The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3 Author: George Grote Release date: August 7, 2012 [eBook #40437] Language: English Credits: Produced by Ed Brandon as part of the on-line Grote Project *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLATO AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES, 3RD ED. VOLUME 3 *** Produced by Ed Brandon as part of the on-line Grote Project PLATO, AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. PLATO, AND THE OTHER COMPANIONS OF SOKRATES. BY GEORGE GROTE AUTHOR OF THE 'HISTORY OF GREECE'. _A NEW EDITION._ IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1888. _The right of Translation is reserved._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVI. PHÆDRUS--SYMPOSION. These two are the two erotic dialogues of Plato. Phædrus is the originator of both 1 Eros as conceived by Plato. Different sentiment prevalent in Hellenic antiquity and in modern times. Position of women in Greece _ib._ 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 4 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 5 Desire of mental copulation and procreation, as the only attainable likeness of immortality, requires the sight of personal beauty as an originating stimulus 6 Highest exaltation of the erotic impulse in a few privileged minds, when it ascends gradually to the love of Beauty in general. This is the most absorbing sentiment of all 7 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 8 Views of Eros presented by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon 9 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 9 Analogy of the erotic aspiration with that of the philosopher, who knows his own ignorance and thirsts for knowledge 10 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 11 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 _ib._ 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 12 Operation of such pre-natal experience upon the Intellectual faculties of man--Comparison and combination of particular sensations indispensable--Reminiscence 13 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 14 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 15 Differences between Symposion and Phædrus. In-dwelling conceptions assumed by the former, pre-natal experiences by the latter 17 Nothing but metaphorical immortality recognised in Symposion _ib._ Form or Idea of Beauty presented singly and exclusively in Symposion 18 Eros recognised, both in Phædrus and Symposion, as affording the initiatory stimulus to philosophy--Not so recognised in Phædon, Theætêtus, and elsewhere _ib._ Concluding scene and speech of Alkibiades in the Symposion--Behaviour of Sokrates to Alkibiades and other handsome youths 19 Perfect self-command of Sokrates--proof against every sort of trial 20 Drunkenness of others at the close of the Symposion--Sokrates is not affected by it, but continues his dialectic process 21 Symposion and Phædon--each is the antithesis and complement of the other 22 Symposion of Plato compared with that of Xenophon _ib._ Small proportion of the serious, in the Xenophontic Symposion 24 Platonic Symposion more ideal and transcendental than the Xenophontic 25 Second half of the Phædrus--passes into a debate on Rhetoric. Eros is considered as a subject for rhetorical exercise 26 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 27 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? 28 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 _ib._ 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 29 Logical processes--Definition and Division--both of them exemplified in the two discourses of Sokrates _ib._ 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 30 What the Art of Rhetoric ought to be--Analogy of Hippokrates and the medical Art 31 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 32 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 33 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 _ib._ Neither written words, nor continuous speech, will produce any serious effect in teaching. Dialectic and cross-examination are necessary 34 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 37 Lysias is only a logographer: Isokrates promises to become a philosopher 38 Date of the Phædrus--not an early dialogue _ib._ Criticism given by Plato on the three discourses--His theory of Rhetoric is more Platonic than Sokratic _ib._ His theory postulates, in the Rhetor, knowledge already assured--it assumes that all the doubts have been already removed 39 The Expositor, with knowledge and logical process, teaches minds unoccupied and willing to learn _ib._ The Rhetor does not teach, but persuades persons with minds pre-occupied--guiding them methodically from error to truth 40 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 41 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 _ib._ The other part of the Platonic _Idéal_ is grand but unattainable--breadth of psychological data and classified modes of discourse 42 Plato's ideal grandeur compared with the rhetorical teachers--Usefulness of these teachers for the wants of an accomplished man 44 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 45 Plato includes in his conception of Art, the application thereof to new particular cases. This can never be taught by rule 46 Plato's charge against the Rhetorical teachers is not made out 47 Plato has not treated Lysias fairly, in neglecting his greater works, and selecting for criticism an erotic exercise for a private circle 47 No fair comparison can be taken between this exercise of Lysias and the discourses delivered by Sokrates in the Phædrus 48 Continuous discourse, either written or spoken, inefficacious as a means of instruction to the ignorant 49 Written matter is useful as a memorandum for persons who know--or as an elegant pastime 50 Plato's didactic theories are pitched too high to be realised 51 No one has ever been found competent to solve the difficulties raised by Sokrates, Arkesilaus, Karneades, and the negative vein of philosophy _ib._ Plato's _idéal_ philosopher can only be realised under the hypothesis of a pre-existent and omniscient soul, stimulated into full reminiscence here 52 Different proceeding of Plato in the Timæus 53 Opposite tendencies co-existent in Plato's mind--Extreme of the Transcendental or Absolute--Extreme of specialising adaptation to individuals and occasions 54 CHAPTER XXVII. PARMENIDES. Character of dialogues immediately preceding--much transcendental assertion. Opposite character of the Parmenides 56 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 _ib._ Circumstances and persons of the Parmenides 57 Manner in which the doctrine of Parmenides was impugned. Manner in which his partisan Zeno defended him 58 Sokrates here impugns the doctrine of Zeno. He affirms the Platonic theory of ideas separate from sensible objects, yet participable by them 60 Parmenides and Zeno admire the philosophical ardour of Sokrates. Parmenides advances objections against the Platonic theory of Ideas 60 What Ideas does Sokrates recognise? Of the Just and Good? Yes. Of Man, Horse, &c.? Doubtful. Of Hair, Mud, &c.? No _ib._ Parmenides declares that no object in nature is mean to the philosopher 61 Remarks upon this--Contrast between emotional and scientific classification _ib._ Objections of Parmenides--How can objects participate in the Ideas. Each cannot have the whole Idea, nor a part thereof 62 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_ 63 Are the Ideas conceptions of the mind, and nothing more? Impossible 64 The Ideas are types or exemplars, and objects partake of them by being likened to them. Impossible 65 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 _ib._ Forms can be known only through the Form of Cognition, which