâ infringit” (p. 12). Dittrich admits that Kratylus, who holds the theory derided, understands nothing of this acerbissima irrisio (p. 18). He thinks that Protagoras, not Prodikus nor Antisthenes, is the person principally caricatured (pp. 32-34-38).
33 Schleiermacher, Introd. to Kratyl. pp. 8-16; Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Krat. p. 17. Winckelmann suspects that Hermogenes in the Kratylus is intended to represent Antisthenes (Antisth. Fragment. p. 49).
Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 866) says that the Pythagoreans were among the earliest etymologising philosophers, proposing such etymologies as now appear very absurd.
Dissent from this theory — No proof that the Sophists ever proposed etymologies.
To me this modern discovery or hypothesis appears inadmissible. It rests upon assumptions at best gratuitous, and in part incorrect: it introduces difficulties greater than those which it removes. We find no proof that the Sophists ever proposed such etymologies as those which are here supposed to be ridiculed — or that they devoted themselves to etymology at all. If they etymologised, they would doubtless do so in the manner (to our judgment loose and fantastic) of their own time and of times long after them. But what ground have we for presuming that Plato’s views on the subject were more correct? and that etymologies which to them appeared admissible, would be regarded by him as absurd and ridiculous?
Now if the persons concerned were other than the Sophists, scarcely any critic would have thought himself entitled to fasten upon them a discreditable imputation without some evidence. Of Prodikus we know (and that too chiefly from some sarcasms of Plato) that he took pains to distinguish words apparently, but not really, equivalent: and that such accurate distinction was what he meant by “rectitude of names” (Plato, Euthydêm. 277 E.) Of Protagoras we know that he taught, by precept or example, correct speaking or writing: but we have no information that either of them pursued etymological researches, 305successfully or unsuccessfully.34 Moreover this very dialogue (Kratylus) contains strong presumptive evidence that the Platonic etymologies could never have been intended to ridicule Protagoras. For these etymologies are announced by Sokrates as exemplifying and illustrating a theory of his own respecting names: which theory (Sokrates himself expressly tells us) is founded upon the direct negation of the cardinal doctrine of Protagoras.35 That Sophist, therefore, could not have been ridiculed by any applications, however extravagant, of a theory directly opposed to him.36
34 See a good passage of Winckelmann, Prolegg. ad Platon. Euthydemum, p. xlvii., respecting Protagoras and Prodikus, as writers and critics on language.
Stallbaum says, Proleg. ad Krat. p. 11:— “Quibus verbis haud dubié notantur Sophistæ; qui, neglectis linguæ elementis, derivatorum et compositorum verborum originationem temeré ad suum arbitrium tractabant”. Ibid. p. 4:— “In Cratylo ineptæ etymologiæ specimina exhibentur, ita quidem ut haudquaquam dubitari liceat, quin ista omnia ad mentem sophistarum maximeque Protagoreorum joculari imitatione explicata sint”.
In spite of these confident assertions, — first, that the Sophists are the persons intended to be ridiculed, next, that they deserved to be so ridiculed — Stallbaum has another passage, p. 15, wherein he says, “Jam vero quinam fuerint philosophi isti atque etymologi, qui in Cratylo ridentur et exploduntur, vulgo parum exploratum habetur”. He goes on to say that neither Prodikus nor Antisthenes is meant, but Protagoras and the Protagoreans. To prove this he infers, from a passage in this dialogue (c. 11, p. 391 C), that Protagoras had written a book περὶ ὀρθότητος τῶν ὀνομάτων (Heindorf and Schleiermacher, with better reason, infer from the passage nothing more than the circumstance that Protagoras taught ὀρθοεπείαν or correct speaking and writing). The passage does not prove this; but if it did, what did Protagoras teach in the book? Stallbaum tells us (p. 16):— “Jam si quæras, quid tandem Protagoras ipse de nominum ortu censuerit, fateor unâ conjecturâ nitendum esse, ut de hâc re aliquid eruatur”. He then proceeds to conjecture, from the little which we know respecting Protagoras, what that Sophist must have laid down upon the origin of names; and he finishes by assuming the very point which he ought to have proved (p. 17):— “ex ipso Cratylo intelligimus et cognoscimus, mox inter Protagoræ amicos exstitisse qui inepté hæc studia persequentes, non e verbis et nominibus mentis humanæ notiones elicere et illustrare, sed in verba et nomina sua ipsi decreta transferre et sic ea probare et confirmare niterentur. Quid quidem homines à Platone hoc libro facetissimâ irrisione exagitantur,” &c. I repeat, that in spite of Stallbaum’s confident assertions, he fails in giving the smallest proof that Protagoras or the Sophists proposed etymologies such as to make them a suitable butt for Plato on this occasion. Ast also talks with equal confidence and equal absence of proof about the silly and arbitrary etymological proceedings of the Sophists, which (he says) this dialogue is intended throughout to ridicule (Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, pp. 253-254-264, &c.).
35 Plato, Kratylus, c. 4-5, pp. 386-387.
36 Lassalle (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 379-384) asserts and shows very truly that Protagoras cannot be the person intended to be represented by Plato under the name of Kratylus, or as holding the opinion of Kratylus about names. Lassalle affirms that Plato intends Kratylus in the dialogue to represent Herakleitus himself (p. 385); moreover he greatly extols the sagacity of Herakleitos for having laid down the principle, that “Names are the essence of things,” in which principle Lassalle (so far as I understand him) himself concurs.
Assuming this to be the case, we should naturally suppose that if Plato intends to ridicule any one, by presenting caricatured etymologies as flowing from this principle, the person intended as butt must be Herakleitus himself. Not so Lassalle. He asserts as broadly as Stallbaum that it was Protagoras and the other Sophists who grossly abused the doctrine of Herakleitus, for the purpose of confusing and perverting truth by arbitrary etymologies. His language is even more monstrous and extravagant than that of Stallbaum; yet he does not produce (any more than Stallbaum) the least fragment of proof that the Sophists or Protagoras did what he imputes to them (pp. 400-401-403-422).
M. Lenormant, in his recent edition of the Kratylus (Comm. p. 7-9), maintains also that neither the Sophists nor the Rhetors pretended to etymologise, nor are here ridiculed. But he ascribes to Plato in the Kratylus a mystical and theological purpose which I find it difficult to follow.
306Plato did not intend to propose mock-etymologies, or to deride any one. Protagoras could not be ridiculed here. Neither Hermogenes nor Kratylus understand the etymologies as caricature.
Suppose it then ascertained that Plato intended to ridicule and humiliate some rash etymologists, there would still be no propriety in singling out the Sophists as his victims — except that they are obnoxious names, against whom every unattested accusation is readily believed. But it is neither ascertained, nor (in my judgment) probable, that Plato here intended to ridicule or humiliate any one. The ridicule, if any was intended, would tell against himself more than against others. For he first begins by laying down a general theory respecting names: a theory unquestionably propounded as serious, and understood to be so by the critics:37 moreover, involving some of his favourite and peculiar doctrines. It is this theory that his particular etymologies are announced as intended to carry out, in the way of illustration or exemplification. Moreover, he undertakes to prove this theory against Hermogenes, who declares himself strongly opposed to it: and he proves it by a string of arguments which (whether valid or not) are obviously given with a serious and sincere purpose of establishing the conclusion. Immediately after having established that there was a real rectitude of names, and after announcing that he would proceed to enquire wherein such rectitude consisted,38 what sense or consistency would there be in his inventing a string of intentional caricatures announced as real etymologies? By doing this, he would be only discrediting and degrading the very theory which he had taken so much pains to inculcate upon Hermogenes. Instead of ridiculing Protagoras, he would ridicule himself and his own theory for the benefit of opponents generally, one among them being Protagoras: 307who (if we imagine his life prolonged) would have had the satisfaction of seeing a theory, framed in direct opposition to his doctrine, discredited and parodied by his own advocate. Hermogenes, too (himself an opponent of the theory, though not concurring with Protagoras), if these etymologies were intended as caricatures, ought to be made to receive them as such, and to join in the joke at the expense of the persons derided. But Hermogenes is not made to manifest any sense of their being so intended: he accepts them all as serious, though some as novel and surprising, in the same passive way which is usual with the interlocutors of Sokrates in other dialogues. Farther, there are some among these etymologies plain and plausible enough, accepted as serious by all the critics.39 Yet these are presented in the series, without being parted off by any definite line, along with those which we are called upon to regard as deliberate specimens of mock-etymology. Again, there are also some, which, looking at their etymological character, are as strange and surprising as any in the whole dialogue: but which yet, from the place which they occupy in the argument, and from the plain language in which they are presented, almost exclude the supposition that they can be intended as jest or caricature.40 Lastly, 308Kratylus, whose theory all these etymologies are supposed to be intended to caricature, is so far from being aware of this, that he cordially approves every thing which Sokrates had said.41
37 Schleiermacher, Introd. to Krat. pp. 7-10; Lassalle, Herakleit. ii. p. 387.
38 Plato, Kratylus, p. 391 B.
39 See, as an example, his derivation of Δίφιλος from Διΐ φίλος, p. 399: Μοῦσα, p. 406: δαίμων from δαήμων, p. 398: for Ἀφροδίτη he takes the Hesiodic etymology, p. 406. Ἄρης and ἄῤῥην (p. 407). His derivation of αἰθήρ — ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀεὶ θέειν (p. 410) is given twice by Aristotle (De Cœlo, i. 3, p. 270, b. 22; Meteorol. i. 3, p. 339, b. 25) as well as in the Pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, p. 392, a. 8. None of the Platonic etymologies is more strange than that of ψυχή, quasi φυσέχη, ἀπὸ τοῦ τὴν φύσιν ὀχεῖν καὶ ἔχειν (Kratyl. p. 400). Yet Proklus cites this as serious, Scholia in Kratylum, p. 4, ed. Boissonnade. Plato, in the Treatise De Legibus, derives χόρος from χαρά and νόμος from νοῦς or νόος (ii. 1, p. 654 A, xii. 8, p. 957 D).
40 See Plato, Kratyl. p. 437 A-B.
This occurs in the latter portion of the dialogue carried on by Sokrates with Kratylus, and is admitted by Lassalle to be seriously meant by Plato: though Lassalle maintains that the etymologies in the first part of the dialogue (between Sokrates and Hermogenes) are mere mockery and parody. (Lassalle, Herakleitos der Dunkle, vol. ii., pp. 402-403).
I venture to say that none of those Platonic etymologies, which Lassalle regards as caricatures, are more absurd than those which he here accepts as serious. Liddell and Scott in their Lexicon say about θυμός, “probably rightly derived from θύω by Plat. Crat. 419 E, ἀπὸ τῆς θύσεως καὶ ζέσεως τῆς ψυχῆς.” The manner in which Schleiermacher and Steinhart also (Einleit. zum Kratylos, pp. 552-554), analysing this dialogue, represent Plato as passing backwards and forwards from mockery to earnest and from earnest to mockery, appears to me very singular: as well as the principle which Schleiermacher lays down (Introduct. p. 10), that Plato intended the general doctrines to be seriously understood, and the particular etymological applications to be mere mockery and extravagance (um wer weiss welche Komödie aufzuführen). What other philosopher has ever propounded serious doctrines, and then followed them up by illustrations knowingly and intentionally caricatured so as to disparage the doctrines instead of recommending them?
It is surely less difficult to believe that Plato conceived as plausible and admissible those etymologies which appear to us absurd.
As a specimen of the view entertained by able men of the seventeenth century respecting the Platonic and Aristotelian etymologies, see the Institutiones Logicæ of Burgersdicius, Lib. i. c. 25, not. 1. Lehrsch (Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, Part i. p. 34-35) agrees with the other commentators, that the Platonic etymologies in the Kratylus are caricatured to deride the boastful and arbitrary etymologies of the Sophists about language. But he too produces no evidence of such etymologies on the part of the Sophists; nay, what is remarkable, he supposes that both Protagoras and Prodikus agreed in the Platonic doctrine that names were φύσει (see pp. 17-19).
41 Plato, Kratylus, p. 429 C. Steinhart (Einleit. zum Krat. pp. 549-550) observes that both Kratylus and Hermogenes are represented as understanding seriously these etymologies which are now affirmed to be meant as caricatures.
As specimens of Plato’s view respecting admissible etymologies, we find him in Timæus, p. 43 C, deriving αἴσθησις from ἀΐσσω: again in the same dialogue, p. 62 A, θερμὸς from κερματίζειν. In Legg. iv. 714, we have τὴν τοῦ νοῦ διανομὴν ἐπονομάζοντας νόμον. In Phædrus, p. 238 C, we find ἔρως derived from ἐῤῥωμένως ῥωσθεῖσα.
Aristotle derives ὄσφυς from ἰσοφυές, Histor. Animal. i. 13, p. 493, a. 22: also δίκαιον from δίχα, Ethic. Nikom. v. 7, 1132, a. 31; μεθύειν — μετὰ τὸ θύειν, Athenæus, ii. 40. The Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Περὶ Κόσμου (p. 401, a. 15) adopts the Platonic etymology of Δία-Ζῆνα as δι’ ὃν ζῶμεν
Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, c. 9, p. 948, derives κνέφας from κενὸν φάους.
The Emperor Marcus Antoninus derives ἀκτίς, the ray of the Sun, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐκτείνεσθαι, Meditat. viii. 57.
The Stoics, who were fond of etymologising, borrowed many etymologies from the Platonic Kratylus (Villoison, de Theologiâ Physicâ Stoicorum, in Osann’s edition of Cornutus De Naturâ Deorum, p. 512). Specimens of the Stoic etymologies are given by the Stoic Balbus in Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, ii. 25-29 (64-73).
Dähne (in his Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religions-Philosophie, i. p. 73 seq.) remarks on the numerous etymologies not merely propounded, but assumed as grounds of reasoning by Philo Judæus in commenting upon the Pentateuch, etymologies totally inadmissible and often ridiculous.
Plato intended his theory as serious, but his exemplifications as admissible guesses. He does not cite particular cases as proofs of a theory, but only as illustrating what he means.
I cannot therefore accept as well-founded this “discovery of modern times,” which represents the Platonic etymologies in the Kratylus as intentionally extravagant and knowingly caricatured, for the purpose of ridiculing the Sophists or others. In my judgment, Plato did not put them forward as extravagant, nor for the purpose of ridiculing any one, but as genuine illustrations of a theory of his own respecting names. It cannot be said indeed that he advanced them as proof of his theory: for Plato seldom appeals to particulars, except when he has a theory to attack. When he has a theory to lay down, he does not generally309 recognise the necessity of either proving or verifying it by application to particular cases. His proof is usually deductive or derived from some more general principle asserted à priori — some internal sentiment enunciated as a self-justifying maxim. Particular examples serve to illustrate what the principle is, but are not required to establish its validity.42 But I believe that he intended his particular etymologies as bonâ fide guesses, more or less probable (like the developments in the Timæus, which he43 repeatedly designates as εἰκότα, and nothing beyond): some certain, some doubtful, some merely novel and ingenious: such as would naturally spring from the originating afflatus of diviners (like Euthyphron, to whom he alludes more than once44) who stepped beyond the ordinary regions of human affirmation. Occasionally he proposes alternative and distinct etymologies: 310feeling assured that there was some way of making out the conclusion — but not feeling equally certain about his own way of making it out. The sentiment of belief attaches itself in Plato’s mind to general views and theorems: when he gives particular consequences as flowing from them, his belief graduates down through all the stages between full certainty and the lowest probability, until in some cases it becomes little more than a fanciful illustration — like the mythes which he so often invents to expand and enliven these same general views.45
42 See some passages in this very dialogue, Krat. pp. 436 E, 437 C, 438 C.
Lassalle remarks that neither Herakleitus nor Plato were disposed to rest the proof of a general principle upon an induction of particulars (Herakleitos, p. 406).
43 Spengel justly remarks (Art. Scr. p. 52) respecting the hypotheses of the Platonic commentators:— “Platonem quidem liberare gestiunt, falsâ, ironiâ, non ex animi sententiâ omnia in Cratylo prolata esse dicentes. Sed præter alia multa et hoc neglexerunt viri docti, easdem verborum originationes, quas in Cratylo, in cæteris quoque dialogis, ubi nullus est facetiis locus, et seria omnia aguntur, recurrere.”
This passage is cited by K. F. Hermann, Gesch. und Syst. d. Platon. Phil. Not. 474, p. 656. Hermann’s own remarks on the dialogue (pp. 494-497) are very indistinct, but he seems to agree with Schleiermacher in singling out Antisthenes as the object of attack.
The third portion of Lehrsch’s work, Ueber die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, cites numerous examples of the etymologies attempted by the ancients, from Homer downwards, many of them collected from the Etymologicon Magnum. When we read the etymologies propounded seriously by Greek and Latin philosophers (especially the Stoic Chrysippus), literary men, jurists, and poets, we shall not be astonished at those found in the Platonic Kratylus. The etymology of Θεὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖν, given in the Kratylus (p. 397 D), as well as in the Pythagorean Philolaus (see Boeckh, Philolaus, pp. 168-175), and repeated by Clemens Alexandrinus, is not more absurd than that of θεὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖναι, given by Herodot. ii. 52, and also repeated by Clemens, see Wesseling’s note. None of the etymologies of the Kratylus is more strange than that of Ζεὺς-Δία-Ζῆνα (p. 396 B). Yet this is reproduced in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise, Περὶ Κόσμου (p. 401, a. 15), as well as by the Stoic Zeno (Diogen. Laert. vii. 147). The treatise of Cornutus, De Nat. Deor. with Osann’s Commentary, is instructive in enabling us to appreciate the taste of ancient times as to what was probable or admissible in etymology. There are few of the etymologies in the Kratylus more singular than that of ἄνθρωπος from ἀναθρῶν ἂ ὅπωπεν. Yet this is cited by Ammonius as a perfectly good derivation, ad Aristot. De Interpret. p. 103, b. 8, Schol. Bekk., and also in the Etymologicon Magnum.
44 Compare Plato, Euthyphron, p. 6 D. Origination and invention often pass in Plato as the workings of an ordinary mind (sometimes even a feeble mind) worked upon from without by divine inspiration, quite distinct from the internal force, reasoning, judging, testing, which belongs to a powerful mind. See Phædrus, pp. 235 C, 238 D, 244 A; Timæus, p. 72 A; Menon, p. 81 A.
45 I have made some remarks to this effect upon the Platonic mythes in my notice of the Phædon, see ch. xxv. p. 415, ad Phædon, p. 114.
Sokrates announces himself as Searcher. Other etymologists of ancient times admitted etymologies as rash as those of Plato.
We must remember that Sokrates in the Kratylus explicitly announces himself as having no formed opinion on the subject, and as competent only to the prosecution of the enquiry, jointly with the others. What he says must therefore be received as conjectures proposed for discussion. I see no ground for believing that he regarded any of them, even those which appear to us the strangest, as being absurd or extravagant — or that he proposed any of them in mockery and caricature, for the purpose of deriding other Etymologists. Because these etymologies, or many of them at least, appear to us obviously absurd, we are not warranted in believing that they must have appeared so to Plato. They did not appear so (as I have already observed) to Dionysius of Halikarnassus — nor to Diogenes, nor to the Platonists of antiquity nor to any critics earlier than the seventeenth century.46 By 311many of these critics they were deemed not merely serious, but valuable. Nor are they more absurd than many of the etymologies proposed by Aristotle, by the Stoics, by the Alexandrine critics, by Varro, and by the grammatici or literary men of antiquity generally; moreover, even by Plato himself in other dialogues occasionally.47 In determining what etymologies would appear to Plato reasonable or admissible, Dionysius, Plutarch, Proklus, and Alkinous, are more likely to judge rightly than we: partly because they had a larger knowledge of the etymologies proposed by Greek philosophers and grammatici than we possess — partly because they had no acquaintance with the enlarged views of modern etymologists — which, on the point here in 312question, are misleading rather than otherwise. Plato held the general theory that names, in so far as they were framed with perfect rectitude, held embodied in words and syllables a likeness or imitation of the essence of things. And if he tried to follow out such a theory into detail, without any knowledge of grammatical systems, without any large and well-chosen collection of analogies within his own language, or any comparison of different languages with each other — he could scarcely fail to lose himself in wonderful and violent transmutations of letters and syllables.48
46 Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verbor. c. 16, p. 96, Reiske; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 60, p. 375.
Proklus advises that those who wish to become dialecticians should begin with the study of the Kratylus (Schol. ad Kratyl. p. 3, ed. Boiss.).
We read in the Phædrus of Plato (p. 244 B) in the second speech ascribed to Sokrates, two etymologies:— 1. μαντικὴ derived from μανικὴ by the insertion of τ, which Sokrates declares to be done in bad taste, οἱ δὲ νῦν ἀπειροκάλως τὸ ταῦ ἐπεμβάλλοντες μαντικὴν ἐκάλασαν. 2. οἰωνιστικὴ, quasi οἰονοϊστικὴ, from οἴησις, νοῦς, ἱστορία. Compare the etymology of ἔρως, p. 238 C. That these are real word-changes, which Plato believes to have taken place, is the natural and reasonable interpretation of the passage. Cicero (Divinat. i. 1) alludes to the first of the two as Plato’s real opinion; and Heindorf as well as Schleiermacher accept it in the same sense, while expressing their surprise at the want of etymological perspicacity in Plato. Ast and Stallbaum, on the contrary, declare that these two etymologies are mere irony and mockery, spoken by Plato, ex mente Sophistarum, and intended as a sneer at the perverse and silly Sophists. No reason is produced by Ast and Stallbaum to justify this hypothesis, except that you cannot imagine “Platonem tam cæcum fuisse,” &c. To me this reason is utterly insufficient; and I contend, moreover, that sneers at the Sophists would be quite out of place in a speech, such as the palinode of Sokrates about Eros.
47 See what Aristotle says about Πάντη in the first chapter of the treatise De Cœlo; also about αὐτόματον from αὐτὸ μάτην, Physic. ii. 5, p. 197, b. 30.
Stallbaum, after having complimented Plato for his talent in caricaturing the etymologies of others, expresses his surprise to find Aristotle reproducing some of these very caricatures as serious, see Stallbaum’s note on Kratyl. p. 411 E.
Respecting the etymologies proposed by learned and able Romans in and before the Ciceronian and Augustan age, Ælius Stilo, Varro, Labeo, Nigidius, &c., see Aulus Gellius, xiii. 10; Quintilian, Inst. Or. i. 5; Varro, de Linguâ Latinâ.
Even to Quintilian, the etymologies of Varro appeared preposterous; and he observes, in reference to those proposed by Ælius Stilo and by others afterwards, “Cui non post Varronem sit venia?” (i. 6, 37). This critical remark, alike good tempered and reasonable, might be applied with still greater pertinence to the Kratylus of Plato. In regard to etymology, more might have been expected from Varro than from Plato; for in the days of Plato, etymological guesses were almost a novelty; while during the three centuries which elapsed between him and Varro, many such conjectures had been hazarded by various scholars, and more or less of improvement might be hoped from the conflict of opposite opinions and thinkers.
M. Gaston Boissier (in his interesting Étude sur la vie et les Ouvrages de M. Terentius Varron, p. 152, Paris, 1861) observes respecting Varro, what is still more applicable to Plato:— “Gardons nous bien d’ailleurs de demander à Varron ce qu’exige la science moderne: pour n’être pas trop sévères, remettons-le dans son époque et jugeons-le avec l’esprit de son temps. Il ne semble pas qu’alors on réclamât, de ceux qui recherchaient les étymologies, beaucoup d’exactitude et de sévérité. On se piquait moins d’arriver à l’origine réelle du mot, que de le décomposer d’une manière ingénieuse et qui en gravât le sens dans la mémoire. Les jurisconsultes eux-mêmes, malgré la gravité de leur profession et l’importance pratique de leurs recherches, ne suivaient pas une autre méthode. Trebatius trouvait dans sacellum les deux mots sacra cella: et Labéon faisait venir soror de seorsum, parce que la jeune fille se sépare de le maison paternelle pours suivre son époux: tout comme Nigidius trouvoit dans frater ferè alter — c’est à dire, un autre soi-même,” &c.
Lobeck has similar remarks in his Aglaophamus (pp. 867-869):— “Sané ita J. Capellus veteres juris consultos excusat, mutuum interpretantes quod ex meo tuum fiat, testamentum autem testationem mentis, non quod eam verborum originem esse putarent, sed ut significationem eorum altius in legentium animis defigerent. Similiterque ecclesiastici quidam auctores, quum nomen Pascha a græco verbo πάσχειν repetunt, non per ignorantiam lapsi, sed allusionis quandam gratiam aucupati videntur.”
48 Gräfenhahn (Gesch. d. classichen Philologie, vol. i. sect. 36, pp. 151-164) points out how common was the hypothesis of fanciful derivation of names or supposed etymologies among the Greek poets, and how it passed from them to the prose writers. He declares that the etymologies in Plato not only in the Kratylus but in other dialogues are “etymologische monstra,” but he professes inability to distinguish which of them are serious (pp. 163-164).
Lobeck remarks that the playing and quibbling with words, widely diffused among the ancient literati generally, was especially likely to belong to those who held the Platonic theory about language:— “Is intelligat necesse est, hoc universum genus ab antiquitatis ingenio non alienum, ei vero, qui imagines rerum in vocabulis sic ut in cerâ expressas putaret, convenientissimum fuisse” (Aglaophamus, p. 870).
Continuance of the dialogue — Sokrates endeavours to explain how it is that the Names originally right have become so disguised and spoiled.
Having expressed my opinion that the etymologies propounded by Sokrates in the Kratylus are not intended as caricatures, but as bonâ fide specimens of admissible etymological conjecture, or, at the least, of discoverable analogy — I resume the thread of the dialogue.
These etymologies are the hypothetical links whereby Sokrates reconciles his first theory of the essential rectitude of Names (that is, of Naming, as a process which can only be performed in one way, and by an Artist who discerns and uses the Name-Form), with the names actually received and current. The contrast between the sameness and perfection postulated in the theory, and the confusion of actual practice, is not less manifest than the contrast between the benevolent purposes ascribed to the Demiurgus (in the Timæus) and the realities of man and society:— requiring intermediate assumptions, more or less ingenious, to explain or attenuate the glaring inconsistencies. Respecting the Name-Form, Sokrates intimates that it may often be so disguised by difference of letters and syllables, as not to be discernible by an 313ordinary man, or by any one except an artist or philosopher. Two names, if compound, may have the same Name-Form, though few or none of the letters in them be the same. A physician may so disguise his complex mixtures, by apparent differences of colour or smell, that they shall be supposed by others to be different, though essentially the same. Beta is the name of the letter B: you may substitute, in place of the three last letters, any others which you prefer, and the name will still be appropriate to designate the letter B.49
49 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393-394.
Letters, as well as things, must be distinguished with their essential properties, each must be adapted to each.
To explain the foundations of the onomastic (name-giving or speaking) art,50 we must analyse words into their primordial constituent letters. The name-giving Artists have begun from this point, and we must follow in their synthetical track. We must distinguish letters with their essential forms — we must also distinguish things with their essential forms — we must then assign to each essence of things that essence of letters which has a natural aptitude to signify it, either one letter singly or several conjoined. The rectitude of the compound names will depend upon that of the simple and primordial.51 This is the only way in which we can track out the rectitude of names: for it is no account of the matter to say that the Gods bestowed them, and that therefore they are right: such recourse to a Deus ex machinâ is only one among the pretexts for evading the necessity of explanation.52
50 Plato, Kratyl. p. 425 A. τῇ ὀνομαστικῇ, ἢ ῥητορικῇ, ἢ ἥτις ἐστὶν ἡ τέχνη.
51 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 424 B-E, 426 A, 434 A.
52 Plato, Kratyl. p. 425 E.
This extreme postulate of analysis and adaptation may be compared with that which Sokrates lays down, in the Phædrus, in regard to the art of Rhetoric. You must first distinguish all the different forms of mind — then all the different forms of speech; you must assign the sort of speech which is apt for persuading each particular sort of mind. Phædrus, pp. 271-272.
Essential significant aptitude consists in resemblance.
Essential aptitude for signification consists in resemblance between the essence of the letter and that of the thing signified. Thus the letter Rho, according to Sokrates, is naturally apt for the signification of rush or vehement motion, because in pronouncing it the tongue is briskly agitated and rolled about. Several words are cited, illustrating this position.53 Iota naturally314 designates thin and subtle things, which insinuate themselves everywhere. Phi, Chi, Psi, Sigma, the sibilants, imitate blowing. Delta and Tau, from the compression of the tongue, imitate stoppage of motion, or stationary condition. Lambda imitates smooth and slippery things. Nu serves, as confining the voice in the mouth, to form the words signifying in-doors and interior. Alpha and Eta are both of them large letters: the first is assigned to signify size, the last to signify length. Omicron is suited to what is round or circular.54
53 Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 D-E. κρούειν, θραύειν, ἑρείκειν, &c. Leibnitz (Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain, Book iii. ch. 2, p. 300 Erdm.); and Jacob Grimm (in his Dissertation Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1858, ed. 4) give views very similar to those of Plato, respecting the primordial growth of language, and the original significant or symbolising power supposed to be inherent in each letter (Kein Buchstabe, “ursprünglich steht bedeutungslos oder ueberflüssig,” pp. 39-40). Leibnitz and Grimm say (as Plato here also affirms) that Rho designates the Rough — Lambda, the Smooth: see also what he says about Alpha, Iota, Hypsilon. Compare, besides, M. Renan, Orig. du Langage, vi. p. 137.
The comparison of the Platonic speculations on the primordial powers of letters, with those of a modern linguistic scholar so illustrious as Grimm (the earliest speculations with the latest) are exceedingly curious — and honourable to Plato. They serve as farther reasons for believing that this dialogue was not intended to caricature Protagoras.
54 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 426-427.
It is from these fundamental aptitudes, and some others analogous, that the name-giving Artist, or Lawgiver, first put together letters to compound and construct his names. Herein consists their rectitude, according to Sokrates. Though in laying down the position Sokrates gives it only as the best which he could discover, and intimates that some persons may turn it into derision — yet he evidently means to be understood seriously.55
55 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 426 B, 427 D.
Sokrates assumes that the Name-giving Lawgiver was a believer in the Herakleitean theory.
In applying this theory — about the fundamental significant aptitudes of the letters of the alphabet — to show the rectitude of the existing words compounded from them — Sokrates assumes that the name-giving Artists were believers in the Herakleitean theory: that is, in the perpetual process of flux, movement, and transition into contraries. He cites a large variety of names, showing by their composition that they were adapted to denote this all-pervading fact, as constituting the essence of things.56 The names given by these theorists to that which is good, virtuous, agreeable, &c., were compounded in such 315a manner as to denote what facilitates, or falls in with, the law of universal movement: the names of things bad or hurtful, denote what obstructs or retards movement.57
56 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 401 C — 402 B. 436 E: ὡς τοῦ παντὸς ἰόντος τε καὶ φερομένον καὶ ῥέοντος φαμὲν σημαίνειν ἡμῖν τὴν οὐσίαν τὰ ὀνόματα. Also p. 439 B.
57 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 415-416-417, &c.
But the Name-Giver may be mistaken or incompetent — the rectitude of the name depends upon his knowledge.
Many names (pursues Sokrates), having been given by artistic lawgivers who believed in the Herakleitean theory, will possess intrinsic rectitude, if we assume that theory to be true. But how if the theory be not true? and if the name-givers were mistaken on this fundamental point? The names will then not be right. Now we must not assume the theory to be true, although the Name-givers believed it to be so. Perhaps they themselves (Sokrates intimates) having become giddy by often turning round to survey the nature of things, mistook this vertige of their own for a perpetual revolution and movement of the things which they saw, and gave names accordingly.58 A Name-Giver who is real and artistic is rare and hard to find: there are more among them incompetent than competent: and the name originally bestowed represents only the opinion or conviction of him by whom it is bestowed.59 Yet the names bestowed will be consistent with themselves, founded on the same theory.
58 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 409-411 C. Αἰτιῶνται δὴ οὐ τὸ ἔνδον τὸ παρὰ σφίσι πάθος αἴτιον εἶναι ταύτης τῆς δόξης, ἀλλ’ αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα οὕτω πεφυκέναι, &c.
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“He that is giddy thinks the world turns round,” &c.
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59 Plato, Kratyl. p. 418 C. Οἶσθα οὖν ὅτι μόνον τοῦτο δηλοῖ τὸ ἀρχαῖον ὄνομα τὴν διάνοιαν τοῦ θεμένου; Also p. 419 A.
Changes and transpositions introduced in the name — hard to follow.
Again, the names originally bestowed differ much from those in use now. Many of them have undergone serious changes: there have been numerous omissions, additions, interpolations, and transpositions of letters, from regard to euphony or other fancies: insomuch that the primitive root becomes hardly traceable, except by great penetration and sagacity.60 Then there are some names which have never been issued at all from the mint of the name-giver, but have either been borrowed from foreigners, or perhaps have been suggested by super-human powers.61
60 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 394 B, 399 B, 414 C, 418 A.
61 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397 B, 409 B.
316Sokrates qualifies and attenuates his original thesis.
To this point Sokrates brings the question during his conversation with Hermogenes: against whom he maintains — That there is a natural intrinsic rectitude in Names, or a true Name-Form — that naming is a process which must be performed in the natural way, and by an Artist who knows that way. But when, after laying down this general theory, he has gone a certain length in applying it to actual names, he proceeds to introduce qualifications which attenuate and explain it away. Existing names were bestowed by artistic law-givers, but under a belief in the Herakleitean theory — which theory is at best doubtful: moreover the original names have, in course of time, undergone such multiplied changes, that the original point of significant resemblance can hardly be now recognised except by very penetrating intellects.
Conversation of Sokrates with Kratylus: who upholds that original thesis without any qualification.
It is here that Sokrates comes into conversation with Kratylus: who appears as the unreserved advocate of the same general theory which Sokrates had enforced upon Hermogenes. He admits all the consequences of the theory, taking no account of qualifications. Moreover he announces himself as having already bestowed reflection on the subject, and as espousing the doctrine of Herakleitus.62
62 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 428 B, 440 E.
It appears that on this point the opinion of Herakleitus coincided with that of the Pythagoreans, who held that names were φύσει καὶ οὐ θέσει and maintained as a corollary that there could be only one name for each thing and only one thing signified by each name (Simplikius ad Aristot. Categ. p. 43, b. 32, Schol. Bekk.).
In general Herakleitus differed from Pythagoras, and is described as speaking of him with bitter antipathy.
If names are significant by natural rectitude, or by partaking of the Name-Form, it follows that all names must be right or true, one as well as another. If a name be not right, it cannot be significant: that is, it is no name at all: it is a mere unmeaning sound. A name, in order to be significant, must imitate the essence of the thing named. If you add any thing to a number, or subtract any thing from it, it becomes thereby a new number: it is not the same number badly rendered. So with a letter: so too with a name. There is no such thing as a bad name. Every name must be either significant, and therefore, right — or else it is not a name. So also there is no such thing as 317a false proposition: you cannot say the thing that is not: your words in that case have no meaning; they are only an empty sound. The hypothesis that the law-giver may have distributed names erroneously is therefore not admissible.63 Moreover, you see that he must have known well, for otherwise he would not have given names so consistent with each other, and with the general Herakleitean theory.64 And since the name is by necessity a representation or copy of the thing, whoever knows the name, must also know the thing named. There is in fact no other way of knowing or seeking or finding out things, except through their names.65
63 Plato, Kratyl. p. 429 B-C.
Sokr. Πάντα ἄρα τὰ ὀνόματα ὀρθως κεῖται;
Krat. Ὅσα γε ὀνόματα ἔστι.
Sokr. Τί οὖν; Ἑρμογένει τῷδε πότερον μηδὲ ὄνομα τοῦτο κεῖσθαι φῶμεν, εἰ μή τι αὐτῷ Ἑρμοῦ γενέσεως προσήκει, ἢ κεῖσθαι μέν, οὐ μέντοι ὀρθῶς γε;
Krat. Οὐδὲ κεῖσθαι ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, ἀλλὰ δοκεῖν κεῖσθαι. εἶναι δὲ ἑτέρου τοῦτο τοὔνομα, οὗπερ καὶ ἡ φύσις ἡ τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῦσα.
The critics say that these last words ought to be read ἢν τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῖ, as Ficinus has translated, and Schleiermacher after him. They are probably in the right; at the same time, reasoning upon the theory of Kratylus, we say without impropriety, that “the thing indicates the name”.
That which is erroneously called a bad name is no name at all (so Kratylus argues), but only seems to be a name to ignorant persons. Thus also in the Platonic Minos (c. 9, p. 317): a bad law is no law in reality, but only seems to be a law to ignorant men, see above, ch. xiv. p. 88.
Compare the like argument about νόμος in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 42-47, and Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. p. 392.
64 Plato, Krat. p. 436 C. Ἀλλὰ μη οὐχ οὕτως ἔχῃ, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖον ᾖ, εἰδότα τίθεσθαι τὸν τιθέμενον τὰ ὀνόματα· εἰ δὲ μή, ὅπερ πάλαι ἐγὼ ἔλεγον, οὐδ’ ἂν ὀνόματα εἴη. Μέγιστον δέ σοι ἔστω τεκμήριον ὅτι οὐκ ἔσφαλται τῆς ἀληθείας ὁ τιθέμενος· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ποτε οὕτω ξύμφωνα ἦν αὐτῷ ἅπαντα. ἢ οὐκ ἐνενόεις αὐτὸς λέγων ὡς πάντα κατ’ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐπὶ ταὐτὸν ἐγίγνετο τὰ ὀνόματα;
These last words allude to the various particular etymologies which had been enumerated by Sokrates as illustrations of the Herakleitean theory. They confirm the opinion above expressed, that Plato intended his etymologies seriously, not as mockery or caricature. That Plato should have intended them as caricatures of Protagoras and Prodikus, and yet that he should introduce Kratylus as welcoming them in support of his argument, is a much greater absurdity than the supposition that Plato mistook them for admissible guesses.
65 Plato, Krat. c. 111, pp. 435-436.
Sokrates goes still farther towards retracting it,
These consequences are fairly deduced by Kratylus from the hypothesis, of the natural rectitude of names, as laid down in the beginning of the dialogue, by Sokrates: who had expressly affirmed (in his anti-Protagorean opening of the dialogue) that unless the process of naming was performed according to the peremptory dictates of nature and by one of the few privileged name-givers, it would be a failure and would accomplish nothing;66 in other words, that a 318non-natural name would be no name at all. Accordingly, in replying to Kratylus, Sokrates goes yet farther in retracting his own previous reasoning at the beginning of the dialogue — though still without openly professing to do so. He proposes a compromise.67 He withdraws the pretensions of his theory, as peremptory or exclusive; he acknowledges the theory of Hermogenes as true, and valid in conjunction with it. He admits that non-natural names also, significant only by convention, are available as a make-shift — and that such names are in frequent use. Still however he contends, that natural names, significant by likeness, are the best, so far as they can be obtained: but inasmuch as that principle will not afford sufficiently extensive holding-ground, recourse must be had by way of supplement to the less perfect rectitude (of names) presented by customary or conventional significance.68
66 Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. ἐὰν δὲ μή, ἐξαμαρτήσεταί τε καὶ οὐδὲν ποιήσει. Compare p. 389 A.