we do not possess 66 Form of cognition, superior to our Cognition, belongs to the Gods. We cannot know them, nor can they know us _ib._ 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 67 Dilemma put by Parmenides--Acuteness of his objections 68 The doctrine which Parmenides attacks is the genuine Platonic theory of Ideas. His objections are never answered in any part of the Platonic dialogues _ib._ 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 69 Philosophers are usually advocates, each of a positive system of his own 70 Different spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search _ib._ The 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 71 Force of the negative case in the Parmenidês. Difficulties about participation of sensible objects in the world of Ideas _ib._ 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 72 Answer of Sokrates--That Ideas are mere conceptions of the mind. Objection of Parmenides correct, though undeveloped 73 Meaning of Abstract and General Terms, debated from ancient times to the present day--Different views of Plato and Aristotle upon it 76 Plato never expected to make his Ideas fit on to the facts of sense: Aristotle tried to do it and partly succeeded 78 Continuation of the Dialogue--Parmenides admonishes Sokrates that he has been premature in delivering a doctrine, without sufficient preliminary exercise 79 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 _ib._ Impossible to do this before a numerous audience--Parmenides is entreated to give a specimen--After much solicitation he agrees 80 Parmenides elects his own theory of the _Unum_, as the topic for exhibition--Aristoteles becomes respondent _ib._ Exhibition of Parmenides--Nine distinct deductions or Demonstrations, first from _Unum Est_--next from _Unum non Est_ 81 The Demonstrations in antagonising pairs, or Antinomies. Perplexing entanglement of conclusions given without any explanation _ib._ Different judgments of Platonic critics respecting the Antinomies and the dialogue generally 82 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 85 This negative purpose is expressly announced by Plato himself. All dogmatical purpose, extending farther, is purely hypothetical, and even inconsistent with what is declared 87 The Demonstrations or Antinomies considered. They include much unwarranted assumption and subtlety. Collection of unexplained perplexities or [Greek: a)pori/ai] 88 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 89 The exercises exhibited by Parmenides are exhibited only as illustrative specimens of a method enjoined to be applied to many other Antinomies 91 These Platonic Antinomies are more formidable than any of the sophisms or subtleties broached by the Megaric philosophers _ib._ 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 93 Assumptions of Parmenides in his Demonstrations convey the minimum of determinate meaning. Views of Aristotle upon these indeterminate predicates, Ens, Unum, &c. 94 In the Platonic Demonstrations the same proposition in words is made to bear very different meanings 95 First demonstration ends in an assemblage of negative conclusions. _Reductio ad Absurdum_, of the assumption--Unum non Multa 96 Second Demonstration 97 It ends in demonstrating _Both_, of that which the first Demonstration had demonstrated _Neither_ 98 Startling paradox--Open offence against logical canon--No logical canon had then been laid down 99 Demonstration third--Attempt to reconcile the contradiction of Demonstrations I. and II. 100 Plato's imagination of the Sudden or Instantaneous--Breaches or momentary stoppages in the course of time _ib._ Review of the successive pairs of Demonstrations or Antinomies in each, the first proves the Neither, the second proves the Both 101 The third Demonstration is mediatorial but not satisfactory--The hypothesis of the Sudden or Instantaneous found no favour 102 Review of the two last Antinomies. Demonstrations VI. and VII. 103 Demonstration VII. is founded upon the genuine doctrine of Parmenides 104 Demonstrations VI. and VII. considered--Unwarrantable steps in the reasoning--The fundamental premiss differently interpreted, though the same in words 105 Demonstrations VIII. and IX.--Analysis of Demonstration VIII. 106 Demonstration VIII. is very subtle and Zenonian 107 Demonstration IX. _Neither_ following _Both_ _ib._ Concluding words of the Parmenides--Declaration that he has demonstrated the Both and the Neither of many different propositions 108 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 _ib._ CHAPTER XXVIII. THEÆTETUS. Subjects and personages in the Theætêtus 110 Question raised by Sokrates--What is knowledge or Cognition? First answer of Theætêtus, enumerating many different cognitions. Corrected by Sokrates 111 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 112 Ethical basis of the cross-examination of Sokrates--He is forbidden to pass by falsehood without challenge 113 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 _ib._ 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 114 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 115 Explanation of the doctrine of Protagoras--_Homo Mensura_ 116 Perpetual implication of Subject with Object--Relate and Correlate 118 Such relativity is no less true in regard to the ratiocinative combinations of each individual, than in regard to his percipient capacities _ib._ Evidence from Plato proving implication of Subject and Object, in regard to the intelligible world 121 The Protagorean measure is even more easily shown in reference to the intelligible world than in reference to sense 122 Object always relative to Subject--Either without the other, impossible. Plato admits this in Sophistes 126 Plato's representation of the Protagorean doctrine in intimate conjunction with the Herakleitean 126 Relativity of sensible facts, as described by him _ib._ Relations are nothing in the object purely and simply without a comparing subject 127 Relativity twofold--to the comparing Subject--to another object, besides the one directly described _ib._ Statement of the doctrine of Herakleitus--yet so as to implicate it with that of Protagoras 128 Agent and Patient--No absolute Ens 129 Arguments derived from dreams, fevers, &c., may be answered 130 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 131 Plato's attempt to get behind the phenomena. Reference to a double potentiality--Subjective and Objective 133 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 135 In matters of present sentiment every man can judge for himself. Where future consequences are involved special knowledge is required 136 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 137 All exposition and discussion is an assemblage of individual judgments and affirmations. This fact is disguised by elliptical forms of language 139 Argument--That the Protagorean doctrine equalises all men and animals. How far true. Not true in the sense requisite to sustain Plato's objection 141 Belief on authority is true to the believer himself--The efficacy of authority resides in the believer's own mind 142 Protagorean formula--is false, to those who dissent from it 143 Plato's argument that the wise man alone is a measure--Reply to it _ib._ Plato's argument as to the distinction between present sensation and anticipation of the future 145 The formula of Relativity does not imply that every man believes himself to be infallible _ib._ 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 146 Contrast with the Treatise De Legibus--Plato assumes infallible authority--sets aside dialectic 148 Plato in denying the Protagorean formula, constitutes himself the measure for all. Counter proposition to the formula _ib._ Import of the Protagorean formula is best seen when we state explicitly the counter-proposition 150 Unpopularity of the Protagorean formula--Most believers insist upon making themselves a measure for others, as well as for themselves. Appeal to Abstractions 150 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 152 Plato's examination of the other doctrine--That knowledge is Sensible Perception. He adverts to sensible facts which are different with different Percipients 153 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. 154 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 155 Argument--That sensible Perception does not include memory--Probability that those who held the doctrine meant to include memory 157 Argument from the analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time _ib._ 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 159 Indication of several judgments which the mind makes by itself--It perceives Existence, Difference, &c. 160 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 161 Examination of this view--Distinction from the views of modern philosophers 162 Different views given by Plato in other dialogues 163 Plato's discussion of this question here exhibits a remarkable advance in analytical psychology. The mind rises from Sensation, first to Opinion, then to Cognition 164 Plato did not recognise Verification from experience, or from facts of sense, as either necessary or possible 168 Second definition given by Theætêtus--That Cognition consists in right or true opinion _ib._ 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? _ib._ Waxen memorial tablet in the mind, on which past impressions are engraved. False opinion consists in wrongly identifying present sensations with past impressions 169 Sokrates refutes this assumption. Dilemma. Either false opinion is impossible, or else a man may know what he does not know 170 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 _ib._ 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 171 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 172 New answer of Theætêtus--Cognition is true opinion, coupled with rational explanation 173 Criticism on the answer by Sokrates. Analogy of letters and words, primordial elements and compounds. Elements cannot be explained: compounds alone can be explained _ib._ Sokrates refutes this criticism. If the elements are unknowable, the compound must be unknowable also 174 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 _ib._ 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 175 Conclusion of the dialogue--Summing up by Sokrates--Value of the result, although purely negative 176 Remarks on the dialogue. View of Plato. False persuasion of knowledge removed. Importance of such removal _ib._ Formation of the testing or verifying power in men's minds, value of the Theætêtus, as it exhibits Sokrates demolishing his own suggestions 177 Comparison of the Philosopher with the Rhetor. The Rhetor is enslaved to the opinions of auditors 178 The Philosopher is master of his own debates 179 Purpose of dialogue to qualify for a life of philosophical Search _ib._ Difficulties of the Theætêtus are not solved in any other Dialogue 180 Plato considered that the search for Truth was the noblest occupation of life 182 Contrast between the philosopher and the practical statesman--between Knowledge and Opinion 183 CHAPTER XXIX. SOPHISTES--POLITIKUS. Persons and circumstances of the two dialogues 185 Relation of the two dialogues to the Theætêtus 187 Plato declares that his first purpose is to administer a lesson in logical method: the special question chosen, being subordinate to that purpose 188 Method of logical Definition and Division _ib._ 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 189 Such a lesson in logical classification was at that time both novel and instructive. No logical manuals then existed 190 Plato describes the Sophist as analogous to an angler. He traces the Sophist by descending subdivision from the acquisitive genus of art 191 The Sophist traced down from the same, by a second and different descending subdivision 192 Also, by a third 193 The Sophist is traced down, from the genus of separating or discriminating art 194 In a logical classification, low and vulgar items deserve as much attention as grand ones. Conflict between emotional and scientific classification 195 The 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 197 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 _ib._ 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 198 Doubt started by the Eleate. How can it be possible either to think or to speak falsely? 199 He pursues the investigation of this problem by a series of questions _ib._ 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 200 The Eleate turns from Non-Ens to Ens. Theories of various philosophers about Ens _ib._ Difficulties about Ens are as great as those about Non-Ens 201 Whether Ens is Many or One? If Many, how Many? Difficulties about One and the Whole. Theorists about Ens cannot solve them 201 Theories of those who do not recognise a definite number of Entia or elements. Two classes thereof 202 1. The Materialist Philosophers. 2. The Friends of Forms or Idealists, who recognise such Forms as the only real Entia _ib._ 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 203 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 204 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 _ib._ 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 205 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? 206 Here the Eleate breaks off without solution. He declares his purpose to show, That Ens is as full of puzzle as Non-Ens _ib._ Argument against those who admit no predication to be legitimate, except identical. How far Forms admit of intercommunion with each other _ib._ No intercommunion between any distinct forms. Refuted. Common speech is inconsistent with this hypothesis 207 Reciprocal intercommunion of all Forms--inadmissible _ib._ Some Forms admit of intercommunion, others not. This is the only admissible doctrine. Analogy of letters and syllables _ib._ 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 208 He comes to enquire what Non-Ens is. He takes for examination five principal Forms--Motion--Rest--Ens--Same--Different _ib._ Form of Diversum pervades all the others 209 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 210 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 _ib._ The Eleate claims to have refuted Parmenides, and to have shown both that Non-Ens is a real Form, and also what it is 211 The theory now stated is the only one, yet given, which justifies predication as a legitimate process, with a predicate different from the subject 212 Enquiry, whether the Form of Non-Ens can come into intercommunion with the Forms of Proposition, Opinion, Judgment 213 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 _ib._ Opinion, Judgment, Fancy, &c., are akin to Proposition, and may be also false, by coming into partnership with the Form Non-Ens 214 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 _ib._ 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 215 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 215 Dialogue closed. Remarks upon it. Characteristics ascribed to a Sophist 216 These characteristics may have belonged to other persons, but they belonged in an especial manner to Sokrates himself _ib._ The conditions enumerated in the dialogue (except the taking of a fee) fit Sokrates better than any other known person 217 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 218 Universal knowledge--was professed at that time by all Philosophers--Plato, Aristotle, &c. 219 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 220 Reasoning of Plato about Non-Ens--No predications except