67 Plato, Kratyl. p. 430 A. φέρε δή, ἐάν πῃ διαλλαχθῶμεν, ὦ Κράτυλε, &c.
68 Plato, Krat. p. 435 C. ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν καὶ αὐτῷ ἀρέσκει μὲν κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ὅμοια εἶναι τὰ ὀνόματα τοῖς πράγμασιν· ἀλλὰ μὴ ὡς ἀληθῶς γλισχρὰ ᾖ ἡ ὀλκὴ αὐτὴ τῆς ὁμοιότητος, ἀναγκαῖον δὲ ᾖ καὶ τῷ φορτικῷ τούτῳ προσχρῆσθαι, τῇ ξυνθήκῃ, εἰς ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητα· ἐπεὶ ἴσως κατά γε τὸ δυνατὸν κάλλιστ’ ἂν λέγοιτο, ὅταν ἢ πᾶσιν ἢ ὡς πλείστοις ὁμοίοις λέγηται, τοῦτο δ’ ἐστὶ προσήκουσιν, αἴσχιστα δὲ τοὐναντίον.
There are names better — more like, or less like to the things named: Natural Names are the best, but they cannot always be had. Names may be significant by habit, though in an inferior way.
You say (reasons Sokrates with Kratylus) that names must be significant by way of likeness. But there are degrees of likeness. A portrait is more or less like its original, but it is never exactly like: it is never a duplicate, nor does it need to be so. Or a portrait, which really belongs to and resembles one person, may be erroneously assigned to another. The same thing happens with names. There are names more or less like the thing named — good or bad: there are names good with reference to their own object, but erroneously fitted on to objects not their own. The name does not cease to be a name, so long as the type or form of the thing named is preserved in it: but it is worse or better, according as the accompanying features are more or less in harmony with the form.69 If names are like things, the letters which are put together to form names, must have a natural resemblance to things — as we remarked above respecting the letters Rho, Lambda, &c. But the natural, inherent, powers of resemblance and significance, 319which we pronounced to belong to these letters, are not found to pervade all the actual names, in which they are employed. There are words containing the letters Rho and Lambda, in a sense opposite to that which is natural to them — yet nevertheless at the same time significant; as is evident from the fact, that you and I and others understand them alike. Here then are words significant, without resembling: significant altogether through habit and convention. We must admit the principle of convention as an inferior ground and manner of significance. Resemblance, though the best ground as far as it can be had, is not the only one.70
69 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 432-434.
70 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 434-435.
All names are not consistent with the theory of Herakleitus: some are opposed to it.
All names are not like the things named: some names are bad, others good: the law-giver sometimes gave names under an erroneous belief. Hence you are not warranted in saying that things must be known and investigated through names, and that whoever knows the name, knows also the thing named. You say that the names given are all coherent and grounded upon the Herakleitean theory of perpetual flux. You take this as a proof that that theory is true in itself, and that the law-giver adopted and proceeded upon it as true. I agree with you that the law-giver or name-giver believed in the Herakleitean theory, and adapted many of his names to it: but you cannot infer from hence that the theory is true — for he may have been mistaken.71 Moreover, though many of the existing names consist with, and are based upon, that theory, the same cannot be said of all names. Many names can be enumerated which are based on the opposite principle of permanence and stand-still. It is unsafe to strike a balance of mere numbers between the two: besides which, even among the various names founded on the Herakleitean theory, you will find jumbled together the names of virtues and vices, benefits and misfortunes. That theory lends itself to good and evil alike; it cannot therefore 320be received as true — whether the name-giver believed in it or not.72
71 Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 B-C. Ἔτι τοίνυν τόδε σκεψωμεθα, ὅπως μὴ ἡμᾶς τὰ πολλὰ ταῦτα ὀνόματα ἐς ταυτὸν τείνοντα ἐξαπατᾷ, καὶ τῷ ὄντι μὲν οἱ θέμενοι αὑτὰ διανοηθέντες τε ἔθεντο ὡς ἰόντων ἀπάντων ἀεὶ καὶ ῥεόντων — φαίνονται γὰρ ἔμοιγε καὶ αὐτοὶ οὔτω διανοηθῆναι — τὸ δ’, εἰ ἔτυχεν, οὐχ οὔτως ἔχει, &c.
These words appear to me to imply that Sokrates is perfectly serious, and not ironical, in delivering his opinion, that the original imposers of names were believers in the Herakleitean theory.
72 Plato, Krat. pp. 437-438 C.
Sokrates here enumerates the particular names illustrating his judgment. However strange the verbal transitions and approximations may appear to us, I think it clear that he intends to be understood seriously.
It is not true to say, That Things can only be known through their names.
Lastly, even if we granted that things may be known and studied through their names, it is certain that there must be some other way of knowing them; since the first name-givers (as you yourself affirm) knew things, at a time when no names existed.73 Things may be known and ought to be studied, not through names, but by themselves and through their own affinities.74
73 Plato, Krat. p. 438 A-B. Kratylus here suggests that the first names may perhaps have been imposed by a super-human power. But Sokrates replies, that upon that supposition all the names must have been imposed upon the same theory: there could not have been any contradiction between one name and another.
74 Plato, Krat. pp. 438-439. 438 E:— δι’ ἀλλήλων γε, εἴ πῃ ξυγγενῆ ἐστί, καὶ αὐτὰ δι’ αὑτῶν.
Unchangeable Platonic Forms — opposed to the Herakleitean flux, which is true only respecting sensible particulars.
Sokrates then concludes the dialogue by opposing the Platonic ideas to the Herakleitean theory. I often dream or imagine the Beautiful per se, the Good per se, and such like existences or Entia.75 Are not such existences real? Are they not eternal, unchangeable and stationary? Particular beautiful things — particular good things — are in perpetual change or flux: but The Beautiful, The Good — The Ideas or Forms of these and such like — remain always what they are, always the same.
75 Plato, Krat. p. 439 C-D. σκέψαι ὁ ἔγωγε πολλάκις ὀνειρώττω, πότερον φῶμέν τι εἶναι αὐτὸ καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων οὕτως, ἢ μή; …
μὴ εἰ πρόσωπόν τί ἐστι καλὸν ἤ τι τῶν τοιοῦτων, καὶ δοκεῖ ταῦτα πάντα ῥεῖν· ἀλλ’ αὐτὸ τὸ καλὸν οὐ τοιοῦτον ἀεί ἐστιν οἷόν ἐστιν;
The Herakleitean theory of constant and universal flux is true respecting particular things, but not true respecting these Ideas or Forms. It is the latter alone which know or are known: it is they alone which admit of being rightly named. For that which is in perpetual flux and change can neither know, nor be known, nor be rightly named.76 Being an ever-changing subject, it is never in any determinate condition: and nothing can be 321known which is not in a determinate condition. The Form of the knowing subject, as well as the Form of the known object, must both remain fixed and eternal, otherwise there can be no knowledge at all.
76 Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D — 440 A. Ἆρ’ οὖν οἷόν τε προσειπεῖν αὐτὸ ὀρθως, εἰ ἀεὶ ὑπεξέρχεται, πρῶτον μὲν ὅτι, ἐκεινό ἐστιν, ἔπειτα ὅτι τοιοῦτων; ἢ ἀνάγκη ἄμα ἡμῶν λεγόντων ἄλλο αὐτὸ εὐθὺς γίγνεσθαι καὶ ὑπεξιέναι, καὶ μηκέτι οὕτως ἔχειν; …
Ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδ’ ἂν γνωσθείη γε ὑπ’ οὐδενός.…
Ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ γνωσιν εἶναι φάναι εἰκός, εἰ μεταπίπτει πάντα χρήματα καὶ μηδὲν μένει.
Herakleitean theory must not be assumed as certain. We must not put implicit faith in names.
To admit these permanent and unchangeable Forms is to deny the Herakleitean theory, which proclaims constant and universal flux. This is a debate still open and not easy to decide. But while it is yet undecided, no wise man ought to put such implicit faith in names and in the bestowers of names, as to feel himself warranted in asserting confidently the certainty of the Herakleitean theory.77 Perhaps that theory is true, perhaps not. Consider the point strenuously, Kratylus. Be not too easy in acquiescence — for you are still young, and have time enough before you. If you find it out, give to me also the benefit of your solution.78
77 Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. Ταῦτ’ οὖν πότερόν ποτε οὕτως ἔχει, ἢ ἐκείνως ὡς οἱ περὶ Ἡράκλειτόν τε λέγουσι καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοί, μὴ οὐ ῥᾷδιον ᾖ ἐπισκέψασθαι, οὐδὲ πάνυ νοῦν ἔχοντος ἀνθρώπου ἐπιτρέψαντα ὀνόμασιν αὑτὸν καὶ τὴ αὑτοῦ ψυχὴν θεραπεύειν, πεπιστευκότα ἐκείνοις καὶ τοῖς θεμένοις αὐτά, διϊσχυρίζεσθαι ὡς τι εἰδότα, καὶ αὐτοῦ τε καὶ τῶν ὄντων καταγιγνώσκειν, ὡς οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς οὐδενός, ἁλλὰ πάντα ὤσπερ κεράμια ῥεῖ, &c.
78 Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 D.
Kratylus replies that he will follow the advice given, but that he has already meditated on the matter, and still adheres to Herakleitus. Such is the close of the dialogue.
Remarks upon the dialogue. Dissent from the opinion of Stallbaum and others, that it is intended to deride Protagoras and other Sophists.
One of the most learned among the modern Platonic commentators informs us that the purpose of Plato in this dialogue was, “to rub over Protagoras and other Sophists with the bitterest salt of sarcasm”.79 I have already expressed my dissent from this theory, which is opposed to all the ancient views of the dialogue, and which has arisen, in my judgment, only from the anxiety of the moderns to exonerate Plato from the reproach of having suggested as admissible, etymologies which now appear to us fantastic. I see no derision of the Sophists, except one or two sneers 322against Protagoras and Prodikus, upon the ever-recurring theme that they took money for their lectures.80 The argument against Protagoras at the opening of the dialogue — whether conclusive or not — is serious and not derisory. The discourse of Sokrates is neither that of an anti-sophistical caricaturist, on the one hand — nor that of a confirmed dogmatist who has studied the subject and made up his mind on the other (this is the part which he ascribes to Kratylus)81 — but the tentative march of an enquirer groping after truth, who follows the suggestive promptings of his own invention, without knowing whither it will conduct him: who, having in his mind different and even opposite points of view, unfolds first arguments on behalf of one, and next those on behalf of the other, without pledging himself either to the one or to the other, or to any definite scheme of compromise between them.82 Those who take no interest in such circuitous gropings and guesses of an inquisitive and yet unsatisfied mind — those who ask for nothing but a conclusion clearly enunciated along with one or two affirmative reasons — may find the dialogue tiresome. However this may be — it is a manner found in many Platonic dialogues.
79 Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Kratyl. p. 18 — “quos Plato hoc libro acerbissimo sale perfricandos statuit.” Schleiermacher also tells us (Einleitung, pp. 17-21) that “Plato had much delight in heaping a full measure of ridicule upon his enemy Antisthenes; and that he at last became tired with the exuberance of his own philological jests”. Lassalle shows, with much force, that the persons ridiculed (even if we grant the derisory purpose to be established) cannot be Protagoras and the Protagoreans (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 376-384).
80 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 B, 391 B.
81 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 428 A, 440 D.
82 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C. 391 A. συζητεῖν ἕτοιμός εἰμι καὶ σοὶ καὶ Κρατύλῳ κοινῇ … ὅτι οὐκ εἰδείην ἀλλὰ σκεψοίμην μετὰ σοῦ.
Theory laid down by Sokrates à priori, in the first part — Great difficulty, and ingenuity necessary, to bring it into harmony with facts.
Sokrates opens his case by declaring the thesis of the Absolute (Object sine Subject), against the Protagorean thesis of the Relative (Object cum Subject). Things have an absolute essence: names have an absolute essence:83 323each name belongs to its own thing, and to no other: this is its rectitude: none but that rare person, the artistic name-giver, can detect the essence of each thing, and the essence of each name, so as to apply the name rightly. Here we have a theory truly Platonic: impressed upon Plato’s mind by a sentiment à priori, and not from any survey or comparison of particulars. Accordingly when Sokrates is called upon to apply his theory to existing current words, and to make out how any such rectitude can be shown to belong to them — he finds the greatest divergence and incongruity between the two. His ingenuity is hardly tasked to reconcile them: and he is obliged to have recourse to bold and multiplied hypotheses. That the first Name-Givers were artists proceeding upon system, but incompetent artists proceeding on a bad system — they were Herakleiteans who believed in the universality of movement, and gave names having reference to movement:84 That the various letters of the alphabet, or rather the different actions of the vocal organism by which they are pronounced, have each an inherent, essential, adaptation, or analogy to the phenomena of movement or arrest of movement:85 That the names originally bestowed have become disguised by a variety of metamorphoses, but may be 324brought back to their original by probable suppositions, and shown to possess the rectitude sought. All these hypotheses are only violent efforts to reconcile the Platonic à priori theory, in some way or other, with existing facts of language. To regard them as intentional caricatures, would be to suppose that Plato is seeking intentionally to discredit and deride his own theory of the Absolute: for the discredit could fall nowhere else. We see that Plato considered many of his own guesses as strange and novel, some even as laying him open to ridicule.86 But they were indispensable to bring his theory into something like coherence, however inadequate, with real language.
83 One cannot but notice how Plato, shortly after having declared war against the Relativity affirmed by Protagoras, falls himself into that very track of Relativity when he comes to speak about actual language, telling us that names are imposed on grounds dependant on or relative to the knowledge or belief of the Name-givers. Kratylus, pp. 397 B, 399 A, 401 A-B, 411 B, 436 B.
The like doctrine is affirmed in the Republic, vi. p. 515 B. δῆλον ὅτι ὁ θέμενος πρῶτος τὰ ὀνόματα, οἷα ἡγεῖτο εἶναι τὰ πράγματα, τοιαῦτα ἐτίθετο καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα.
Leibnitz conceived an idea of a “Lingua Characterica Universalis, quæ simul sit ars inveniendi et judicandi” (see Leibnitz Opp. Erdmann, pp. 162-163), and he alludes to a conception of Jacob Böhme, that there once existed a Lingua Adamica or Natur-Sprache, through which the essences of things might be contemplated and understood. “Lingua Adamica vel certé vis ejus, quam quidam se nosse, et in nominibus ab Adamo impositis essentias rerum intueri posse contendunt — nobis certé ignota est” (Opp. p. 93). Leibnitz seems to have thought that it was possible to construct a philosophical language, based upon an Alphabetum Cogitationum Humanarum, through which problems on all subjects might be resolved, by a calculus like that which is employed for the solution of arithmetical or geometrical problems (Opp. p. 83; compare also p. 356).
This is very analogous to the affirmations of Sokrates, in the first part of the Kratylus, about the essentiality of Names discovered and declared by the νομοθέτης τεχνικός
84 Plato, Kratyl. p. 436 D.
85 Plato, Krat. pp. 424-425. Schleiermacher declares this to be among the greatest and most profound truths which have ever been enunciated about language (Introduction to Kratylus, p. 11). Stallbaum, on the contrary, regards it as not even seriously meant, but mere derision of others (Prolegg. ad Krat. p. 12). Another commentator on Plato calls it “eine Lehre der Sophistischen Sprachforscher“ (August Arnold, Einleitung in die Philosophie — durch die Lehre Platons vermittelt — p. 178, Berlin, 1841).
Proklus, in his Commentary, says that the scope of this dialogue is to exhibit the imitative or generative faculty which essentially belongs to the mind, and whereby the mind (aided by the vocal or pronunciative imagination — λεκτικὴ φαντασία) constructs names which are natural transcripts of the essences of things (Proklus, Schol. ad Kratyl. pp. 1-21 ed. Boissonnade; Alkinous, Introd. ad Platon. c. 6).
Ficinus, too, in his argument to the Kratylus (p. 768), speaks much about the mystic sanctity of names, recognised not merely by Pythagoras and Plato, but also by the Jews and Orientals. He treats the etymologies in the Kratylus as seriously intended. He says not a word about any intention on the part of Plato to deride the Sophists or any other Etymologists.
So also Sydenham, in his translation of Plato’s Philêbus (p. 33), designates the Kratylus as “a dialogue in which is taught the nature of things, as well the permanent as the transient, by a supposed etymology of Names and Words”.
86 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425 D, 426 B. Because Sokrates says that these etymologies may appear ridiculous, we are not to infer that he proposed them as caricatures; see what Plato says in the Republic, v. p. 452, about his own propositions respecting the training of women, which others (he says) will think ludicrous, but which he proposes with the most thorough and serious conviction.
Opposite tendencies of Sokrates in the last half of the dialogue — he disconnects his theory of Naming from the Herakleitean doctrine.
In the second part of the dialogue, where Kratylus is introduced as uncompromising champion of this same theory, Sokrates changes his line of argument, and impugns the peremptory or exclusive pretensions of the theory: first denying some legitimate corollaries from it — next establishing by the side of it the counter-theory of Hermogenes, as being an inferior though indispensable auxiliary — yet still continuing to uphold it as an ideal of what is Best. He concludes by disconnecting the theory pointedly from the doctrine of Herakleitus, with which Kratylus connected it, and by maintaining that there can be no right naming, and no sound knowledge, if that doctrine be admitted.87 The Platonic Ideas, eternal and unchangeable, are finally opposed to Kratylus as the only objects truly knowable and nameable — and therefore as the only conditions under which right naming can be realised. The Name-givers of actual society have failed in their task by proceeding on a wrong doctrine: neither they nor the names which they have given can be trusted.88 The doctrine of perpetual325 change or movement is true respecting the sensible world and particulars, but it is false respecting the intelligible world or universals — Ideas and Forms. These latter are the only things knowable: but we cannot know them through names: we must study them by themselves and by their own affinities.
87 Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D. Ἆρ’ οὖν οἷον τε προσειπεῖν αὐτὸ ὀρθως, εἰ ἀεὶ ὑπεξέχεται;
88 Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. Compare pp. 436 D, 439 B.
Lassalle contends that Herakleitus and his followers considered the knowledge of names to be not only indispensable to the knowledge of things, but equivalent to and essentially embodying that knowledge. (Herakleitos, vol. ii. pp. 363-368-387.) See also a passage of Proklus, in his Commentary on the Platonic Parmenidês, p. 476, ed. Stallbaum.
The remarkable passage in the first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, wherein he speaks of Plato and Plato’s early familiarity with Kratylus and the Herakleitean opinions, coincides very much with the course of the Platonic dialogue Kratylus, from its beginning to its end (Aristot. Metaphys. A. p. 987 a-b).
How this is to be done, Sokrates professes himself unable to say. We may presume him to mean, that a true Artistic Name-giver must set the example, knowing these Forms or essences beforehand, and providing for each its appropriate Name, or Name-Form, significant by essential analogy.
Ideal of the best system of naming — the Name-Giver ought to be familiar with the Platonic Ideas or Essences, and apportion his names according to resemblances among them.
Herein, so far as I can understand, consists the amount of positive inference which Plato enables us to draw from the Kratylus. Sokrates began by saying that names having natural rectitude were the only materials out of which a language could be formed: he ends by affirming merely that this is the best and most perfect mode of formation: he admits that names may become significant, though loosely and imperfectly, by convention alone — yet the best scheme would be, that in which they are significant by inherent resemblance to the thing named. But this cannot be done until the Name-giver, instead of proceeding upon the false theory of Herakleitus, starts from the true theory recognising the reality of eternal, unchangeable, Ideas or Forms. He will distinguish, and embody in appropriate syllables, those Forms of Names which truly resemble, and have natural connection with, the Forms of Things.
Such is the ideal of perfect or philosophical Naming, as Plato conceives it — disengaged from those divinations of the origin and metamorphoses of existing names, which occupy so much of the dialogue.89 He does not indeed attempt to construct a body 326of true names à priori, but he sets forth the real nameable permanent essences, to which these names might be assimilated: 327the principles upon which the construction ought to be founded, by the philosophic lawgiver following out a good theory:90 and he contrasts this process with two rival processes, each defective in its own way. This same contrast, pervading Plato’s views on other subjects, deserves a few words of illustration.
89 Deuschle (Die Platonische Sprachphilosophie, p. 57) tells us that in this dialogue “Plato intentionally presented many of his thoughts in a covert or contradictory and unintelligible manner”. (Vieles absichtlich verhüllt oder widersprechend und missverständlich dargestellt wird.)
I see no probability in such an hypothesis.
Respecting the origin and primordial signification of language, a great variety of different opinions have been started.
William von Humboldt (Werke, vi. 80) assumes that there must have been some primitive and natural bond between each sound and its meaning (i.e. that names were originally significant φύσει), though there are very few particular cases in which such connexion can be brought to evidence or even divined. (Here we see that the larger knowledge of etymology possessed at present deters the modern philologer from that which Plato undertakes in the Kratylus.) He distinguishes a threefold relation between the name and the thing signified. 1. Directly imitative. 2. Indirectly imitative or symbolical. 3. Imitative by one remove, or analogical: where a name becomes transferred from one object to another, by virtue of likeness between the two objects. (Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechtes, p. 78, Berlin, 1880.)
Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, in his Etymology of the English Language (see Prelim. Disc. p. 10 seq.), recognises the same imitative origin, and tries to apply the principle to particular English words. Mr. F. W. Farrar, in his recent interesting work (Chapters on Language) has explained and enforced copiously the like thesis — onomatopœic origin for language generally. He has combated the objections of Professor Max Müller, who considers the principle to be of little applicability or avail. But M. Renan assigns to it not less importance than Mr. Wedgwood and Mr. Farrar. (See sixth chapter of his ingenious dissertation De l’Origine du Langage, pp. 135-146-148.)
“L’imitation, ou l’onomatopée, paraît avoir été le procédé ordinaire d’après lequel les premiers nomenclateurs formèrent les appellations.… D’ailleurs, comme le choix de l’appellation n’est point arbitraire, et que jamais l’homme ne se décide à assembler des sons au hasard pour en faire les signes de la pensée, on peut affirmer que de tous les mots actuellement usités, il n’en est pas un seul qui n’ait eu sa raison suffisante, et ne se rattache, à travers mille transformations, à une élection primitive. Or, le motif déterminant pour le choix des mots a dû être, dans la plupart des cas, le désir d’imiter l’objet qu’on voulait exprimer. L’instinct de certains animaux suffit pour les porter à ce genre d’imitation, qui, faute de principes rationnels, reste chez eux infécond.…
“En résumé, le caprice n’a eu aucune part dans la formation du langage. Sans doute, on ne peut admettre qu’il y ait une relation intrinsèque entre le nom et la chose. Le système que Platon a si subtilement développé dans le Cratyle — cette thèse qu’il y a des dénominations naturelles, et que la propriété des mots se reconnaîlt à l’imitation plus ou moins exacte de l’objet, — pourrait tout au plus s’appliquer aux noms formés par onomatopée, et pour ceux-ci mêmes, la loi dont nous parlous n’établit qu’une convenance. Les appellations n’ont pas uniquement leur cause dans l’objet appelé (sans quoi, elles seraient les mêmes dans toutes les langues), mais dans l’objet appelé, vu à travers les dispositions personnelles du sujet appelant.… La raison qui a déterminé le choix des premiers hommes peut nous échapper; mais elle a existé. La liaison du sens et du mot n’est jamais nécessaire, jamais arbitraire; toujours elle est motivée.”
When M. Renan maintains the Protagorean doctrine, that it is not the Object which is cause of the denomination given, but the Object seen through the personal dispositions of the denominating Subject — he contradicts the reasoning of the Platonic Sokrates in the conversation with Hermogenes (pp. 386-387; compare 424 A). But he adopts the reasoning of the same in the subsequent conversation with Kratylus; wherein the relative point of view is introduced for the first time (pp. 429 A-B, 431 E), and brought more and more into the foreground (pp. 436 B-D — 437 C — 439 C).
The distinction drawn by M. Renan between l’arbitraire and le motivé appears to me unfounded: at least, it requires a peculiar explanation of the two words — for if by le caprice and l’arbitraire be meant the exclusion of all motive, such a state of mind could not be a preliminary to any proceeding at all. M. Renan can only mean that the motive which led to the original choice of the name, was peculiar to the occasion, and has since been forgotten. And this is what he himself says in a note to his Preface (pp. 18-19), replying to M. Littré: “L’Arien primitif a eu un motif pour appeler le frère bhratr ou fratr, et le Sémite pour l’appeler ah: peut on dire que cette différence résulte ou des aptitudes différentes de leur esprit, ou du spectacle extérieur? Chaque objet, les circonstances restant les mêmes, a été susceptible d’une foule de dénominations: le choix qui a été fait de l’une d’elles tient à des causes impossibles à saisir.”
90 Plato (in Timæus, p. 29 B) recognises an essential affinity between the eternal Forms and the words or propositions in which they become subjects of discourse.
Comparison of Plato’s views about naming with those upon social institutions. Artistic, systematic construction — contrasted with unpremeditated unsystematic growth.
Respecting social institutions and government, there is one well-known theory to which Sir James Mackintosh gave expression in the phrase — “Governments are not made, but grow”. The like phrase has been applied by an eminent modern author on Logic, to language — “Languages are not made, but grow”.91 One might suppose, in reading the second and third books of the Republic of Plato, that Plato also had adopted this theory: for the growth of a society, without any initiative or predetermined construction by a special individual, is there strikingly depicted.92 But in truth it is this theory which stands in most of the Platonic works, as the antithesis depreciated and discredited by Plato. The view most satisfactory to him contemplates the analogy of a human artist or professional man; which he enlarges into the idea of an originating, intelligent, artistic, Constructor, as the source of all good. This view is exhibited to us in the Timæus, where we find the Demiurgus, building up by his own fiat all that is good in the Kosmos: in the Politikus, where we find the individual dictator producing by his uncontrolled ordinance all that is really good in the social system; — lastly, here also in the Kratylus, where we have the scientific or artistic 328Name-giver, and him alone, set forth as competent to construct an assemblage of names, each possessing full and perfect rectitude. To this theory there is presented a counter-theory, which Plato disapproves — a Kosmos which grows by itself and keeps up its own agencies, without any extra-kosmic constructor or superintendent: in like manner, an aggregate of social customs, and an aggregate of names, which have grown up no one knows how; and which sustain and perpetuate themselves by traditional force — by movement already acquired in a given direction. The idea of growth, by regular assignable steps and by regularising tendencies instinctive and inherent in Nature, belongs rather to Aristotle; Plato conceives Nature as herself irregular, and as persuaded or constrained into some sort of regularity by a supernatural or extranatural artist.93
91 See Mr. John Stuart Mill’s Logic, Book i. ch. viii.
92 Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 seq., where the γένεσις of a social community, out of common necessity and desire acting upon all and each of the individual citizens, is depicted in a striking way. The ἀρχη of the City (p. 369 B) as Plato there presents it, is Aristotelian rather than Platonic.
93 M. Destutt de Tracy insists upon the emotional initiative force, as deeper and more efficacious than the intellectual, in the first formation of language.
“Dans l’origine du langage d’action, un seul geste dit — je veux cela, ou je vous montre cela, ou je vous demande secours; un seul cri dit, je vous appelle, ou je souffre, ou je suis content, &c.; mais sans distinguer aucune des idées qui composent ses propositions. Ce n’est point par le détail, mais par les masses, que, commencent toutes nos expressions, ainsi que toutes nos connaissances. Si quelques langages possèdent des signes propres à exprimer des idées isolées, ce n’est donc que par l’effet de la décomposition qui s’est opérée dans ces langages; et ces signes, ou noms propres d’idées, ne sont, pour ainsi dire, que des débris, des fragmens, ou du moins des émanations de ceux qui d’abord exprimaient, bien ou mal, les propositions tout entières.” (Destutt de Tracy, Grammaire, ch. i. p. 23, ed. 1825; see also the Idéologie of the same author, ch. xvi. p. 215.)
M. Renan enunciates in the most explicit terms this comparison of the formation of language to the growth and development of a germ:— “Les langues doivent êtres comparées, non au cristal qui se forme par agglomération autour d’un noyau, mais au germe qui se développe par sa force intime, et par l’appel nécessaire de ses parties”. (De l’Origine du Langage, ch. iii. p. 101; also ch. iv. pp. 115-117.)
The theory of M. Renan, in this ingenious treatise, is, that language is the product of “la raison spontanée, la raison populaire,” without reflexion. “La reflexion n’y peut rien: les langues sont sorties toutes faites du moule même de l’esprit humain, comme Minerve du cerveau de Jupiter.” “Maintenant que la raison réfléchie a remplacé l’instinct créateur, à peine le génie suffit-il pour analyser ce que les l’esprit des premiers hommes enfanta de toutes pièces, et sans y songer” (pp. 98-99). This theory appears to me very doubtful; as much as there is proved in it, is stated in a good passage cited by M. Renan from Will. von Humboldt (pp. 106-107). But there are two remarks to be made, in comparing it with the Kratylus of Plato. 1. That the hypothesis of a philosopher “qui compose un langage de sang-froid,” which appears absurd to Turgot and M. Renan (p. 92), did not appear absurd to Plato, but on the contrary as the only sure source of what is good and right in language. 2. That Plato, in the Kratylus, takes account only of naming, and not of the grammatical structure of language, which M. Renan considers the essential part (p. 106: compare also pp. 208-209). Grammar, with its established analogies, does not seem to have been present to Plato’s mind as an object of reflexion; there existed none in his day.
Politikus compared with Kratylus.
Looking back to the Politikus (reviewed in the last chapter), 329we find Plato declaring to us wherein consists the rectitude of a social Form: it resides in the presiding and uncontrolled authority of a scientific or artistic Ruler, always present and directing every one: or of a few such Rulers, if there be a few — though this is more than can be hoped. But such rectitude is seldom or never realised. Existing social systems are bad copies of this type, degenerating more or less widely from its perfection. One or a Few persons arrogate to themselves uncontrolled power, without possessing that science or art which justifies the exercise of it in the Right Ruler. These are, or may become, extreme depravations. The least bad, among all the imperfect systems, is an aggregate of fixed laws and magistrates with known functions, agreed to by convention of all and faithfully obeyed by all. But such a system of fixed laws, though second-best, falls greatly short of rectitude. It is much inferior in every way to the uncontrolled authority of the scientific Ruler.94
94 See Plato, Politik. pp. 300-301.
That which Plato does for social systems in the Politikus, he does for names in the Kratylus. The full rectitude of names is when they are bestowed by the scientific Ruler, considered in the capacity of Name-giver. He it is who discerns, and embodies in syllables, the true Name-Form in each particular case. But such an artist is seldom realised: and there are others who, attempting to do his work without his knowledge, perform it ignorantly or under false theories.95 The names thus given are imperfect names: moreover, after being given, they become corrupted and transformed in passing from man to man. Lastly, the mere fact of convention among the individuals composing the society, without any deliberate authorship or origination from any Ruler, bad or good — suffices to impart to Names a sort of significance, vulgar and imperfect, yet adequate to a certain extent.96 The Name-giving Artist or Lawgiver is here superseded by King Nomos.
95 Plato, Kratyl. p. 432 E.
96 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 434 E, 435 A-B.
This unsystematic, spontaneous, origin and growth of language is set forth by Lucretius, who declares himself opposed to the theory of an originating Name-giver (v. pp. 1021-1060). Jacob Grimm and M. Renan espouse a theory, in the main, similar.
Ideal of Plato — Postulate of the One Wise Man — Badness of all reality.
It will be seen that in both these cases the Platonic point of 330view comes out — deliberate authorship from the scientific or artistic individual mind, as the only source of rectitude and perfection. But when Plato looks at the reality of life, either in social system or in names, he finds no such perfection anywhere: he discovers a divine agency originating what is good; but there is an independent agency necessary in the way of co-operation, though it sometimes counteracts and always debases the good.97 We find either an incompetent dictator who badly imitates the true Artist — or else we have fixed, peremptory, laws; depending on the unsystematic, unauthorised, convention among individuals, which has grown up no one knows how — which is transmitted by tradition, being taught by every one and learnt by every one without any privileged caste of teachers — and which in the Platonic Protagoras is illustrated in the mythe and discourse ascribed to that Sophist;98 being in truth, common sense, as contrasted with professional specialty. In regard to social systems, Plato pronounces fixed laws to be the second-best — enjoining strict obedience to them, wherever the first-best cannot be obtained. In the Republic he enumerates what are the conditions of rectitude in a city: but he admits at the same time that this Right Civic Constitution is an ideal, nowhere to be found existing: and he points out the successive stages of corruption by which it degenerates more and more into conformity with the realities of human society. As with Right Civic Constitution, so with Right Naming: Plato shows what constitutes rectitude of Names, but he admits that this is an ideal seen nowhere, and he notes the various causes which deprave the Right Names into that imperfect and semi-significant condition, which is the best that existing languages present.99
97 Plato, Timæus, p. 68 E.
98 See my remarks on the Politikus, in the last chapter: also Protagoras, p. 320 seq.
Compare Plato, Kriton, p. 48 A. ὁ ἐπαΐων περὶ τω δικαίων, ὁ εἷς.
In the Menon also the same question is broached as in the Protagoras, whether virtue is teachable or not? and how any virtue can exist, when there are no special teachers, and no special learners of virtue? Here we have, though differently handled, the same antithesis between the ethical sentiment which grows and propagates itself unconsciously, without special initiative — and that which is deliberately prescribed and imparted by the wise individual: common sense versus professional specialty.
99 See the conditions of the ὀρθὴ πολιτεία, and its gradual depravation and degeneracy into the state of actual governments, in Republic, v. init. p. 449 B, vii. 544 A-B.
331Comparison of Kratylus, Theætêtus, and Sophistês, in treatment of the question respecting Non-Ens, and the possibility of false propositions.
One more remark, in reference to the general spirit and reciprocal bearing of Plato’s dialogues. In three comparison distinct dialogues — Kratylus, Theætêtus, Sophistês — one and the same question is introduced into the discussion: a question keenly debated among the contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle. How is a false proposition possible? Many held that a false proposition and a false name were impossible: that you could not speak the thing that is not, or Non-Ens (τὸ μὴ ὄν): that such a proposition would be an empty sound, without meaning or signification: that speech may be significant or insignificant, but could not be false, except in the sense of being unmeaning.100
100 Plato, Kratyl. p. 429.
Ammonius, Scholia εἰς τὰς Κατηγορίας of Aristotle (Schol. Brandis, p. 60, a. 10).
Τινές φασι μηδὲν εἶναι τῶν πρός τι φύσει, ἀλλὰ ἀνάπλασμα εἶναι ταῦτα τῆς ἡμετέρας διανοίας, λέγοντες ὅτι οὕτως οὐκ ἐστὶ φύσει τὰ πρός τι ἀλλὰ θέσει … Τινὲς δέ, ἐκ διαμέτρου τούτοις ἔχοντες, πάντα τὰ ὄντα πρός τι ἔλεγον. Ὧν εἶς ἦν Πρωταγόρας ὁ σοφιστής· … διὸ καὶ ἔλεγεν ὅτι οὐκ ἔστι τινὰ ψευδῆ λέγειν· ἕκαστος γὰρ κατὰ τὸ φαινόμενον αὐτῷ καὶ δοκοῦν ἀποφαίνεται περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων, οὐκ ἐχόντων ὡρισμένην φύσιν ἀλλ’ ἐν τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς σχέσει τὸ εἶναι ἐχόντων.
Now this doctrine is dealt with in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Kratylus. In the Theætêtus,101 Sokrates examines it at great length, and proposes several different hypotheses to explain how a false proposition might be possible: but ends in pronouncing them all inadmissible. He declares himself incompetent, and passes on to something else. Again, in the Sophistês, the same point is taken up, and discussed there also very copiously.102 The Eleate in that dialogue ends by finding a solution which satisfies him (viz.: that τὸ μη ὂν = τὸ ἕτερον ὄντος). But what is remarkable is, that the solution does not meet any of the difficulties propounded in the Theætêtus; nor are those difficulties at all adverted to in the Sophistês. Finally, in the Kratylus, we have the very same doctrine, that false affirmations are impossible — which both in the Theætêtus and in the Sophistês is enunciated, not as the decided opinion of the speaker, but as a problem which embarrasses him — we have this same doctrine averred unequivocally by Kratylus as his own full 332conviction. And Sokrates finds that a very short argument, and a very simple comparison, suffice to refute him.103 The supposed “aggressive cross-examiner,” who presses Sokrates so hard in the Theætêtus, is not allowed to put his puzzling questions in the Kratylus.104
101 Plato, Theætêt. pp. 187 D to 201 D. The discussion of the point is continued through thirteen pages of Stephan. Edit.
102 Plato, Sophistês, pp. 237 A, 264 B, through twenty-seven pages of Steph. edit. — though there are some digressions included herein.
103 Plato, Kratyl. pp. 430-431 A-B.
104 Plato, Theætêt. p. 200 A. ὁ γὰρ ἐλεγκτικὸς ἐκεῖνος γελάσας φήσει.
Discrepancies and inconsistencies of Plato, in his manner of handling the same subject.
How are we to explain these three different modes of handling the same question by the same philosopher? If the question about Non-Ens can be disposed of in the summary way which we read in the Kratylus, what is gained by the string of unsolved puzzles in the Theætêtus — or by the long discursive argument in the Sophistês, ushering in a new solution noway satisfactory? If, on the contrary, the difficulties which are unsolved in the Theætêtus, and imperfectly solved in the Sophistês, are real and pertinent — how are we to explain the proceeding of Plato in the Kratylus, when he puts into the mouth of Kratylus a distinct averment of the opinion, about Non-Ens, yet without allowing him, when it is impugned by Sokrates, to urge any of these pertinent arguments in defence of it? If the peculiar solution given in the Sophistês be the really genuine and triumphant solution, why is it left unnoticed both in the Kratylus and the Theætêtus, and why is it contradicted in other dialogues? Which of the three dialogues represents Plato’s real opinion on the question?
No common didactic purpose pervading the Dialogues — each is a distinct composition, working out its own peculiar argument.
To these questions, and to many others of like bearing, connected with the Platonic writings, I see no satisfactory reply, if we are to consider Plato as a positive philosopher, with a scheme and edifice of methodised opinions in his mind: and as composing all his dialogues with a set purpose, either of inculcating these opinions on the reader, or of refuting the opinions opposed to them. This supposition is what most Platonic critics have in their minds, even when professedly modifying it. Their admiration for Plato is not satisfied unless they conceive him in the professorial chair as a teacher, surrounded by a crowd of learners, all under the obligation (incumbent on learners generally) to believe what 333they hear. Reasoning upon such a basis, the Platonic dialogues present themselves to me as a mystery. They exhibit neither identity of the teacher, nor identity of the matter taught: the composer (to use various Platonic comparisons) is Many, and not One — he is more complex than Typhos.105
105 Plato, Phædrus, p. 230 A.
If we are to find any common purpose pervading and binding together all the dialogues, it must not be a didactic purpose, in the sense above defined. The value of them consists, not in the result, but in the discussion — not in the conclusion, but in the premisses for and against it. In this sense all the dialogues have value, and all the same sort of value — though not all equal in amount. In different dialogues, the same subject is set before you in different ways: with remarks and illustrations sometimes tending towards one theory, sometimes towards another. It is for you to compare and balance them, and to elicit such result as your reason approves. The Platonic dialogues require, in order to produce their effect, a supplementary responsive force, and a strong effective reaction, from the individual reason of the reader: they require moreover that he shall have a genuine interest in the process of dialectic scrutiny (τὸ φιλομαθές, φιλόλογον)106 which will enable him to perceive beauties in what would appear tiresome to others.