identical 221 Misconception of the function of the copula in predication _ib._ No formal Grammar or Logic existed at that time. No analysis or classification of propositions before the works of Aristotle 222 Plato's declared purpose in the Sophistês--To confute the various schools of thinkers--Antisthenes, Parmenides, the Materialists, &c. 223 Plato's refutation throws light upon the doctrine of Antisthenes _ib._ Plato's argument against the Materialists 224 Reply open to the Materialists _ib._ Plato's argument against the Idealists or Friends of Forms. Their point of view against him 225 Plato argues--That to know, and be known, is action and passion, a mode of relativity 226 Plato's reasoning--compared with the points of view of both _ib._ The argument of Plato goes to an entire denial of the Absolute, and a full establishment of the Relative 227 Coincidence of his argument with the doctrine of Protagoras in the Theætêtus _ib._ 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 228 Plato's reasoning against the Materialists _ib._ 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 229 Narrower meaning given by Materialists to Ens--they included only Objects of Perception. Their reasoning as opposed to Plato _ib._ Different definitions of Ens--by Plato--the Materialists, the Idealists 231 Plato's views about Non-Ens examined _ib._ His review of the select Five Forms 233 Plato's doctrine--That Non-Ens is nothing more than different from Ens _ib._ Communion of Non-Ens with proposition--possible and explicable 235 Imperfect analysis of a proposition--Plato does not recognise the predicate _ib._ Plato's explanation of Non-Ens is not satisfactory--Objections to it 236 Plato's view of the negative is erroneous. Logical maxim of contradiction 239 Examination of the illustrative propositions chosen by Plato--How do we know that one is true, the other false? _ib._ Necessity of accepting the evidence of sense 240 Errors of Antisthenes--depended partly on the imperfect formal logic of that day 241 Doctrine of the Sophistês--contradicts that of other Platonic dialogues 242 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. 246 The Sophistês recedes from the Platonic point of view, and approaches the Aristotelian 247 Aristotle assumes without proof, that there are some propositions true, others false 249 Plato in the Sophistês has undertaken an impossible task--He could not have proved, against his supposed adversary, that there _are_ false propositions _ib._ What must be assumed in all dialectic discussion 251 Discussion and theorising presuppose belief and disbelief, expressed in set forms of words. They imply predication, which Antisthenes discarded 252 Precepts and examples of logical partition, illustrated in the Sophistês 253 Recommendation of logical bipartition 254 Precepts illustrated by the Philêbus _ib._ Importance of founding logical Partition on resemblances perceived by sense 255 Province of sensible perception--is not so much narrowed by Plato here as it is in the Theætêtus 256 Comparison of the Sophistês with the Phædrus 257 Comparison of the Politikus with the Parmenidês 258 Variety of method in dialectic research--Diversity of Plato 259 CHAPTER XXX. POLITIKUS. The Politikus by itself, apart from the Sophistês 260 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 _ib._ 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 261 Plato's defence of the Politikus against critics. Necessity that the critic shall declare explicitly what his standard of comparison is 262 Comparison of Politikus with Protagoras, Phædon, Philêbus, &c. _ib._ Definition of the statesman, or Governor. Scientific competence. Sokratic point of departure. Procedure of Plato in subdividing 263 King during the Saturnian period, was of a breed superior to the people--not so any longer 264 Distinction of causes Principal and Causes Auxiliary. The King is the only Principal Cause, but his auxiliaries pretend to be principal also 266 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 267 Unscientific governments are counterfeits. Government by any numerous body must be counterfeit. Government by the one scientific man is the true government 268 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 269 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 _ib._ Comparison of unscientific governments. The one despot is the worse. Democracy is the least bad, because it is least of a government 270 The true governor distinguished from the General, the Rhetor, &c. They are all properly his subordinates and auxiliaries 271 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 272 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 272 Remarks--Sokratic Ideal--Title to govern mankind derived exclusively from scientific superiority in an individual person 273 Different ways in which this ideal is worked out by Plato and Xenophon. The man of speculation and the man of action _ib._ The theory in the Politikus is the contradiction to that theory which is assigned to Protagoras in the Protagoras 274 Points of the Protagorean theory--rests upon common sentiment 275 Counter-Theory in the Politikus. The exigencies of the Eleate in the Politikus go much farther than those of Protagoras 276 The Eleate complains that under the Protagorean theory no adverse criticism is allowed. The dissenter is either condemned to silence or punished _ib._ 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 277 Theory of the Politikus--distinguished three gradations of polity. Gigantic individual force the worst 278 Comparison of the Politikus with the Republic. Points of analogy and difference 279 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 281 Courage and Temperance are assumed in the Politikus. No notice taken of the doubts and difficulties raised in Lachês and Charmidês 282 Purpose of the difficulties in Plato's Dialogues of Search--To stimulate the intellect of the hearer. His exposition does not give solutions 284 CHAPTER XXXI. KRATYLUS. Persons and subjects of the dialogue Kratylus--Sokrates has no formed opinion, but is only a Searcher with the others 285 Argument of Sokrates against Hermogenes--all proceedings of nature are conducted according to fixed laws--speaking and naming among the rest 286 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 287 Names have an intrinsic aptitude for signifying one thing and not another 289 Forms of Names, as well as Forms of things nameable--essence of the Nomen, to signify the Essence of its Nominatum _ib._ Exclusive competence of a privileged lawgiver, to discern these essences, and to apportion names rightly 290 Counter-Theory, which Sokrates here sets forth and impugns--the Protagorean doctrine--Homo Mensura 291 Objection by Sokrates--That Protagoras puts all men on a level as to wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance 292 Objection unfounded--What the Protagorean theory really affirms--Belief always relative to the believer's mind _ib._ Each man believes others to be wiser on various points than himself--Belief on authority--not inconsistent with the affirmation of Protagoras 293 Analogy of physical processes (cutting and burning) appealed to by Sokrates--does not sustain his inference against Protagoras 294 Reply of Protagoras to the Platonic objections 295 Sentiments of Belief and Disbelief, common to all men--Grounds of belief and disbelief, different with different men and different ages 295 Protagoras 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 297 Facts of sense--some are the same to all sentient subjects, others are different to different subjects. Grounds of unanimity 298 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 299 These 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 302 Dissent from this