106 Plato, Republic, v. p. 475; compare Phædon, pp. 89-90. Phædrus, p. 230 E.
Such manner of proceeding may be judicious or not, according to the sentiment of the critic. But it is at any rate Platonic. And we have to recall this point of view when dismissing the Kratylus, which presents much interest in the premisses and conflicting theories, with little or no result. It embodies the oldest speculations known to us respecting the origin, the mode of signification, and the functions of words as an instrument: and not the least interesting part of it, in my judgment, consists in its etymological conjectures, affording evidence of a rude etymological sense which has now passed away.
334
The Philêbus, which we are now about to examine, is not merely a Dialogue of Search, but a Dialogue of Exposition, accompanied with more or less of search made subservient to the exposition. It represents Sokrates from the first as advancing an affirmative opinion — maintaining it against Philêbus and Protarchus — and closing with a result assumed to be positively established.1
1 Schleiermacher says, about the Philêbus (Einleit. p. 136) — “Das Ganze liegt fertig in dem Haupte des Sokrates, und tritt mit der ganzen Persönlichkeit und Willkühr einer zusammenhängenden Rede heraus,” &c.
Character, Personages, and Subject of the Philêbus.
The question is, Wherein consists the Good — The Supreme Good — Summum Bonum. Three persons stand before us: the youthful Philêbus: Protarchus, somewhat older, yet still a young man: and Sokrates. Philêbus declares that The Good consists in pleasure or enjoyment; and Protarchus his friend advocates the same thesis, though in a less peremptory manner. On the contrary, Sokrates begins by proclaiming that it consists in wisdom or intelligence. He presently however recedes from this doctrine, so far as to admit that wisdom, alone and per se, is not sufficient to constitute the Supreme Good: and that a certain combination of pleasure along with it is required. Though the compound total thus formed is superior both to wisdom and to pleasure taken separately, yet comparing the two elements of which it is compounded, wisdom (Sokrates contends) is the most important of the two, and pleasure the least important. Neither wisdom nor pleasure can pretend to claim the first prize; but wisdom is fully entitled to the second, as being far more cognate than pleasure is, with the nature of Good.
335Protest against the Sokratic Elenchus, and the purely negative procedure.
Such is the general purpose of the dialogue. As to the method of enquiry, Plato not only assigns to Sokrates a distinct affirmative opinion from the beginning, instead of that profession of ignorance which is his more usual characteristic — but he also places in the mouth of Protarchus an explicit protest against the negative cross-examination and Elenchus. “We shall not let you off” (says Protarchus to Sokrates) “until the two sides of this question shall have been so discriminated as to elicit a sufficient conclusion. In meeting us on the present question, pray desist from that ordinary manner of yours — desist from throwing us into embarrassment, and putting interrogations to which we cannot at the moment give suitable answers. We must not be content to close the discussion by finding ourselves in one common puzzle and confusion. If we cannot solve the difficulty, you must solve it for us.”2
2 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 19 E — 20 A. παῦσαι δὴ τὸν τρόπον ἡμῖν ἀπαντῶν τοῦτον ἐπὶ τὰ νῦν λεγόμενα … εἰς ἀπορίαν ἐμβάλλων καὶ ἀνερωτῶν ὧν μὴ δυναίμεθ’ ἂν ἱκανὴν ἀπόκρισιν ἐν τῷ παρόντι διδόναι σοι. μὴ γὰρ οἰώμεθα τέλος ἡμῖν εἶναι τῶν νῦν τὴν πάντων ἡμῶν ἀπορίαν, ἀλλ’ εἰ δρᾷν τοῦθ’ ἡμεῖς ἀδυνατοῦμεν, σοὶ δραστέον.
There is a remarkable contrast between the method here proclaimed and that followed in the Theætêtus, though some eminent commentators have represented the Philêbus as a sequel of the Theætêtus.
Enquiry — What mental condition will ensure to all men a happy life? Good and Happiness — correlative and co-extensive. Philêbus declares for Pleasure, Sokrates for Intelligence.
Conformably to this requisition, Sokrates, while applying his cross-examining negative test to the doctrine of Philêbus, sets against it a counter-doctrine of his own, and prescribes, farther, a positive method of enquiry. “You and I” (he says) “will each try to assign what permanent habit of mind, and what particular mental condition, is calculated to ensure to all men a happy life.”3 Good and Happiness are used in this dialogue as correlative and co-extensive terms. Happiness is that which a man feels when he possesses Good: Good is that which a man must possess in order to feel Happiness. The same fact or condition, looked at objectively, is denominated Good: looked at subjectively, is denominated Happiness.
3 Plato, Philêbus, p. 11 D.
Good — object of universal choice and attachment by men, animals, and plants — all-sufficient — satisfies all desires.
Is Good identical with pleasure, or with intelligence, or is it a Tertium Quid, distinct from both? Good, or The Good must be perfect and all-sufficient in itself: the 336object of desire, aspiration, choice, and attachment, by all men, and even by all animals and plants, who are capable of attaining it. Every man who has it, is satisfied, desiring nothing else. If he neglects it, and chooses any thing else, this is contrary to nature: he does so involuntarily, either from ignorance or some other untoward constraint.4 Thus, the characteristic mark of Good or Happiness is, That it is desired, loved, and sought by all, and that, if attained, it satisfies all the wishes and aspirations of human nature.
4 Plato, Philêbus, p. 11 C. 20 C-D: Τὴν τἀγαθοῦ μοῖραν πότερον ἀνάγκη τέλεον ἢ μὴ τέλεον εἶναι; Πάντων δήπου τελεώτατον. Τί δέ· ἱκανὸν τἀγαθόν; Πῶς γὰρ οὔ; καὶ πάντων γε εἰς τοῦτο διαφέρειν τῶν ὄντῶν. Τόδε γε μὴν, ὡς οἶμαι, περὶ αὐτοῦ ἀναγκαιότατον εἶναι λέγειν, ὡς πᾶν τὸ γιγνῶσκον αὐτὸ θηρεύει καὶ ἐφίεται βουλόμενον ἑλεῖν καὶ περὶ αὑτὸ κτήσασθαι, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδὲν φροντίζει πλὴν τῶν ἀποτελουμένων ἄμα ἀγαθοῖς.
22 B: ἱκανὸς καὶ τέλεος καὶ πᾶσι φυτοῖς καὶ ζώοις αἱρετός, οἷσπερ δυνατὸν ἦν οὕτως ἀεὶ διὰ βίου ζῆν· εἰ δέ τις ἄλλα ᾑρεῖθ’ ἡμῶν, παρὰ φύσιν ἂν τὴν τοῦ ἀληθοῦς αἱρετοῦ ἐλάμβανεν ἄκων ἐξ ἀγνοίας ἤ τινος ἀνάγκης οὐκ εὐδαίμονος.
60 C, 61 A. 61 E: τὸν ἀγαπητότατον βίον. 64 C: τοῦ πᾶσι γεγονέναι προσφιλῆ τὴν τοιαύτην διάθεσιν. 67 A.
“Omnibus naturæ humanæ desideriis prorsus satisfacere” (Stallbaum ad Philêb. p. 18 D-E, page 139).
Pleasures are unlike to each other, and even opposite cognitions are so likewise.
Sokrates then remarks that pleasure is very multifarious and diverse: and that under that same word, different forms and varieties are signified, very unlike to each other, and sometimes even opposite to each other. Thus the intemperate man has his pleasures, while the temperate man enjoys his pleasures also, attached to his own mode of life: so too the simpleton has pleasure in his foolish dreams and hopes, the intelligent man in the exercise of intellectual force. These and many others are varieties of pleasure not resembling, but highly dissimilar, even opposite. — Protarchus replies — That they proceed from dissimilar and opposite circumstances, but that in themselves they are not dissimilar or opposite. Pleasure must be completely similar to pleasure — itself to itself. — So too (rejoins Sokrates) colour is like to colour: in that respect there is no difference between them. But black colour is different from, and even opposite to, white colour.5 You will go wrong if you make things altogether opposite, into one. You may call all pleasures by the name pleasures: but you must not affirm between them any other point of resemblance, nor call them all good. I maintain that some are bad, 337others good. What common property in all of them, is it, that you signify by the name good? As different pleasures are unlike to each other, so also different cognitions (or modes of intelligence) are unlike to each other; though all of them agree in being cognitions. To this Protarchus accedes.6 — We must enter upon our enquiry after The Good with this mutual concession: That Pleasure, which you affirm to be The Good — and Intelligence, which I declare to be so — is at once both Unum, and Multa et Diversa.7
5 Plat. Philêb. p. 12 D-E.
6 Plat. Philêb. pp. 13 D-E, 14 A.
7 Plat. Philêb. p. 14 B.
Whether Pleasure, or Wisdom, corresponds to this description? Appeal to individual choice.
In determining between the two competing doctrines — pleasure on one side and intelligence on the other — Sokrates makes appeal to individual choice. “Would you be satisfied (he asks Protarchus) to live your life through in the enjoyment of the greatest pleasures? Would any one of us be satisfied to live, possessing the fullest measure and variety of intelligence, reason, knowledge, and memory — but having no sense, great or small, either of pleasure or pain?” And Protarchus replies, in reference to the joint life of intelligence and pleasure combined, “Every man will choose this joint life in preference to either of them separately. It is not one man who will choose it, and another who will reject it: but every man will choose it alike.”8
8 Plato, Philêbus, p. 21 A. δέξαι’ ἂν σύ, Πρώταρχε, ζῆν τὸν βίον ἅπαντα ἡδόμενος ἡδονὰς τὰς μεγίστας; 21 D-E: εἴ τις δέξαιτ’ ἂν αὖ ζῆν ἡμῶν, &c. 22 A: Πᾶς δήπου τοῦτόν γε αἱρήσεται πρότερον ἢ ἐκείνων ὁποτερονοῦν, καὶ πρὸς τούτοις γε οὐχ ὁ μέν, ὁ δ’ οὔ. 60 D: εἴ τις ἄνευ τούτων δέξαιτ’ ἄν, &c.
Here again in appealing to the individual choice and judgment, the Platonic Sokrates indirectly recognises what, in the Theætêtus and other dialogues, we have seen him formally rejecting and endeavouring to confute — the Protagorean canon or measure. Protarchus is the measure of truth or falsehood, of belief or disbelief, to Protarchus himself: every other man is so to himself. Sokrates may be a wiser man, in the estimation of the public, than Protarchus; and if Protarchus believes him to be such, that very belief may amount to an authority, determining Protarchus to accept or reject various opinions propounded by Sokrates: but the ultimate verdict must emanate from the bosom of the acceptor or rejector. I have already observed elsewhere, that a large part of the conversation which the Platonic dialogues put into the mouth of Sokrates, is addressed to individualities and specialties of the other interlocutors: that this very power of discriminating between one mind and another, forms the great superiority of dialectic colloquy as compared with written treatise or rhetorical discourse — both of which address the same terms to a multitude of hearers or readers differing among themselves, without possibility of separate adaptation to each. (See above, ch. xxvi. pp. 50-54, on Phædrus.)
338First Question submitted to Protarchus — Intense Pleasure, without any intelligence — He declines to accept it.
The point, which Sokrates submits to the individual judgment of Protarchus, is — “Would you be satisfied to pass your life in the enjoyment of the most intense pleasures, and would you desire nothing farther?” The reply is in the affirmative. “But recollect (adds Sokrates) that you are to have nothing else. The question assumes that you are to be without thought, intelligence, reason, sight, and memory: you are neither to have opinion of present enjoyment, nor remembrance of past, nor anticipation of future: you are to live the life of an oyster, with great present pleasure?” The question being put with these additions, Protarchus alters his view, and replies in the negative: at the same time expressing his surprise at the strangeness of the hypothesis.9
9 Plato, Philêbus, p. 21.
Such an hypothesis does indeed depart so totally from the conditions of human life, that it cannot be considered as a fair test of any doctrine. A perpetuity of delicious sensations cannot be enjoyed, consistent with the conditions of animal organization. A man cannot realise to himself that which the hypothesis promises; much less can he realise it without those accompaniments which it assumes him to renounce. The loss stands out far more palpably than the gain. It is no refutation of the theory of Philêbus; who, announcing pleasure as the Summum Bonum, is entitled to call for pleasure in all its varieties, and for exemption from all pains. Sokrates himself had previously insisted on the great variety as well as on the great dissimilarity of the modes of pleasure and pain. To each variety of pleasure there corresponds a desire: to each variety of pain, an aversion.
If the Summum Bonum is to fulfil the conditions postulated — that is, if it be such as to satisfy all human desires, it ought to comprise all these varieties of pleasure. It ought, e.g., to comprise the pleasures of self-esteem, and conscious self-protecting power, affording security for the future; it ought to comprise exemption from the pains of self-reproach, self-contempt, and conscious helplessness. These are among the greatest pleasures and pains of the mature man, though they are aggregates formed by association. Now the alternative tendered by Sokrates neither includes these pleasures nor eliminates these pains. It includes only the pleasures of sense; and it is tendered to one who has rooted in his mind desires for other pleasures, and aversions for other pains, besides those of sense. It does not therefore come up to the requirements fairly implied in the theory of Philêbus.
Second Question — Whether he will accept a life of Intelligence purely without any pleasure or pain? Answer — No.
Sokrates now proceeds to ask Protarchus, whether he will accept a life of full and all-comprehensive intelligence purely and simply, without any taste either of pleasure or pain. To which Protarchus answers, that neither he nor any one else would accept such a life.10 339Both of them agree that the Summum Bonum ought to be sought neither in pleasure singly, nor in intelligence singly, but in both combined.
10 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 21-22.
It is to be remarked, however, that there was more than one Grecian philosopher who described the Summum Bonum as consisting in absence of pain (ἀλυπία); even without the large measure of intelligence which Sokrates here promises, and without any positive pleasure. These men would of course have accepted the second alternative put by Sokrates, which Protarchus here refuses. They took their standard of comparison from the actualities of human life around them, which exhibited pain and suffering universal, frequent, and unavoidable. They conceived that if painlessness could be obtained, it was as much as could reasonably be demanded, and that pleasure might be dispensed with. In laying down any theory about the Summum Bonum, the preliminary question ought always to be settled — What are the conditions of human life which are to be assumed as peremptory and unalterable? What circumstances are we at liberty to suppose to be suppressed, modified, or reversed? According as these fundamental postulates are given in a larger or narrower sense, the ideal Summum Bonum will be shaped differently. This preliminary requisite to the investigation was little considered by the ancient philosophers.
It is agreed on both sides, That the Good must be a Tertium Quid. But Sokrates undertakes to show, That Intelligence is more cognate with it than Pleasure.
Difficulties about Unum et Multa. How can the One be Many? How can the Many be One? The difficulties are greatest about Generic Unity — how it is distributed among species and individuals.
Sokrates then undertakes to show, that of these two elements, intelligence is the most efficacious and the most contributory to the Summum Bonum — pleasure the least so. But as a preparation for this enquiry, he adverts to that which has just been agreed between them respecting both Pleasure and Intelligence — That each of them is Unum, and each of them at the same time Multa et Diversa. Here (argues Sokrates) we find opened before us the embarrassing question respecting the One and the Many. Enquirers often ask — “How can the One be Many? How can the Many be One? How can the same thing be both One and Many?” They find it difficult to understand how you, Protarchus, being One person, are called by different names — tall, heavy, white, just, &c.: or how you are affirmed to consist of many different parts and members. To this difficulty, however (says Sokrates), the reply is easy. You, and other particular men, belong to the generated and the perishable. You partake of many different Ideas or Essences, and your partaking of one among them does not exclude you from partaking also of another distinct and even opposite. You partake of the Idea or Essence of Unity — also of Multitude — of tallness, heaviness, whiteness, humanity, greatness, littleness, &c. You are both great and little, heavy and light, &c. In regard to generated and perishable things, we may understand this. But in regard to the ungenerated, imperishable, absolute 340Essences, the difficulty is more serious. The Self-existent or Universal Man, Bull, Animal — the Self-existent Beautiful, Good — in regard to these Unities or Monads there is room for great controversy. First, Do such unities or monads really and truly exist? Next, assuming that they do exist, how do they come into communion with generated and perishable particulars, infinite in number? Is each of them dispersed and parcelled out among countless individuals? or is it found, whole and entire, in each individual, maintaining itself as one and the same, and yet being parted from itself? Is the Universal Man distributed among all individual men, or is he one and entire in each of them? How is the Universal Beautiful (The Self-Beautiful — Beauty) in all and each beautiful thing? How does this one monad, unchangeable and imperishable, become embodied in a multitude of transitory individuals, each successively generated and perishing? How does this One become Many, or how do these Many become One?11
11 Plato, Philêbus, p. 15 B.
Active disputes upon this question at the time.
These (says Sokrates) are the really grave difficulties respecting the identity of the One and the Many: difficulties which have occasioned numerous controversies, and are likely to occasion many more. Youthful speculators, especially, are fond of trying their first efforts of dialectical ingenuity in arguing upon this paradox — How the One can be Many, and the Many One.12
12 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 15-16.
In reading the difficulties thus started by Sokrates, we perceive them to be the same as those which we have seen set forth in the dialogue called Parmenidês, where they are put into the mouth of the philosopher so-called; as objections requiring to be removed by Sokrates, before the Platonic theory of self-existent Ideas, universal, eternal and unchangeable, can be admitted. We might expect that Plato having so emphatically and repeatedly announced his own sense of the difficulty, would proceed to suggest some mode of replying to it. But this he never does. In the Parmenidês, he does not even promise any explanation; in the Philêbus, he seems to promise one, but all the explanation which he gives ignores or jumps over the difficulty, enjoining us to proceed as if no such difficulty existed.
Order of Nature — Coalescence of the Finite with the Infinite. The One — The Finite Many — The Infinite Many.
It is a primæval inspiration (he says) granted by the Gods to man along with the fire of Prometheus, and handed down to us as a tradition from that heroic race who were in nearer kindred with the Gods — That all things said to exist are composed of Unity and Multitude, and include in them a natural coalescence of 341Finiteness and Infinity.13 This is the fundamental order of Nature, which we must assume and proceed upon in our investigations. We shall find everywhere the Form of Unity conjoined with the Form of Infinity. But we must not be satisfied simply to find these two forms. We must look farther for those intermediate Forms which lie between the two. Having found the Form of One, we must next search for the Form of Two, Three, Four, or some definite number: and we must not permit ourselves to acquiesce in the Form of Infinite, until no farther definite number can be detected. In other words, we must not be satisfied with knowing only one comprehensive Genus, and individuals comprised under it. We must distribute the Genus into two, three, or more Species: and each of those Species again into two or more sub-species, each characterised by some specific mark: until no more characteristic marks can be discovered upon which to found the establishment of a distinct species. When we reach this limit, and when we have determined the number of subordinate species which the case presents, nothing remains except the indefinite mass and variety of individuals.14 The whole scheme will thus comprise — The One, the Summum Genus, or Highest Form: The Many, a definite number of Species or sub-Species or subordinate Forms: The Infinite, a countless heap of Individuals.
13 Plato, Philêbus, p. 16 C. ὡς ἐξ ἑνὸς μὲν καὶ ἐκ πολλῶν ὄντων τῶν ἀεὶ λεγομένων εἶναι, πέρας δὲ καὶ ἀπειρίαν ἑν αὑτοῖς ξύμφυτον ἐχόντων.
14 Plato, Philêbus, p. 16 D. δεῖν οὖν ἡμᾶς τούτων οὕτω διακεροσμημένων, ἀεὶ μίαν ἰδέαν περὶ παντὸς ἑκάστοτε θεμένους ζητεῖν· εὑρήσειν γὰρ ἐνοῦσαν· ἐὰν οὖν μεταλάβωμεν, μετὰ μίαν δύο, εἴ πως εἰσί, σκοπεῖν, εἰ δὲ μή, τρεῖς ἤ τινα ἄλλον ἀριθμόν, καὶ τὸ ἓν ἐκείνων ἕκαστον πάλιν ὡσαύτως, μέχρι περ ἂν τὸ κατ’ ἀρχὰς ἓν μὴ ὅτι ἓν καὶ πολλὰ καὶ ἄπειρά ἐστι μόνον ἴδῃ τις ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅποσα· τὴν δὲ τοῦ ἀπείρου ἰδέαν πρὸς τὸ πλῆθος μὴ προσφέρειν, πρὶν ἄν τις τὸν ἀριθμὸν αὐτοῦ πάντα κατίδῃ τὸν μεταξὺ τοῦ ἀπείρου τε καὶ τοῦ ἑνός· τότε δ’ ἤδη τὸ ἓν ἕκαστον τῶν πάντων εἰς τὸ ἄπειρον μεθέντα χαίρειν ἐᾷν.
Plato here recognises a Form of the Infinite, ἀπείρου ἰδέαν; again, p. 18 A, ἀπείρου φύσιν.
Mistake commonly made — To look only for the One, and the Infinite Many, without looking for the intermediate subdivisions.
The mistake commonly made (continues Sokrates) by clever men of the present day, is, that they look for nothing beyond the One and the Infinite Many: one comprehensive class, and countless individuals included in it. They take up carelessly any class which strikes them,15 and are satisfied to have got an indefinite number342 of individuals under one name. But they never seek for intermediate sub-divisions between the two, so as to be able to discriminate one portion of the class from other by some definite mark, and thus to constitute a sub-class. They do not feel the want of such intermediate sub-divisions, nor the necessity of distinguishing one portion of this immense group of individuals from another. Yet it is exactly upon these discriminating marks that the difference turns, between genuine dialectical argument and controversy without result.16
15 Plato, Philêbus, p. 17 A. οἱ δὲ νῦν τῶν ἀνθρώπων σοφοὶ ἓν μέν, ὅπως ἂν τύχωσι, καὶ πολλὰ θᾶττον καὶ βραδύτερον ποιοῦσι τοῦ δέοντος, μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἓν ἄπειρα εὐθύς, τὰ δὲ μέσα αὐτοὺς ἐκφεύγει, &c.
Stallbaum conjectures that the words καὶ πολλὰ after τύχωσι ought not to be in the text. He proposes to expunge them. The meaning of the passage certainly seems clearer without them.
16 Plato, Philêbus, p. 17 A. οἷς διακεχώρισται τό τε διαλεκτικῶς πάλιν καὶ τὸ ἐριστικῶς ἡμᾶς ποιεῖσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τοὺς λόγους.
Illustration from Speech and Music.
This general doctrine is illustrated by two particular cases — Speech and Music. The voice (or Vocal Utterance) is One — the voice is also Infinite: to know only thus much is to know very little. Even when you know, in addition to this, the general distinction of sounds into acute and grave, you are still far short of the knowledge of music. You must learn farthermore to distinguish all the intermediate gradations, and specific varieties of sound, into which the infinity of separate sounds admits of being distributed: what and how many these gradations are? what are the numerical ratios upon which they depend — the rhythmical and harmonic systems? When you have learnt to know the One Genus, the infinite diversity of individual sounds, and the number of subordinate specific varieties by which these two extremes are connected with each other — then you know the science of music. So too, in speech: when you can distinguish the infinite diversity of articulate utterance into vowels, semi-vowels, and consonants, each in definite number and with known properties — you are master of grammatical science. You must neither descend at once from the One to the Infinite Multitude, nor ascend at once from the Infinite Multitude to the One: you must pass through the intermediate stages of subordinate Forms, in determinate number. All three together make up scientific knowledge. You cannot know one portion separately, without knowing the remainder:343 all of them being connected into one by the common bond of the highest Genus.17
17 Plato, Philêbus, p. 18 C-D. καθορῶν δὲ ὡς οὐδεὶς ἡμῶν οὐδ’ ἂν ἓν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ ἄνευ πάντων αὐτῶν μάθοι, τοῦτον τὸν δεσμὸν αὖ λογισάμενος ὡς ὄντα ἕνα καὶ πάντα ταῦτα ἓν πως ποιοῦντα, μίαν ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ὡς οὖσαν γραμματικὴν τέχνην ἐπεφθέγξατο προσειπών.
Plato’s explanation does not touch the difficulties which he had himself recognised as existing.
Such is the explanation which Plato gives as to the identity of One and Many. Considered as a reply to his own previous doubts and difficulties, it is altogether insufficient. It leaves all those doubts unsolved. The first point of enquiry which he had started, was, Whether any Universal or Generic Monads really existed: the second point was, assuming that they did exist, how each of them, being essentially eternal and unchangeable, could so multiply itself or divide itself as to be at the same time in an infinite variety of particulars.18 Both points are left untouched by the explanation. No proof is furnished that Universal Monads exist — still less that they multiply or divide their one and unchangeable essence among infinite particulars — least of all is it shown, how such multiplication or division can take place, consistently with the fundamental and eternal sameness of the Universal Monad. The explanation assumes these difficulties to be eliminated, but does not suggest the means of eliminating them. The Philêbus, like the Parmenidês, recognises the difficulties as existing, but leaves them unsolved, though the dogmas to which they attach are the cardinal and peculiar tenets of Platonic speculation. Plato shows that he is aware of the embarrassments: yet he is content to theorize as if they did not exist. In a remarkable passage of this very dialogue, he intimates pretty clearly that he considered the difficulty of these questions to be insuperable, and never likely to be set at rest. This identification of the One with the Many, in verbal propositions (he says) has begun with the beginning of dialectic debate, and will continue to the end of it, as a stimulating puzzle which especially captivates the imagination of youth.19
18 Plato, Philêbus, p. 15 B-C.
19 Plato, Philêbus, p. 15 D. φαμέν που ταὐτὸν ἓν καὶ πολλὰ ὑπὸ λόγων γιγνόμενα περιτρέχειν πάντῃ καθ’ ἕκαστον τῶν λεγομένων ἀεὶ καὶ πάλαι καὶ νῦν. καὶ τοῦτο οὔτε μὴ παύσηταί ποτε οὔτε ἤρξατο νῦν, ἀλλ’ ἔστι τὸ τοιοῦτον, ὡς ἐμοὶ φαίνεται, τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν ἀθάνατόν τι καὶ ἀγήρων πάθος ἐν ἡμῖν.
The sequel (too long to transcribe) of this passage (setting forth the manner in which this apparent paradox worked upon the imagination of youthful students) is very interesting to read, and shows (in my opinion) that Stallbaum’s interpretation of it in his note is not the right one. Plato is here talking (in my judgment) about the puzzle and paradox itself: Stallbaum represents Plato as talking about his pretended solution of it, which has not as yet been at all alluded to.
Plato seems to give his own explanation without full certainty or confidence: see p. 16 B. And when we turn to pp. 18-19, we shall see that he forgets the original difficulty which had been proposed (compare p. 15 B), introducing in place of it another totally distinct difficulty, as if that had been in contemplation.
344It is nevertheless instructive, in regard to logical division and classification.
But though the difficulties started by Plato remain unexplained, still his manner of stating them is in itself valuable and instructive. It proclaims — 1. The necessity of a systematic classification, or subordinate scale of species and sub-species, between the highest Genus and the group of individuals beneath. 2. That each of these subordinate grades in the scale must be founded upon some characteristic mark. 3. That the number of sub-divisions is definite and assignable, there being a limit beyond which it cannot be carried. 4. That full knowledge is not attainable until we know all three — The highest Genus — The intermediate species and sub-species; both what they are, how many there are, and how each is characterised — The infinite group of individuals. These three elements must all be known in conjunction: we are not to pass either from the first to the third, or from the third to the first, except through the second.
At that time little thought had been bestowed upon classification as a logical process.
The general necessity of systematic classification — of generalisation and specification, or subordination of species and sub-species, as a condition of knowing any extensive group of individuals — requires no advocate at the present day. But it was otherwise in the time of Plato. There existed then no body of knowledge, distributed and classified, to which he could appeal as an example. The illustrations to which he himself refers here, of language and music as systematic arrangements of vocal sounds, were both of them the product of empirical analogy and unconscious growth, involving little of predetermined principle or theory. All the classification then employed was merely that which is included in the structure of language: in the framing of general names, each designating a multitude of individuals. All that men knew of classification was, that which is involved in calling many individuals by the same common name. This is the defect pointed out by Plato, when he remarks that 345the clever men of his time took no heed except of the One and the Infinite (Genus and Individuals): neglecting all the intermediate distinctions. Upon the knowledge of these media (he says) rests the difference between true dialectic debate, and mere polemic.20 That is — when you have only an infinite multitude of individuals, called by the same generic name, it is not even certain that they have a single property in common: and even if they have, it is not safe to reason from one to another as to the possession of any other property beyond the one generic property — so that the debate ends in mere perplexity. All pleasures agree in being pleasures (Sokrates had before observed to Protarchus), and all cognitions agree in being cognitions. But you cannot from hence infer that there is any other property belonging in common to all.21 That is a point which you cannot determine without farther observation of individuals, and discrimination of the great multitude into appropriate subdivisions. You will thus bring the whole under that triple point of view which Plato requires:— the highest Genus, — the definite number of species and sub-species, — the undefined number of individuals.
20 Plato, Philêbus, p. 17 A. οἱ δὲ νῦν τῶν ἀνθρώπων σοφοὶ ἓν μέν, ὅπως ἂν τύχωσι, καὶ πολλὰ θᾶττον καὶ βραδύτερον ποιοῦσι τοῦ δέοντος, μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἓν ἄπειρα εὐθύς, τὰ δὲ μέσα αὐτοὺς ἐκφεύγει, οἷς διακεχώρισται τό τε διαλεκτικῶς πάλον καὶ τὸ ἐριστικῶς ἡμᾶς ποιεῖσθαι πρὸς ἀλλήλους τοὺς λόγους.
21 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 13 B, 14 A.
Classification — unconscious and conscious.
Here we have set before us one important branch of logical method — the necessity of classification, not simply arising as an incidental and unconscious effect of the transitive employment of a common name, but undertaken consciously and intentionally as a deliberate process, and framed upon principles predetermined as essential to the accomplishment of a scientific end. This was a conception new in the Sokratic age. Plato seized upon it with ardour. He has not only emphatically insisted upon it in the Philêbus and elsewhere, but he has also given (in the Sophistês and Politikus) elaborate examples of systematic logical subdivision applied to given subjects.
Plato’s doctrine about classification is not necessarily connected with his Theory of Ideas.
We may here remark that Plato’s views as to the necessity of systematic classification, or of connecting the Summum Genus with individuals by intermediate stages of gradually decreasing generality — are not necessarily 346connected with his peculiar theory of Ideas as Self-existent objects, eternal and unchangeable. The two are indeed blended together in his own mind and language: but the one is quite separable from the other; and his remarks on classification are more perspicuous without his theory of Ideas than with it. Classification does not depend upon his hypothesis — That Ideas are not simply Concepts of the Reason, but absolute existences apart from the Reason (Entia Rationis apart from the Ratio) — and that these Ideas correspond to the words Unum, Multa definité, Multa indefinité, which are put together to compose the totality of what we see and feel in the Kosmos.
Applying this general doctrine (about the necessity of establishing subordinate classes as intermediate between the Genus and Individuals) to the particular subject debated between Sokrates and Protarchus — the next step in the procedure would naturally be, to distinguish the subordinate classes comprised first under the Genus Pleasure — next, under the Genus Intelligence (or Cognition). And so indeed the dialogue seems to promise22 in tolerably explicit terms.
22 Plato, Philêbus, p. 19 B, p. 20 A.
Quadruple distribution of Existences. 1. The Infinite. 2. The Finient 3. Product of the two former. 4. Combining Cause or Agency.
But such promise is not realised. The dialogue takes a different turn, and recurs to the general distinction already brought to view between the Finient (Determinans) and the Infinite (Indeterminatum). We have it laid down that all existences in the universe are divided into four Genera: 1. The Infinite or Indeterminate. 2. The Finient or the Determinans. 3. The product of these two, mixed or compounded together Determinatum. 4. The Cause or Agency whereby they become mixed together. — Of these four, the first is a Genus, or is both One and Many, having numerous varieties, all agreeing in the possession of a perpetual More and Less (without any limit or positive quantity): that which is perpetually increasing or diminishing, more or less hot, cold, moist, great, &c., than any given positive standard. The second, or the Determinans, is also a Genus, or One and Many: including equal, double, triple, and all fixed ratios.23
23 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 24-25.
The third Genus is laid down by Plato as generated by a mixture or combination of these two first — the Infinite and the Determinans. The varieties of this third or compound Genus comprise all that is good and desirable in nature — health, strength, beauty, virtue, fine weather, good temperature:24 all agreeing, each in its respective sphere, in presenting a right measure or proportion as opposed to excess or deficiency.
24 Plato, Philêbus, p. 26 A-B.
Fourthly, Plato assumes a distinct element of causal agency which operates such mixture of the Determinans with the Infinite, or banishment and supersession of the latter by the former.
Pleasure and Pain belong to the first of these four Classes — Cognition or Intelligence belongs to the fourth.
We now approach the application of these generalities to the question in hand — the comparative estimate of pleasure and intelligence in reference to Good. It has been granted that neither of them separately is sufficient, and that both must be combined to compose the result Good: but the question remains, which of the two elements is the most important in the compound? To which of the four above-mentioned Genera (says Sokrates) does Pleasure belong? It belongs to the Infinite or Indeterminate: so also does Pain. To which of the four does Intelligence or Cognition belong? It belongs to the fourth, or to the nature of Cause, the productive agency whereby definite combinations are brought about.25
25 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 27-28, p. 31 A.
In the combination, essential to Good, of Intelligence with Pleasure, Intelligence is the more important of the two constituents.
Hence we see (Sokrates argues) that pleasure is a less important element than Intelligence, in the compound called Good. For pleasure belongs to the Infinite: but pain belongs to the Infinite also: the Infinite therefore, being common to both, cannot be the circumstance which imparts to pleasures their affinity with Good: they must derive that affinity from some one of the other elements.26 It is Intelligence which imparts to pleasures their affinity with Good: for Intelligence belongs to the more efficacious Genus called Cause. In the combination of Intelligence with Pleasure, indispensable to constitute Good, Intelligence is the primary 348element, Pleasure only the secondary element. Intelligence or Reason is the ruling cause which pervades and directs both the smaller body called Man, and the greater body called the Kosmos. The body of man consists of a combination of the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire: deriving its supply of all these elements from the vast stock of them which constitutes the Kosmos. So too the mind of man, with its limited reason and intelligence, is derived from the vast stock of mind, reason, and intelligence, diffused throughout the Kosmos, and governing its great elemental body. The Kosmos is animated and intelligent, having body and mind like man, but in far higher measure and perfection. It is from this source alone that man can derive his supply of mind and intelligence.27
26 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 27-28.
The argument of Plato is here very obscure and difficult to follow. Stallbaum in his note even intimates that Plato uses the word ἄπειρον in a sense different from that in which he had used it before: which I think doubtful.
27 Plato, Philêbus, p. 29 C. 30 A: Τὸ παρ’ ἡμῖν σῶμα ἆρ’ οὐ ψυχὴν φήσομεν ἔχειν; … Πόθεν λαβόν, εἴπερ μὴ τό γε τοῦ παντὸς σῶμα ἔμψυχον ὂν ἐτύγχανε, ταὐτά γε ἔχον τούτῳ καὶ ἔτι πάντη καλλίονα;
Intelligence is the regulating principle — Pleasure is the Indeterminate, requiring to be regulated.
Sokrates thus arrives at the conclusion, that in the combination constituting Good, Reason or Intelligence is the regulating principle: and that Pleasure is the Infinite or Indeterminate which requires regulation from without, having no fixed measure or regulating power in itself.28 He now proceeds to investigate pleasure and intelligence as phenomena: to enquire in what each of them resides, and through what affection they are generated.29
28 Plato, Philêbus, p. 31 A.
29 Plato, Philêbus, p. 31 B. δεῖ δὴ τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο, ἐν ᾧ τέ ἐστιν ἑκάτερον αὐτοῖν καὶ διὰ τί πάθος γίγνεσθον, ὁπόταν γίγνησθον, ἰδεῖν ἡμᾶς.
Pleasure and Pain must be explained together — Pain arises from the disturbance of the fundamental harmony of the system — Pleasure from the restoration.
We cannot investigate pleasure (Sokrates continues) apart from pain: both must be studied together. Both pleasure and pain reside in the third out of the four above-mentioned Genera:30 that is, in the compound Genus formed out of that union (of the Infinite with the Determinans or Finient) which includes all animated bodies. Health and Harmony reside in these animated bodies: and pleasure as well as pain proceed from modifications of such fundamental harmony. When the fundamental harmony is disturbed or dissolved, pain is the consequence: when the disturbance is rectified and the harmony restored, pleasure 349ensues.31 Thus hunger, thirst, extreme heat and cold, are painful, because they break up the fundamental harmony of animal nature: while eating, drinking, cooling under extreme heat, or warming under extreme cold, are pleasurable, because they restore the disturbed harmony.
30 Plato, Philêbus, p. 31 C. ἐν τῷ κοινῷ μοι γένει ἅμα φαίνεσθον λύπη τε καὶ ἡδονὴ γίγνεσθαι κατὰ φύσιν … κοινὸν τοίνυν ὑπακούωμεν ὃ δὴ τῶν τεττάρων τρίτον ἐλέγομεν. Compare p. 32 A-B: τὸ ἐκ τοῦ ἀπείρου καὶ πέρατος κατὰ φύσιν ἔμψυχον γεγονὸς εἶδος.
Plato had before said that ἡδονὴ belonged to the Infinite (compare p. 41 D), or to the first of the four above-mentioned genera, not to the third.
31 Plato, Philêbus, p. 31 D.
This is the primary conception, or original class, of pleasures and pains, embracing body and mind in one and the same fact. Pleasure cannot be had without antecedent pain: it is in fact a mere reaction against pain, or a restoration from pain.
Derivative pleasures of memory and expectation belonging to mind alone. Here you may find pleasure without pain.
But there is another class of pleasures, secondary and derivative from these, and belonging to the mind alone without the body. The expectation of future pleasures is itself pleasurable,32 the expectation of future pains is itself painful. In this secondary class we find pleasure without pain, and pain without pleasure: so that we shall be better able to study pleasure by itself, and to decide whether the whole class, in all its varieties, be good, welcome and desirable, — or whether pleasure and pain be not, like heat and cold, desirable or undesirable according to circumstances — i.e. not good in their own nature, but sometimes good and sometimes not.33
32 Plato, Philêbus, p. 32 C. ἡδονῆς καὶ λύπης ἕτερον εἶδος, τὸ χωρὶς τοῦ σώματος αὐτῆς τῆς ψυχῆς διὰ προσδοκίας γιγνόμενον.