theory--No proof that the Sophists ever proposed etymologies 304 Plato 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 306 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 308 Sokrates announces himself as Searcher. Other etymologists of ancient times admitted etymologies as rash as those of Plato 310 Continuance of the dialogue--Sokrates endeavours to explain how it is that the Names originally right have become so disguised and spoiled 312 Letters, as well as things, must be distinguished with their essential properties, each must be adapted to each 313 Essential significant aptitude consists in resemblance _ib._ Sokrates assumes that the Name-giving Lawgiver was a believer in the Herakleitean theory 314 But the Name-Giver may be mistaken or incompetent--the rectitude of the name depends upon his knowledge 315 Changes and transpositions introduced in the name--hard to follow 315 Sokrates qualifies and attenuates his original thesis 316 Conversation of Sokrates with Kratylus; who upholds that original thesis without any qualification _ib._ Sokrates goes still farther towards retracting it 317 There are names better and worse--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 318 All names are not consistent with the theory of Herakleitus: some are opposed to it 319 It is not true to say, That Things can only be known through their names 320 Unchangeable Platonic Forms--opposed to the Herakleitean flux, which is true only respecting sensible particulars _ib._ Herakleitean theory must not be assumed as certain. We must not put implicit faith in names 321 Remarks upon the dialogue. Dissent from the opinion of Stallbaum and others, that it is intended to deride Protagoras and other Sophists _ib._ Theory laid down by Sokrates _à priori_, in the first part--Great difficulty, and ingenuity necessary, to bring it into harmony with facts 322 Opposite tendencies of Sokrates in the last half of the dialogue--he disconnects his theory of Naming from the Herakleitean doctrine 324 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 325 Comparison of Plato's views about naming with those upon social institutions. Artistic, systematic construction--contrasted with unpremeditated unsystematic growth 327 Politikus compared with Kratylus 328 Ideal of Plato--Postulate of the One Wise Man--Badness of all reality 329 Comparison of Kratylus, Theætêtus, and Sophistês, in treatment of the question respecting Non-Ens, and the possibility of false propositions 331 Discrepancies and inconsistencies of Plato, in his manner of handling the same subject 332 No common didactic purpose pervading the Dialogues--each is a distinct composition, working out its own peculiar argument _ib._ CHAPTER XXXII. PHILEBUS. Character, Personages, and Subject of the Philêbus 334 Protest against the Sokratic Elenchus, and the purely negative procedure 335 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 _ib._ Good--object of universal choice and attachment by men, animals, and plants--all-sufficient--satisfies all desires _ib._ Pleasures are unlike to each other, and even opposite cognitions are so likewise 336 Whether Pleasure, or Wisdom, corresponds to this description? Appeal to individual choice 337 First Question submitted to Protarchus--Intense Pleasure, without any intelligence--He declines to accept it 338 Second Question--Whether he will accept a life of Intelligence purely without any pleasure or pain? Answer--_No_ _ib._ 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 339 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 _ib._ Active disputes upon this question at the time 340 Order of Nature--Coalescence of the Finite with the Infinite. The One--The Finite Many--The Infinite Many _ib._ Mistake commonly made--To look only for the One, and the Infinite Many, without looking for the intermediate subdivisions 341 Illustration from Speech and Music 342 Plato's explanation does not touch the difficulties which he had himself recognised as existing 343 It is nevertheless instructive, in regard to logical division and classification 344 At that time little thought had been bestowed upon classification as a logical process _ib._ Classification--unconscious and conscious 345 Plato's doctrine about classification is not necessarily connected with his Theory of Ideas _ib._ Quadruple distribution of Existences. 1. The Infinite. 2. The Finient 3. Product of the two former. 4. Combining Cause or Agency 346 Pleasure and Pain belong to the first of these four Classes--Cognition or Intelligence belongs to the fourth 347 In the combination, essential to Good, of Intelligence with Pleasure, Intelligence is the more important of the two constituents _ib._ Intelligence is the regulating principle--Pleasure is the Indeterminate, requiring to be regulated 348 Pleasure and Pain must be explained together--Pain arises from the disturbance of the fundamental harmony of the system--Pleasure from the restoration of it _ib._ Pleasure presupposes Pain 349 Derivative pleasures of memory and expectation belonging to mind alone. Here you may find pleasure without pain _ib._ A life of Intelligence alone, without pain and without pleasure, is conceivable. Some may prefer it: at any rate it is second-best _ib._ Desire 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 350 Can pleasures be true or false? Sokrates maintains that they are so 351 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 _ib._ Protarchus disputes this--He thinks that there are some pleasures bad, but none false--Sokrates does not admit this, but reserves the question 352 No means of truly estimating pleasures and pains--False estimate habitual--These are the false pleasures _ib._ 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 353 Opinion of the pleasure-hating philosophers--That pleasure is no reality, but a mere juggle. There is no reality except pain, and the relief from pain 354 Sokrates agrees with them in part, but not wholly _ib._ Theory of the pleasure-haters--We must learn what pleasure is by looking at the intense pleasures--These are connected with distempered body and mind 355 The intense pleasures belong to a state of sickness; but there is more pleasure, on the whole, enjoyed in a state of health 356 Sokrates acknowledges some pleasures to be true. Pleasures of beautiful colours, odours, sounds, smells, &c. Pleasures of acquiring knowledge _ib._ Pure and moderate pleasures admit of measure and proportion 357 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 _ib._ Other reasons why pleasure is not the Good 358 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 _ib._ Arithmetic and Geometry are twofold: As studied by the philosopher and teacher: As applied by the artisan 359 Dialectic is the truest and purest of all Cognitions. Analogy between Cognition and Pleasure: in each, there are gradations of truth and purity 360 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 _ib._ 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 361 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? _ib._ We must include all Cognitions--not merely the truest, but the others also. Life cannot be carried on without both 362 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 _ib._ What causes the excellence of this mixture? It is Measure, Proportion, Symmetry. To these Reason is more akin than Pleasure 363 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 364 Remarks. Sokrates does not claim for Good the unity of an Idea, but a quasi-unity of analogy 365 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 _ib._ Inconvenience of his method, blending Ontology with Ethics 366 Comparison of Man to the Kosmos (which has reason, but no emotion) is unnecessary and confusing 367 Plato borrows from the Pythagoreans, but enlarges their doctrine. Importance of his views in dwelling upon systematic classification 368 Classification broadly enunciated, and strongly recommended--yet feebly applied--in this dialogue 369 What is the Good? Discussed both in Philêbus and in Republic. Comparison 370 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 _ib._ Plato lays down tests by which Bonum may be determined: but the answer in the Philêbus does not satisfy those tests 371 Inconsistency of Plato in his way of putting the question--The alternative which he tenders has no fair application 372 Intelligence and Pleasure cannot be fairly compared--Pleasure is an End, Intelligence a Means. Nothing can be compared with Pleasure, except some other End 373 The Hedonists, while they laid down attainment of pleasure and diminution of pain, postulated Intelligence as the governing agency 374 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 375 Marked antithesis in the Philêbus between pleasure and avoidance of pain 377 The Hedonists did not recognise this distinction--They included both in their acknowledged End _ib._ Arguments of Plato against the intense pleasures--The Hedonists enforced the same reasonable view 378 Different points of view worked out by Plato in different dialogues--Gorgias, Protagoras, Philêbus--True and False Pleasures 379 Opposition between the Gorgias and Philêbus, about Gorgias and Rhetoric 380 Peculiarity of the Philêbus--Plato applies the same principle of classification--true and false--to Cognitions and Pleasures 382 Distinction of true and false--not applicable to pleasures _ib._ Plato acknowledges no truth and reality except in the Absolute--Pleasures which he admits to be true--and why 385 Plato could not have defended this small list of Pleasures, upon his own admission, against his opponents--the Pleasure-haters, who disallowed pleasures altogether 387 Sokrates in this dialogue differs little from these Pleasure-haters 389 Forced conjunction of Kosmology and Ethics--defect of the Philêbus 391 Directive sovereignty of Measure--how explained and applied in the Protagoras _ib._ How explained in Philêbus--no statement to what items it is applied 393 Classification of true and false--how Plato applies it to Cognitions 394 Valuable principles of this classification--difference with other dialogues 395 Close of the Philêbus--Graduated elements of Good 397 Contrast between the Philêbus and the Phædrus, and Symposion, in respect to Pulchrum, and intense Emotions generally 398 CHAPTER XXXIII. MENEXENUS. Persons and situation of the dialogue 401 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 401 Sokrates professes to have learnt a funeral harangue from Aspasia, and to be competent to recite it himself. Menexenus entreats him to do so 402 Harangue recited by Sokrates 403 Compliments of Menexenus after Sokrates has finished, both to the harangue itself and to Aspasia _ib._ Supposed period--shortly after the peace of Antalkidas _ib._ Custom of Athens about funeral harangues. Many such harangues existed at Athens, composed by distinguished orators or logographers--Established type of the harangue 404 Plato in this harangue conforms to the established type--Topics on which he insists 405 Consolation and exhortation to surviving relatives 407 Admiration felt for this harangue, both at the time and afterwards 407 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 _ib._ Menexenus compared with the view of rhetoric presented in the Gorgias--Necessity for an orator to conform to established sentiments 409 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 410 Anachronism of the Menexenus--Plato careless on this point 411 CHAPTER XXXIV. KLEITOPHON. Persons and circumstances of Kleitophon 413 Conversation of Sokrates with Kleitophon alone: he alludes to observations of an unfavourable character recently made by Kleitophon, who asks permission to explain _ib._ Explanation given. Kleitophon expresses gratitude and admiration for the benefit which he has derived from long companionship with Sokrates 414 The observations made by Sokrates have been most salutary and stimulating in awakening ardour for virtue. Arguments and analogies commonly used by Sokrates _ib._ 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 415 Questions addressed by Kleitophon with this view, both to the companions of Sokrates and to Sokrates himself 416 Replies made by the friends of Sokrates unsatisfactory _ib._ None of them could explain what the special work of justice or virtue was 417 Kleitophon at length asked the question from Sokrates himself. But Sokrates did not answer clearly. Kleitophon believes that Sokrates knows, but will not tell 417 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 418 Remarks on the Kleitophon. Why Thrasyllus placed it in the eighth Tetralogy immediately before the Republic, and along with Kritias, the other fragment 419 Kleitophon is genuine, and perfectly in harmony with a just theory of Plato 420 It could not have been published until after Plato's death _ib._ Reasons why the Kleitophon was never finished. It points out the defects of Sokrates, just as he himself confesses them in the Apology 421 The same defects also confessed in many of the Platonic and Xenophontic dialogues 422 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 423 The Kleitophon represents a point of view which many objectors must have insisted on against Sokrates and Plato 424 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 _ib._ CHAPTER XXVI. PLATO. CHAPTER XXVI. PHÆDRUS--SYMPOSION. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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; yet 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 confined 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 view, 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: The/seis E)rôtikai\] or [Greek: E)rôtika/s], Diogenes Laert. v. 22-24. See Bernays, Die Dialoge des Aristoteles, p. 133, Berlin, 1863. Compare the dialogue called [Greek: E)rôtiko/s], among the works of Plutarch, p. 750 seq., where some of the speakers, especially Protogenes, illustrate and enlarge upon this Platonic construction of Eros--[Greek: a)lêthinou= de\ E)/rôtos ou)d' o(tiou=n tê=| gunaikôni/tidi me/testin], &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, [Greek: kai\ to\n pa/nta cho/ron e)kei/nôn tô=n a)ndrô=n, oi( tou\s a)/r)r(enas e)doki/masan e)/rôtas], &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 [Greek: paiderasti/a] 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--[Greek: E)kei/nois me\n ga\r tau=ta no/mima, ê(mi=n de\ e)ponei/dista.] 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)--[Greek: to\ ga\r sunoikei=n tou=t' e)sti/n, o(\s a)\n paidopoiê=tai kai\ ei)sa/gê| ei)/s te tou\s dêmo/tas kai\ tou\s phra/toras tou\s ui(ei=s, kai\ ta\s thugate/ras e)kdidô=| ô(s au)tou= ou)/sas toi=s a)ndra/si. Ta\s me\n ga\r e(tai/ras, ê(donê=s e(/neka e)/chomen--ta\s de\ pallaka/s, tê=s kath' ê(me/ran therapei/as tou= sô/matos--ta\s de\ gunai=kas, tou= paidopoiei=sthai gnêsi/ôs, kai\ tô=n e(/ndon phu/laka pi/stên e)/chein.] To the same purpose, the speaker in Lysias ([Greek: U(pe\r tou= E)ratosthe/nous pho/nou]--sect. 7), describing his wife, says--[Greek: e)n me\n ou)=n tô=| prô/tô| chro/nô| pasô=n ê)=n belti/stê; kai\ ga\r oi)kono/mos deinê\ kai\ pheidôlo\s a)gathê\ kai\ a)kribô=s pa/nta dioikou=sa.] 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 Oeconomicus, 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).] [Footnote 2: See the Oeconomicus of Xenophon, cap. iii. 12, vii. 5.