33 Plato, Philêbus, p. 32 D.
A life of Intelligence alone, without pain and without pleasure, is conceivable. Some may prefer it: at any rate it is second-best.
In the definition above given of the conditions of pleasure, as a re-action from antecedent pain, it is implied that if there be no pain, there can be no pleasure: and that a state of life is therefore conceivable which shall be without both — without pain and without pleasure. The man who embraces wisdom may prefer this third mode of life. It would be the most divine and the most akin to the nature of the Gods, who cannot be supposed without indecency to feel either joy or sorrow.34 At any rate, if not the best life of all, it will be the second-best.
34 Plato, Philêbus, p. 33 B. Οὐκοῦν εἰκός γε οὔτε χαίρειν θεοὺς οὔτε τὸ ἐναντίον; Πάνυ μὲν οὖν οὐκ εἰκός· ἄσχημον γοῦν αὐτων ἑκάτερον γιγνόμενόν ἐστιν.
350Desire belongs to the mind, presupposes both a bodily want, and the memory of satisfaction previously had for it. The mind and body are here opposed. No true or pure pleasure therein.
Those pleasures, which reside in the mind alone without the body, arise through memory and by means of reminiscence. When the body receives a shock which does not go through to the mind, we call the fact insensibility. In sensation, the body and mind are both affected:35 such sensation is treasured up in the memory, and the mental part of it is recalled (without the bodily part) by reminiscence.36 Memory and reminiscence are the foundations of desire or appetite. When the body suffers the pain of hunger or thirst, the mind recollects previous moments of satisfaction, desires a repetition of that satisfaction by means of food or drink. Here the body and the mind are not moved in the same way, but in two opposite ways: the desire belongs to the mind alone, and is turned towards something directly opposed to the affection of the body. That which the body feels is emptiness: that which the mind feels is desire of replenishment, or of the condition opposed to emptiness. But it is only after experience of replenishment that the mind will feel such desire. On the first occasion of emptiness, it will not desire replenishment, because it will have nothing, neither sensation nor memory, through which to touch replenishment: it can only do so after replenishment has been previously enjoyed, and through the memory. Desire therefore is a state of the mind apart from the body, resting upon memory.37 Here then the man is in a double state: the pain of emptiness, which affects the mind through the body, and the memory of past replenishment, or expectation of future replenishment, which resides in the mind. Such expectation, if certain and immediate, will be a state of pleasure: if doubtful and distant, it will be a state of pain. The state of emptiness and consequent appetite must be, at the very best, a state of mixed pain and pleasure: and it may 351perhaps be a state of pain only, under two distinct forms.38 Life composed of a succession of these states can afford no true or pure pleasure.
35 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 33 E — 34 A. ἀναισθησίαν ἐπονόμασον … τὸ δὲ ἐν ἑνὶ πάθει τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ σῶμα κοινῇ γιγνόμενον κοινῇ καὶ κινεῖσθαι, ταύτην δ’ αὖ τὴν κίνησιν ὀνομάζων αἴσθησιν οὐκ ἀπὸ τρόπου φθέγγοι’ ἄν.
36 Plato, Philêbus, p. 34 A-B. σωτηρίαν αἰσθήσεως τὴν μνήμην.
Μνήμη and ἀνάμνησις are pronounced to be different.
37 Plato, Philêbus, p. 35 C. τὴν ψυχὴν ἄρα τῆς πληρώσεως ἐφάπτεσθαι λοιπόν, τῇ μνήμῃ δῆλον ὅτι· τῷ γὰρ ἂν ἔτ’ ἄλλῳ ἐφάψαιτο;
35 D. τὴν ἄρ’ ἐπάγουσαν ἐπὶ τὰ ἐπιθυμούμενα ἀποδείξας μνήμην, ὁ λόγος ψυχῆς ξύμπασαν τήν τε ὁρμὴν καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ ζώου παντὸς ἀπέφῃνεν.
38 Plato, Philêbus, p. 36 A-B.
This analysis of desire is in the main just: antecedent to all gratification, it is simple uneasiness: gratification having been supplied, the memory thereof remains, and goes along with the uneasiness to form the complex mental state called desire.
But there is another case of desire. While tasting a pleasure, we desire the continuance of it: and if the expectation of its continuance be assured, this is an additional pleasure: two sources of pleasure instead of one. In this last case, there is no such conjunction of opposite states, pain and pleasure, as Plato pointed out in the former case.
Can pleasures be true or false? Sokrates maintains that they are so.
What do you mean (asks Protarchus) by true pleasures or pains? How can pleasures or pains be either true or false? Opinions and expectations may be true or false; but not pleasures, nor pains.
That is an important question (replies Sokrates), which we must carefully examine. If opinions may be false or true, surely pleasures may be so likewise. When a man holds an opinion, there is always some Object of his opinion, whether he thinks truly or falsely: so also when a man takes delight, there must always be some Object in which he takes delight, truly or falsely. Pleasure and pain, as well as opinion, are susceptible of various attributes; vehement or moderate, right or wrong, bad or good. Delight sometimes comes to us along with a false opinion, sometimes along with a true one.
Yes (replies Protarchus), but we then call the opinion true or false — not the pleasure.39
39 Plato, Philêbus, p. 37.
Reasons given by Sokrates. Pleasures attached to true opinions, are true pleasures. The just man is favoured by the Gods, and will have true visions sent to him.
You will not deny (says Sokrates) that there is a difference between the pleasure accompanying a true opinion, and that which accompanies a false opinion. Wherein does the difference consist? Our opinions, and our comparisons of opinion, arise from sensation and memory:40 which write words and impress images upon our mind (as upon a book or canvas), sometimes truly, sometimes falsely,41 not only respecting 352the past and present, but also respecting the future. To these opinions respecting the future are attached the pleasures and pains of expectation, which we have already recognised as belonging to the mind alone, — anticipations of bodily pleasures or pains to come — hopes and fears. As our opinions respecting the future are sometimes true, sometimes false, so also are our hopes and fears: but throughout our lives we are always full of hopes and fears.42 Now the just and good man, being a favourite of the Gods, will have these visions or anticipations of the future presented to him truly and accurately: the bad man on the contrary will have them presented to him falsely. The pleasures of anticipation will be true to the former, and false to the latter:43 his false pleasures will be a ludicrous parody on the true ones.44 Good or bad opinions are identical with true or false opinions: so also are good or bad pleasures, identical with true or false pleasures: there is no other ground for their being good or bad.
40 Plato, Philêbus, p. 38 C. Οὐκοῦν ἐκ μνήμης τε καὶ αἰσθήσεως δόξα ἡμῖν καὶ τὸ διαδοξάζειν ἐγχειρεῖν γίγνεθ’ ἑκάστοτε;
41 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 38 E, 39. δοκεῖ μοι τότε ἡμῶν ἡ ψυχὴ βιβλίῳ τινὶ προσεοικέναι … ἡ μνήμη ταῖς αἰσθήσεσι ξυμπίπτουσα εἰς ταὐτόν, κἀκεῖνα ἂ περὶ ταῦτά ἐστι τὰ παθήματα, φαίνονταί μοι σχεδὸν οἷον γράφειν ἡμῶν ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς τότε λόγους.…
Ἀποδέχου δὴ καὶ ἕτερον δημιουργὸν ἡμῶν ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἐν τῷ τότε χρόνῳ γιγνόμενον … Ζωγράφον, ὃς μετὰ τὸν γραμματιστὴν τῶν λεγομένων εἰκόνας ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τούτων γράφει.
It seems odd that Plato here puts the painter after the scribe, and not before him. The images or phantasm of sense must be painted on the mind before any words are written upon it if we are to adopt both these metaphors).
The comparison of the mind to a sheet of paper or a book begins with the poets (Æschyl. Prometh. 790), and passes into philosophy with Plato.
42 Plato, Philêbus, p. 39 E. ἡμεῖς δ’ αὖ διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου ἀεὶ γέμομεν ἐλπίδων. 40 E. οὐκοῦν ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος ἂν εἴη περὶ φόβων τε καὶ θυμῶν, &c. Also 40 D.
43 Plato, Philêbus, p. 40 A-B.
Prophets and prophecies, inspired by the Gods, were phenomena received as frequently occurring in the days of Plato.
44 Plato, Philêbus, p. 40 C. μεμιμημέναι μέντοι τὰς ἀληθεῖς ἐπὶ τὰ γελοιότερα.
Protarchus disputes this — He thinks that there are some pleasures bad, but none false — Sokrates does not admit this, but reserves the question.
I admit this identity (remarks Protarchus) in regard to opinions, but not in regard to pleasures. I think there are other grounds, and stronger grounds, for pronouncing pleasures to be bad — independently of their being false. We will reserve that question (says Sokrates) for the present — whether there are or are not pleasures bad on other grounds.45 I am now endeavouring to show that there are some pleasures which are false: and I proceed to another way of viewing the subject.
45 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 40 E-41 A. Sokr. Οὐδ’ ἡδονάς γ’, οἶμαι, κατανοοῦμεν ὡς ἄλλον τινὰ τρόπον εἰσὶ πονηραὶ πλὴν τῷ ψευδεῖς εἶναι. Protarch. Πάνυ μὲν οὖν τοὐναντίον εἴρηκας, &c.
No means of truly estimating pleasures and pains — False estimate habitual — These are the false pleasures.
We agreed before that the state, called Appetite or Desire, 353was a mixed state comprehending body and mind: the state of body affecting the mind with a pain of emptiness, — the state of mind apart from body being either a pleasure of expected replenishment, or a pain arising from our regarding replenishment as distant or unattainable. Appetite or Desire, therefore, is sometimes mixed pleasure and pain; both, of the genus Infinite, Indeterminate. We desire to compare these pleasures and pains, and to value their magnitude in relation to each other, but we have no means of performing the process. We not only cannot perform it well, but we are sure to perform it wrongly. For future pleasure or pain counts for more or less in our comparison, according to its proximity or distance. Here then is a constant source of false computation: pleasures and pains counted as greater or less than they really are: in other words, false pleasures and pains. We thus see that pleasures may be true or false, no less than opinions.46
46 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 41-42.
Much of what is called pleasure is false. Gentle and gradual changes do not force themselves upon our notice either as pleasure or pain. Absence of pain not the same as pleasure.
We have also other ways of proving the point that much of what is called pleasure is false and unreal47 — either no pleasure at all, or pleasure mingled and alloyed with pain and relief from pain. According to our previous definition of pain and pleasure — that pain arises from derangement of the harmony of our nature, and pleasure from the correction of such derangement, or from the re-establishment of harmony — there may be and are states which are neither painful nor pleasurable. Doubtless the body never remains the same: it is always undergoing change: but the gentle and gradual changes (such as growth, &c.) escape our consciousness, producing neither pain nor pleasure: none but the marked, sudden changes force themselves upon our consciousness, thus producing pain and pleasure.48 A life of gentle changes would be a life without pain as well as 354without pleasure. There are thus three states of life49 — painful — pleasurable — neither painful nor pleasurable. But no pain (absence of pain) is not identical with pleasure: it is a third and distinct state.50
47 Plato, Philêbus, p. 42 C. Τούτων τοίνυν ἑξῆς ὀψόμεθα, ἐὰν τῇδε ἀπαντῶμεν ἡδονὰς καὶ λύπας ψευδεῖς ἕτι μᾶλλον ἢ ταύτας φαινομένας τε καὶ οὔσας ἐν τοῖς ζώοις.
This argument is continued, though in a manner desultory and difficult to follow, down to p. 51 A: πρὸς τὸ τινὰς ἡδονὰς εἶναι δοκούσας, οὐσας δ’ οὐδαμῶς· καὶ μεγάλας ἑτέρας τινὰς ἄμα καὶ πολλὰς φαντασθείσας, εἶναι δ’ αὐτὰς συμπεφυρμένας ὁμοῦ λύπαις τε καὶ ἀναπαύσεσιν ὀδυνῶν τῶν μεγίστων περί τε σώματος καὶ ψυχῆς ἀπορίας.
48 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 42-43.
49 Plato, Philêbus, p. 43 D. τριττοὺς βίους, ἕνα μὲν ἡδύν, τὸν δ’ αὖ λυπηρόν, τὸν δ’ ἕνα μηδέτερα.
50 Plato, Philêbus, p. 43 D. οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὸ μὴ λυπεῖσθαί ποτε ταὐτὸν τῷ χαίρειν.
Opinion of the pleasure-hating philosophers — That pleasure is no reality, but a mere juggle — no reality except pain, and the relief from pain.
Now there are some philosophers who confound this distinction:51 Philosophers respectable, but stern, who hate the very name of pleasure, deny its existence as a separate state per se, and maintain it to be nothing more than relief from pain: implying therefore, perpetually and inevitably, the conjunction or antecedence of pain. They consider the seduction of pleasure in prospect to be a mere juggle — a promise never realised. Often the expected moment brings no pleasure at all: and even when it does, there are constant accompaniments of pain, which always greatly impair, often countervail, sometimes far more than countervail, its effect. Pain is regarded by them as the evil — removal or mitigation of pain as the good — of human life.
51 Plato, Philêbus, p. 44 B-C. καὶ μάλα δεινοὺς λεγομένους τὰ περὶ φύσιν, οἱ τὸ παράπαν ἡδονὰς οὔ φασιν εἶναι … λυπῶν ταύτας εἶναι πάσας ἀποθυγάς, ἃς νῦν οἱ περὶ Φίληβον ἡδονὰς ἐπονομάζουσιν.
Sokrates agrees with them in part, but not wholly.
These philosophers (continues Sokrates) are like prophets who speak truth from the stimulus of internal temperament, without any rational comprehension of it. Their theory is partially true, but not universally.52 It is true of a large portion of what are called pleasures, but it is not true of all pleasures. Most pleasures (indeed all the more vehement and coveted pleasures), correspond to the description given in the theory. The moment when the supposed intense pleasure arrives, is a disappointment of the antecedent hopes, either by not bringing the pleasure promised, or by bringing it along with a preponderant dose of pain. But there are some pleasures of which this cannot be said — which are really true and unmixed with pain. Which these are (continues Sokrates), I will presently explain: but I shall first state the case of the pleasure-hating philosophers, so far as I go along with it.
52 Plato, Philêbus, p. 44 C. ὥσπερ μάντεσι προσχρῆσθαί τισι, μαντευομένοις οὐ τέχνῃ, ἀλλά τινι δυσχερεία φύσεως οὐκ ἀγεννοῦς, &c. Also p. 51 A.
355Theory of the pleasure-haters — We must learn what pleasure is by looking at the intense pleasures — These are connected with distempered body and mind.
When we are studying any property (they say), we ought to examine especially those cases in which it appears most fully and prominently developed: thus, if we are enquiring into hardness, we must take for our first objects of investigation the hardest things, in preference to those which are less hard or scarcely hard at all.53 So in enquiring into pleasure generally, we must investigate first the pleasures of extreme intensity and vehemence. Now the most intense pleasures are enjoyed not in a healthy state of body, but on the contrary under circumstances of distemper and disorder: because they are then preceded by the most violent wants and desires. The sick man under fever suffers greater thirst and cold than when he is in health, but in the satisfaction of those wants, his pleasure is proportionally more intense. Again when he suffers from the itch or an inflamed state of body, the pleasure of rubbing or scratching is more intense than if he had no such disorder.54 The most vehement bodily pleasures can only be enjoyed under condition of being preceded or attended by pains greater or less as the case may be. The condition is not one of pure pleasure, but mixed between pain and pleasure. Sometimes the pain preponderates, sometimes the pleasure: if the latter, then most men, forgetting the accompanying pain, look upon these transient moments as the summit of happiness.55 In like manner the violent and insane man, under the stimulus of furious passions and desires, experiences more intense gratifications than persons of sober disposition: his condition is a mixed one, of great pains and great pleasures. The like is true of all the vehement passions — love, hatred, revenge, anger, jealousy, envy, fear, sorrow, &c.: all of them embody pleasures mixed with pain, and the magnitude of the pleasure is proportioned to that of the accompanying pain.56
53 Plato, Philêbus, p. 44 E. ὡς εἰ βουλήθειμεν ὁτουοῦν εἶδους τὴν φύσιν ἰδεῖν, οἷον τὴν τοῦ σκληροῦ, πότερον εἰς τὰ σκληρότατα ἀποβλέποντες οὕτως ἂν μᾶλλον συννοήσαιμεν ἢ πρὸς τὰ πολλοστὰ σκληρότητι; Answer: πρὸς τὰ πρῶτα μεγέθει.
54 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 45-46.
55 Plato, Philêbus, p. 47 A.
56 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 49-50 D. Plato here introduces, at some length, an analysis of the mixed sentiment of pleasure and pain with which we regard scenic representations, tragedy and comedy — especially the latter. The explanation which he gives of the sentiment of the ludicrous is curious, and is intended to elucidate an obscure psychological phenomenon (ὅσῳ σκοτεινότερόν ἐστι, p. 48 B). But his explanation is not clear, and the sense which he gives to the word φθόνος is a forced one. He states truly that the natural object (at least one among the objects) which a man laughs at, is the intellectual and moral infirmities of persons with whom he is in friendly intercourse, when such persons are not placed in a situation of power, so as to make their defects or displeasure pregnant with dangerous consequences. The laugher is amused with exaggerated self-estimation or foolish vanity displayed by friends, δοξοσοφία, δοξοκαλία &c. (49 E). But how the laugher can be said to experience a mixture of pain and pleasure here, or how he can be said to feel φθόνος, I do not clearly see. At least φθόνος is here used in the very unusual sense (to use Stallbaum’s words, note p. 48 B, page 278) of “injusta lætitia de malis eorum, quibus bene cupere debemus”: a sense altogether contrary to that which the word bears in Xen. Memor. iii. 9, 8; which Stallbaum himself cites, as if the definition of φθόνος were the same in both.
356The intense pleasures belong to a state of sickness; but there is more pleasure, on the whole, enjoyed in a state of health.
Recollect (observes Sokrates) that the question here is not whether more pleasure is enjoyed, on the whole, in a state of health than in a state of sickness — by violent rather than by sober men. The question is, about the intense modes of pleasure. Respecting these, I have endeavoured to show that they belong to a distempered, rather than to a healthy, state both of state of body and mind:— and that they cannot be enjoyed pure, without a countervailing or preponderant accompaniment of pain.57 This is equally true, whether they be pleasures of body alone, of mind alone, or of body and mind together. They are false and delusive pleasures: in fact, they are pleasures only in seeming, but not in truth and reality. To-morrow I will give you fuller proofs on the subject.58
57 Plato, Philêbus, p. 45 C-E. μή με ἡγῇ διανοούμενον ἐρωτᾷν σε, εἰ πλείω χαίρουσιν οἱ σφόδρα νοσοῦντες τῶν ὑγιαινόντων, ἀλλ’ οἴου μέγεθός με ζητεῖν ἡδονῆς, καὶ τὸ σφόδρα περὶ τοῦ τοιούτου ποῦ ποτὲ γίγνεται ἑκάστοτε, &c.
58 Plato, Philêbus, p. 50 E. τούτων γὰρ ἁπάντων αὕριον ἐθελήσω σοι λόγον δοῦναι, &c.
Sokrates acknowledges some pleasures to be true. Pleasures of beautiful colours, odours, sounds, smells, &c. Pleasures of acquiring knowledge.
Thus far (continues Sokrates) I have set forth the case on behalf of the pleasure-haters. Though I deny their full doctrine, — that there is no pleasure except cessation from pain — I nevertheless agree with them and cite them as witnesses on my behalf, to the extent of affirming that a large proportion of our so-called pleasures, and those precisely the most intense, are false and unreal: being poisoned and drenched in accompaniments of pain.59 But there are some pleasures, true, genuine, and untainted. Such are those produced by beautiful colours and figures — by many 357odours — by various sounds: none of which are preceded by any painful want requiring to be satisfied. The sensation when it comes is therefore one of pure and unmixed pleasure. The figures here meant are the perfect triangle, cube, circle, &c.: the colours and sounds are such as are clear and simple. All these are beautiful and pleasurable absolutely and in themselves — not simply in relation to (or relatively to) some special antecedent condition. Smells too, though less divine than the others, are in common with them unalloyed by accompanying pain.60 To these must be added the pleasure of acquiring knowledge, which supposes neither any painful want before it, nor any subsequent pain even if the knowledge acquired be lost. This too is one of the unmixed or pure pleasures; though it is not attainable by most men, but only by a select few.61
59 Plato, Philêbus, p. 51 A.
60 Plato, Philêbus, p. 51 E. τὸ δὲ περὶ τὰς ὀσμὰς ἧττον μὲν τούτων θεῖον γένος ἡδονῶν· τὸ δὲ μὴ συμμεμίχθαι ἐν αὐταῖς ἀναγκαίους λύπας, &c.
61 Plato, Philêbus, p. 52 B. ταύτας τοίνυν τὰς τῶν μαθημάτων ἡδονὰς ἀμίκτους τε εἶναι λύπαις ῥητέον, καὶ οὐδαμῶς τῶν σφόδρα ὀλίγων.
Pure and moderate pleasures admit of measure and proportion.
Having thus distinguished the pure and moderate class of pleasures, from the mixed and vehement — we may remark that the former class admit of measure and proportion, while the latter belong to the immeasurable and the infinite. Moreover, look where we will, we shall find truth on the side of the select, small, unmixed specimens — rather than among the large and mixed masses. A small patch of white colour, free from all trace of any other colour, is truer, purer, and more beautiful, than a large mass of clouded and troubled white. In like manner, gentle pleasure, free from all pain, is more pleasurable, truer, and more beautiful, than intense pleasure coupled with pain.62
62 Plato, Philêbus, p. 53 B-C.
Pleasure is generation, not substance or essence: it cannot therefore be an End, because all generation is only a means towards substance — Pleasure therefore cannot be the Good.
There are yet other arguments remaining (continues Sokrates) which show that pleasure cannot be the Summum Bonum. If it be so, it must be an End, not a Means: it must be something for the sake of which other things exist or are done — not something which itself exists or is done for the sake of something else. But pleasure is not an End: it is essentially a means, as we may infer from the reasonings of its own advocates. 358They themselves tell us that it is generation, not substance:— essentially a process of transition or change, never attaining essence or permanence.63 But generation or transition is always for the sake of the thing to be generated, or for Substance — not substance for the sake of generation: the transitory serves as a road to the permanent, not vice versà. Pleasure is thus a means, not an End. It cannot therefore partake of the essential nature and dignity of Good: it belongs to a subordinate and imperfect category.64
63 Plato, Philêbus, p. 53 C. ἆρα περὶ ἡδονῆς οὐκ ἀκηκόαμεν ὡς ἀεὶ γένεσίς ἐστιν, οὐσία δὲ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ παράπαν ἡδονᾶς· κομψοὶ γὰρ δή τινες αὖ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἐπιχειροῦσι μηνύειν ἡμῖν, οἷς δεῖ χάριν ἔχειν.…
53 D: ἐστὸν δή τινε δύο, τὸ μὲν αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό, τὸ δὲ ἀεὶ ἐφιέμενον ἄλλου … τὸ μὲν σεμνότατον ἀεὶ πεφυκός, τὸ δὲ ἐλλιπὲς ἐκείνου.
64 Plato, Philêbus, p. 54 D. ἡδονὴ εἴπερ γένεσίς ἐστιν, εἰς ἄλλην ἢ τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ μοῖραν αὐτὴν τιθέντες ὀρθῶς θήσομεν.
Other reasons why pleasure is not the Good.
Indeed we cannot reasonably admit that there is no Good in bodies and in the universe generally, nor anywhere except in the mind:— nor that, within the mind, pleasure alone is good, while courage, temperance, &c., are not good:— nor that a man is good only while he is enjoying pleasure, and bad while suffering pain, whatever may be his character and merits.65
65 Plato, Philêbus, p. 55 B.
Distinction and classification of the varieties of Knowledge or Intelligence. Some are more true and exact than others, according as they admit more or less of measuring and computation.
Having thus (continues Sokrates) gone through the analysis of pleasures, distinguishing such as are true and pure, from such as are false and troubled — we must apply the like distinctive analysis to the various modes of knowledge and intelligence. Which varieties of knowledge, science, or art, are the purest from heterogeneous elements, and bear most closely upon truth? Some sciences and arts (we know) are intended for special professional practice: others are taught as subjects for improving the intellect of youth. As specimens of the former variety, we may notice music, medicine, husbandry, navigation, generalship, joinery, ship-building, &c. Now in all these, the guiding and directing elements are computation, mensuration, and statics — the sciences or arts of computing, measuring, weighing. Take away these three — and little would be left worth having, in any 359of the sciences or arts before named. There would be no exact assignable rules, no definite proportions: everything would be left to vague conjecture, depending upon each artisan’s knack and practice which some erroneously call Art. In proportion as each of these professional occupations has in it more or less of computation and mensuration, in the same proportion is it exact and true. There is little of computation or mensuration in music, medicine, husbandry, &c.: there is more of them in joinery and ship-building, which employ the line, plummet, and other instruments: accordingly these latter are more true and exact, less dependent upon knack and conjecture, than the three former.66 They approach nearer to the purity of science, and include less of the non-scientific, variable, conjectural, elements.
66 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 55-56.
Arithmetic and Geometry are twofold: As studied by the philosopher and teacher: As applied by the artisan.
But a farther distinction must here be taken (Sokrates goes on). Even in such practical arts as ship-building, which include most of computation and mensuration — these two latter do not appear pure, but diversified and embodied in a multitude of variable particulars. Arithmetic and geometry, as applied by the ship-builder and other practical men, are very different from arithmetic and geometry as studied and taught by the philosopher.67 Though called by the same name, they are very different; and the latter alone are pure and true. The philosopher assumes in his arithmetic the exact equality of all units, and in his geometry the exact ratios of lines and spaces: the practical man adds together units very unlike each other — two armies, two bulls, things little or great as the case may be: his measurement too, always falls short of accuracy.68 There are in short two arithmetics and two geometries69 — very different from each other, though bearing a common name.
67 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 D-E. Ἀριθμητικὴν πρῶτον ἆρ’ οὐκ ἄλλην μέν τινα τὴν τῶν πολλῶν φατέον, ἄλλην δ’ αὖ τὴν τῶν φιλοσοφούντων; . . .
λογιστικὴ καὶ μετρητικὴ ἡ κατὰ τεκτονικὴν καὶ κατ’ ἐμπορικὴν τῆς κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν γεωμετρίας τε καὶ λογισμῶν καταμελετωμένων — πότερον ὡς μία ἑκατέρα λεκτέον, ἢ δύο τιθῶμεν;
Compare Aristotel. Ethic. Nikom. i. 7, p. 1098, a. 30.
68 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 D-E. οἱ μὲν γάρ που μονάδας ἀνίσους καταριθμοῦνται τῶν περὶ ἀριθμόν, οἷον στρατόπεδα δύο καὶ βοῦς δύο καὶ δύο τὰ σμικρότατα ἢ καὶ τὰ πάντων μέγιστα· οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτοῖς συνακολουθήσειαν, εἰ μὴ μονάδα μονάδος ἑκάστης τῶν μυρίων μηδεμίαν ἄλλην ἄλλης διαφέρουσάν τις θήσει.
69 Plato, Philêbus, p. 57 D.
360Dialectic is the truest and purest of all Cognitions. Analogy between Cognition and Pleasure: in each, there are gradations of truth and purity.
We thus make out (continues Sokrates) that there is a difference between one variety and another variety of science or knowledge, analogous to that which we have traced between the varieties of pleasure. One pleasure is true and pure; another is not so, or is inseparably connected with pain and non-pleasurable elements — there being in each case a difference in degree. So too one variety of science, cognition, or art, is more true and pure than another: that is, it is less intermingled with fluctuating particulars and indefinite accompaniments. A science, bearing one and the same name, is different according as it is handled by the practical man or by the philosopher. Only as handled by the philosopher, does science attain purity: dealing with eternal and invariable essences. Among all sciences, Dialectic is the truest and purest, because it takes comprehensive cognizance of the eternal and invariable — Ens semper Idem — presiding over those subordinate sciences which bear upon the like matter in partial and separate departments.70
70 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 57-58.
Difference with Gorgias, who claims superiority for Rhetoric. Sokrates admits that Rhetoric is superior in usefulness and celebrity: but he claims superiority for Dialectic, as satisfying the lover of truth.
Your opinion (remarks Protarchus) does not agree with that of Gorgias. He affirms, that the power of persuasion (Rhetoric) is the greatest and best of all arts: inasmuch as it enables us to carry all our points, not by force, but with the free will and consent of others. I should be glad to avoid contradicting either him or you.
There is no real contradiction between us (replies Sokrates). You may concede to Gorgias that his art or cognition is the greatest and best of all — the most in repute, as well as the most useful to mankind. I do not claim any superiority of that kind, on behalf of my cognition.71 I claim for it superiority in truth and purity. I remarked before, that a small patch of unmixed white colour was superior in truth and purity to a large mass of white tarnished with other colours — a gentle and 361unmixed pleasure, in like manner, to one that is more intense but alloyed with pains. It is this superiority that I assert for Dialectic and the other sister cognitions. They are of little positive advantage to mankind: yet they, and only they, will satisfy both the demands of intelligence, and the impulse within us, in so far as we have an impulse to love and strain after truth.72
71 Plato, Philêbus, p. 58 B. Οὐ τοῦτ’ ἔγωγε ἐζήτουν πω, τίς τέχνη ἢ τίς ἐπιστήμη πασῶν διαφέρει τῷ μεγίστη καὶ ἀρίστη καὶ πλεῖστα ὠφελοῦσα ἡμᾶς. ἀλλὰ τίς ποτε τὸ σαφὲς καὶ τἀκριβὲς καὶ τὸ ἀληθέστατον ἐπισκοπεῖ, κἂν ᾖ σμικρὰ καὶ σμικρὰ ὀνίνασα. Τοῦτ’ ἐστὶν ὃ νῦν δὴ ζητοῦμεν.
72 Plato, Philêbus, p. 58 D. ἀλλ’ εἴ τις πέφυκε τῆς ψυχῆς ἡμῶν δύναμις ἐρᾷν τε τοῦ ἀληθοῦς καὶ πάντα ἕνεκα τούτου πράττειν, ταύτην εἴπωμεν, &c.
As far as straining after truth is concerned (says Protarchus), Dialectic and the kindred sciences have an incontestable superiority.
Most men look to opinions only, or study the phenomenal manifestations of the Kosmos. They neglect the unchangeable essences, respecting which alone pure truth can be obtained.
You must see (rejoins Sokrates) that Rhetoric, and most other arts or sciences, employ all their study, and seek all their standard, in opinions alone: while of those who study Nature, the greater number confine their investigations to this Kosmos, to its generation and its phenomenal operations — its manifestations past, present, and future.73 Now all these manifestations are in perpetual flux, admitting of no true or certain cognition. Pure truth, corresponding to those highest mental endowments, Reason and Intelligence — can be found only in essences, eternal and unchangeable, or in matters most akin to them.74
73 Plato, Philêbus, p. 59. εἰ δὲ καὶ περὶ φύσεως ἡγεῖταί τις ζητεῖν, οἶσθ’ ὅτι τὰ περὶ τὸν κόσμον τόνδε, ὅπῃ τε γέγονε καὶ ὅπῃ πάσχει τι καὶ ὅπῃ ποιεῖ, ταῦτα ζητεῖ διὰ βίου;
74 Plato, Philêbus, p. 59.
Application. Neither Intelligence nor Pleasure separately, is the Good, but a mixture of the two — Intelligence being the most important. How are they to be mixed?
We have now (continues Sokrates) examined pleasure separately and intelligence separately. We have agreed that neither of them, apart and by itself, comes up to the conception of Good; the attribute of which is, to be all sufficient, and to give plenary satisfaction, so that any animal possessing it desires nothing besides.75 We must therefore seek Good in a certain mixture or combination of the two — Pleasure and Intelligence: and we must determine, what sort of combination of these two contains the Good we seek. Now, to mix all pleasures, with all cognitions,362 at once and indiscriminately, will hardly be safe. We will first mix the truest and purest pleasures (those which include pleasure in its purest form), with the truest or purest cognitions (those which deal altogether with eternal and unchangeable essence, not with fluctuating particulars). Will such a combination suffice to constitute Good, or an all-sufficient and all-satisfactory existence? Or do we want anything more besides?76 Suppose a man cognizant of the Form or Idea of Justice, and of all other essential Ideas: and able to render account of his cognition, in proper words: Will this be sufficient?77 Suppose him to be cognizant of the divine Ideas of Circle, Sphere, and other figures; and to employ them in architecture, not knowing anything of human circles and figures as they exist in practical life?78
75 Plato, Philêbus, p. 60 C. τὴν τἀγαθοῦ διαφέρειν φύσιν τῷδε τῶν ἄλλων … ᾧ παρείη τοῦτ’ ἀεὶ τῶν ζώων διὰ τέλους πάντως καὶ πάντῃ, μηδενὸς ἑτέρου ποτὲ ἔτι προσδεῖσθαι, τὸ δὲ ἱκανὸν τελεώτατον ἔχειν.
76 Plato, Philêbus, p. 61 E.
77 Plato, Philêbus, p. 62 A. Ἔστω δή τις ἡμῖν φρονῶν ἄνθρωπος αὐτῆς περὶ δικαιοσύνης, ὅ, τι ἔστι, καὶ λόγον ἔχων ἑπόμενον τῷ νοεῖν, καὶ δὴ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων τῶν ὄντων ὡσαύτως διανοούμενος;
78 Plato, Philêbus, p. 62 A. Ἆρ’ οὖν οὗτος ἱκανῶς ἐπιστήμης ἕξει κύκλου μὲν καὶ σφαίρας αὐτῆς τῆς θείας τὸν λόγον ἔχων, τὴν δὲ ἀνθρωπίνην ταύτην σφαῖραν καὶ τοὺς κύκλους τούτους ἀγνοῶν, &c.
We must include all Cognitions, not merely the truest, but the others also. Life cannot be carried on without both.
That would be a ludicrous position indeed (remarks Protarchus), to have his mind full of the divine Ideas or cognitions only.
What! (replies Sokrates) must he have cognition not only of the true line and circle, but also of the false, the variable, the uncertain?
Certainly (says Protarchus), we all must have this farther cognition, if we are to find our way from hence to our own homes.79
79 Plato, Philêbus, p. 62 B. Ἀναγκαῖον γάρ, εἰ μέλλει τις ἡμῶν καὶ τὴν ὁδὸν ἑκάστοτε ἐξευρήσειν οἴκαδε.
Must we then admit (says Sokrates) those cognitions also in music, which we declared to be full of conjecture and imitation, without any pure truth or certainty?
We must admit them (says Protarchus), if life is to be worth anything at all. No harm can come from admitting all the other cognitions, provided a man possesses the first and most perfect.
But we must include no pleasures except the true, pure, and necessary. The others are not compatible with Cognition or Intelligence — especially the intense sexual pleasures.
Well then (continues Sokrates), we will admit them all. We have now to consider whether we can in like manner admit all pleasures without distinction. The true and pure must first be let in: next, such as are 363necessary and indispensable: and all the rest also, if any one can show that there is advantage without mischief in our enjoying every variety of pleasure.80 We must put the question first to pleasures, next to cognitions — whether they can consent respectively to live in company with each other. Now pleasures will readily consent to the companionship of cognitions: but cognitions (or Reason, upon whom they depend) will not tolerate the companionship of all pleasures indiscriminately. Reason will welcome the true and pure pleasures: she will also accept such as are indispensable, and such as consist with health, and with a sober and virtuous disposition. But Reason will not tolerate those most intense, violent, insane, pleasures, which extinguish correct memory, disturb sound reflection, and consist only with folly and bad conduct. Excluding these violent pleasures, but retaining the others in company with Reason and Truth — we shall secure that perfect and harmonious mixture which makes the nearest approximation to Good.81
80 Plato, Philêbus, p. 63 A. εἴπερ πάσας ἡδονὰς ἥδεσθαι διὰ βίου συμφέρον τε ἡμῖν ἐστὶ καὶ ἀβλαβὲς ἅπασι, πάσας ξυγκρατέον.
81 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 63-64.
What causes the excellence of this mixture? It is Measure, Proportion, Symmetry. To these Reason is more akin than Pleasure.
This mixture as Good (continues Sokrates) will be acceptable to all.82 But what is the cause that it is so? and is that cause more akin to Reason or to Pleasure? The answer is, that this mixture and combination, like every other that is excellent, derives its excellence from Measure and Proportion. Thus the Good becomes merged in the Beautiful: for measure and proportion (Moderation and Symmetry) constitute in every case beauty and excellence.83 In this case, Truth has been recognised as a third element of the mixture: the three together coalesce into Good, forming a Quasi-Unum, which serves instead of a Real Unum or Idea of Good.84 We 364must examine these three elements separately — Truth — Moderation — Symmetry (Measure — Proportion) to find whether each of them is most akin to Reason or to Pleasure. There can be no doubt that to all the three, Reason is more akin than Pleasure: and that the intense pleasures are in strong repugnance and antipathy to all the three.85
82 Plato, Philêbus, p. 64 C. Τί δῆτα ἐν τῇ ξυμμίξει τιμιώτατον ἅμα καὶ μάλιστ’ αἴτιον εἶναι δόξειεν ἂν ἡμῖν, τοῦ πᾶσι γεγονέναι προσφιλῆ τὴν τοιαύτην διάθεσιν;
83 Plato, Philêbus, p. 64 E. νῦν δὴ καταπέφευγεν ἡμῖν ἡ τἀγαθοῦ δύναμις εἰς τὴν τοῦ καλοῦ φύσιν· μετριότης γὰρ καὶ ξυμμετρία κάλλος δήπου καὶ ἀρετὴ πανταχοῦ ξυμβαίνει γίγνεσθαι.
84 Plato, Philêbus, p. 64 E-65 A. Οὐκοῦν εἰ μὴ μιᾷ δυνάμεθα ἰδέᾳ τὸ ἀγαθὸν θηρεῦσαι, σὺν τρισὶ λαβόντες, κάλλει καὶ ξυμμετρίᾳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ, λέγωμεν ὡς τοῦτο οἷον ἓν ὀρθότατ’ ἂν αἰτιασαίμεθ’ ἂν τῶν ἐν τῇ ξυμμίξει, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὡς ἀγαθὸν ὂν τοιαύτην αὐτὴν γεγονέναι.
85 Plato, Philêbus, p. 65 C.
Quintuple gradation in the Constituents of the Good. 1. Measure. 2. Symmetry. 3. Intelligence. 4. Practical Arts and Right Opinions. 5. True and Pure Pleasures.