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: e)rôtikê\] 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--[Greek: tou\s nuni\ katêgo/rous] (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 [Greek: e)gkô/mia] 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--[Greek: e)r)r(i/phthô de\ kai\ Pla/tôn o( ko/lax, O(mê/rou sukopha/ntês--Tou\s de\ Pla/tônos dialo/gous, a)/nô kai\ ka/tô paidikoi\ kathubri/zousin e)/rôtes, ou)damou= de ou)chi tê=s a)r)r(e/nos e)pithumi/as mesto/s e)stin o( a)nê/r] (Herakl. All. Hom., c. 4-74, ed. Mehler, Leiden, 1851).] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 is[5] 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. The 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] [Footnote 5: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249 E, 250 B-E.] [Footnote 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."] [Side-note: 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 object. 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. [Footnote 7: Plato, Sympos. pp. 204-205. [Greek: Phe/re, o( e)rô=n tô=n a)gathô=n, ti/ e)ra=|? Gene/sthai, ê)=n d' e)gô/, au)tô=|. Kai\ ti/ e)/stai e)kei/nô| ô(=| a)\n ge/nêtai ta)gatha/? Tou=t' eu)porô/teron, ê)=n d' e)gô/, e)/chô a)pokri/nasthai, o(/ti eu)dai/môn e)/stai. Ktê/sei ga/r, e)/phê, a)gathô=n, oi( eu)dai/mones eu)dai/mones; Kai\ ou)ke/ti prosdei= e)re/sthai, i(/na ti/ de\ bou/letai eu)dai/môn ei)=nai o( boulo/menos, a)lla\ te/los dokei= e)/chein ê( a)po/krisis. . . . Tau/tên dê\ tê\n bou/lêsin kai\ to\n e)/rôta tou=ton, po/tera koino\n ei)=nai pa/ntôn a)nthrô/pôn, kai\ pa/ntas ta)gatha\ bou/lesthai au)toi=s ei)=nai a)ei/, ê)\ pô=s le/geis? Ou(/tôs, ê)=n d' e)gô/, koino\n ei)=nai pa/ntôn.]] [Footnote 8: Plato, Sympos. p. 206 A. [Greek: ô(s ou)de/n ge a)/llo e)sti\n ou)= e)rô=sin a)/nthrôpoi ê)\ tou= a)gathou=.]] [Footnote 9: Plato, Sympos. p. 207 C.] [Footnote 10: Plato, Sympos. pp. 207-208.] [Side-note: 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 to 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] [Footnote 11: Plato, Sympos. p. 206 E. [Greek: o(/then dê\ tô=| kuou=nti/ te kai\ ê)/dê spargô=nti pollê\ ê( pto/êsis ge/gone peri\ to\ kalo\n dia\ to\ mega/lês ô)di=nos a)polu/ein to\n e)/chonta. E)sti\ ga\r ou) tou= kalou= o( e)/rôs, a)lla\--tê=s gennê/seôs kai\ tou= to/kou e)n tô=| kalô=|.]] [Footnote 12: Plato, Sympos. p. 209.] [Side-note: 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 of 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] [Footnote 13: Plato, Symposion, p. 211.] [Footnote 14: Plato, Symposion, p. 211 B. [Greek: o(/tan dê/ tis a)po\ tô=nde dia\ to\ o)rthô=s paiderastei=n e)paniô\n e)kei=no to\ kalo\n a)/rchêtai kathora=|n, schedo\n a)/n ti a(/ptoito tou= te/lous], &c.] [Side-note: 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 Diotima[15]--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. [Footnote 15: Plat. Sympos. p. 201 D. [Greek: gunaiko\s mantikê=s Dioti/mas, ê( tau=ta/ te sophê\ ê)=n kai\ a)/lla polla/, kai\ A)thênai/ois pote\ thusame/nois pro\ tou= loimou= de/ka e)/tê a)nabolê\n e)poi/êse tê=s no/sou, ê)\ dê\ kai\ e)me\ ta\ e)rôtika\ e)di/daxen.] Instead of [Greek: gunaiko\s mantikê=s], which was the old reading, Stallbaum and other editors prefer to write [Greek: gunaiko\s Mantinikê=s], also 211 D. I cannot but think that [Greek: mantikê=s] is right. There is no pertinence or fit meaning in [Greek: Mantinikê=s], whereas the word [Greek: mantikê=s] 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 Kroesus that Apollo had obtained from the [Greek: Moi=rai] a postponement of the ruin of the Lydian kingdom for three years, but that he could obtain from them no more (Herodot. i. 91).] [Side-note: Views of Eros presented by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon.] Both Phædrus[16] 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 Uranius[17] or Coelestis. In regard to the different views taken of Eros by Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon--the first is medical, physiological, cosmical[18]--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. [Footnote 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 ([Greek: i)so/kôla, a)nti/theta]), which Aristophanes parodies in Agathon's name at the beginning of the Thesmophoriazusæ, Athenæus, v. 187 C.] [Footnote 17: Plato, Sympos. pp. 180-181.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 striving, 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] [Footnote 19: Plato, Sympos. pp. 202-203.] [Footnote 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).] [Footnote 21: Plato, Symposion, pp. 199-200. [Greek: O( E)/rôs e)/rôs e)sti\n ou)deno\s ê(\ tino/s? Pa/nu me\n ou)=n e)/stin. . . . Po/teron o( E)/rôs e)kei/nou ou(= e)/stin e)/rôs, e)pithumei= au)tou= ê)\ ou)/? Pa/nu ge. . . . A)na/gkê to\ e)pithumou=n e)pithumei=n ou)= e)ndee/s e)stin, ê)\ mê\ e)pithumei=n, e)a\n mê\ e)ndee\s ê)=|.]] [Footnote 22: Plato, Sympos. p. 204 A. [Greek: Ti/nes ou)=n oi( philosophou=ntes, ei) mê/te oi( sophoi\ mê/te oi( a)mathei=s? . . . Oi( metaxu\ tou/tôn a)mphote/rôn, ô(=n au)= kai\ o( E)/rôs. E)sti\ ga\r dê\ tô=n kalli/stôn ê( sophi/a, E)/rôs d' e)sti\n e)/rôs peri\ to\ kalo/n; ô(/ste a)nagkai=on E)/rôta philo/sophon ei)=nai, philo/sophon de\ o)/nta metaxu\ ei)=nai sophou= kai\ a)mathou=s.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 23: Plato, Symposion, pp. 210-211.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 24: Plato, Phædrus, p. 230 seq.] [Footnote 25: Plato, Phædrus, p. 237 seq.] [Footnote 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).] [Side-note: 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 custom[28]--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. And 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. [Footnote 27: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265-266. [Greek: to\ a)/phron tê=s dianoi/as e(/n ti koinê=| ei)=dos. . . . to\ tê=s paranoi/as ô(s e(\n e)n ê(mi=n pephuko\s ei)=dos.] Compare p. 236 A.] [Footnote 28: Plato, Phædrus, p. 265 A. [Greek: Mani/as de/ ge ei)/dê du/o; tê\n me/n, u(po\ nosêma/tôn a)nthrôpi/nôn, tê\n de/, u(po\ thei/as e)xallagê=s tô=n ei)ôtho/tôn nomi/môn gignome/nên.] Compare 249 D.] [Footnote 29: Plato, Phædrus, p. 244 A. [Greek: ei) me\n ga\r ê)=n a(plou=n to\ mani/an kako\n ei)=nai, kalô=s a)\n e)le/geto; nu=n de\ ta\ me/gista tô=n a)gathô=n ê(mi=n gi/gnetai dia\ mani/as, thei/a| me/ntoi do/sei didome/nês.] Compare Plutarch, [Greek: E)rôtiko/s], c. 16. pp. 758-759, &c.] [Footnote 30: Plato, Phædrus, p. 245 B. [Greek: mêde/ tis ê(ma=s lo/gos thorubei/tô deditto/menos ô(s pro\ tou= kekinême/nou to\n sô/phrona dei= proairei=sthai phi/lon.] P. 256 E; [Greek: ê( de\ a)po\ tou= mê\ e)rô=ntos oi)keio/tês, sôphrosu/nê| thnêtê=| kekrame/nê, thnêta/ te kai\ pheidôla\ oi)konomou=sa, a)neleutheri/an u(po\ plê/thous e)panoume/nên ô(s a)retê\n tê=| phi/lê|** psuchê=| e)ntekou=sa], &c.] [Side-note: 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 to 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: muthiko/s tis u(/mnos] (Phædr. p. 265 D).] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 33: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249-250. [Greek: pa=sa me\n a)nthrô/pou psuchê\ phu/sei tethe/atai ta\ o)/nta--ê)\ ou)k a)\n ê)=lthen ei)s to/de** to\ zô=on; a)namimnê/skesthai d' e)k tô=nde e)kei=na ou) r(a/|dion a(pa/sê|], &c.] [Footnote 34: Plato, Phædrus, p. 249 B. [Greek: Ou) ga\r ê(/ ge mê/ pote i)dou=sa tê\n a)lê/theian ei)s to/de ê(/xei to\ schê=ma. Dei= ga\r a)/nthrôpon xunie/nai kat' ei)=dos lego/menon, e)k pollô=n i)o\n ai)sthê/seôn ei)s e(\n logismô=| xunairou/menon. Tou=to de/ e)stin a)na/mnêsis e)kei/nôn, a(/ pot' ei)=den ê(mô=n ê( psuchê\ sumporeuthei=sa theô=| kai\ u(peridou=sa a(\ nu=n ei)=nai/ phamen, kai\ a)naku/psasa ei)s to\ o)\n o)/ntôs.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 35: Plato, Phædrus, p. 256 B. [Greek: ou(= mei=zon a)gatho\n ou)/te sôphrosu/nê a)nthrôpi/nê ou)/te thei/a mani/a dunatê\ pori/sai a)nthrô/pô|.]