We thus see (says Sokrates in conclusion), in reference to the debate with Philêbus, that Pleasure stands neither first nor second in the scale of approximation to Good. First comes Measure — the Moderate — the Seasonable — and all those eternal Forms and Ideas which are analogous to these.86 Secondly, come the Symmetrical — the Beautiful — the Perfect — the Sufficient — and other such like Forms and Ideas.87 Thirdly, come Reason and Intelligence. Fourthly, the various sciences, cognitions, arts, and right opinions — acquirements embodied in the mind itself. Fifthly, those pleasures which we have discriminated as pure pleasures without admixture of pain; belonging to the mind itself but consequent on the sensations of sight, hearing, smell.88
86 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 A. ὡς ἡδονὴ κτῆμα οὐκ ἔστι πρῶτον οὐδ’ αὖ δεύτερον, ἀλλὰ πρῶτον μέν πῃ περὶ μέτρον καὶ τὸ μέτριον καὶ καίριον καὶ πάντα ὁπόσα χρὴ τοιαῦτα νομίζειν τὴν ἀΐδιον ᾑρῆσθαι φύσιν.
87 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 B. δεύτερον μὴν περὶ τὸ σύμμετρον καὶ καλὸν καὶ τὸ τέλεον καὶ ἱκανὸν, καὶ πάνθ’ ὁπόσα τῆς γενεᾶς αὖ ταύτης ἐστίν.
88 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 C.
It is not necessary to trace the descending scale farther. It has been shown, against Philêbus — That though neither Intelligence separately, nor Pleasure separately, is an adequate embodiment of Good, which requires both of them conjointly — yet Intelligence is more akin to Good, and stands nearer to it in nature, than Pleasure.
Dionysius of Halikarnassus, while blaming the highflown metaphor and poetry of the Phædrus and other Platonic dialogues, speaks with great admiration of Plato in his appropriate walk of the Sokratic dialogues; and selects specially the Philêbus, as his example of these latter. I confess that this selection 365surprises me: for the Philêbus, while it explicitly renounces the peculiar Sokratic vein, and becomes didactic — cannot be said to possess high merit as a didactic composition. It is neither clear, nor orderly, nor comparable in animation to the expository books of the Republic.89 Every commentator of Plato, from Galen downwards, has complained of the obscurity of the Philêbus.
89 Dionys. Hal. De Adm. Vi Dic. ap. Demosth. p. 1025.
Schleiermacher (Einleit. p. 136) admits the comparatively tiresome character and negligent execution of the Philêbus.
Galen had composed a special treatise, Περὶ τῶν ἐν Φιλήβῳ μεταβάσεων, now lost (Galen, De Libris Propriis, 13, vol. xix. 46, ed. Kühn).
We have the advantage of two recent editions of the Philêbus by excellent English scholars, Dr. Badham and Mr. Poste; both are valuable, and that of Dr. Badham is distinguished by sagacious critical remarks and conjectures, but the obscurity of the original remains incorrigible.
Remarks. Sokrates does not claim for Good the unity of an Idea, but a quasi-unity of analogy.
Sokrates concludes his task, in the debate with Protarchus, by describing Bonum or the Supreme Good as a complex aggregate of five distinct elements, in a graduated scale of affinity to it and contributing to its composition in a greater or less degree according to the order in which they are placed. Plato does not intimate that these five complete the catalogue; but that after the fifth degree, the affinity becomes too feeble to deserve notice.90 According to this view, no Idea of Good, in the strict Platonic sense, is affirmed. Good has not the complete unity of an Idea, but only the quasi-unity of analogy between its diverse elements; which are attached by different threads to the same root, with an order of priority and posteriority.91
90 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 C.
91 Plato, Philêbus, p. 65 A. The passage is cited in note 5, p. 363.
About the difference, recognised partly by Plato but still more insisted on by Aristotle, between τὰ λεγόμενα καθ’ ἓν (κατὰ μίαν ἰδέαν) and τὰ λεγόμενα πρὸς ἓν (πρὸς μίαν τινὰ φύσιν), see my note towards the close of the Lysis, vol. ii. ch. xx.
Aristotle says about Plato (Eth. Nikom. i. 6): Οἱ δὲ κομίσαντες τὴν δόξαν ταύτην, οὐκ ἐποίουν ἰδέας ἐν οἷς τὸ πρότερον καὶ τὸ ὕστερον ἔλεγον, &c.
Discussions of the time about Bonum. Extreme absolute view, maintained by Eukleides: extreme relative by the Xenophontic Sokrates. Plato here blends the two in part; an Eclectic doctrine.
In the discussions about Bonum, there existed among the contemporaries of Plato a great divergence of opinions. Eukleides of Megara represents the extreme absolute, ontological, or objective view: Sokrates (I mean the historical Sokrates, as reported by Xenophon) enunciated very distinctly the relative or subjective view. “Good (said Eukleides) is the One: the only real, eternal, omnipresent Ens — always the same or like 366itself — called sometimes Good, sometimes Intelligence, and by various other names: the opposite of Good has no real existence, but only a temporary, phenomenal, relative, existence.” On the other hand, the Xenophontic Sokrates affirmed — “The Good and The Beautiful have no objective unity at all; they include a variety of items altogether dissimilar to each other, yet each having reference to some human want or desire: sometimes relieving or preventing pain, sometimes conferring pleasure. That which neither contributes to relieve any pain or want, nor to confer pleasure, is not Good at all.”92 In the Philêbus, Plato borrows in part from both of these points of view, though inclining much more to the first than to the last. He produces a new eclectic doctrine, comprising something from both, and intended to harmonise both; announced as applying at once to Man, to Animals, to Plants, and to the Universe.93
92 Diogen. Laert. ii. 106; Cicero, Academic. ii. 42; Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 8, 3-5.
93 Plato, Philêbus, p. 64 A. ἐν ταύτῃ μαθεῖν πειρᾶσθαι, τί ποτε ἓν τε ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τῷ παντὶ πέφυκεν ἀγαθόν, καὶ τίνα ἰδέαν αὐτὴν εἶναί ποτε μαντευτέον.
Schleiermacher observes about the Philêbus:— “Dieses also lag ihm (Plato) am Herzen, das Gute zu bestimmen nicht nur für das Leben des Menschen, sondern auch zumal für das ganze Gebiet des gewordenen Seins,” &c.
The partial affinity between the Kosmos and the human soul is set forth in the Timæus, pp. 37-43-44.
Inconvenience of his method, blending Ontology with Ethics.
Unfortunately, the result has not corresponded to his intentions. If we turn to the close of the dialogue, we find that the principal elements which he assigns as explanatory of Good, and the relation in which they stand to each other, stand as much in need of explanation as Good itself. If we follow the course of the dialogue, we are frequently embarrassed by the language, because he is seeking for phrases applicable at once to the Kosmos and to Man: or because he passes from one to the other, under the assumption of real analogy between them. The extreme generalities of Logic or Ontology, upon which Sokrates here dwells — the Determinant and Indeterminate, the Cause, &c. — do not conduct us to the attainment of Good as he himself defines it — That which is desired by, and will give full satisfaction to, all men, animals, and plants. The fault appears to me to lie in the very scheme of the dialogue. Attempts to discuss Ontology and 367Ethics in one and the same piece of reasoning, instead of elucidating both, only serve to darken both. Aristotle has already made a similar remark: and it is after reading the Philêbus that we feel most distinctly the value of his comments on Plato in the first book of the Nikomachean Ethics. Aristotle has discussed Ontology in the Metaphysica and in other treatises: but he proclaims explicitly the necessity of discussing Ethics upon their own principles: looking at what is good for man, and what is attainable by man.94 We find in the Philêbus many just reflections upon pleasure and its varieties: but these might have been better and more clearly established, without any appeal to the cosmical dogmas. The parallelism between Man and the Kosmos is overstrained and inconclusive, like the parallelism in the Republic between the collective commonwealth and the individual citizen.
94 See especially Ethic. Nikom. i. 4, 1096-1097. Aristotle reasons there directly against the Platonic ἰδέα ἀγαθοῦ, but his arguments have full application to the exposition in the Philêbus. He distinguishes pointedly the ethical from the physical point of view. In his discussion of friendship, after touching upon various comparisons of the physiological poets, and of Plato himself repeating them, he says:— τὰ μὲν οὖν φυσικὰ τῶν ἀπορημάτων παραφείσθω· οὐ γὰρ οἰκεῖα τῆς παρούσης σκέψεως· ὅσα δ’ ἐστὶν ἀνθρωπικά καὶ ἀνήκει εἰς τὰ ἤθη καὶ τὰ πάθη, ταῦτ’ ἐπισκεψώμεθα, Ethic. Nikom. viii. 1, 1155, b. 10.
The like contrast is brought out (though less clearly) in the Eudemian Ethics, viii. 1. 1235, a. 30.
He animadverts upon Plato on the same ground in the Ethica Magna, i. 1, 1182, a. 23-30. ὑπὲρ γὰρ τῶν ὄντων καὶ ἀληθείας λέγοντα, οὐκ ἔδει ὑπὲρ ἀρετῆς φράζειν· οὐδὲν γὰρ τούτῳ κἀκείνῳ κοινόν.
Comparison of Man to the Kosmos, which has reason, but no emotion, is unnecessary and confusing.
Moreover, when Plato, to prove the conclusion that Intelligence and Reason are the governing attributes of man’s mind, enunciates as his premiss that Intelligence and Reason are the governing attributes in the Kosmos95 — the premiss introduced is more debateable than the conclusion; and would (as he himself intimates) be contested by those against whose opposition he was arguing. In fact, the same proposition (That Reason and Intelligence are the dominant and controlling attributes of man, Passion and Appetite the subordinate) is assumed without any proof by Sokrates, both in the Protagoras and in the Republic. The Kosmos (in Plato’s view) has reason and intelligence, but experiences no emotion either painful or pleasurable: the rational nature of man is thus common to him with the 368Kosmos, his emotional nature is not so. That the mind of each individual man was an emanation from the all-pervading mind of the Kosmos or universe, and his body a fragmentary portion of the four elements composing the cosmical body — these are propositions which had been laid down by Sokrates, as well as by Philolaus and other Pythagoreans (perhaps by Pythagoras himself) before the time of Plato.96 Not only that doctrine, but also the analysis of the Kosmos into certain abstract constituent principia — (the Finient or Determinant — and the Infinite or Indeterminate) — this too seems to have been borrowed by Plato from Philolaus.97
95 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 20-30.
96 Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 11, 27: De Senectute, 21, 78; Xenophon, Memor. i. 4, 7-8; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 6, 18; Plato, Timæus, pp. 37-38, &c.
In the Xenophontic dialogue here referred to, Sokrates inverts the premiss and the conclusion: he infers that Mind and Reason govern the Kosmos, because the mind and reason of man govern the body of man.
97 See Stallbaum, Prolegg. in Philêb. pp. 41-42.
Plato borrows from the Pythagoreans, but enlarges their doctrine. Importance of his views in dwelling upon systematic classification.
But here in the Philêbus, that analysis appears expanded into a larger scheme going beyond Philolaus or the Pythagoreans: viz. the recognition of a graduated scale of limits, or a definite number of species and sub-species — intermediate between the One or Highest Genus, and the Infinite Many or Individuals — and descending by successive stages of limitation from the Highest to the Lowest. What is thus described, is the general framework of systematic logical classification, deliberately contrived, and founded upon known attributes, common as well as differential. It is prescribed as essential to all real cognition; if we conceive only the highest Genus or generic name as comprehending an infinity of diverse particulars, we have no real cognition, until we can assign the intermediate stages of specification by which we descend from one to the other.98 The step here made by Plato, 369under the stimulus of the Sokratic dialectic, from the Pythagorean doctrine of Finient and Infinite to the idea of gradual, systematic, logical division and subdivision, is one very important in the history of science. He lays as much stress upon the searching out of the intermediate species, as Bacon does upon the Axiomata Media of scientific enquiry.99
98 Ueberweg (Æchtheit und Zeitf. Platon. Schriften, pp. 204-207) considers the Philêbus, as well as the Sophistês and Timæus, to be compositions of Plato’s very late age — partly on the ground of their didactic and expository style, the dialogue serving only as form to the exponent Sokrates — partly because he thinks that the nearest approach is made in them to that manner of conceiving the doctrine of Ideas which Aristotle ascribes to Plato in his old age — that is, the two στοιχεῖα or factors of the Ideas. 1. Τὸ ἓν. 2. Τὸ μέγα καὶ μικρόν. This last argument seems to me far-fetched. I see no real and sensible approach in the Philêbus to this Platonic doctrine of the στοιχεῖα of the Ideas: at least, the approach is so vague, that one can hardly make it a basis of reasoning. But the didactic tone is undoubtedly a characteristic of the Philêbus, and seems to indicate that the dialogue was composed after Plato had been so long established in his school, as to have acquired a pedagogic ostentation.
99 Bacon, Augment. Scient. v. 2. Nov. Organ. Aph. 105. “At Plato non semel innuit particularia infinita esse maximé: rursus generalia minus certa documenta exhibere. Medullam igitur scientiarum, quâ artifex ab imperito distinguitur, in mediis propositionibus consistere, quas per singulas scientias tradidit et docuit experientia.”
Classification broadly enunciated, and strongly recommended — yet feebly applied — in this dialogue.
Though there are several other passages of the Platonic dialogues in which the method of logical division is inculcated, there is none (I think) in which it is prescribed so formally, or enunciated with such comprehensive generality, as this before us in the Philêbus. Yet the method, after being emphatically announced, is but feebly and partially applied, in the distinction of different species, both of pleasure and of cognition.100 The announcement would come more suitably, as a preface to the Sophistês and Politikus: wherein the process is applied to given subjects in great detail, and at a length which some critics consider excessive: and wherein moreover the particular enquiry is expressly proclaimed as intended to teach as well as to exemplify the general method.101
100 The purpose of discriminating the different sorts of pleasure is intimated, yet seemingly not considered as indispensable, by Sokrates; and it is executed certainly in a very unsystematic and perfunctory manner, compared with what we read in the Sophistês and Politikus. (Philêbus, pp. 19 B, 20 C, 32 B-C.)
Mr. Poste, in his note on p. 55 A, expresses surprise at this point; and notices it as one among other grounds for suspecting that the Philêbus is a composition of two distinct fragments, rather carelessly soldered together:— “Again after Division and Generalization have been propounded as the only satisfactory method, it is somewhat strange that both the original problems are solved by ordinary Dialectic without any recourse to classification. All this becomes intelligible if we assume the Philêbus to have arisen from a boldly executed junction of two originally separate dialogues.”
Acknowledging the want of coherence in the dialogue, I have difficulty in conceiving what the two fragments could have been, out of which it was compounded. Schleiermacher (Einleit. pp. 136-137) also points out the negligent execution and heavy march of the dialogue.
101 See Politikus, pp. 285-286; Phædrus, p. 265; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 12.
I have already observed that Socher (Ueber Platon. pp. 260-270) and Stallbaum (Proleg. ad Politik. pp. 52-54-65-67, &c.) agree in condemning the extreme minuteness, the tiresome monotony, the useless and petty comparisons, which Plato brings together in the multiplied bifurcate divisions of the Sophistês and Politikus. Socher adduces this as one among his reasons for rejecting the dialogue as spurious.
370What is the Good? Discussed both in Philêbus and in Republic. Comparison.
The same question as that which is here discussed in the Philêbus, is also started in the sixth book of the Republic. It is worth while to compare the different handling, here and there. “Whatever else we possess (says Sokrates in the Republic), and whatever else we may know is of no value, unless we also possess and know Good. In the opinion of most persons, Pleasure is The Good: in the opinion of accomplished and philosophical men, intelligence (φρόνησις) is the Good. But when we ask Intelligence, of what? these philosophers cannot inform us: they end by telling us, ridiculously enough, Intelligence of The Good. Thus, while blaming us for not knowing what The Good is, they make an answer which implies that we do already know it: in saying, Intelligence of the Good, they of course presume that we know what they mean by the word. Then again, those who pronounce Pleasure to be the Good, are not less involved in error; since they are forced to admit that some Pleasures are Evil; thus making Good and Evil to be the same. It is plain therefore that there are many and grave disputes what The Good is.”102
102 Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 B-C. οἱ τοῦτο ἡγύμενοι οὐκ ἔχουσι δεῖξαι ἥ τις φρόνησις, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκάζονται τελευτῶντες τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φάναι … ὀνειδίζοντές γε ὅτι οὐκ ἴσμεν τὸ ἀγαθόν, λέγουσι πάλιν ὡς εἰδόσι· φρόνησιν γὰρ αὐτό φασιν εἶναι ἀγαθοῦ, ὡς αὖ συνιέντων ἡμῶν ὅ, τι λέγουσιν, ἐπειδὰν τὸ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φθέγξωνται ὄνομα.
In the Symposion, there is a like tenor of questions about Eros or Love. Love must be Love of something: the term is relative. You confound Love with the object loved. See Plato, Symposion, pp. 199 C, 204 C.
When we read the objection here advanced by Plato (in the above passage of the Republic) as conclusive against the appeal to φρόνησις absolutely (without specifying φρόνησις of what), we are surprised to see that it is not even mentioned in the Philêbus.
Mistake of talking about Bonum confidently, as if it were known, while it is subject of constant dispute. Plato himself wavers about it; gives different explanations, and sometimes professes ignorance, sometimes talks about it confidently.
In this passage of the Republic Plato points out that Intelligence cannot be understood, except as determined by or referring to some Object or End: and that those who tendered Intelligence per se for an explanation of The Good (as Sokrates does in the Philêbus), assumed as known the very point in dispute which they professed to explain. This is an important remark in regard to ethical discussions: and it were to be wished that Plato had himself avoided the mistake which he here blames in others. The Platonic Sokrates frequently tells us that he does not know what Good is. 371In the sixth Book of the Republic, having come to a point where his argument required him to furnish a positive explanation of it, he expressly declines the obligation and makes his escape amidst the clouds of metaphor.103 In the Protagoras, he pronounces Good to be identical with pleasure and avoidance of pain, in the largest sense and under the supervision of calculating Intelligence.104 In the second Book of the Republic, we find what is substantially the same explanation as that of the Protagoras, given (though in a more enlarged and analytical manner) by Glaukon and assented to by Sokrates; to the effect that Good is tripartite,105 viz.: 1. That which we desire for itself, without any reference to consequences — e. g., enjoyment and the innocuous pleasures. 2. That which we desire on a double account, both for itself and by reason of its consequences — e. g., good health, eyesight, intelligence, &c. 3. That which we do not desire, perhaps even shun, for itself: but which we desire, or at least accept, by reason of its consequences — such as gymnastics, medical treatment, discipline, &c. Again, in the Gorgias and elsewhere, Plato seems to confine the definition of Good to the two last of these three heads, rejecting the first: for he distinguishes pointedly the Good from the Pleasurable. Yet while thus wavering in his conception of the term, Plato often admits it into the discussions as if it were not merely familiar, but clear and well-understood by every one.
103 Plato, Republic, vi. p. 506 E.
Compare also Republic, vii. p. 533 C. ᾦ γὰρ ἀρχὴ μὲν ὃ μὴ οἶδε, τελευτὴ δὲ καὶ τὰ μεταξὺ ἐξ οὖ μὴ οἶδε συμπέπλεκται, τίς μηχανὴ τὴν τοιαῦτην ὁμολογίαν ποτὲ ἐπιστήμην γίγνεσθαι;
104 Plato, Protagoras, pp. 356-7.
105 Plato, Republic, ii. p. 357 B.
Plato lays down tests by which Bonum may be determined: but the answer in the Philêbus does not satisfy those tests.
In the present dialogue, Plato lays down certain characteristic marks whereby The Supreme Good may be known. These marks are subjective — relative to the feelings and appreciation of sentient beings — to all mankind, and even to animals and plants. Good is explicitly defined by the property of conferring happiness. The Good is declared to be “that habit and disposition of mind which has power to confer on all men a happy life”:106 it is perfect and all sufficient: every creature that knows Good, desires and hunts after it, demanding 372nothing farther when it is attained, and caring for nothing else except what is attained along with it:107 it is the object of choice for all plants and animals, and if any one prefers any thing else, he only does so through ignorance or from some untoward necessity:108 it is most delightful and agreeable to all.109 This is what Plato tells us as to the characteristic attributes of Good. And the test which Sokrates applies, to determine whether Pleasure does or does not correspond with these attributes, is an appeal to individual choice or judgment. “Would you choose? Would any one be satisfied?” Though this appeal ought by the conditions of the problem to be made to mankind generally, and is actually made to Protarchus as one specimen of them — yet Sokrates says at the end of the dialogue that all except philosophers choose wrong, being too ignorant or misguided to choose aright. Now it is certain that what these philosophers choose, will not satisfy the aspirations of all other persons besides. It may be Good, in reference to the philosophers themselves: but it will fail to answer those larger conditions which Plato has just laid down.
106 Plato, Philêbus, p. 11 E.
107 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 20 D-E, 61 C, 67 A. αὐταρκεία, &c.
Sydenham, Translation of Philêbus, note, p. 48, observes — “Whether Happiness be to be found in Speculative Wisdom or in Pleasure, or in some other possession or enjoyment, it can be seated nowhere but in the soul. For Happiness has no existence anywhere but where it is felt and known. Now, it is no less certain, that only the soul is sensible of pain and pleasure, than it is, that only the soul is capable of knowledge, and of thinking either foolishly or wisely.”
108 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 22 B, 61 A.
109 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 61 E, 64 C. τὸν ἀγαπητότατον βίον πᾶσι προσφιλῆ.
Aristotle, Ethic. Nikomach. i. init. τἀγαθόν, οὖ πάντα ἐφίεται.
Seneca, Epistol. 118. “Bonum est quod ad se impetum animi secundum naturam movet.”
Inconsistency of Plato in his way of putting the question — The alternative which he tenders has no fair application.
In submitting the question to individual choice, Plato does not keep clear either of confusion or of contradiction. If this Summum Bonum be understood as the End comprising the full satisfaction of human wishes and imaginations, without limitation by certain given actualities — and if the option be tendered to a man already furnished with his share of the various desires generated in actual life — such a man will naturally demand entire absence of all pains, with pleasures such as to satisfy all his various desires: not merely the most intense pleasures (which Plato intends to prove, not to be pleasures at all), but other pleasures also. He will wish (if you thus 373suppose him master of Fortunatus’s wishing-cap) to include in his enjoyments pleasures which do not usually go together, and which may even, in the real conditions of life, exclude one another: no boundary being prescribed to his wishing power. He will wish for the pleasures of knowledge or intelligence, of self-esteem, esteem from others, sympathy, &c., as well as for those of sense. He will put in his claim for pleasures, without any of those antecedent means and conditions which, in real life, are necessary to procure them. Such being the state of the question, the alternative tendered by Plato — Pleasure, versus Intelligence or Knowledge — has no fair application. Plato himself expressly states that pleasure, though generically One, is specifically multiform, and has many varieties different from, even opposite to, each other: among which varieties one is, the pleasure of knowledge or intelligence itself.110 The person to whom the question is submitted, has a right to claim these pleasures of knowledge among the rest, as portions of his Summum Bonum. And when Plato proceeds to ask — Will you be satisfied to possess pleasure only, without the least spark of intelligence, without memory, without eyesight? — he departs from the import of his previous question, and withdraws from the sum total of pleasure many of its most important items: since we must of course understand that the pleasures of intelligence will disappear along with intelligence itself,111 and that the pains of conscious want of intelligence will be felt instead of them.
110 Plato, Philêbus, p. 12 D.
111 Plato, Philêbus, p. 21 C.
Intelligence and Pleasure cannot be fairly compared — Pleasure is an End, Intelligence a Means. Nothing can be compared with Pleasure, except some other End.
That the antithesis here enunciated by Plato is not legitimate or logical, we may see on other grounds also. Pleasure and Intelligence cannot be placed in competition with each other for recognition as Summum Bonum: which, as described by Plato himself, is of the nature of an End, while Intelligence is of the nature of a means or agency — indispensable indeed, yet of no value unless it be exercised, and rightly exercised towards its appropriate end, which end must be separately declared.112 Intelligence is a durable acquisition stored up, like the good health, moral character, or established habits, of each individual person: it is a 374capital engaged in the production of interest, and its value is measured by the interest produced. You cannot with propriety put the means — the Capital — in one scale, and the End — the Interest — in the other, so as to ascertain which of the two weighs most. A prudent man will refrain from any present enjoyment which trenches on his capital: but this is because the maintenance of the capital is essential to all future acquisitions and even future maintenance. So too, Intelligence is essential as a means or condition to the attainment of pleasure in its largest sense — that is, including avoidance or alleviation of pain or suffering: if therefore you choose to understand pleasure in a narrower sense, not including therein avoidance of pain (as Plato understands it in this portion of the Philêbus), the comprehensive end to which Intelligence corresponds may be compared with Pleasure and declared more valuable — but Intelligence itself cannot with propriety be so compared. Such a comparison can only be properly instituted when you consider the exercise of Intelligence as involving (which it undoubtedly does113) pleasures of its own; which pleasures form part of the End, and may fairly be measured against other pleasures and pains. But nothing can be properly compared with Pleasure, except some other supposed End: and those theorists who reject Pleasure must specify some other Terminus ad quem — otherwise intelligence has no clear meaning.
112 Compare Plato, Republic, vi. p. 505 D (referred to in a previous note); also Aristotel. Ethic. Nikom. i. 3, 1095, b. 30; i. 8, 1099, a. 1.
Respecting the value of Intelligence or Cognition, when the end towards which it is to be exercised is undetermined, see the dialogue between Sokrates and Kleinias — Plato, Euthydêm. pp. 289-292 B-E.
Aristotle, in the Nikomach. Ethic. (i. 4, 1096, b. 10), makes a distinction between — 1. τὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ διωκόμενα καὶ ἀγαπώμενα — 2. τὰ ποιητικὰ τούτων ἢ φυλακτικὰ ἢ τῶν ἐναντίων κωλυτικά: and Plato himself makes the same distinction at the beginning of the second book of the Republic. But though it is convenient to draw attention to this distinction, for the clear understanding of the subject, you cannot ask with propriety which of the two lots is most valuable. The value of the two is equal: the one cannot be had without the other.
113 Plato, Philêb. p. 12 D.
The Hedonists, while they laid down attainment of pleasure and diminution of pain, postulated Intelligence as the governing agency.
Now the Hedonists in Plato’s age, when they declared Pleasure to be the supreme Good, understood Pleasure in its widest sense, as including not merely all varieties of pleasure, mental and bodily alike, but also avoidance of pain (in fact Epikurus dwelt especially upon this last point). Moreover, they did not intend to depreciate Intelligence, but on the contrary postulated it 375as a governing agency, indispensable to right choice and comparative estimation between different pleasures and pains. That Eudoxus,114 the geometer and astronomer, did this, we may be sure: but besides, this is the way in which the Hedonistic doctrine is expounded by Plato himself. In his Protagoras, Sokrates advocates that doctrine, against the Sophist who is unwilling to admit it. In the exposition there given by Sokrates, Pleasure is announced as The Good to be sought, Pain as The Evil to be avoided or reduced to a minimum. But precisely because the End, to be pursued through constant diversity of complicated situations, is thus defined — for that very reason he declares that the dominant or sovereign element in man must be, the measuring and calculating Intelligence; since such is the sole condition under which the End can be attained or approached. In the theory of the Hedonists, there was no antithesis, but indispensable conjunction and implication, between Pleasure and Intelligence.115 And if it be said, that by declaring Pleasure (and avoidance of Pain) to be the End, Intelligence the means, — they lowered the dignity of the latter as compared with the former:— we may reply that the dignity of Intelligence is exalted to the maximum when it is enthroned as the ruling and controuling agent over the human mind.
114 Eudoxus is cited by Aristotle (Ethic. Nikom. x. 2) as the great champion of the Hedonistic theory. He is characterised by Aristotle as διαφερόντως σώφρων.
115 The implication of the intelligent and emotional is well stated by Aristotle (Eth. Nikom. x. 8, 1178, a. 16). συνέζευκται δὲ καὶ ἡ φρόνησις τῇ τοῦ ἤθους ἀρετῇ, καὶ αὔτη τῇ φρονήσει, εἴπερ αἱ μὲν τῆς φρονήσεως ἀρχαὶ κατὰ τὰς ἠθικάς εἰσιν ἀρετάς, τὸ δ’ ὀρθὸν τῶν ἦθικῶν κατὰ τὴν φρόνησιν. συνηρτημέναι δ’ αὖται καὶ τοῖς πάθεσι περὶ τὸ σύνθετον ἂν εἶεν· αἱ δὲ τοῦ συνθέτου ἀρεταὶ ἀνθρωπικαί. καὶ ὁ βίος δὴ ὁ κατ’ αὐτὰς καὶ ἡ εὐδαιμονία. ἡ δὲ τοῦ νοῦ κεχωρισμένη, &c. Compare also the first two or three sentences of the tenth Book of Eth. Nik.
Pleasures of Intelligence may be compared, and are compared by Plato, with other pleasures, and declared to be of more value. This is arguing upon the Hedonistic basis.
In a scheme of mental philosophy, Emotion and Intellect are properly treated as distinct phenomena requiring to be explained separately, though perpetually co-existent and interfering with each other. But in an ethical discourse about Summum Bonum, the antithesis between Pleasure and Intelligence, on which the Philêbus turns, is from the outset illogical. What gives to it an apparent plausibility, is, That the exercise of Intelligence has pleasures and pains of its 376own, and includes therefore in itself a part of the End, besides being the constant and indispensable directing force or Means. Now, though pleasure in genere cannot be weighed in the scale against Intelligence, yet the pleasures and pains of Intelligence may be fairly and instructively compared with other pleasures and pains. You may contend that the pleasures of Intelligence are superior in quality, as well as less alloyed by accompanying pains. This comparison is really instituted by Plato in other dialogues;116 and we find the two questions apparently running together in his mind as if they were one and the same. Yet the fact is, that those who affirm the pleasures attending the exercise of Intelligence to be better and greater, and the pains less, than those which attend other occupations, are really arguing upon the Hedonistic basis.117 Far from establishing any antithesis between 377Pleasure and Intelligence, they bring the two into closer conjunction than was done by Epikurus himself.
116 See Republic, ix. pp. 581-582, where he compares the pleasures of the three different lives. 1. Ὁ φιλόσοφος or φιλομαθής. 2. Ὁ φιλύτιμος. 3. Ὁ φιλοκερδής.
Again in the Phædon, he tells us that we are not to weigh pleasures against pleasures, or pains against pains, but all of them against φρόνησις or Intelligence (p. 69 A-B). This appears distinctly to contradict what Sokrates affirms in the Protagoras. But when we turn to another passage of the Phædon (p. 114 E), we find Sokrates recognising a class of pleasures attached to the exercise of Intelligence, and declaring them to be more valuable than the pleasures of sense, or any others. This is a very different proposition: but in both passages Plato had probably the same comparison in his mind.
Sydenham, in a note to his translation of the Philêbus (pp. 42-43), observes — “if Protarchus, when he took on himself to be an advocate for pleasure, had included, in his meaning of the word, all such pleasures as are purely mental, his opinion, fairly and rightly understood, could not have been different in the main, from what Sokrates here professes — That in every particular case, to discern what is best in action, and to perceive what is true in speculation, is the chief good of man; unless, indeed, it should afterwards come into question which of the two kinds of pleasure, the sensual or the mental, was to be preferred. For if it should appear that in this point they were both of the same mind, the controversy between them would be found a mere logomachy, or contention about words (as between Epicureans and Stoics), of the same kind as that would be between two persons, one of whom asserted that to a musical ear the proper and true good was Harmony, while the other contended that the good lay not in the Harmony itself, but in the pleasure which the musical ear felt from hearing it: or like a controversy among three persons, one of whom having asserted that to all animals living under the northern frigid zone, the Sun in Cancer was the greatest blessing; and another having asserted that not the Sun was that chief blessing to those northern animals, but the warmth which he afforded them; the third should imagine that he corrected or amended the two former by saying — That those animals were thus highly blest neither by the Sun, nor by the warmth which his rays afforded them, but by the joy or pleasure which they felt from the return of the Sun and warmth.”
117 Plato, in Philêbus, p. 63 C-D, denounces and discards the vehement pleasures because they disturb the right exercise of Reason and Intelligence. Aristotle, after alluding to this doctrine, presents the same fact under a different point of view, as one case of a general law. Each variety of pleasure belongs to, and is consequent on, a certain ἐνέργεια of the system. Each variety of pleasure promotes and consummates its own ἐνέργεια, but impedes or arrests other different ἐνεργείας. Thus the pleasures of hunting, of gymnastic contest, of hearing or playing music — cause each of these ἐνεργεῖαι, upon which each pleasure respectively depends, to be more completely developed; but are unfavourable to different ἐνεργεῖαι, such as learning by heart, or solving a geometrical problem. The pleasure belonging to these latter, again, is unfavourable to the performance of the former ἐνεργεῖαι. Study often hurts health or good management of property; but if a man has pleasure in study, he will perform that work with better fruit and result.
This is a juster view of ἡδονὴ than what we read in the Philêbus. The illogical antithesis of Pleasure in genere, against Intelligence, finds no countenance from Aristotle.
See Ethic. Nikom. vii. 13, 1153, a. 20; x. 5, p. 1175; also Ethic. Magna, ii. p. 1206, a. 3.
Marked antithesis in the Philêbus between pleasure and avoidance of pain.
Another remark may be made on the way in which Plato argues the question in the Philêbus against the Hedonists. He draws a marked line of separation between Pleasure — and avoidance, relief, or mitigation, of Pain. He does not merely distinguish the two, but sets them in opposing antithesis. Wherever there is pain to be relieved, he will not allow the title of pleasurable to be bestowed on the situation. That is not true pleasure: in other words, it is no pleasure at all. He does not go quite so far as some contemporary theorists, the Fastidious Pleasure-Haters, who repudiated all pleasures without exception.118 He allows a few rare exceptions; the sensual pleasures of sight, hearing, and smell — and the pleasures of exercising Intelligence, which (these latter most erroneously) he affirms to be not disentitled by any accompanying pains. His catalogue of pleasures is thus reduced to a chosen few, and these too enjoyable only by a chosen few among mankind.
118 Plato, Philêbus, p. 44 B.
The Hedonists did not recognise this distinction — They included both in their acknowledged End.
Now this very restricted sense of the word Pleasure is peculiar to Plato, and peculiar even to some of the Platonic dialogues. Those who affirmed Pleasure to be the Good, did not understand the word in the same restricted sense. When Sokrates in the Protagoras affirms, and when Sokrates in the Philêbus denies, that Pleasure is identical with Good, — the affirmation and the denial do not bear upon the same substantial meaning.119
119 Among the arguments employed by Sokrates in the Philêbus to disprove the identity between ἡδονὴ and ἀγαθόν, one is, that ἡδονὴ is a γένεσις, and is therefore essentially a process of imperfection or transition into some ulterior οὐσία, for the sake of which alone it existed (Philêbus, pp. 53-55); whereas Good is essentially an οὐσία — perfect, complete, all-sufficient — and must not be confounded with the process whereby it is brought about. He illustrates this by telling us that the species of γένεσις called ship-building exists only for the sake of the ship — the οὐσία in which it terminates; but that the fabricating process, and the result in which it ends, are not to be confounded together.
The doctrine that pleasure is a γένεσις, Plato cites as laid down by others: certain κομψοί, whom he does not name, but whom the critics suppose to be Aristippus and the Kyrenaici. Aristotle (in the seventh and tenth books of Ethic. Nik.) also criticises and impugns the doctrine that pleasure is a γένεσις: but he too omits to name the persons by whom it was propounded.
Possibly Aristippus may have been the author of it: but we can hardly tell what he meant, or how he defended it. Plato derides him for his inconsistency in calling pleasure a γένεσις, while he at the same time maintained it to be the Good: but the derision is founded upon an assumption which Aristippus would have denied. Aristippus would not have admitted that all γένεσις existed only for the sake of οὐσία: and he would have replied to Plato’s argument, illustrated by the example of ship-building, by saying that the οὐσία called a ship existed only for the sake of the services which it was destined to render in transporting persons and goods: that if γένεσις existed for the sake of οὐσία, it was no less true that οὐσία existed for the sake of γένεσις. Plato therefore had no good foundation for the sarcasm which he throws out against Aristippus.
The reasoning of Aristotle (E. N. x. 3-4; compare Eth. Magn. ii. 1204-1205) against the doctrine, that pleasure is γένεσις or κίνησις, is drawn from a different point of view, and is quite as unfavourable to the opinions of Plato as to those of Aristippus. His language however in the Rhetoric is somewhat different (i. p. 1370, b. 33).
Aristippus is said to have defined pleasure as λεία κίνησις, and pain as τραχεῖα κίνησις (Diog. L. ii. 86-89). The word κίνησις is so vague, that one can hardly say what it means, without some words of context: but I doubt whether he meant anything more than “a marked change of consciousness”. The word γένεσις is also very obscure: and we are not sure that Aristippus employed it.
378Arguments of Plato against the intense pleasures — The Hedonists enforced the same reasonable view.
Again, in the arguments of Sokrates against pleasure in genere, we find him also singling out as examples the intense pleasures, which he takes much pains to discredit. The remarks which he makes here upon the intense pleasures, considered as elements of happiness, have much truth taken generally. Though he exaggerates the matter when he says that many persons would rejoice to have itch and irritation, in order that they might have the pleasure of scratching120 — and that persons in a fever have greater pleasure as well as greater pain than persons in health — yet he is correct to this extent, that the disposition to hanker after intense pleasures, to forget their painful sequel in many cases, and to pay for them a greater price than they are worth, is widely disseminated among mankind. But this is no valid objection against the Hedonistic theory, as it was enunciated and defended by its principal advocates — by the 379Platonic Sokrates (in the Protagoras), by Aristippus, Eudoxus,121 Epikurus. All of them took account of this frequent wrong tendency, and arranged their warnings accordingly. All of them discouraged, not less than Plato, such intense enjoyments as produced greater mischief in the way of future pain and disappointment, or as obstructed the exercise of calm reason.122 All of them, when they talked of pleasure as the Supreme Good, understood thereby a rational estimate and comparison of pleasures and pains, present and future, so as to ensure the maximum of the former and the minimum of the latter. All of them postulated a calculating and governing Reason. Epikurus undoubtedly, and I believe the other two also, recommended a life of moderation, tranquillity, and meditative reason: they deprecated the violent emotions, whether sensual, ambitious, or money-getting.123 The objections therefore here stated by Sokrates, in so far as they are derived from the mischievous consequences of indulgence in the intense pleasures, do not avail against the Hedonistic theory, as explained either by Plato himself (Protagoras) or by any theorists of the Platonic century.
120 Plato, Philêbus, p. 47 B.
121 I have already remarked that Eudoxus is characterised by Aristotle as being διαφερόντως σώφρων (Ethic. Nikom. x. 2). The strong interest which he felt in scientific pursuits is marked by a story in Plutarch (Non Posse Suaviter Vivi; see Epicur. p. 1094 A).
122 The equivocal sense of the word Pleasure is the same as that which Plato notes in the Symposion to attach to Eros or Love (p. 205). When employed in philosophical discussion, it sometimes is used (and always ought to be used) in its full extent of generic comprehension: sometimes in a narrower sense, so as to include only a few of the more intense pleasures, chiefly the physical, and especially the sexual; sometimes in a sense still more peculiar, partly as opposed to duty, partly as opposed to business, work, utility, &c. Opponents of the Hedonists took advantage of the unfavourable associations attached to the word in these narrower and special senses, to make objections tell against the theory which employed the word in its widest generic sense.
123 See the beautiful lines of Lucretius, Book ii. init. When we read the three acrimonious treatises in which Plutarch attacks the Epikureans (Non Posse Suaviter Vivi, adv. Koloten, De Latenter Vivendo), we find him complaining, not that Epikurus thought too much about pleasures, or that he thought too much about the intense pleasures, but quite the reverse. Epikurus (he says) made out too poor a catalogue of pleasures: he was too easily satisfied with a small amount and variety of pleasures: he dwelt too much upon the absence of pain, as being, when combined with a very little pleasure, as much as man ought to look for: he renounced all the most vehement and delicious pleasures, those of political activity and contemplative study, which constitute the great charms of life (1097 F-1098 E-1092 E-1093-1094). Plutarch attacks Epikurus upon grounds really Hedonistic.
Different points of view worked out by Plato in different dialogues — Gorgias, Protagoras, Philêbus — True and False Pleasures.
We find Plato in his various dialogues working out different points of view, partly harmonious, partly conflicting, upon ethical theory. Thus in the Gorgias, Sokrates 380insists eloquently upon the antithesis between the Immediate and Transient on the one hand, which he calls Pleasure or Pain — and the Distant and Permanent on the other, which he calls Good or Profit, Hurt or Evil. In the Protagoras, Sokrates acknowledges the same antithesis: but he points out that the Good or Profit, Hurt or Evil, resolve themselves into elements generically the same as those of the Immediate and Transient — Pleasure and Pain: so that all which we require is, a calculating Intelligence to assess and balance correctly the pleasures and pains in every given case. In the Philêbus, Sokrates takes a third line, distinct from both the other two dialogues: he insists upon a new antithesis, between True Pleasures — and False Pleasures. If a Pleasure be associated with any proportion, however small, of Pain or Uneasiness — or with any false belief or impression — he denounces it as false and impostrous, and strikes it out of the list of pleasures. The small residue which is left after such deduction, consists of pleasures recommended altogether by what Plato calls their truth, and addressing themselves to the love of truth in a few chosen minds. The attainment of Good — the object of the practical aspirations — is presented as a secondary appendage of the attainment of Truth — the object of the speculative or intellectual energies.
Opposition between the Gorgias and Philêbus, about Gorgias and Rhetoric.
How much the Philêbus differs in its point of view from the Gorgias,124 is indicated by Plato himself in a remarkable passage. “I have often heard Gorgias affirm” (says Protarchus) “that among all arts, the art of persuasion stands greatly pre-eminent: since, it ensures subservience from all, not by force, but with their own free consent.” To which Sokrates replies — “I was not then enquiring what art or science stands pre-eminent as the greatest, or as the best, or as conferring most benefit upon us — but what art or science investigates clear, exact, and full truth, though it be in itself small, and may afford small benefit. You 381need not quarrel with Gorgias, for you may admit to him the superiority of his art in respect of usefulness to mankind, while my art (dialectic philosophy) is superior in respect of accuracy. I observed just now, that a small piece of white colour which is pure, surpasses in truth a large area which is not pure. We must not look to the comparative profitable consequences or good repute of the various sciences or arts, but to any natural aspiration which may exist in our minds to love truth, and to do every thing for the sake of truth. It will then appear that no other science or art strives after truth so earnestly as Dialectic.”125
124 Sokrates in the Gorgias insists upon the constant intermixture of pleasure with pain, as an argument to prove that pleasure cannot be identical with good: pleasure and pain (he says) go together but good and evil cannot go together: therefore pleasure cannot be good, pain cannot be evil (Gorgias, pp. 496-497). But he distinguishes pleasures into the good and the bad; not into the true and the false, as they are distinguished in the Philêbus and the Republic (ix. pp. 583-585).
125 Plato, Philêbus, p. 58 B-D-E. Οὐ τοῦτο ἕγωγε ἐζήτουν πω, τίς τέχνη ἢ τίς ἐπιστήμη πασῶν διαφέρει τῷ μεγίστη καὶ ἀρίστη καὶ πλεῖστα ὠφελοῦσα ἡμᾶς, ἀλλὰ τίς ποτε τὸ σαφὲς καὶ τἀκριβὲς καὶ τὸ ἀληθέστατον ἐπισκοπεῖ, κἂν εἰ σμικρὰ καὶ σμικρὰ ὀνίνασα … Ἀλλ’ ὅρα· οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀπεχθήσει Γοργίᾳ, τῇ μὲν ἐκείνου ὑπερέχειν τέχνῃ διδοὺς πρὸς χρείαν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, πρὸς ἀκριβείαν δὲ ᾖ εἶπον ἐγὼ νῦν πραγματείᾳ … μήτ’ εἴς τινας ὠφελείας ἐπιστημῶν βλέψαντες μήτε τινὰς εὐδοκιμίας, ἀλλ’ εἴ τις πέφυκε τῆς ψυχῆς ἡμῶν δύναμις ἐρᾷν τε τοῦ ἀληθοῦς καὶ πάντα ἕνεκα τούτου πράττειν.
Here, as elsewhere, I translate the substance of the passage, adopting the amendments of Dr. Badham and Mr. Poste (see Mr. Poste’s note), which appear to me valuable improvements of a confused text.
It seems probable enough that what is here said, conceding so large a measure of credit to Gorgias and his art, may be intended expressly as a mitigation of the bitter polemic assigned to Sokrates in the Gorgias. This is, however, altogether conjecture.
If we turn to the Gorgias, we find the very same claim advanced by Gorgias on behalf of his own art, as that which Protarchus here advances: but while Sokrates here admits it, in the Gorgias he repudiates it with emphasis, and even with contumely: ranking rhetoric among those employments which minister only to present pleasure, but which are neither intended to yield, nor ever do yield, any profitable result. Here in the Philêbus, the antithesis between immediate pleasure and distant profit is scarcely noticed. Sokrates resigns to Gorgias and to others of the like stamp, a superiority not merely in the art of flattering and tricking the immediate sensibilities of mankind, but in that of contributing to their permanent profit and advantage. It is in a spirit contrary to the Gorgias, and contrary also to the Republic (in which latter we read the memorable declaration — That the miseries of society will have no respite until government is in the hands of philosophers126), that Sokrates here abnegates on behalf of philosophy all efficacious pretension of conferring profit or happiness on mankind generally, and claims for it only the pure delight of satisfying 382the truth-seeking aspirations. Now these aspirations have little force except in a few chosen minds; in the bulk of mankind the love of truth is feeble, and the active search for truth almost unknown. We thus see that in the Philêbus it is the speculative few who are present to the imagination of Plato, more than the ordinary working, suffering, enjoying Many.
126 Plato, Republ. v. 473 D.
Peculiarity of the Philêbus — Plato applies the same principle of classification — true and false — to Cognitions and Pleasures.
Aristotle, in the commencement of his Metaphysica, recommends Metaphysics or First Philosophy to the reader, by affirming that, though other studies are more useful or more necessary to man, none is equal to it in respect of truth and exactness,127 because it teaches us to understand First Causes and Principles. The like pretension is put forward by Plato in the Philêbus128 on behalf of dialectic; which he designates as the science of all real, permanent, unchangeable, Entia. Taking Dialectic as the maximum or Verissimum, Plato classifies other sciences or cognitions according as they approach closer to it in truth or exactness — according as they contain more of precise measurement and less of conjecture. Sciences or cognitions are thus classified according as they are more or less true and pure. But because this principle of classification is fairly applicable to cognitions, Plato conceives that it may be made applicable to Pleasures also. One characteristic feature of the Philêbus is the attempt to apply the predicates, true or false, to pleasures and pains, as they are applicable to cognitions or opinions: an attempt against which Protarchus is made to protest, and which Sokrates altogether fails in justifying,129 though he employs a train of argument both long and diversified.
127 Aristotel. Metaphys. A. p. 983, a. 25, b. 10.
128 Plato, Philêb. pp. 57-58. Compare Republic, vii. pp. 531-532.
129 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 36 C. 38 A.
The various arguments, intended to prove this conclusion, are continued from p. 36 to p. 51. The same doctrine is advocated by Sokrates in the Republic, ix. pp. 583-584.
The doctrine is briefly stated by the Platonist Nemesius, De Natur. Hominis, p. 223. καὶ γὰρ κατὰ Πλάτωνα τῶν ἡδονῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι ψευδεῖς, αἱ δὲ ἀληθεῖς. Ψευδεῖς μέν, ὅσαι μετ’ αἰσθήσεως γίγνονται καὶ δόξης οὐκ ἀληθοῦς, καὶ λύπας ἔχουσι συμπεπλεγμένας· ἀληθεῖς δέ, ὅσαι τῆς ψυχῆς εἰσι μόνης αὐτῆς καθ’ ἑαυτὴν μετ’ ἐπιστήμης καὶ νοῦ καὶ φρονήσεως, καθαραὶ καὶ ἀνεπίμικτοι λύπης, αἶς οὐδεμία μετάνοια παρακολουθεῖ ποτέ.
A brief but clear abstract of the argument will be found in Dr. Badham’s Preface to the Philêbus (pp. viii.-xi.). Compare also Stallbaum’s Prolegg. ch. v. p. 50, seq.
Distinction of true and false — not applicable to pleasures.
In this train of argument we find a good deal of just and 383instructive psychological remark: but nothing at all which proves the conclusion that there are or can be false pleasures or false pains. We have (as Sokrates shows) false remembrances of past pleasures and pains — false expectations, hopes, and fears of future: we have pleasures alloyed by accompanying pains, and pains qualified by accompanying pleasures: we have pleasures and pains dependent upon false beliefs: but false pleasures we neither have nor can have. The predicate is altogether inapplicable to the subject. It is applicable to the intellectual side of our nature, not to the emotional. A pleasure (or a pain) is what it seems, neither more nor less; its essence consists in being felt.130 There are false beliefs, disbeliefs, judgments, opinions — but not false pleasures or pains. The pleasure of the dreamer or madman is not false, though it may be founded on illusory belief: the joy of a man informed that he has just been appointed to a lucrative and honourable post, the grief of a father on hearing that his son has been killed in battle, are neither of them false, though the news which both persons are made to believe may be totally false, and though the feelings will thus be of short duration. Plato observes that the state which he calls neutrality or indifference appears pleasurable when it follows pain, and painful when it results from an interruption of pleasure: here is a state which appears alternately to be both, though it is in reality neither: the pleasure or pain, therefore, whichever it be, he infers to be false131 But there is no falsehood in the case: the state described 384is what it appears to be — pleasurable or painful: Plato describes it erroneously when he calls it the same state, or one of neutrality. Pleasure and Pain are both of them phenomena of present consciousness. They are what they seem: none of them can be properly called (as Plato calls them) “apparent pleasures which have no reality”.132
130 This is what Aristotle means when he says:— τῆς ἡδονῆς δ’ ἐν ὁτῳοῦν χρόνῳ τέλειον τὸ εἶδος … τῶν ὅλων τι καὶ τελείων ἡ ἡδονή (Eth. Nik. x. 3, 1174, b. 4).
131 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 43-44; Republic, ix. p. 583.
I copy the following passage from Professor Bain’s work on “The Emotions and the Will,” the fullest and most philosophical account of the emotions that I know (pp. 615-616; 3rd ed., pp. 550 seq.):—
“It is a general law of the mental constitution, more or less recognised by inquirers into the human mind, that change of impression is essential to consciousness in every form.… There are notable examples to show, that one unvarying action upon the senses fails to give any perception whatever. Take the motion of the earth about its axis and through space, whereby we are whirled with immense velocity, but at a uniform pace, being utterly insensible of the circumstance.… It is the change from rest to motion that wakens our sensibility, and, conversely, from motion to rest. A uniform condition, as respects either state, is devoid of any quickening influence on the mind.… We have repeatedly seen pleasures depending for their existence on previous pains, and pains on pleasures experienced or conceived. Such are the contrasting states of Liberty and Restraint, Power and Impotence. Many pleasures owe their effect as such to mere cessation. For example, the pleasures of exercise do not need to be preceded by pain: it is enough that there has been a certain intermission, coupled with the nourishment of the exhausted parts. These are of course our best pleasures. By means of this class, we might have a life of enjoyment without pain: although, in fact, the other is more or less mixed up in every one’s experience. Exercise, Repose, the pleasures of the different Senses and Emotions, might be made to alternate, so as to give a constant succession of pleasure: each being sufficiently dormant during the exercise of the others, to reanimate the consciousness when its turn comes. It also happens that some of those modes of delight are increased, by being preceded by a certain amount of a painful opposite. Thus, confinement adds to the pleasure of exercise, and protracted exertion to that of repose. Fasting increases the enjoyment of meals; and being much chilled prepares us for a higher zest in the accession of warmth. It is not necessary, however, in those cases, that the privation should amount to positive pain, in order to the existence of the pleasure. The enjoyment of food may be experienced, although the previous hunger may not be in any way painful: at all events, with no more pain than the certainty of the coming meal can effectually appease. There is still another class of our delights depending entirely upon previous suffering, as in the sudden cessation of acute pains, or the sudden relief from great depression. Here the rebound from one nervous condition to another is a stimulant of positive pleasure: constituting a small, but altogether inadequate, compensation for the prior misery. The pleasurable sensation of good health presupposes the opposite experience in a still larger measure. Uninterrupted health, though an instrumentality for working out many enjoyments, of itself gives no sensation.”
It appears to me that this passage of Mr. Bain’s work discriminates and sets out what there is of truth in Plato’s doctrine about the pure and painless pleasures. In his first volume (The Senses and the Intellect) Mr. Bain has laid down and explained the great fundamental fact of the system, that it includes spontaneous sources of activity; which, after repose and nourishment, require to be exerted, and afford a certain pleasure in the course of being exerted. There is no antecedent pain to be relieved: but privation (which is only a grade and variety of pain, and sometimes considerable pain) is felt if the exertion be hindered. This doctrine of spontaneous activity, employed by Mr. Bain successfully to explain a large variety of mental phenomena, is an important and valuable extension of that which Aristotle lays down in the Ethics, that pleasure is an accessory or adjunct of ἐνέργεια ἀνεμπόδιστος (ἐνέργεια τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἕξεως Eth. N. vii. 13, 1153, a. 15), without any view to obtain any separate extraneous pleasure or to relieve any separate extraneous pain (καθ’ αὑτὰς δ’ εἰσὶν αἱρεταί, ἀφ’ ὦν μηδὲν ἐπιζητεῖται παρὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν, E. N. x. 6, 1176, b. 6).
132 Plato, Philêbus, p. 51 A. πρὸς τὸ τινὰς ἡδονὰς εἶναι δοκούσας, οὔσας δ’ οὐδαμῶς, &c. τὸ φαινόμενον ἀλλ’ οὐκ ὄν, p. 42 C, which last sentence is better explained (I think) in the note of Dr. Badham than in that of Mr. Poste.
Mr. Poste observes justly, in his note on p. 40 C:— “The falsely anticipated pleasure in mistaken Hope may be called, as it is here called, False Pleasure. This is, however, an inaccurate expression. It is not the Pleasure, but the Imagination of it (i.e. the Imagination or Opinion) that is false. Sokrates therefore does not dwell upon this point, though Protarchus allows the expression to pass.” The last phrase of the passage which I have thus transcribed (“Sokrates therefore does not dwell upon this point”) is less accurate than that which precedes: for it seems to imply that the Sokrates of Philêbus admits the inaccuracy of the expression, which seems to me not borne out by the text of the dialogue. Both here and elsewhere in the dialogue, the doctrine, that many pleasures are false, is maintained by Sokrates distinctly — τὸ ἥδεσθαι is put upon the same footing as τὸ δοξάζειν, which may be either ἀληθῶς or ψευδῶς.
When Sokrates (p. 37 B) puts the question, “You admit that δόξα may be either ἀληθὴς or ψευδής: how then can you argue that ἡδονή must be always ἀληθής?” the answer is, that pleasure is not, if we speak correctly, either true or false: neither one predicate nor the other is properly applicable to it: we can only so apply them by a metaphor, altogether misleading in philosophical reasoning. When Sokrates further argues (37 D), “You admit that some qualifying predicates may be applied to pleasures and pain, great or small, durable or transient, &c. You admit that an opinion may be correct or mistaken in its object, and when it is the latter you call it false: why is not the pleasure which accompanies a false opinion to be called false also?” Protarchus refuses distinctly to admit this, saying, “I have already affirmed that on that supposition the opinion is false: but no man will call the pleasure false” (p. 38 A).
385Plato acknowledges no truth and reality except in the Absolute — Pleasures which he admits to be true — and why.
What seems present to the mind of Plato in this doctrine is the antithesis between the absolute and the relative. He will allow reality only to the absolute: the relative he considers (herein agreeing with the Eleates) to be all seeming and illusion. Thus when he comes to describe the character of those few pleasures which he admits to be true, we find him dwelling upon their absolute nature. 1. The pleasures derived from perfect geometrical figures: the exact straight line, square, cube, circle, &c.: which figures are always beautiful per se, not by comparison or in relation with any thing else:133 and “which have pleasures of their own, noway analogous to those of scratching” (i. e., not requiring to be preceded by the discomfort of an itching surface). 2. The pleasures derived from certain colours beautiful in themselves: which are beautiful always, not merely when seen in contrast with some other colours. 3. The pleasures of hearing simple sounds, beautiful in and by themselves, with whatever other sounds they may be connected. 4. The pleasures of sweet smells, which are pleasurable though not preceded by uneasiness. 5. The pleasures of mathematical studies: these studies do not derive their pleasurable character from satisfying any previous uneasy appetite, nor do they leave behind them any pain if they happen to be forgotten.134
133 Plato, Philêbus, p. 51 C. ταῦτα γὰρ οὐκ εἶναι πρός τι καλὰ λέγω, καθάπερ ἄλλα, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ καλὰ καθ’ αὑτὰ πεφυκέναι, καί τινας ἡδονὰς οἰκείας ἔχειν, οὐδὲν ταῖς τῶν κνήσεων προσφερεῖς.
51 D: τὰς τῶν φωνῶν τὰς λείας καὶ λαμπράς, τὰς ἕν τι καθαρὸν ἱείσας μέλος, οὐ πρὸς ἕτερον καλὰς ἀλλ’ αὐτὰς καθ’ αὑτὰς εἶναι, καὶ τούτων ξυμφύτους ἡδονὰς ἑπομένας.
134 Plato, Philêbus, p. 62 B.
We may illustrate the doctrine of the Philêbus about pleasures and pains, by reference to a dictum of Sokrates quoted in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (iii. 13).
Some person complained to Sokrates that he had lost his appetite — that he no longer ate with any pleasure (ὅτι ἀηδῶς ἔσθιοι) — “The physician Akumenus (so replied Sokrates) teaches us a good remedy in such a case. Leave off eating: after you have left off, you will come back into a more pleasurable, easy, and healthful condition.”
Now let us suppose the like complaint to be addressed to the Platonic Sokrates. What would have been his answer?
The Sokrates of the Protagoras would have regarded the complainant as suffering under a misfortune, and would have tried to suggest some remedy: either the prescription of Akumenus, or any other more promising that he could think of. The Sokrates of the Phædon, on the contrary, would have congratulated him on the improvement in his condition, inasmuch as the misguiding and degrading ascendancy, exercised by his body over his mind, was suppressed in one of its most influential channels: just as Kephalus, in the Republic (i. 329), is made to announce it as one of the blessings of old age, that the sexual appetite has left him. The Sokrates of the Philêbus, also, would have treated the case as one for congratulation, but he would have assigned a different reason. He would have replied: “The pleasures of eating are altogether false. You never really had any pleasure in eating. If you believed yourself to have any, you were under an illusion. You have reason to rejoice that this illusion has now passed away: and to rejoice the more, because you have come a step nearer to the most divine scheme of life.”
Speusippus (the nephew and successor of Plato), if he had been present, would have re-assured the complainant in a manner equally decided. He would have said nothing, however, about the difference between true and false pleasures: he would have acknowledged them all as true, and denounced them all as mischievous. He would have said (see Aul. Gell. ix. 5): “The condition which you describe is one which I greatly envy. Pleasure and Pain are both, alike and equally, forms of Evil. I eat, to relieve the pain of hunger: but unfortunately, I cannot do so without experiencing some pleasure; and I thus incur evil in the other and opposite form. I am ashamed of this, because I am still kept far off from Good, or the point of neutrality: but I cannot help myself. You are more fortunate: you avert one evil, pain, without the least alloy of the other evil, pleasure: what you attain is thus pure Good. I hope your condition may long continue, and I should be glad to come into it myself.”
Not only the sincere pleasure-haters, but also other theorists indicated by Aristotle, would have warmly applauded this pure ethical doctrine of Speusippus; not from real agreement with it, but in order to edify the audience. They would say to one another aside: “This is not true; but we must do all we can to make people believe it. Since every one is too fond of pleasures, and suffers himself to be enslaved by them, we must pull in the contrary direction, in order that we may thereby bring people into the middle line.” (Aristot. Eth. Nikom. x. 1, 1172, a. 30.)
It deserves to be remarked that Aristotle, in alluding to these last theorists, disapproves their scheme of Ethical Fictions, or of falsifying theory in order to work upon men’s minds by edifying imposture; while Plato approves and employs this scheme in the Republic. Aristotle even recognises it as a fault in various persons, that they take too little delight in bodily pleasures — that a man is τοιοῦτος οἷος ἧττον ἢ δεῖ τοῖς σωματικοῖς χαίρων (Ethic. Nikom. vii. 11, 1151, b. 24).
386These few are all the varieties of pleasure which Plato admits as true: they are alleged as cases of the absolutely pleasurable (Αὐτο-ἡδύ) — that which is pleasurable per se, and always, without relation to any thing else, without dependence on occasion or circumstance, and without any antecedent or concomitant pain. All other pleasures are pleasurable relatively to some antecedent pain, or to some contrasting condition, with which they are compared:387 accordingly Plato considers them as false, unreal, illusory: pleasures and not pleasures at once, and not more one than the other.135 Herein he conforms to the Eleatic or Parmenidean view, according to which the relative is altogether falsehood and illusion: an intermediate stage between Ens and Non-Ens, belonging as much to the first as to the last.
135 Compare, respecting this Platonic view, Republic, v. pp. 478-479, and pp. 583-585, where Plato contrasts the παναληθὴς or γνησία ἡδονή, which arises from the acquisition of knowledge (when the mind nourishes itself with real essence), with the νόθη (p. 587 B) or ἐσκιαγραφημένη ἡδονή, εἴδωλον τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἡδονῆς, arising from the pursuits of wealth, power, and other objects of desire.
The comic poet Alexis adverts to this Platonic doctrine of the absolutely pleasurable, here, there, and everywhere, — τὸ δ’ ἡδὺ πάντως ἡδύ, κἀκεῖ κἀνθάδε, Athenæ. viii. 354; Meineke, Com. Frag. p. 453.
In the Phædrus (258 E), we find this same class of pleasures, those which cannot be enjoyed unless preceded by some pain, asserted to be called for that reason slavish (ἀνδραποδώδεις), and depreciated as worthless. Nearly all the pleasures connected with the body are said to belong to this class; but those of rhetoric and dialectic are exempted from it, and declared to be of superior order.
The pleasure of gaining a victory in the stadium at Olympia was ranked by Greeks generally as the maximum of pleasure: and we find the Platonic Sokrates (Republ. v. 465 D) speaks in concurrence with this opinion. But this pleasure ought in Plato’s view to pass for a false pleasure; since it was invariably preceded by the most painful, long-continued training.
The reasoning of Sokrates in the Philêbus (see especially pp. 46-47) against the intense and extatic pleasures, as being never pure, but always adulterated by accompanying pain, misfortune, disappointment, &c., is much the same as that of Epikurus and his followers afterwards. The case is nowhere more forcibly put than in the fourth book of Lucretius (1074 seq.): where that poet deprecates passionate love, and points out that pure or unmixed pleasure belongs only to the man of sound and healthy reason.
Plato could not have defended this small list of Pleasures, upon his own admission, against his opponents — the Pleasure-haters, who disallowed pleasures altogether.
The catalogue of pleasures recognised by Plato being so narrow (and much of them attainable only by a few persons), the amount of difference is really very small between him and his pleasure-hating opponents, who disallowed pleasure altogether. But small as the catalogue is, he could not consistently have defended it against them, upon his own principles. His opponents could have shown him that a considerable portion of it must be discarded, if we are to disallow all pleasures which are preceded by or intermingled with pain — or which are sometimes stronger, sometimes feebler, according to the relations of contrast or similarity with other concomitant sensations. Mathematical study certainly, far from being all pleasure and no pain, demands an irksome preparatory training (which is numbered among the 388miseries of life in the Axiochus136), succeeded by long laborious application, together with a fair share of vexatious puzzle and disappointment. The love of knowledge grows up by association (like the thirst for money or power), and includes an uncomfortable consciousness of ignorance: nay, it is precisely this painful consciousness which the Sokratic method was expressly intended to plant forcibly in the student’s mind, as an indispensable antecedent condition. Requital doubtless comes in time; but the outlay is not the less real, and is quite sufficient to disentitle the study from being counted as a true pleasure, in the Platonic sense. Nor could Plato, upon his own principles, defend the pleasures of sight, sound, and smell. For though he might justly contend that there were some objects originally agreeable to these senses, yet all these objects will appear more or less agreeable, according to the accompanying contrasts under which they are presented, while, in particular states of the organ, they will not appear agreeable at all. Now such variability of estimate is among the grounds alleged by Plato for declaring pleasures to be false.137
136 See the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Axiochus, pp. 366-367. Compare Republic, vii. 526 C, vi. 504 C.
The Sokratic method, in creating consciousness of ignorance, is exhibited not less in the Xenophontic Memorabilia (iv. 2, 40) than in various Platonic dialogues, Alkibiades I., Theætêtus, &c. We read it formally proclaimed by Sokrates in the Platonic Apology.
Aristotle repeats the assertion contained in the Philêbus about the list of painless pleasures — ἄλυποι γάρ εἰσιν αἵ τε μαθηματικαὶ, &c. (Ethic. Nikom. x. 2, 1173, b. 16; 7, 1177, a. 25.) He himself says in another place (vii. 13, 1153, a. 20) that τὸ θεωρεῖν sometimes hurts the health, and if he had examined the lives of mathematicians, especially that of Kepler, he would hardly have imagined that mathematical investigations have no pains attached to them. He probably means that they are not preceded by painful appetites such as hunger and thirst. But they are preceded by acquired impulses or desires, which in reference to the present question are upon same footing as the natural appetites. A healthy and temperate man, leading a regular life and in easy circumstances, knows little of hunger and thirst as pains: he knows them only as appetites which give relish to his periodical meals. It is only when this periodical satisfaction is withheld that his appetite grows to a painful and distressing height. So too the φιλομαθής; his appetite for study, when regularly gratified to an extent consistent with health and other considerations, is not painful; but it will rise to the height of a most distressing privation if he be debarred from gratifying it, excluded from books and papers, disturbed by noises and intrusions. Kepler, if interdicted from pursuing his calculations, would have been miserable. Jason of Pheræ was heard to say that he felt hungry so long as he was not in possession of supreme power — πεινῇν, ὅτε μὴ τυραννοῖ, Aristot. Politic. iii. 4, 1277, a. 24; thus intimating that the acquired appetite of ambition had in his mind reached the same intensity as the natural appetite of hunger.
137 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 41-42. In the Phædon (p. 60 B) Sokrates makes a striking remark on the inseparable conjunction of pleasure with pain generally.
389Sokrates in this dialogue differs little from these Pleasure-haters.
How little the Sokrates of this dialogue differs, at the bottom, from the fastidious pleasure-haters, may be seen by the passage in which he proclaims that the life of intelligence alone, without the smallest intermixture of pleasure or pain, is the really perfect life: that the Gods and the divine Kosmos have no enjoyment and no suffering.138 The emotional department of human nature is here regarded as a degenerate and obstructive appendage: so that it was an inauspicious act of the sons of the Demiurgus (in the Timæus139) when they attached the spherical head (the miniature parallel of the Kosmos, with the rotatory movements of the immortal soul in the brain within) at the summit of a bodily trunk and limbs, containing the thoracic and abdominal cavities: the thoracic cavity embodying a second and inferior soul with the energetic emotions and passions — the abdominal region serving as lodgment to a third yet baser soul with the appetites. From this conjunction sprang the corrupting influence of emotional impulse, depriving man of his close parallelism with the Kosmos, and poisoning the life of pure exclusive Intelligence — regular, unfeeling, undisturbed. The Pleasure-haters, together with Speusippus and others, declared that pleasure and pain were both alike enemies to be repelled, and that neutrality was the condition to be aimed at.140 And such appears to me to be the drift of 390Plato’s reasonings in the Philêbus: though he relaxes somewhat the severity of his requirements in favour of a few pleasures, towards which he feels the same indulgence as towards Homer in 391the Republic.141 When Ethics are discussed, not upon principles of their own (οἰκεῖαι ἀρχαὶ), but upon principles of Kosmology or Ontology, no emotion of any kind can find consistent place.
138 Plato, Philêbus, p. 33 B.
139 Plato, Timæus, pp. 43 A, 44 D, 69 D, 70-71. The same fundamental idea though embodied in a different illustration, appears also in the Phædon; where Sokrates depicts life as a period of imprisonment, to which the immortal rational soul is condemned, in a corrupt and defective body, with perpetual stream of disturbing sensations and emotions (Phædon, pp. 64-65).
Aristotle observes, De Animâ, i. p. 407, b. 2:— ἐπίπονον δὲ καὶ τὸ μεμίχθαι τῷ σώματι μὴ δυνάμενον ἀπολυθῆναι, καὶ προσέτι φευκτόν, εἴπερ βέλτιον τῷ νῷ μὴ μετὰ σώματος εἶναι, καθάπερ εἴωθέ τε λέγεσθαι καὶ πολλοῖς συνδοκεῖ.
We find in one of the Fragments of Cicero, quoted by Augustin from the lost work Hortensius (p. 485, ed. Orelli):— “An vero, inquit, voluptates corporis expetendæ, quæ veré et graviter dictæ sunt à Platone illecebræ et escæ malorum? Quis autem bonâ mente præditus, non mallet nullas omnino nobis à naturâ voluptates esse datas?” This is the same doctrine as what is ascribed to Speusippus.
140 Aristot. Ethic. Nikom. vii. 14, p. 1153, b. 5; x. 2, p. 1173, a. 8; Aulus Gellius, ix. 5. “Speusippus vetusque omnis Academia voluptatem et dolorem duo mala esse dicunt opposita inter se: bonum autem esse quod utriusque medium foret.”
Compare Plato, Philêbus, pp. 43 D-E, 33 B.
To whom does Plato here make allusion, under the general title of the Fastidious (οἱ δυσχερεῖς) Pleasure-haters? Schleiermacher (note to his translation, p. 487), Stallbaum, and most critics down to Dr. Badham inclusive, are of opinion, that he alludes to Antisthenes — among whose dicta we certainly read declarations expressing positive aversion to pleasure — μανείην μᾶλλον ἢ ἡσθείην Diog. L. vi. 3; compare ix. 101, and Winckelmann, Frag. Antisthen. xii. Mr. Poste, on the contrary, thinks it improbable that Antisthenes is alluded to (see p. 80 of his Philêbus). I confess that I think so too. Mr. Poste points out that these δυσχερεῖς are characterised by Plato (p. 44 B), as μάλα δεινοὺς λεγομένους περὶ φύσιν:— whereas we are informed that speculations on φύσις were neglected by Antisthenes, who confined his attention to τὰ ἠθικά. This is a strong reason for believing that Antisthenes cannot be here meant; and there are some other reasons also.
First, in describing the δυσχερεῖς, Plato notes it as one among their attributes, that they hold in thorough detestation the indecorous pleasures (τὰς τῶν ἀσχημόνων ἡδονάς, ἃς οὓς εἴπομεν δυσχερεῖς μισοῦσι παντελῶς, p. 46 A). Now this is surely not likely to have been affirmed about Antisthenes. It was the conspicuous characteristic of the Cynic sect, begun by Antisthenes, and carried still farther by his pupil Diogenes, that they reduced to its minimum the distinction between the decorous and the indecorous.
Next, we may observe that these δυσχερεῖς, whoever they were, are spoken of with much respect by Plato, even while he combats their doctrine (p. 44 C). I think it not likely that he would have spoken thus of Antisthenes. We are told that there prevailed between the two a great and reciprocal acrimony. And this sentiment is manifested in the Sophistês (p. 251 B), where the opponents whom Plato is refuting are described with the most contemptuous bitterness — and where Schleiermacher, and the critics generally, declare that he alludes to Antisthenes. The passage in the Sophistês represents, in my judgment, the probable sentiment of Plato towards Antisthenes: the passage in the Philêbus is at variance with it.
I imagine that the δυσχερεῖς to whom Plato makes allusion in the Philêbus, are the persons from whom his nephew and successor Speusippus derived the doctrine declared in the first portion of this note. The “vetus omnia Academia” of Aulus Gellius is an exaggerated phrase; but many of the old Academy, or companions of Plato, probably held the theory that pleasure was only one form of evil, — especially the pythagorising Platonici, adopting the tendencies of Plato himself in his old age. That Speusippus was among the borrowers from the Pythagoreans, we know from Aristotle (Eth. Nikom. i. 4, 1096, b. 8).
Now the Pythagorean canon of life, like the Orphic (both of them supposed by Herodotus to be derived in great part from Egypt — ii. 81), was distinguished by a multiplicity of abstinences, disgusts, antipathies, in respect to alimentation and other physical circumstances of life — which were held to be of the most imperative force and necessity; so that offences against them were of all others the most intolerable. A remarkable fragment of the Κρῆτες of Euripides (ed. Dind., vol. ii. p. 912) describes a variety of this purism analogous to the Orphic and Pythagorean:— Πάλλευκα δ’ ἔχων εἴματα, φεύγω γένεσίν τε βρότων, καὶ νεκροθήκης οὐ χριμπτόμενος· τὴν τ’ ἐμψύχων βρῶσιν ἐδεστῶν πεφύλαγμαι. Compare Eurip. Hippol. 957; Alexis Comicus, ap. Athenæ, iv. p. 161. See the work of M. Alfred Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, vol. iii. pp. 368-384.
It appears to me that the δυσχερεῖς, to whom Plato alludes in the Philêbus, were most probably pythagorising friends of his own; who, adopting a ritual of extreme rigour, distinguished themselves by the violence of their antipathies towards τὰς ἡδονὰς τὰς τῶν ἀσχημόνων. Plato speaks of them with respect; partly because ethical theorists, who denounce pleasure, are usually characterised in reverential terms, as persons of exalted principle, even by those who think their reasonings inconclusive; partly because these men only pushed the consequences of Plato’s own reasonings, rather farther than Plato himself did. In fact they were more consistent than Plato was: for the principles laid down in the Philêbus, if carried out strictly, would go to the exclusion of all pleasures — not less of the few which he tolerates, than of the many which he banishes.
These pythagorising Platonici might well be termed δεινοὶ περὶ φύσιν. They paid much attention to the interpretation of nature, though they did so according to a numerical and geometrical symbolism.
141 Plato, Republic, x. p. 607.
Forced conjunction of Kosmology and Ethics — defect of the Philêbus.
In my judgment, this is one main defect pervading the Platonic Philêbus — the forced conjunction between Kosmology and Ethics — the violent pressure employed to force Pleasures and Pains into the same classifying framework as cognitive Beliefs — the true and the false. In respect to the various pleasures, the dialogue contains many excellent remarks, the value of which is diminished by the purpose to which they are turned.142 One of Plato’s main batteries is directed against the intense, extatic, momentary enjoyments, which he sets in contrast against the gentle, serene, often renewable.143 That the former are often purchasable only at the cost of a distempered condition of body and mind, which ought to render them objects shunned rather than desired by a reasonable man — this is a doctrine important to inculcate: but nothing is gained by applying the metaphorical predicate false, either to them, or to the other classes of mixed pleasures, &c., which Plato discountenances under the same epithet. By thus condemning pleasures in wholesale and in large groups, we not only set aside the innocuous as well as others, but we also leave unapplied, or only half applied, that principle of Measure or Calculation which Plato so often extols as the main item in Summum Bonum.
142 We read in Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric (Book i. ch. 7, pp. 168-170) some very good remarks on the erroneous and equivocal assertions which identify Truth and Good — a thesis on which various Platonists have expended much eloquence. Dr. Campbell maintains the just distinction between the Emotions and Will on one side, and the Understanding on the other.
“Passion” (he says) “is the mover to action, Reason is the guide. Good is the object of the Will; Truth the object of the Understanding.”
143 Plato, Philêbus, p. 45 D. ἐν ὕβρει μείζους ἡδονάς, οὐ πλείους λέγω, &c.
So in the Republic, also, ἡδονὴ ὑπερβάλλουσα is declared to be inconsistent with σωφροσύνη (iii. 402 E).
Directive sovereignty of Measure — how explained and applied in the Protagoras.
In this dialogue as well as others, Measure is thus exalted, and exalted with emphasis, at the final conclusion: but it is far less clearly and systematically applied, as far as human beings are concerned, than in the Protagoras. 392The Sokrates of the Protagoras does not recognise any pleasures as false — nor any class of pleasures as absolutely unmixed with pain: he does not set pleasure in pointed opposition to the avoidance of pain, nor the intense momentary pleasures to the gentle and more durable. He considers that the whole course of life is a perpetual intermixture of pleasures and pains, in proportions variable and to a certain extent modifiable: that each item in both lists has its proper value, commensurable with the others; that the purpose of a well-ordered life consists, in rendering the total sum of pleasure as great, and the total sum of pain as small, as each man’s case admits: that avoidance of pain and attainment of pleasure are co-ordinate branches of this one comprehensive End. He farther declares that men are constantly liable to err by false remembrances, estimates, and comparisons, of pleasures and pains past — by false expectations of pleasures and pains to come: that the whole security of life lies in keeping clear of such error — in right comparison of these items and right choice between them: that therefore the full sovereign controul of each man’s life must be vested in the Measuring Science or Calculating Intelligence.144 Not only all comprehensive sovereignty, but also ever-active guidance, is postulated for this Measuring Science: while at the same time its special function, and the items to which it applies, are more clearly defined than in any other Platonic dialogue. If a man be so absorbed by the idea of an intense momentary pleasure or pain, as to forget or disregard 393accompaniments or consequences of an opposite nature, greatly overbalancing it — this is an error committed from default of the Measuring Science: but it is only one among many errors arising from the like deficiency. Nothing is required but the Measuring Science or Intelligence, to enable a man to make the best of those circumstances in which he may be placed: this is true of all men, under every variety of place and circumstances. Measure is not the Good, but the one condition which is constant as well as indispensable to any tolerable approach towards Good.
144 This argument is carried on by Sokrates from p. 351 until the close of the Protagoras, p. 357 A. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἡδονῆς τε καὶ λύπης ἐν ὀρθῇ τῇ αἱρέσει ἐφάνη ἡμῖν ἡ σωτηρία τοῦ βίου οὖσα, τοῦ τε πλέονος καὶ ἐλάττονος καὶ μείζονος καὶ σμικροτεροῦ καὶ ποῤῥωτέρω καὶ ἐγγυτέρω, ἆρα πρῶτον μὲν οὐ μετρητικὴ φαίνεται, ὑπερβολῆς τε καὶ ἐνδείας οὖσα καὶ ἰσότητος πρὸς ἀλλήλας σκέψις; … Ἐπεὶ δὲ μετρητική, ἀνάγκῃ δήπου τέχνη καὶ ἐπιστήμη.
Yet Plato in the Philêbus, imputing to the Hedonistic theory that it sets aside all idea of measure, regulation, limit, advances as an argument in the case, that Pleasure and Pain in their own nature have no limit (Philêbus, pp. 25-26 B, 27 E. Compare Dr. Badham’s note, p. 30 of his edition).
The imputation is unfounded, and the argument without application, in regard to the same theory as expounded by Sokrates in the Protagoras.
At the end of the Philêbus (p. 67 B) Plato makes Sokrates exclaim, “We cannot put Pleasure first among the items of Good, even though all oxen, horses, and other beasts affirm it”. This rhetorical flourish is altogether misplaced in the Philêbus: for Plato had already specified it as one of the conditions of the Good, That it must be acceptable and must give satisfaction to all animals, and even to all plants (pp. 22 B, 60 C), as well as to men.
How explained in Philêbus — no statement to what items it is applied.
In the Philêbus, too, Measure — The Exact Quantum — The Exact Moment — are proclaimed as the chief item in the complex called — The Good.145 But to what Items does Sokrates intend the measure to be applied? Not certainly to pleasures: the comparison of quantity between one pleasure and another is discarded as useless or misleading, and the comparison of quality alone is admitted — i. e., true and false: the large majority of human pleasures being repudiated in the lump as false, and a small remnant only being tolerated, on the allegation that they are true. Nor, again, is the measure applied to pains: for though Plato affirms that a life altogether without pains (as without pleasures) would be the truly divine Ideal, yet he never tells us that the Measuring Intelligence is to be made available in the comparison and choice of pains, and in avoidance of the greater by submitting to the less. Lastly, when we look at the concession made in this dialogue to Gorgias and his art, we find that Plato no longer claims for his Good or Measure any directive function, or any paramount influence, as to utility, profit, reputation, or the greater ends which men usually pursue in life:146 he claims for it only the privilege of satisfying the aspiration for truth, in minds wherein such aspiration is preponderant over all others.
145 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 A. μέτρον — τὸ μέτριον — τὸ καίριον.
146 Plato, Philêbus, p. 58 B-D.
Comparing the Philêbus with the Protagoras, therefore, we see that though, in both, Measuring Science or Intelligence is proclaimed as supreme, the province assigned to it in the Philêbus is comparatively narrow. Moreover the practical side or activities of life (which are prominent in the Protagoras) appear in 394the Philêbus thrust into a corner; where scanty room is found for them on ground nearly covered by the speculative, or theorising, truth-seeking, pursuits. Practical reason is forced into the same categories as theoretical.
The classification of true and false is (as I have already remarked) unsuitable for pleasures and pains. We have now to see how Plato applies it to cognitions, to which it really belongs.
Classification of true and false — how Plato applies it to Cognitions.
The highest of these Cognitions is set apart as Dialectic or Ontology: the Object of which is, Ens or Entia, eternal, ever the same and unchangeable, ever unmixed with each other: while the corresponding Subject is, Reason, Intelligence, Wisdom, by which it is apprehended and felt. In this Science alone reside perfect Truth and Purity. Where the Objects are shifting, variable, mixed or confounded together, there Reason cannot apply herself; no pure or exact truth can be attained.147 These unchangeable Entities are what in other dialogues Plato terms Ideas or Forms — a term scarcely used in the Philêbus.
147 Plato, Philêbus, p. 59 C. ὡς ἢ περὶ ἐκεῖνα ἔσθ’ ἡμῖν τό τε βέβαιον καὶ τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ὃ δὴ λέγομεν εἰλικρινές, περὶ τὰ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἀμικτότατα ἔχοντα — ἢ δευτέρως ἐκείνων ὅ τι μάλιστά ἐστι ξυγγενές· τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πάντα δεύτερά τε καὶ ὕστερα λεκτέον. 62 A: φρονῶν ἄνθρωπος αὑτῆς περὶ δικαιοσύνης, ὅ, τι ἔστι, καὶ λόγον ἔχων ἑπόμενον τῷ νοεῖν … κύκλου μὲν καὶ σφαίρας αὐτῆς τῆς θείας τὸν λόγον ἔχων.
Though pure truth belongs exclusively to Dialectic and to the Objects thereof, there are other Sciences which, having more or less of affinity to Dialectic, may thus be classified according to the degree of such affinity. Mathematics approach most nearly to Dialectic. Under Mathematics are included the Sciences or Arts of numbering, measuring, weighing — Arithmetic, Metrêtic, Static — which are applied to various subordinate arts, and impart to these latter all the scientific guidance and certainty which is found in them. Without Arithmetic, the subordinate arts would be little better than vague guesswork or knack. But Plato distinguishes two varieties of Arithmetic and Metrêtic: one purely theoretical, prosecuted by philosophers, and adapted to satisfy the love of abstract truth — the other applied to some department of practice, and employed by the artist as a guide to the execution of his work. Theoretical Arithmetic is characterised by this feature, that it assumes each unit to be equal, like, 395and interchangeable with every other unit: while practical Arithmetic adds together concrete realities, whether like and equal to each other or not.148
148 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 E.
It is thus that the theoretical geometer and arithmetician, though not coming up to the full and pure truth of Dialectic, is nevertheless nearer to it than the carpenter or the ship-builder, who apply the measure to material objects. But the carpenter, ship-builder, architect, &c., do really apply measure, line, rule, &c.: they are therefore nearer to truth than other artists, who apply no measure at all. To this last category belong the musical composer, the physician, the husbandman, the pilot, the military commander, neither of whom can apply to their processes either numeration or measurement: all of them are forced to be contented with vague estimate, conjecture, a practised eye and ear.149
149 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 A-B.
Valuable principles of this classification — difference with other dialogues.
The foregoing classification of Sciences and Arts is among the most interesting points in the Philêbus. It coincides to a great degree with that which we read in the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, though it is also partially different: it differs too in some respects from doctrines advanced in other dialogues. Thus we find here (in the Philêbus) that the science or art of the physician, the pilot, the general, &c., is treated as destitute of measure and as an aggregate of unscientific guesses: whereas in the Gorgias150 and elsewhere, these are extolled as genuine arts, and are employed to discredit Rhetoric by contrast. Again, all these arts are here placed lower in the scientific scale than the occupations of the carpenter or the ship-builder, who possess and use some material measures. But these latter, in the Republic,151 are dismissed with the disparaging epithet of snobbish (βάναυσοι) and deemed unworthy of consideration.
150 Plato, Gorgias, pp. 501 A, 518 A. Compare Republic, i. pp. 341-342.
151 Plato, Republic, vii. p. 522 B.
Dialectic appears here exalted to the same pre-eminence which is assigned to it in the Republic — as the energy of the pure Intellect, dealing with those permanent real Essences which are the objects of Intellect alone, intelligible only and not visible. The distinction here drawn by Plato between the theoretical and 396practical arithmetic and geometry, compared with numeration or mensuration of actual objects of sense — is also remarkable in two ways: first, as it marks his departure from the historical Sokrates, who recognised the difference between the two, but discountenanced the theoretical as worthless:152 next as it brings clearly to view, the fundamental assumption or hypothesis upon which abstract arithmetic proceeds — the concept of units all perfectly like and equal. That this is an assumption (always departing more or less from the facts of sense) — and that upon its being conceded depends the peculiar certainty and accuracy of arithmetical calculation — was an observation probably then made for the first time; and not unnecessary to be made even now, since it is apt to escape attention. It is enunciated clearly both here and in the Republic.153
152 Xenophon, Memorab. iv. 7, 2-8. The contrast drawn in this chapter of the Memorabilia appears to me to coincide pretty exactly with that which is taken in the Philêbus, though the preference is reversed. Dr. Badham (p. 78) and Mr. Poste (pp. 106-113) consider Plato as pointing to a contrast between pure and applied Mathematics: which I do not understand to be his meaning. The distinction taken by Aristotle in the passage cited by Mr. Poste is different, and does really designate Pure and Applied Mathematics. Mr. Poste would have found a better comparison in Ethic. Nikom. i. 7, 1098, a. 29.
153 Plato, Philêbus, p. 56 E. οἱ δ’ οὐκ ἄν ποτε αὐτοῖς συνακολουθήσειαν, εἰ μὴ μονάδα μονάδος ἑκάστης τῶν μυρίων μηδεμίαν ἄλλην ἄλλης διαφέρουσάν τις θήσει — where it is formally proclaimed as an assumption or postulate. See Republic, vii. pp. 525-526, vi. p. 510 C.
Mr. John Stuart Mill thus calls attention to the same remark in his instructive chapters on Demonstration and Necessary Truth (System of Logic, Book ii. ch. vi sect. 3).
“The inductions of Arithmetic are of two sorts: first, those that we have just expounded, such as One and One are Two, Two and One are Three, &c., which may be called the definitions of the various numbers, in the improper or geometrical sense of the word Definition; and, secondly, the two following Axioms. The sums of Equals are equal, the differences of Equals are equal.
“These axioms, and likewise the so-called Definitions, are (as already shown) results of induction: true of all objects whatsoever, and as it may seem, exactly true, without the hypothetical assumption of unqualified truth where an approximation to it is all that exists. On more accurate investigation, however, it will be found that even in this case, there is one hypothetical element in the ratiocination. In all propositions concerning numbers a condition is implied without which none of them would be true, and that condition is an assumption which may be false. The condition is that 1 = 1: that all the numbers are numbers of the same or of equal units. Let this be doubtful, and not one of the propositions in arithmetic will hold true. How can we know that one pound and one pound make two pounds, if one of the pounds may be troy and the other avoirdupois? They may not make two pounds of either or of any weight. How can we know that a forty-horse power is always equal to itself, unless we assume that all horses are of equal strength? One actual pound weight is not exactly equal to another, nor one mile’s length to another; a nicer balance or more exact measuring instruments would always detect some difference.”
The long preliminary discussion of the Philêbus thus brings us to the conclusion — That a descending scale of value, relatively to truth and falsehood, must be recognised in cognitions as well as in pleasures: many cognitions are not entirely true, but tainted in different degrees by error and falsehood: most pleasures also, instead of being true and pure, are alloyed by concomitant pains or delusions or both: moreover, all the intense 397pleasures are incompatible with Measure, or a fixed standard,154 and must therefore be excluded from the category of Good.
154 Plato, Philêbus, pp. 52 D — 57 B.
Close of the Philêbus — Graduated elements of Good.
In arranging the quintuple scale of elements or conditions of the Good, Plato adopts the following descending order: I report them as well as I can, for I confess that I understand them very imperfectly.
1. Measure; that which conforms to Measure and to proper season: with everything else analogous, which we can believe to be of eternal nature. — These seem to be unchangeable Forms or Ideas, which are here considered objectively, apart from any percipient Subject affected by them.155
2. The Symmetrical, Beautiful, Perfect, Sufficient, &c. — These words seem to denote the successive manifestations of the same afore-mentioned attributes; but considered both objectively and subjectively, as affecting and appreciated by some percipient.
3. Intelligent or Rational Mind — Here the Subject is brought in by itself.
4. Sciences, Cognitions, Arts, Right Opinions, &c. — Here we 398have the intellectual manifestations of the Subject, but of a character inferior to No. 3, descending in the scale of value relatively to truth.
5. Lastly come the small list of true and painless pleasures. — These, being not intellectual at all, but merely emotional (some as accompaniments of intellectual, others of sensible, processes), are farther removed from Good and Measure than even No. 4 — the opining or uncertain phases of the intellect.156
The four first elements belong to the Kosmos as well as to man: for the Kosmos has an intelligent soul. The fifth marks the emotional nature of man.
155 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66 A.
The Appendix B, subjoined by Mr. Poste to his edition of the Philêbus (pp. 149-165), is a very valuable Dissertation, comparing and explaining the abstract theories of Plato and Aristotle. He remarks, justly contrasting the Philêbus with the Timæus, as to the doctrine of Limit: “In the Philêbus the limit is always quantitative. Quality, including all the elementary forces, is the substratum that has to receive the quantitative determination. Just, however, as Quality underlies quantity, we can conceive a substratum underlying quality. This Plato in the Timæus calls the Vehicle or Receptacle (τὸ δεκτικόν), and Aristotle in his writings the primary Matter (πρώτη ὕλη). The Philêbus, however, does not carry the analysis so far. It regards quality as the ultimate matter, the substratum to be moulded and measured out in due quantity by the quantitative limit” (p. 160).
I doubt whether the Platonic idea of τὸ μέτριον is rightly expressed by Mr. Poste’s translation — a mean (p. 158). It rather implies, even in Politikus, p. 306, to which he refers, something adjusted according to a positive standard or conformable to an assumed measure or perfection: there being undoubtedly error in excess above it and error in defect below it — but the standard being not necessarily mid-way between the two. The Pythagoreans used καιρὸς in a very large sense, describing it as the First Cause of Good. Proklus ad Plat. Alkib. i. p. 270-272, Cousin.
156 Neither the Introduction of Schleiermacher (p. 134 seq.), nor the elucidation of Trendelenburg (De Philebi Consilio, pp. 16-23), nor the Prolegomena of Stallbaum (pp. 76-77 seq.), succeed in making this obscure close of the Philêbus clearly intelligible. Stallbaum, after indicating many commentators who have preceded him, observes respecting the explanations which they have given: “Ea sunt adeo varia atque inter se diversa, ut tanquam adversâ fronte inter ipsa pugnare dicenda sint” (p. 72).
I see no sufficient ground for the hypothesis of Stallbaum and some other critics, who, considering the last result abrupt and unsatisfactory, suspect that Plato either intended to add more, or did add more which has not come down to us.157 Certainly the result (as in many other Platonic dialogues) is inconsiderable, and the instruction derivable from the dialogue must be picked out by the reader himself from the long train of antecedent reasoning. The special point emphatically brought out at the end is the discredit thrown upon the intense pleasures, and the exclusion of them from the list of constituents of Good. If among Plato’s contemporaries who advocated the Hedonistic doctrine, there were any who laid their main stress upon these intense pleasures, he may be considered to have replied to them under the name of Philêbus. But certainly this result might have been attained with a smaller array of preliminaries.
157 Stallbaum, Proleg. p. 10.
Contrast between the Philêbus and the Phædrus, and Symposion, in respect to Pulchrum, and intense Emotions generally.
Moreover, in regard to these same intense emotions we have to remark that Plato in other dialogues holds a very different opinion respecting them — or at least respecting some of them. We have seen that at the close of the Philêbus he connects Bonum and Pulchrum principally, and almost exclusively, with the Reason; but we find him, in the Phædrus and Symposion, taking 399a different, indeed an opposite, view of the matter; and presenting Bonum and Pulchrum as objects, not of the unimpassioned and calculating Reason, but of ardent aspiration and even of extatic love. Reason is pronounced to be insufficient for attaining them, and a peculiar vein of inspiration a species of madness, eo nomine — is postulated in its place. The life of the philosophical aspirant is compared to that of the passionate lover, beginning at first with attachment to some beautiful youth, and rising by a gradual process of association, so as to transfer the same fervent attachment to his mental companionship, as a stimulus for generating intellectual sympathies and recollections of the world of Ideas. He is represented as experiencing in the fullest measure those intense excitements and disturbances which Eros alone can provoke.158 It is true that Plato here repudiates sensual excitements. In this respect the Phædrus and Symposion agree with the Philêbus. But as between Reason and Emotion, they disagree with it altogether: for they dwell upon ideal excitements of the most vehement character. They describe the highest perfection of human nature as growing out of the better variety of madness — out of the glowing inspirations of Eros: a state replete with the most intense alternating emotions of pain and pleasure. How opposite is the tone of Sokrates in the Philêbus, where he denounces all the intense pleasures as belonging to a distempered condition — as adulterated with pain, and as impeding the tranquil process of Reason — and where he tolerates only such gentle pleasures as are at once unmixed400 with pain and easily controuled by Reason! In the Phædrus and Symposion, we are told that Bonum and Pulchrum are attainable only under the stimulus of Eros, through a process of emotion, feverish and extatic, with mingled pleasure and pain: and that they crown such aspirations, if successfully prosecuted, with an emotional recompense, or with pleasure so intense as to surpass all other pleasures. In the Philêbus, Bonum and Pulchrum come before us as measure, proportion, seasonableness: as approachable only through tranquil Reason — addressing their ultimate recompense to Reason alone — excluding both vehement agitations and intense pleasures — and leaving only a corner of the mind for gentle and unmixed pleasures.159
158 See in the Symposion the doctrines of the prophetess Diotima, as recited by Sokrates, pp. 204-212: also the Phædrus, the second ἐγκώμιον delivered by Sokrates upon Eros, pp. 36-60, repeated briefly and confirmed by Sokrates, pp. 77-78.
Compare these with the latter portion of the Philêbus; the difference of spirit and doctrine will appear very manifest.
To illustrate the contrast between the Phædrus and the Philêbus, we may observe that the former compares the excitement and irritation of the inspired soul when its wings are growing to ascend to Bonum and Pulchrum, with the κνῆσις or irritation of the gums when a child is cutting teeth — ζεῖ οὖν ἐν τούτῳ ὅλη καὶ ἀνακηκίει, καὶ ὅπερ τὸ τῶν ὀδοντοφυούντων πάθος περὶ τοὺς ὀδόντας γίγνεται ὅταν ἄρτι φυῶσι κνῆσίς τε καὶ ἀγανάκτησις περὶ τὰ οὖλα, ταὐτὸν δὴ πέπονθεν ἡ τοῦ πτεροφυεῖν ἀρχομένου ψυχή· ζεῖ τε καὶ ἀγανακτεῖ καὶ γαργαλίζεται φύουσα τὰ πτερά (Phædrus, p. 251). These are specimens of the strong metaphors used by Plato to describe the emotional condition of the mind during its fervour of aspiration towards Bonum and Pulchrum. On the other hand, in the Philêbus, κνῆσις and γαργαλισμὸς are noted as manifestations of that distempered condition which produces indeed moments of intense pleasure, but is quite inconsistent with Reason and the attainment of Good. See Philêbus, pp. 46 E, 51 D, and Gorgias, p. 494.
159 Plato, Philêbus, p. 66.
The comparison, here made, of the Philêbus with the Phædrus and Symposion, is one among many proofs of the different points of view with which Plato, in his different dialogues,160 handled the same topics of ethical and psychological discussion. And upon this point of dissent, Eudoxus and Epikurus, would have agreed with the Sokrates of the Philêbus, in deprecating that extatic vein of emotion which is so greatly extolled in the Phædrus and Symposion.
160 Maximus Tyrius remarks this difference (between the erotic dialogues of Plato and many of the others) in one of his discourses about the ἐρωτικὴ of Sokrates. Οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς αὑτῷ ὅμοιος ὁ Σωκράτης ἐρῶν τῷ σωφρονοῦντι, καὶ ὁ ἐκπληττόμενος τοὺς καλοὺς τῷ ἐλέγχοντι τοὺς ἄφρονας, &c. (Diss. xxiv. 5, p. 466 ed. Reiske).
Persons and situation of the dialogue.
In this dialogue the only personages are, Sokrates as an elderly man, and Menexenus, a young Athenian of noble family, whom we have already seen as the intimate friend of Lysis, in the dialogue known under the name of Lysis.
Funeral harangue at Athens — Choice of a public orator — Sokrates declares the task of the public orator to be easy — Comic exaggeration of the effects of the harangue.
Sokr. — What have you been doing at the Senate-house, Menexenus? You probably think that your course of education and philosophy is finished, and that you are qualified for high political functions. Young as you are, you aim at exercising command over us elders, as your family have always done before you.1 Menex. — I shall do so, if you advise and allow me, Sokrates: but not otherwise. Now, however, I came to learn who was the person chosen by the Senate to deliver the customary oration at the approaching public funeral of the citizens who have fallen in battle. The Senate, however, have adjourned the election until to-morrow: but I think either Archinus or Dion will be chosen. Sokr. — To die in battle is a fine thing in many ways.2 He who dies thus may be poor, but he receives a splendid funeral: he may be of little worth, yet he is still praised in prepared speeches by able orators, who decorate his name with brilliant encomiums, whether deserved or not, fascinating all the hearers: extolling us all — not merely the slain warrior, but the city collectively, our ancestors, and us the living — so admirably that I stand bewitched when I hear them, and fancy myself a 402greater, nobler, and finer man than I was before. I am usually accompanied by some strangers, who admire as much as I do, and who conceive a lofty estimation both of me and of the city. The voice of the orator resounds in my ear, and the feeling of pride dwells in my mind, for more than three days; during which interval I fancy myself almost in the islands of the blest. I hardly come to myself or recollect where I am, until the fourth or fifth day. Such is the force of these orators.
1 Plat. Menex. p. 234 B-C.
2 Plat. Menex. p. 235 A-B.
Sokrates professes to have learnt a funeral harangue from Aspasia, and to be competent to recite it himself. Menexenus entreats him to do so.
Menex. — You are always deriding the orators, Sokrates.3 However, on this occasion I think the orator chosen will have little chance of success: he will have no time for preparation, and will be obliged to speak impromptu. Sokr. — Never fear: each of these orators has harangues ready prepared. Besides, there is no difficulty here in speaking impromptu. If indeed the purpose were to praise the Athenians in Peloponnesus, or the Peloponnesians at Athens, an excellent orator would be required to persuade or to give satisfaction. But when he exhibits before the very hearers whom he praises, there is no great difficulty in appearing to be a good speaker.4 Menex. — Indeed! What! do you think you would be competent to deliver the harangue yourself, if the Senate were to elect you? Sokr. — Certainly: and it is no wonder that I should be competent to speak, because I have learnt rhetoric from Aspasia (an excellent mistress, who has taught many eminent speakers, and among them Perikles, the most illustrious of all), and the harp from Konnus. But any one else, even less well-trained than me — instructed in music by Lamprus, and in rhetoric by Antiphon — would still be fully competent to succeed in praising Athenians among Athenians. Menex. — What would you have to say, if the duty were imposed upon you?5 Sokr. — Probably little or nothing of my own. But it was only yesterday that I heard Aspasia going through a funeral harangue for this very occasion: partly suggestions of the present moment, partly recollections of past matters which had 403occurred to her when she composed the funeral harangue delivered by Perikles. Menex. — Could you recollect what Aspasia said? Sokr. — I should be much to blame if I could not. I learnt it from herself, and was near being beaten because I partly forgot it. Menex. — Why do you not proceed with it then? Sokr. — I fear that my instructress would be displeased, if I were to publish her discourse. Menex. — Do not fear that, but proceed to speak. You will confer the greatest pleasure upon me, whether what you say comes from Aspasia or from any one else. Only proceed. Sokr. — But perhaps you will laugh me to scorn, if I, an elderly man, continue still such work of pastime.6 Menex. — Not at all: I beseech you to speak. Sokr. — Well, I cannot refuse you. Indeed, I could hardly refuse, if you requested me to strip naked and dance — since we are here alone.7
3 Plat. Menex. p. 235 C. Ἀεὶ σὺ προσπαίζεις, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοὺς ῥήτορας.
4 Plat. Menex. p. 235 D.
Aristotle refers twice to this dictum as being a true remark made by Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ, Rhetoric, i. 9, p. 1367, b. 8, iii. 14, p. 1415, b. 30.
5 Plat. Menex. p. 236 A.
6 Plato, Menex. p. 236 C. Ἀλλ’ ἴσως μου καταγελάσει, ἄν σοι δόξω πρεσβύτης ὢν ἔτι παίζειν.
7 Plat. Menex. pp. 234 C, 236 C.
Sokrates then proceeds to recite a funeral harangue of some length which continues almost to the end.8 When he concludes — repeating his declaration that the harangue comes from Aspasia — Menexenus observes, By Zeus, Sokrates, Aspasia is truly enviable, if she, a woman, is competent to compose such discourses as that.
8 Plat. Menex. pp. 236 C, 249 C.
Compliments of Menexenus after Sokrates has finished, both to the harangue itself and to Aspasia.
Sokr. — If you do not believe me, come along with me, and you will hear it from her own lips. Menex. — I have often been in company with Aspasia, and I know what sort of person she is. Sokr. — Well then, don’t you admire her? and are you not grateful to her for the harangue? Menex. — I am truly grateful for the harangue, to her, or to him, whoever it was that prompted you: and most of all, I am grateful to you for having recited it. Sokr. — Very good. Take care then that you do not betray me. I may perhaps be able, on future occasions, to recite to you many other fine political harangues from her. Menex. — Be assured that I will not betray you. Only let me hear them. Sokr. — I certainly will.
Supposed period — shortly after the peace of Antalkidas.
The interval between these two fragments of dialogue is filled up by the recitation of Sokrates: a long funeral harangue in honour of deceased warriors, whom the 404city directs to be thus commemorated. The period is supposed to be not long after the peace concluded by Antalkidas in 387 B.C. That peace was imposed upon Sparta, Athens, and the other Grecian cities, by the imperative rescript of the Persian king: the condition of it being an enforcement of universal autonomy, or free separate government to each city, small as well as great.9
9 See respecting the character of the peace of Antalkidas, and the manner in which its conditions were executed, my History of Greece, chap. 76.
Custom of Athens about funeral harangues. Many such harangues existed at Athens, composed by distinguished orators or logographers — Established type of the harangue.
It had been long the received practice among the Athenians to honour their fallen warriors from time to time by this sort of public funeral, celebrated with every demonstration of mournful respect: and to appoint one of the ablest and most dignified citizens as public orator on the occasion.10 The discourse delivered by Perikles, as appointed orator, at the end of the first Peloponnesian war, has been immortalised by Thucydides, and stands as one of the most impressive remnants of Hellenic antiquity. Since the occasion recurred pretty often, and since the orator chosen was always a man already conspicuous,11 we may be sure that there existed in the time of Plato many funeral harangues which are now lost: indeed he himself says in this dialogue, that distinguished politicians prepared such harangues beforehand, in case the choice of the citizens should fall upon them. And we may farther be sure, amidst the active cultivation of rhetoric at Athens — that the rhetorical teachers as well as their pupils, and the logographers or paid composers of speeches, were practised in this variety of oratorical compositions not less than in others. We have one of them among the remaining discourses of the logographer Lysias: who could not actually have delivered it himself (since he was not even a citizen) — nor could ever probably have been called upon to prepare one for delivery (since the citizens chosen were always eminent speakers and politicians themselves, not requiring the aid of a logographer) — but who composed it as a rhetorical exercise to extend his own celebrity. In like manner we find 405one among the discourses of Demosthenes, though of very doubtful authenticity. The funeral discourse had thus come to acquire an established type. Rhetorical teachers had collected and generalised, out of the published harangues before them, certain loci communes, religious, patriotic, social, historical or pseudo-historical, &c., suitable to be employed by any new orator.12 All such loci were of course framed upon the actual sentiments prevalent among the majority of Athenians; furnishing eloquent expression for sympathies and antipathies deeply lodged in every one’s bosom.
10 Thucyd. ii. 34.
11 Thucyd. ii. 34. ὃς ἂν γνώμῃ τε δοκῇ μὴ ἀξύνετος εἶναι, καὶ ἀξιώματι προήκῃ.
12 Aristotel. Rhetoric. i. 5, p. 1360, b. 31, i. 9, p. 1367. Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetoric. c. 6, pp. 260-267.
“Nec enim artibus inventis factum est, ut argumenta inveniremus; sed dicta sunt omnia, antequam præciperentur: mox ea scriptores observata et collecta ediderunt” (Quintilian, Inst. Or. v. 10).
Plato in this harangue conforms to the established type — Topics on which he insists.
The funeral discourse which we read in the Menexenus is framed upon this classical model. It dwells, with emphasis and elegance, upon the patriotic common-places which formed the theme of rhetors generally. Plato begins by extolling the indigenous character of the Athenian population; not immigrants from abroad (like the Peloponnesians), but born from the very soil of Attica:13 which, at a time when other parts of the earth produced nothing but strange animals and plants, gave birth to an admirable breed of men, as well as to wheat and barley for their nourishment, and to the olive for assisting their bodily exercises.14 Attica was from the beginning favoured by the Gods; and the acropolis had been an object of competition between Athênê and Poseidon.15 She was the common and equal mother of all the citizens, who, from such community of birth and purity of Hellenic origin, had derived the attributes which they had ever since manifested — attachment to equal laws among themselves, Panhellenic patriotism, and hatred of barbarians.16 The free and equal political constitution of Athens — called an aristocracy, or presidency of the best men, under the choice and 406approval of the multitude — as it was and as it always had been, is here extolled by Plato, as a result of the common origin.
13 Plat. Menex. pp. 237-245. 245 D: οὐ γάρ Πέλοπες οὐδὲ Κάδμοι οὐδὲ Αἴγυπτοί τε καὶ Δαναοὶ οὐδὲ ἄλλοι πολλοί, φύσει μὲν βάρβαροι ὄντες, νόμῳ δὲ Ἕλληνες, συνοικοῦσιν ἡμῖν, ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ Ἕλληνες, οὐ μιξοβάρβαροι οἰκοῦμεν, &c.
14 Plat. Menex. pp. 237 D, 238 A.
15 Plat. Menex. p. 237 C.
16 Plat. Menex. pp. 238 D, 239 A, 245 C-D. 239 A: ἡ ἰσογονία ἡμᾶς ἡ κατὰ φύσιν ἰσονομίαν ἀναγκάζει ζητεῖν κατὰ νόμον, καὶ μηδενὶ ἄλλῳ ὑπείκειν ἀλλήλοις ἢ ἀρετῆς δόξῃ καὶ φρονήσεως. 245 D: ὅθεν καθαρὸν τὸ μῖσος ἐντέτηκε τῇ πόλει τῆς ἀλλοτρίας φύσεως (i.e. of the βάρβαροι).
Alluding briefly to the victories over Eumolpus and the Amazons, the orator passes on to the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, which he celebrates with the warmth of an Hellenic patriot.17 He eulogizes the generous behaviour of Athens towards the Greeks, during the interval between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, contrasting it with the unworthy requital which she received from Sparta and others. He then glances at the events of the Peloponnesian wars, though colouring them in a manner so fanciful and delusive, that any one familiar with Thucydides can scarcely recognise their identity — especially in regard to the Athenian expedition against Syracuse.18 He protests against the faithlessness of Sparta, towards the close of the Peloponnesian war, in allying herself with the common anti-Hellenic enemy — the Great King — against Athens: and he ascribes mainly to this unholy alliance the conquest of Athens at the end of the war.19 The moderation of political parties in Athens, when the Thirty were put down and the democracy restored, receives its due meed of praise: but the peculiar merit claimed for Athens, in reference to the public events between 403 B.C. and 387 B.C., is — That she stood alone among Greeks in refusing to fraternise with the Persian King, or to betray to him the Asiatic Greeks. Athens had always been prompted by generous feeling, even in spite of political interests, to compassionate and befriend the weak.20 The orator dwells with satisfaction on the years preceding the peace concluded by Antalkidas; during which years Athens had recovered her walls and her ships — had put down the Spartan superiority at sea — and had rescued even the Great King from Spartan force.21 He laments the disasters of Athenian soldiers at Corinth, through 407difficulties of the ground — and at Lechæum, through treachery. These are the latest political events to which he alludes.22
17 Plat. Menex. pp. 240-241.
18 Plat. Menex. pp. 242-243.
19 Plat. Menex. pp. 243-244.
20 Plat. Menex. pp. 244-245. 244 E: εἴ τις βούλοιτο τῆς πόλεως κατηγορῆσαι δικαίως, τοῦτ’ ἂν μόνον λέγων ὀρθῶς ἂν κατηγοροίη, ὡς ἀεὶ λίαν φιλοικτίρμων ἐστί, καὶ τοῦ ἥττονος θεραπίς. Isokrates also, in the Oratio Panegyrica (Or. iv.), dwells upon this point, as well as on the pronounced hatred towards βάρβαροι, as standing features in the Athenian character (sect. 59-184). The points touched upon in reference to Athens by Isokrates are in the main the same as those brought out by Plato in the Menexenus, only that Isokrates makes them subservient to a special purpose, that of bringing about an expedition against Persia under the joint headship of Sparta and Athens.
21 Plat. Menex. p. 245.
22 Plat. Menex. pp. 245 E, 246 A.
Consolation and exhortation to surviving relatives.
Having thus touched upon the political history of Athens, he turns to the surviving relatives — fathers, mothers, children, &c. — of the fallen warriors: addressing to them words of mingled consolation and exhortation. He adopts the fiction of supposing these exhortations to have been suggested to him by the warriors themselves, immediately before entering upon their last battle.23 This is the most eloquent and impressive portion of the harangue. The orator concludes by a few words from himself, inculcating on the elders the duty of resignation, and on the youth that of forward and devoted patriotism.24
23 Plat. Menex. pp. 247-248.
24 Plat. Menex. p. 249 A-C.
Admiration felt for this harangue, both at the time and afterwards.
That this oration was much admired, not merely during the lifetime of Plato, but also long after his death, we know from the testimony of Cicero; who informs us that it was publicly recited every year on the day when the annual funeral rites were celebrated, in honour of those citizens collectively who had been slain in the service of their country.25 The rhetor Dionysius26 recognises the fact of such warm admiration, and concurs generally therein, yet not without reserves. He points out what he considers defects of thought and expression — ostentatious contrasts and balancing of antithetical clauses, after the manner of Gorgias. Yet we may easily believe that the harangue found much favour, and greatly extended the reputation of its author. It would please many readers who took little interest in the Sokratic dialectics.
25Cicero, Orator. c. 44, 151. “At non Thucydides: ne ille quidem, haud paullo major scriptor, Plato: nec solum in his sermonibus, qui dialogi dicuntur, ubi etiam de industriâ id faciendum fuit, sed in populari oratione, quâ est Athenis laudari in concione eos, qui sint in præliis interfecti: quæ sic probata est, ut eam quotannis, ut scis, illo die recitari necesse sit.”
See Plato, Menex. p. 249 B, about these yearly funereal rites, and Lysias, Epitaph. s. 80.
26 Dionys. Hal. De Adm. Vi Dic. in Demosth. p. 1027, compared with Ars Rhetoric. c. 6, pp. 260-267.
Probable motives of Plato in composing it, shortly after he established himself at Athens as a teacher — His competition with Lysias — Desire for celebrity both as rhetor and as dialectician.
When Plato first established himself at Athens as a lecturer (about 386 B.C., shortly after the peace made by Antalkidas), he was probably known only by Sokratic dialogues, properly so called: which Dionysius408 specifies both as his earliest works and as his proper department, wherein he stood unrivalled.27 In these, his opposition to the Rhetors and Sophists was proclaimed: and if, as is probable, the Gorgias had been published before that time, he had already declared war, openly as well as bitterly, against the whole art of Rhetoric. But it would be a double triumph for his genius, if, after standing forward as the representative of Dialectic, and in that character heaping scornful derision on the rival art of Rhetoric, as being nothing better than a mere knack of juggling and flattery28 — he were able to show that this did not proceed from want of rhetorical competence, but that he could rival or surpass the Rhetors in their own department. Herein lies the purpose of the Menexenus. I agree with Schleiermacher, Stallbaum, and some other critics,29 in thinking that it was probably composed not long after the peace of Antalkidas, in competition with the harangue of Lysias now remaining on the same subject. Though the name of Lysias is not mentioned in the Menexenus, yet the rivalry between him and Plato is clearly proclaimed in the Platonic Phædrus: and the two funeral harangues go so completely over the same ground, that intentional competition 409on the part of the latest, is the most natural of all hypotheses.
27 Dionys. Hal. ad Cn. Pomp. De Platon. p. 762. τραφεὶς μὲν ἐν τοῖς Σωκρατικοῖς διαλόγοις ἰσχνοτάτοις οὖσι καὶ ἀκριβεστάτοις, οὐ μείνας δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ τῆς Γοργίου καὶ Θουκυδίδου κατασκευῆς ἐρασθείς. Compare p. 761, the passage immediately preceding, and De Adm. Vi Dicendi in Demosthene, pp. 1025-1031.
To many critics Plato appeared successful in the figurative and metaphorical style — δεινὸς περὶ τὸ τροπικόν. But Dionysius thinks him very inferior to Demosthenes even on this point, though it was not the strongest point of Demosthenes, whose main purpose was ὁ ἀληθινὸς ἀγών (Dionys. ibid. p. 1057).
28 Isokrates, in his last composition (Panathen. Or. xii.) written in very old age, shows how keenly he felt the aspersions of jealous rivals — Sophists less successful than himself — who publicly complained that he despised the lessons of the poets, and thought no teaching worth having except his own — ἀποδεξαμένων δὲ τῶν περιεστώτων τὴν διατριβὴν αὐτῶν, ἕνα τὸν τολμηρότερον ἐπιχειρῆσαι ἐμὲ διαβάλλειν, λέγονθ’ ὡς ἐγὼ πάντων καταφρονῶ ὦν τοιούτων, καὶ τάς τε φιλοσοφίας τὰς τῶν ἄλλων καὶ τὰς παιδείας ἁπάσας ἀναιρῶ, καὶ φημὶ πάντας ληρεῖν πλὴν τοὺς μετεσχηκότας τῆς ἐμῆς διατριβῆς (sect. 22). That which Isokrates complains of these teachers for saying in their talk with each other, the rhetorical teachers would vehemently complain of in Plato, when he expressed forcibly his contempt for rhetoric in the Gorgias and the Phædrus. One way of expressing their resentment would be to affirm that Plato could not compose a regular rhetorical discourse; which affirmation Plato would best contradict by composing one in the received manner.
29 See the Einleitung of Schleiermacher to his translation of the Menexenus; also Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Menex. p. 10, and Westermann, Gesch. der Beredtsamkeit, sect. 66, p. 134.
Menexenus compared with the view of rhetoric presented in the Gorgias — Necessity for an orator to conform to established sentiments.
Here then we have Plato exchanging philosophy for “the knack of flattery” — to use the phrase of the Gorgias. Stallbaum is so unwilling to admit this as possible, that he represents the Platonic harangue as a mere caricature, intended to make the rhetorical process ridiculous. I dissent from this supposition; as I have already dissented from the like supposition of the same critic, in regard to the etymologies of the Kratylus. That Plato might in one dialogue scornfully denounce Rhetoric — and in another, compose an elaborate discourse upon the received rhetorical type — is noway inconsistent with the general theory which I frame to myself, about the intellectual character and distinct occasional manifestations of Plato.30 The funeral harangue in the Menexenus proves that, whatever he thought about Rhetoric generally, he was anxious to establish his title as a competent rhetorical composer: it proves farther that he was equal to Lysias in the epideiktic department, though inferior to Perikles. It affords a valuable illustration of that general doctrine which the Platonic Sokrates lays down in the Gorgias — That no man can succeed as a rhetor, unless he is in full harmony of spirit and cast of mind with his auditors; or unless he dwells upon and enforces sympathies, antipathies, and convictions, already established in their minds.31 A first-rate orator like Perikles, touching the chords of cherished national sentiment, might hope, by such a discourse as that which we read in Thucydides, “adjecisse aliquid receptæ religioni”.32 No public orator ever appointed 410by the Senate to pronounce the funeral harangue, could have expatiated more warmly than Plato has here done, upon the excellence of the Athenian constitution, and upon the admirable spirit which had animated Athenian politics, both foreign and domestic. Plato falls far short, indeed, of the weight and grandeur, the impressive distinctness of specification, the large sympathies, intellectual as well as popular — with which these topics are handled by Perikles in Thucydides: but his eulogy is quite as highflown and unreserved.
30 Compare also the majestic picture which Plato presents of the ancient character and exploits of the early Athenians, in the mythe commenced in the Timæus (pp. 23-24), prosecuted in the Kritias (pp. 113-114 seq.), but left by the author incomplete.
31 Plato, Gorgias, p. 510 C; see above, ch. xxiv. p. 359.
This appears to me the real truth, subject to very rare exceptions. But I do not think it true to say, as the Platonic Sokrates is made to declare in the Menexenus, that it is an easy matter to obtain admiration when you praise Athens among Athenians — though Aristotle commends the observation. Assuredly Perikles did not think so (Thucyd. ii. 35). You have a popular theme, but unless you have oratorical talent to do justice to it you are likely to disappoint and offend, especially among auditors like the Athenians, accustomed to good speaking. Compare Plat. Kritias, p. 107 E.
32 To employ the striking expression of Quintilian (xii. 10) respecting the great statue of Zeus at Olympia by Pheidias.
Colloquial portion of the Menexenus is probably intended as ridicule and sneer at Rhetoric — The harangue itself is serious, and intended as an evidence of Plato’s ability.
In understanding fully the Menexenus, however, we have to take account, not merely of the harangue which forms the bulk of it, but also of the conversation whereby it is commenced and concluded. Plato, speaking always through the mouth of Sokrates, has to invent some fiction excusing the employment of his master in the unprecedented capacity of public orator. What Stallbaum says (in my judgment, erroneously) about the harangue — appears to me perfectly true about the conversation before and after it. The introductory observations, interchanged between Sokrates and Menexenus, certainly tend to caricature (as Aristophanes33 does in the Acharneis and the Equites) the strong effects produced by this panegyrical oratory on the feelings of hearers; and to depreciate the task of the orator as nothing better than an easy and amusing pastime. To praise Athens among Athenian auditors (we are told) is a matter in which few speakers can fail to succeed, however poor their abilities. Moreover, the great funeral harangue of Perikles is represented as having been composed for him by Aspasia34 — a 411female, though remarkable among her sex — who is extolled as holding the highest place among rhetorical teachers, and is introduced here, as Aristophanes introduces her in the Acharneis, when he is putting a construction of discreditable ridicule on the origin of the Peloponnesian war.35 To make a good funeral harangue (Sokrates says) requires little or no preliminary preparation: besides, the Rhetors have harangues ready prepared at home. All this persiflage, in harmony with the polemics of the Gorgias, derides and degrades the Rhetors collectively. But when Plato takes the field against them as a competitor, in his own rhetorical discourse, he drops the ironical vein, and takes pains to deliver one really good and excellent in its kind. His triumph is thus doubled. He tells the Rhetors that their business is a trifling and despicable one: at the same time showing them that, despicable as it is, he can surpass them in it, as he professes to surpass Lysias in the Phædrus.36
33 Aristoph. Acharn. 615, Equit. 640-887.
The comic exaggeration of Sokrates, in the colloquial portion of the Menexenus (235 B-C) goes as far as that of Aristophanes.
34 By the language of Plato here, he seems plainly to bring his own harangue into competition not merely with that of Lysias but also with that of Perikles. But we must not suppose for that reason, that he necessarily has in view the Periklean harangue which we now read in Thucydides, ii. 35-43: which is the real speech, reported and drest up by Thucydides in his own language and manner. Probably the Periklean harangue was preserved separately and in other reports, so that Plato may have known it without knowing the history of Thucydides. When I see the extreme liberty which Plato takes throughout his harangue in regard to the history of the past, I can hardly believe that he ever read Thucydides; if he ever read the history, he certainly disregarded it altogether, and threw himself ἐπὶ τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον: like the λογογράφοι of whom Thucydides speaks, i. 21, Lysias among them, though in a less degree than Plato. Æschines Sokraticus had composed among his dialogues one entitled Ἀσπασία. See Xenophon, Œconom. i. 14; Cicero de Inventione, i. 31: Plutarch, Perikles, c. 24-32: also Bergk, De Reliquiis Comœd. Attic. Antiq. p. 237.
35 Aristoph. Acharn. 501.
36 The remarks of Dionysius of Halikarnassus (in the Epistle to Cn. Pompey about Plato, pp. 754-758) are well deserving of attention: especially as he had before him many writers now lost, either contemporary with Plato or of the succeeding generation. He notices not only Plato’s asperity in ridiculing most of his distinguished contemporaries, but also his marked rivalry against Lysias.
ἦν γάρ, ἦν μὲν τῇ Πλάτωνος φύσει πολλὰς ἀρετὰς ἐχούσῃ τὸ φιλότιμον, &c. (p. 756).
See this subject well handled in an instructive Dissertation by M. Lebeau (Stuttgart, 1863, Lysias’ Epitaphios als ächt erwiesen, pp. 42-46 seq.).
Anachronism of the Menexenus — Plato careless on this point.
Such I conceive to be the scope of the dialogue, looked at from Plato’s point of view. In order to find a person suitable in point of age to be described as the teacher of Sokrates, he is forced to go back to the past generation — that of Perikles and Aspasia. But though he avoids anachronism on this point, he cannot avoid the anachronism of making Sokrates allude to events long posterior to his own death. This anachronism is real, though it has been magnified by some critics into a graver defect than it is in truth. Plato was resolved not to speak in his own person, but through that of Sokrates. But he is not always 412careful to keep within the limits which consistent adherence to such a plan imposes.37
37 Groen van Prinsterer (Prosopographia Platonica, p. 211 seq.) adverts to the carelessness of Plato about exact chronology.
Most of the Platonic critics recognise the Menexenus as a genuine Platonic dialogue. Ast, however, includes it among the numerous dialogues which he disallows as spurious; and Suckow, Steinhart, and Ueberweg, are also inclined to disallow it. See Ueberweg, Die Aechtheit der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 143-148. These critics make light of the allusion of Aristotle in the Rhetoric — Σωκράτης ἐν τῷ Ἐπιταφίῳ — which appears to me, I confess, of more weight than all the grounds of suspicion adduced by them to prove the dialogue spurious. The presumption in favour of the catalogue of Thrasyllus counts with them, here as elsewhere, for nothing.
Persons and circumstances of Kleitophon.
The Kleitophon is an unfinished fragment, beginning with a short introductory conversation between Sokrates and Kleitophon, and finishing with a discourse of some length, a sort of remonstrance or appeal, addressed by Kleitophon to Sokrates; who makes no reply.
Some one was lately telling me (says Sokrates) that Kleitophon, in conversation with Lysias, depreciated the conversation of Sokrates, and extolled prodigiously that of Thrasymachus.
Conversation of Sokrates with Kleitophon alone: he alludes to observations of an unfavourable character recently made by Kleitophon, who asks permission to explain.
Whoever told you so (replies Kleitophon), did not report accurately what I said. On some points, indeed, I did not praise you; but on other points I did praise you. Since, however, you are evidently displeased with me, though you affect indifference — and since we are here alone — I should be glad to repeat the same observations to yourself, in order that you may not believe me to think meanly of you. These incorrect reports seem to have made you displeased with me, more than is reasonable. I am anxious to speak to you with full freedom, if you will allow it.1
1 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 406.
It would be a shame indeed (rejoined Sokrates), if, when you were anxious to do me good, I could not endure to receive it. When I have learnt which are my worst and which are my best points, I shall evidently be in a condition to cultivate and pursue the latter and resolutely to avoid the former.
414Hear me then (says Kleitophon).
Explanation given. Kleitophon expresses gratitude and admiration for the benefit which he has derived from long companionship with Sokrates.
As your frequent companion, Sokrates, I have often listened to you with profound admiration. I thought you superior to all other speakers when you proclaimed your usual strain of reproof, like the God from a dramatic machine, against mankind.2 You asked them, “Whither are you drifting, my friends? You do not seem aware that you are doing wrong when you place all your affections on the gain of money, and neglect to teach your sons and heirs the right use of money. You do not provide for them teachers of justice, if justice be teachable; nor trainers of it, if it be acquirable by training and habit; nor indeed have you studied the acquisition of it, even for yourselves. Since the fact is obvious that, while you, as well as your sons, have learnt what passes for a finished education in virtue (letters, music, gymnastic), you nevertheless yield to the corruptions of gain — how comes it that you do not despise your actual education, and look out for teachers to correct such disorder? It is this disorder, not the want of accomplishment in the use of the lyre, which occasions such terrible discord, and such calamitous war, between brother and brother — between city and city.3 You affirm that men do wrong wilfully, not from ignorance or want of training: yet nevertheless you are bold enough to say, that wrong-doing is dishonourable and offensive to the Gods. How can any one, then, choose such an evil willingly? You tell us it is because he is overcome by pleasures: well then, that again comes to unwillingness — if victory be the thing which every man wishes: so that, whichever way you turn it, reason shows you that wrong-doing is taken up unwillingly, and that greater precautions ought to be taken upon the subject, both by individuals and by cities.”4
2 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 A. ἐγὼ γάρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, σοὶ συγγιγνόμενος, πολλάκις ἐξεπληττόμην ἀκούων· καί μοι ἐδόκεις παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους κάλλιστα λέγειν, ὁπότε ἐπιτιμῶν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ μηχανῆς τραγικῆς θεός, ὑμεῖς, λέγων, ποῖ φερεσθε, ἄνθρωποι; &c.
3 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 B-C.
4 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 407 D-E. ὥστε ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου τό γε ἀδικεῖν ἀκούσιον ὁ λόγος αἱρεῖ, καὶ δεῖν ἐπιμέλειαν τῆς νῦν πλείω ποιεῖσθαι πάντ’ ἄνδρα ἰδίᾳ θ’ ἅμα καὶ δημοσίᾳ ξυμπάσας τὰς πόλεις.
The observations made by Sokrates have been most salutary and stimulating in awakening ardour for virtue. Arguments and analogies commonly used by Sokrates.
Such, Sokrates (continues Kleitophon), is the language which 415I often hear from you; and which I always hear with the strongest and most respectful admiration. You follow it up by observing, that those who train their bodies and neglect their minds, commit the mistake of busying themselves about the subordinate and neglecting the superior. You farther remark, that if a man does not know how to use any object rightly, he had better abstain from using it altogether: if he does not know how to use his eyes, his ears, or his body — it will be better for him neither to see, nor to hear, nor to use his body at all: the like with any instrument or article of property — for whoever cannot use his own lyre well, cannot use his neighbour’s lyre better. Out of these premisses you bring out forcibly the conclusion — That if a man does not know how to use his mind rightly, it is better for him to make no use of it:— better for him not to live, than to live under his own direction. If he must live, he had better live as a slave than a freeman, surrendering the guidance of his understanding to some one else who knows the art of piloting men: which art you, Sokrates, denominate often the political art, sometimes the judicial art or justice.5
5 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 408 B. ἦν δὴ σὺ πολιτικήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὀνομάζεις πολλάκις, τὴν αὐτὴν δὴ ταύτην δικαστικήν τε καὶ δικαιοσύνην ὡς ἔστι λέγων.
But Sokrates does not explain what virtue is, nor how it is to be attained. Kleitophon has had enough of stimulus, and now wants information how he is to act.
These discourses of yours, alike numerous and admirable — showing that virtue is teachable, and that a man should attend to himself before he attends to other objects — I never have contradicted, and never shall contradict. I account them most profitable and stimulating, calculated to wake men as it were out of sleep. I expected anxiously what was to come afterwards. I began by copying your style and asking, not yourself, but those among your companions whom you esteemed the most6 — How are we now to understand this stimulus imparted by Sokrates towards virtue? Is this to be all? Cannot we make advance towards virtue and get full possession of it? Are we to pass 416our whole lives in stimulating those who have not yet been stimulated, in order that they in their turn may stimulate others? Is it not rather incumbent upon us, now that we have agreed thus far, to entreat both from Sokrates and from each other, an answer to the ulterior question, What next? How are we to set to work in regard to the learning of justice?7 If any trainer, seeing us careless of our bodily condition, should exhort us strenuously to take care of it, and convince us that we ought to do so — we should next ask him, which were the arts prescribing how we should proceed? He would reply — The gymnastic and medical arts. How will Sokrates or his friends answer the corresponding question in their case?
6 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 408 C. τούτων γὰρ τούς τι μάλιστα εἶναι δοξαζομένους ὑπὸ σοῦ πρώτους ἐπανηρώτων, πυνθανόμενος τίς ὁ μετὰ ταῦτ’ εἴη λόγος, καὶ κατὰ σὲ τρόπον τινὰ ὑποτείνων αὐτοῖς, &c.
7 Plato, Kleitophon, p. 408 D-E. ἢ δεῖ τὸν Σωκράτην καὶ ἀλλήλους ἡμᾶς τὸ μετὰ τοῦτ’ ἐπανερωτᾷν, ὁμολογήσαντας τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ ἀνθρώπῳ πρακτέον εἶναι. Τί τοὐντεῦθεν; πῶς ἄρχεσθαι δεῖν φαμὲν δικαιοσύνης περὶ μαθήσεως;
Questions addressed by Kleitophon with this view, both to the companions of Sokrates and to Sokrates himself.
The ablest of your companions answered me (continues Kleitophon), that the art to which you were wont to allude was no other than Justice itself. I told him in reply — Do not give me the mere name, but tell me what Justice is.8 In the medical art there are two distinct results contemplated and achieved: one, that of keeping up the succession of competent physicians — another that of conferring or preserving health: this last, Health, is not the art itself, but the work accomplished by the art. Just so, the builder’s art, has for its object the house, which is its work — and the keeping up the continuity of builders, which is its teaching. Tell me in the same manner respecting the art called Justice. Its teaching province is plain enough — to maintain the succession of just men: but what is its working province? what is the work which the just man does for us?
8 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 409 A. εἰπόντος δὲ μοῦ, Μή μοι τὸ ὄνομα μόνον εἰπῇς, ἀλλὰ ὦδε — Ἰατρική πού τις λέγεται τέχνη, &c,
Replies made by the friends of Sokrates unsatisfactory.
To this question your friend replied (explaining Justice) — it is The Advantageous. Another man near him said, The Proper: a third said, The Profitable: a fourth, The Gainful.9 I pursued the inquiry by observing, that these were general names equally applicable in 417other arts, and to something different in each. Every art aims at what is proper, advantageous, profitable, gainful, in its own separate department: but each can farther describe to you what that department is. Thus the art of the carpenter is, to perform well, properly, advantageously, profitably, &c., in the construction of wooden implements, &c. That is the special work of the carpenter’s art: now tell me, what is the special work, corresponding thereunto, of the art called Justice?
9 Plato, Kleitoph. 409 B. τὸ δ’ ἕτερον, ὃ δύναται ποιεῖν ἡμῖν ἔργον ὁ δίκαιος, τί τοῦτό φαμεν; εἶπε. Οὗτος μέν, ὡς οἶμαι, τὸ συμφέρον ἀπεκρίνατο· ἄλλος δέ, τὸ δέον· ἕτερος δέ, τὸ ὠφέλιμον· ὁ δέ, τὸ λυσιτελοῦν. ἐπανῄειν δὴ ἐγὼ λέγων ὅτι κἀκεῖνά γε ὀνόματα ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἐν ἑκάστῃ τῶν τεχνῶν, ὀρθῶς πράττειν, λυσιτελοῦντα, ὠφέλιμα, καὶ τἄλλα τὰ τοιαῦτα· ἀλλὰ πρὸς ὅ, τι ταῦτα πάντα τείνει, ἐρεῖ τὸ ἴδιον ἑκάστῃ τέχνῃ, &c.
None of them could explain what the special work of justice or virtue was.
At length one of your most accomplished companions, Sokrates, answered me — That the special work peculiar to Justice was, to bring about friendship in the community.10 Being farther interrogated, he said — That friendship was always a good, never an evil: That the so-called friendships between children, and between animals, mischievous rather than otherwise, were not real friendships, and ought not to bear the name: That the only genuine friendship was, sameness of reason and intelligence: not sameness of opinion, which was often hurtful — but knowledge and reason agreeing, in different persons.11
10 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 409 D. Τελευτῶν ἀπεκρίνατό τις, ὦ Σώκρατες, μοὶ τῶν σῶν ἑταίρων, ὃς δὴ κομψότατα ἔδοξεν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι τοῦτ’ εἴη τὸ τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἴδιον ἔργον, ὃ τῶν ἄλλων οὐδεμιᾶς, φιλίαν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι ποιεῖν.
11 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 409 E.
At this stage of our conversation the hearers themselves felt perplexed, and interfered to remonstrate with him; observing, that the debate had come round to the same point again. They declared that the medical art also was harmony of reason and intelligence: that the like was true besides of every other art: that each of them could define the special end to which it tended: but that as to that art, or that harmony of reason and intelligence, which had been called Justice, no one could see to what purpose it tended, nor what was its special work.12
12 Plato, Kleitoph. p. 410 A. καὶ ἔλεγον (i.e. the hearers said) ὅτι καὶ ἡ ἰατρικὴ ὁμόνοιά τίς ἐστι, καὶ ἅπασαι αἱ τέχναι, καὶ περὶ ὅτου εἰσίν, ἔχουσι λέγειν· τὴν δὲ ὑπὸ σοῦ λεγομένην δικαιοσύνην ἢ ὁμόνοιαν, ὅποι τείνουσά ἐστι, διαπέφευγε, καὶ ἄδηλον αὐτῆς ὅ, τι πότ ἐστὶ τὸ ἔργον.
Kleitophon at length asked the question from Sokrates himself. But Sokrates did not answer clearly. Kleitophon believes that Sokrates knows, but will not tell.
After all this debate (continues Kleitophon) I addressed the same question to yourself, Sokrates — What is Justice? You answered — To do good to friends, hurt to enemies. 418But presently it appeared, that the just man would never, on any occasion, do hurt to any one:— that he would act towards every one with a view to good. It is not once, nor twice, but often and often, that I have endured these perplexities, and have importuned you to clear them up.13 At last I am wearied out, and have come to the conviction that you are doubtless a consummate proficient in the art of stimulating men to seek virtue; but that as to the ulterior question, how they are to find it — you either do not know, or you will not tell. In regard to any art (such as steersmanship or others), there may be persons who can extol and recommend the art to esteem, but cannot direct the hearers how to acquire it: and in like manner a man might remark about you, that you do not know any better what Justice is, because you are a proficient in commending it. For my part, such is not my opinion. I think that you know, but have declined to tell me. I am resolved, in my present embarrassment, to go to Thrasymachus, or any one else that I can find to help me; unless you will consent to give me something more than these merely stimulating discourses.14 Consider me as one upon whom your stimulus has already told. If the question were about gymnastic, as soon as I had become fully stimulated to attend to my bodily condition, you would have given me, as a sequel to your stimulating discourse, some positive direction, what my body was by nature, and what treatment it required. Deal in like manner with the case before us: reckon Kleitophon as one fully agreeing with you, that it is contemptible to spend so much energy upon other objects, and to neglect our minds, with a view to which all other objects are treasured up. Put me down as having already given my adhesion to all these views of yours.
13 Plato, Kleitophon, p. 410 B. Ταῦτα δὲ οὐχ ἅπαξ οὐδὲ δὶς ἀλλὰ πολὺν δὴ ὑπομείνας χρόνον καὶ λιπαρῶν ἀπείρηκα, &c.
14 Plato, Kleitophon, p. 410 C. διὰ ταῦτα δὴ καὶ πρὸς Θρασύμαχον, οἶμαι, πορεύσομαι, καὶ ἄλλοσε ὅποι δύναμαι, ἀπορῶν — ἐπεὶ εἴ γ’ ἐθέλοις σὺ τούτων μὲν ἤδη παύσασθαι πρὸς ἐμὲ τῶν λόγων τῶν προτρεπτικῶν, &c.
Kleitophon is on the point of leaving Sokrates and going to Thrasymachus. But before leaving he addresses one last entreaty, that Sokrates will speak out clearly and explicitly.
Proceed, Sokrates — I supplicate you — to deal with me as I have described; in order that I may never more have occasion, when I talk with Lysias, to blame you on some points while praising you on others. I will 419repeat, that to one who has not yet received the necessary stimulus, your conversation is of inestimable value: but to one who has already been stimulated, it is rather a hindrance than a help, to his realising the full acquisition of virtue, and thus becoming happy.15
15 Plato, Kleitophon, p. 410 E. μὴ μὲν γὰρ προτετραμμένῳ σὲ ἀνθρώπῳ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἄξιον εἶναι τοῦ παντὸς φήσω, προτετραμμένῳ δέ, σχεδὸν καὶ ἐμπόδιον τοῦ πρὸς τέλος ἀρετῆς ἐλθόντα εὐδαίμονα γενέσθαι.
Remarks on the Kleitophon. Why Thrasyllus placed it in the eighth Tetralogy immediately before the Republic, and along with Kritias, the other fragment.
The fragment called Kleitophon (of which I have given an abstract comparatively long), is in several ways remarkable. The Thrasyllean catalogue places it first in the eighth Tetralogy; the three other members of the same Tetralogy being, Republic, Timæus, Kritias.16 Though it is both short, and abrupt in its close, we know that it was so likewise in antiquity: the ancient Platonic commentators observing, that Sokrates disdained to make any reply to the appeal of Kleitophon.17 There were therefore in this Tetralogy two fragments, unfinished works from the beginning — Kleitophon and Kritias.
16 Diog. L. iii. 59. The Kleitophon also was one of the dialogues selected by some students of Plato as proper to be studied first of all (Diog. L. iii. 61).
17 M. Boeckh observes (ad Platonis Minoem, p. 11):— “Nec minus falsum est, quod spurium Clitophontem plerique omnes mutilatum putant; quem ex auctoris manibus truncum excidisse inde intelligitur, quod ne vetusti quidem Platonici philosophi, quibus antiquissima exemplaria ad manum erant, habuerunt integriorem. Proclus in Timæ, i. p. 7. Πτολεμαῖος δὲ ὁ Πλατωνικὸς Κλειτοφῶντα αὐτὸν οἴεται εἶναι. τοῦτον γὰρ ἐν τῷ ὁμωνύμῳ διαλόγῳ μηδ’ ἀποκρίσεως ἠξιῶσθαι παρὰ Σωκράτους. Plané ut in Critiâ, quem ab ipso Platone non absolutum docet Plutarchus in Solone.”
M. Boeckh here characterises the Kleitophon as spurious, in which opinion I do not concur.
Yxem, in his Dissertation, Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, Berlin, 1846, has vindicated the genuineness of this dialogue, though many of his arguments are such as I cannot subscribe to.
He shows farther, that the first idea of distrusting the genuineness of the Kleitophon arose from the fact that the dialogue was printed in the Aldine edition of 1513, along with the spurious dialogues; although in that very Aldine edition the editors expressly announce that this was a mistake, and that the dialogue ought to have been printed as first of the eighth tetralogy. See Yxem, pp. 32-33. Subsequent editors followed the Aldine in printing the dialogue among the spurious, though still declaring that they did not consider it spurious.
We may explain why Thrasyllus placed the Kleitophon in immediate antecedence to the Republic: because 1. It complains 420bitterly of the want of a good explanation of Justice, which Sokrates in the latter books of the Republic professes to furnish. 2. It brings before us Kleitophon, who announces an inclination to consult Thrasymachus: now both these personages appear in the first book of the Republic, in which too Thrasymachus is introduced as disputing in a brutal and insulting way, and as humiliated by Sokrates: so that the Republic might be considered both as an answer to the challenge of the Kleitophon, and as a reproof to Kleitophon himself for having threatened to quit Sokrates and go to Thrasymachus.
Kleitophon is genuine, and perfectly in harmony with a just theory of Plato.
Like so many other pieces in the Thrasyllean catalogue, the Kleitophon has been declared to be spurious by Schleiermacher and other critics of the present century. I see no ground for this opinion, and I believe the dialogue to be genuine. If it be asked, how can we imagine Plato to have composed a polemic argument, both powerful and unanswered, against Sokrates, — I reply, that this is not so surprising as the Parmenidês: in which Plato has introduced the veteran so named as the successful assailant not only of Sokrates, but of the Platonic theory of Ideas defended by Sokrates.
I have already declared, that the character of Plato is, in my judgment, essentially many-sided. It comprehends the whole process of searching for truth, and testing all that is propounded as such: it does not shrink from broaching and developing speculative views not merely various and distinct, but sometimes even opposite.
It could not have been published until after Plato’s death.
Yet though the Kleitophon is Plato’s work, it is a sketch or fragment never worked out. In its present condition, it can hardly have been published (any more than the Kritias) either by his direction or during his life. I conceive it to have remained among his papers, to have been made known by his school after his death, and to have passed from thence among the other Platonic manuscripts into the Alexandrian library at its first foundation. Possibly it may have been originally intended as a preparation for the solution of that problem, which Sokrates afterwards undertakes in the Republic: for it is a challenge to Sokrates to explain what he means by Justice. It may have been intended 421as such, but never prosecuted:— the preparation for that solution being provided in another way, such as we now read in the first and second books of the Republic. That the great works of Plato — Republic, Protagoras, Symposion, &c. — could not have been completed without preliminary sketches and tentatives — we may regard as certain. That some of these sketches, though never worked up, and never published by Plato himself, should have been good enough to be preserved by him and published by those who succeeded him — is at the very least highly probable. One such is the Kleitophon.
Reasons why the Kleitophon was never finished. It points out the defects of Sokrates, just as he himself confesses them in the Apology.
When I read the Kleitophon, I am not at all surprised that Plato never brought it to a conclusion, nor ever provided Sokrates with an answer to the respectful, yet emphatic, requisition of Kleitophon. The case against Sokrates has been made so strong, that I doubt whether Plato himself could have answered it to his own satisfaction. It resembles the objections which he advances in the Parmenidês against the theory of Ideas: objections which he has nowhere answered, and which I do not believe that he could answer. The characteristic attribute of which Kleitophon complains in Sokrates is, that of a one-sided and incomplete efficiency — (φύσις μονόκωλος) — “You are perpetually stirring us up and instigating us: you do this most admirably: but when we have become full of fervour, you do not teach us how we are to act, nor point out the goal towards which we are to move”.18 Now this is precisely the description which Sokrates gives of his own efficiency, in the Platonic Apology addressed to the Dikasts. He lays especial stress on the mission imposed upon him by the Gods, to apply his Elenchus in testing and convicting the false persuasion of knowledge universally prevalent:— to make sure by repeated cross-examination, whether the citizens pursued money and worldly advancement more energetically than virtue:— and to worry the Athenians with perpetual stimulus, like the gadfly exciting a high-bred but lethargic horse. Sokrates describes this 422not only as the mission of his life, but as a signal benefit and privilege conferred upon Athens by the Gods.19 But here his services end. He declares explicitly that he shares in the universal ignorance, and that he is no wiser than any one else, except in being aware of his own ignorance. He disclaims all power of teaching:20 and he deprecates the supposition, — that he himself knew what he convicted others of not knowing, — as a mistake which had brought upon him alike unmerited reputation and great unpopularity.21 We find thus that the description given by Sokrates of himself in the Apology, and the reproach addressed to Sokrates by Kleitophon, fully coincide. “My mission from the Gods” (says Sokrates), “is to dispel the false persuasion of knowledge, to cross-examine men into a painful conviction of their own ignorance, and to create in them a lively impulse towards knowledge and virtue: but I am no wiser than they: I can teach them nothing, nor can I direct them what to do.” — That is exactly what I complain of (remarks Kleitophon): I have gone through your course, — have been electrified by your Elenchus, — and am full of the impulse which you so admirably communicate. In this condition, what I require is, to find out how, or in which direction I am to employ that impulse. If you cannot tell me, I must ask Thrasymachus or some one else.
18 I have in an earlier chapter (ch. viii. vol. i. p. 406) cited the passage — “Philosophiam multis locis inchoasti: ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum”. This is the language addressed by Cicero to Varro, and coinciding substantially with that of Kleitophon here.
19 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 28 E, 29 D-E, 30 A-E. 30 E: προσκείμενον τῇ πόλει ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ὥσπερ ἵππῳ μεγάλῳ μὲν καὶ γενναίῳ, ὑπὸ μεγέθους δὲ νωθεστέρῳ καὶ δεομένῳ ἐγείρεσθαι ὑπὸ μύωπός τινος· οἷον δή μοι δοκεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἐμὲ τῇ πόλει προστεθεικέναι τοιοῦτόν τινα, ὃς ὑμᾶς ἐγείρων καὶ πείθων καὶ ὀνειδίζων ἕνα ἕκαστον οὐδὲν παύομαι τὴν ἡμέραν ὅλην πανταχοῦ προσκαθίζων. Also pp. 36 D, 41 E.
20 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 21 D-22 D, 33 A: ἐγὼ δὲ διδάσκαλος οὐδενὸς πώποτ’ ἐγενόμην.
21 Plat. Apol. Sokr. pp. 23 A, 28 A.
The same defects also confessed in many of the Platonic and Xenophontic dialogues.
Moreover, it is not merely in the declarations of Sokrates himself before the Athenian Dikasts, but also in the Platonic Sokrates as exhibited by Plato in very many of his dialogues, that the same efficiency, and the same deficiency, stand conspicuous. The hearer is convicted of ignorance, on some familiar subject which he believed himself to know: the protreptic stimulus is powerful, stinging his mind into uneasiness which he cannot appease except by finding some tenable result: but the didactic supplement is not forthcoming. Sokrates ends by creating a painful feeling of perplexity in the hearers, but he himself shares 423the feeling along with them. — It is this which the youth Protarchus deprecates, at the beginning of the Platonic Philêbus;22 and with which Hippias taunts Sokrates, in one of the Xenophontic conversations23 — insomuch that Sokrates replies to the taunt by giving a definition of the Just (τὸ δίκαιον), upon which Hippias comments. But if the observations ascribed by Xenophon to Hippias are a report of what that Sophist really said, we only see how inferior he was to Sokrates in the art of cross-questioning: for the definition given by Sokrates would have been found altogether untenable, if there had been any second Sokrates to apply the Elenchus to it.24 Lastly, Xenophon expressly tells us, that there were others also, who, both in speech and writing, imputed to Sokrates the same deficiency on the affirmative side.25
22 Plato, Philêbus, p. 20 A.
23 Xenoph. Memor. iv. 4, 9-11.
24 We need only compare the observations made by Hippias in that dialogue, to the objections raised by Sokrates himself in his conversation with Euthydêmus, Xen. Mem. iv. 4, 2, and to the dialogue of the youthful Alkibiades (evidently borrowed from Sokrates) with Perikles, ib. i. 2, 40-47.
25 Xenoph. Memor. i. 4, 1. εἰ δέ τινες Σωκράτην νομίζουσιν, ὡς ἕνιοι γράφουσί τε καὶ λέγουσι περὶ αὐτοῦ τεκμαιρόμενοι, προτρέψασθαι μὲν ἀνθρώπους ἐπ’ ἀρετὴν κράτιστον γεγονέναι, προαγαγεῖν δὲ ἐπ’ αὐτὴν οὐχ ἱκανόν — σκεψάμενοι μὴ μόνον, &c.
See also Cicero, De Oratore, i. 47, 204, in which Sokrates is represented as saying that concitatio (προτροπὴ) was all that people required: they did not need guidance: they would find out the way for themselves: and Yxem, Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, pp. 5-12.
Forcible, yet respectful, manner in which these defects are set forth in the Kleitophon. Impossible to answer them in such a way as to hold out against the negative Elenchus of a Sokratic pupil.
The Platonic Kleitophon corresponds, in a great degree, to these complaints of Protarchus and others, as well as to the taunt of Hippias. The case is put, however, with much greater force and emphasis: as looked at, not by an opponent and outsider, like Hippias — nor by a mere novice, unarmed though eager, like Protarchus — but by a companion of long standing, who has gone through the full course of negative gymnastic, is grateful for the benefit derived, and feels that it is time to pass from the lesser mysteries to the greater. He is sick of perpetual negation and stimulus: he demands doctrines and explanations, which will hold good against the negative Elenchus of Sokrates himself. But this is exactly what Sokrates cannot give. His mission from the Delphian God finishes with the negative: inspiration fails him when he deals with the affirmative. He is like the gadfly (his own simile) in stimulating 424the horse — and also in furnishing no direction how the stimulus is to be expended. His affirmative dicta, — as given in the Xenophontic Memorabilia, are for the most part plain, home-bred, good sense, — in which all the philosophical questions are slurred over, and the undefined words, Justice, Temperance, Holiness, Courage, Law, &c., are assumed to have a settled meaning agreed to by every one: while as given by Plato, in the Republic and elsewhere, they are more speculative, highflown, and poetical,26 but not the less exposed to certain demolition, if the batteries of the Sokratic Elenchus were brought to bear upon them. The challenge of Kleitophon is thus unanswerable. It brings out in the most forcible, yet respectful, manner the contrast between the two attributes of the Sokratic mind: in the negative, irresistible force and originality: in the affirmative, confessed barrenness alternating with honest, acute, practical sense, but not philosophy. Instead of this, Plato gives us transcendental hypotheses, and a religious and poetical ideal; impressive indeed to the feelings, but equally inadmissible to a mind trained in the use of the Sokratic tests.
26 The explanation of Justice given by Plato in the Republic deserves to be described much in the same words as Sokrates employs (Repub. i. p. 332 C) in characterising the definition of Justice furnished by (or ascribed to) the poet Simonides:—
ᾐνίξατο, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὁ Σιμωνίδης ποιητικῶς τὸ δίκαιον ὃ εἴη.
The Kleitophon represents a point of view which many objectors must have insisted on against Sokrates and Plato.
We may thus see sufficient reason why Plato, after having drawn up the Kleitophon as preparatory basis for a dialogue, became unwilling to work it out, and left it as an unfinished sketch. He had, probably without intending it, made out too strong a case against Sokrates and against himself. If he continued it, he would have been obliged to put some sufficient reason into the mouth of Sokrates, why Kleitophon should abandon his intention of frequenting some other teacher: and this was a hard task. He would have been obliged to lay before Kleitophon, a pupil thoroughly inoculated with his own negative œstrus, affirmative solutions proof against such subtle cross-examination: and this, we may fairly assume, was not merely a hard task, but impossible. Hence it is that we possess the Kleitophon only as a fragment.
The Kleitophon was originally intended as a first book of the Republic, but was found too hard to answer. Reasons why the existing first book was substituted.
Yet I think it a very ingenious and instructive fragment: 425setting forth powerfully, in respect to the negative philosophy of Sokrates and Plato, a point of view which must have been held by many intelligent contemporaries. Among all the objections urged against Sokrates and Plato, probably none was more frequent than this protest against the continued negative procedure. This same point of view — that Sokrates puzzled every one, but taught no one any thing — is reproduced by Thrasymachus against Sokrates in the first book of the Republic:27 in which first book there are various other marks of analogy with the Kleitophon.28 It might seem as if Plato had in the first instance projected a dialogue in which Sokrates was to discuss the subject of justice, and had drawn up the Kleitophon as the sketch of a sort of forcing process to be applied to Sokrates: then, finding that he placed Sokrates under too severe pressure, had abandoned the project, and taken up the same subject anew, in the manner which we now read in the Republic. The task which he assigns to Sokrates, in this last-mentioned dialogue, is far easier. Instead of the appeal made to Sokrates by Kleitophon, with truly Sokratic point — we have an assault made upon him by Thrasymachus, alike angry, impudent and feeble; which just elicits the peculiar aptitude of Sokrates for humbling the boastful affirmer. Again in the second book, Glaukon and Adeimantus are introduced as stating the difficulties which they feel in respect to the theory of Justice: but in a manner totally different from Kleitophon, and without any reference to previous Sokratic requirements. Each of them delivers an eloquent and forcible pleading, in the manner of an Aristotelian or Ciceronian dialogue: and to this Sokrates makes his reply. In that reply, Sokrates explains what he means by Justice: and though his exposition is given in the form of short questions, each followed by an answer of acquiescence, yet no 426real or serious objections are made to him throughout the whole. The case must have been very different if Plato had continued the dialogue Kleitophon; so as to make Sokrates explain the theory of Justice, in the face of all the objections raised by a Sokratic cross-examiner.29
27 Plat. Repub. pp. 336 D, 337 A, 338 A.
28 For example, That it is not the province of the just man to hurt any one, either friend or foe, Repub. p. 335 D.
Thrasymachus derides any such definitions of τὸ δίκαιον as the following — τὸ δέον — τὸ ὠφέλιμον — τὸ λυσιτελοῦν — τὸ ξυμφέρον — τὸ κερδάλεον, Repub. i. p. 336, C-D.
These are exactly the unsatisfactory definitions which Kleitophon describes himself (p. 409 C) as having received from the partisans of Sokrates.
29 Schleiermacher (Einleitung, v. pp. 453-455) considers the Kleitophon not to be the work of Plato. But this only shows that he, like many other critics, attaches scarcely the smallest importance to the presumption arising from the Canon of Thrasyllus. For the grounds by which he justifies his disallowance of the dialogue are to the last degree trivial.
I note with surprise one of his assertions: “How” (he asks) “or from what motive can Plato have introduced an attack upon Sokrates, which is thoroughly repelled, both seriously and ironically, in almost all the Platonic dialogues?”
As I read Plato, on the contrary: the Truth is, That it is repelled in none, confirmed in many, and thoroughly ratified by Sokrates himself in the Platonic Apology.
Schleiermacher thinks that the Kleitophon is an attack upon Sokrates and the Sokratic men, Plato included, made by some opponent out of the best rhetorical schools. He calls it “a parody and caricature” of the Sokratic manner. To me it seems no caricature at all. It is a very fair application of the Sokratic or Platonic manner. Nor is it conceived by any means in the spirit of an enemy, but in that of an established companion, respectful and grateful, yet dissatisfied at finding that he makes no progress.
END OF VOL. III.
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