--245 B: [Greek: e)p' eu)tuchi/a tê=| megi/stê| para\ theô=n ê( toiau/tê mani/a di/dotai.] 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).] Such 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 _oestrus_, 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. [Side-note: 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 the 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--[Greek: to\ Kalo\n--to\ au)to\-kalo\n]--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 and 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 Pindar[37]--according to the comparison of Dionysius of Halikarnassus. [Footnote 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.)] [Footnote 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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 feelings--by leaving a name and reputation to survive in the memory of others. [Footnote 38: Plato, Sympos. pp. 207-208.] [Side-note: 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 Rationis[39]--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 ([Greek: to\ kalo\n]) is presented singly and exclusively--as if the communion with this one Form were the sole occupation of the most exalted philosophy. [Footnote 39: Plat. Repub. v. 476. He recognises Forms of [Greek: a)/dikon, kako/n, ai)schro/n], as well as Forms of [Greek: di/kaion, a)gatho/n, kalo/n], &c.] [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 Alkibiades 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. [Footnote 40: Plato, Sympos. p. 216 C-D.] [Footnote 41: Plato, Sympos. p. 219. See also, respecting the historical Alkibiades and his characte, 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, [Greek: ô(s ou)k a)p' a)ndro/s, a)ll' a)p' a)ndri/antos, a)nastai/ê.] 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 [Greek: dêmoge/rontes] 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.] [Footnote 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:--[Greek: ô(/ste ou) mo/non philoi=o a)/n, a)lla\ kai\ e)rô=|o, u(p' a)nthrô/pôn; _kai\ tou\s kalou\s ou) peira=|n, a)lla\ peirô/menon u(p' au)tô=n a)ne/chesthai a)/n se de/oi_], &c. These words illustrate the adventure described by Alkibiades in the Platonic Symposion. Herakleides of Pontus, Dikæarchus, and the Peripatetic Hieronymus, all composed treatises [Greek: Peri\ E)rôtos], especially [Greek: peri\ paidikô=n e)rô/tôn] (Athenæ. xiii. 602-603).] [Side-note: 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 eccentric in manner, than potent, soul-subduing,[43] and provocative in its effects. [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 gymnasium at the Lykeion; where he passes all the day in his usual abundant colloquy.[45] [Footnote 44: In Sympos. p. 176 B, Sokrates is recognised as [Greek: dunatô/tatos pi/nein], 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 ([Greek: me/thê]) 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 [Greek: chrei/a tê=s me/thês], 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 [Greek: phu/lakes] 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 [Greek: Peri\ Me/thês] (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.] [Footnote 45: Plato, Sympos. p. 223.] [Side-note: 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 Schleiermacher[46]--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] [Footnote 46: Einleitung zum Gastmahl, p. 359 seq.] [Footnote 47: Plato, Phædrus, p. 256 C-E. [Greek: sôphrosu/nê thnêtê/--e)rôtikê\ mani/a: sôphrosu/nê a)nthrôpi/nê--thei/a mani/a.] Compare p. 244 B.] [Side-note: 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 present; 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] The 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. [Footnote 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 ([Greek: prophê/tas a)to/môn], v. 3, 187 B, 177 B. [Greek: E)pi/kouros de\ sumpo/sion philoso/phôn mo/non pepoi/êtai]), 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" ([Greek: muktêristô=n a)llê/lous tôthazo/ntôn], 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.] [Footnote 49: Xenophon, Sympos. vii. 1; ii. 18-19. [Greek: proga/stôr], &c.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: o)rchêstri\s] by Philippus, ii. 21. Compare also iii. 11.] [Footnote 51: Xen. Symp. c. 4-5.] [Footnote 52: Xen. Symp. vi. [Greek: Au)tê\ me\n ê( paroini/a ou(/tô katesbe/sthê], vii. 1-5. Epiktêtus insists upon this feature in the character of Sokrates--his patience and power of soothing angry men (ii. 12-14).] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 53: Xen. Symp. iv. 28. [Greek: a)nami\x e)skôpsa/n te kai\ e)spou/dasan], viii. 41.] [Footnote 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--[Greek: o(/ te ga\r oi)=nos sunepai/rei, kai\ o( a)ei\ su/noikos e)moi\ e)/rôs kentri/zei ei)s to\n a)nti/palon e)/rôta au)tou= par)r(êsia/zesthai.] 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.] The 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] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 weaknesses[57]--coupled however with that eccentricity 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. [Footnote 56: The difference between the two coincides very much with that which is drawn by Plato himself in the Phædrus--[Greek: thei/a mani/a] as contrasted with [Greek: sôphrosu/nê thnêtê\] (p. 256 E). Compare Athenæus, v. 187 B.] [Footnote 57: Plato, Phædrus, p. 249 D. [Greek: nouthetei=tai me\n u(po\ tô=n pollô=n ô(s parakinô=n, e)nthousia/zôn de\ le/lêthe tou\s pollou\s. . . . ai)ti/an e)/chei ô(s manikô=s diakei/menos.]] 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: dioi/kisis] 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 [Greek: o( A)ga/thônos tou= poiêtou= e)rastê/s], 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 [Greek: dioi/kisis] 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.] [Side-note: 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 is founded, or ought to be founded: and estimating the efficacy of written discourse generally, as a means of working upon or instructing other minds. [Side-note: 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? [Footnote 59: Plato, Phædrus, p. 257 C.] [Footnote 60: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 257 E, 258 D. The two appellations--[Greek: logogra/phos] and [Greek: sophistê/s]--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 [Greek: logogra/phos] 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 [Greek: logogra/phos] 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 [Greek: logogra/phos] to the proposer of a law or decree. "Igitur, quum solemne legum initium ejusmodi esset, [Greek: e)/doxe tê=| boulê=|], &c., Plato aliter longé quam vulgo acciperetur, neque sine calumniâ quâdam, interpretatus est" (ad p. 258).] [Footnote 61: Plato, Phædrus, p. 259 E. [Greek: o(/pê| kalô=s e)/chei le/gein te kai\ gra/phein, kai\ o(/pê| mê/, skepte/on.]--p. 258 D. [Greek: ti/s o( tro/pos tou= kalô=s te kai\ mê\ gra/phein.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 62: Plato, Phædrus, p. 260 A.] [Side-note: 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, deception 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] [Footnote 63: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 260-261.] [Footnote 64: Plato, Phædrus, p. 262.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 65: Plato, Phædrus, p. 263 B. Compare Plato, Alkibiad. i. p. 109.] [Footnote 66: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 263-265.] [Side-note: 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 four 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] [Footnote 67: Plato, Phædrus, p. 265 A. [Greek: u(po\ thei/as e)xallagê=s tô=n ei)ôtho/tôn nomi/môn.]] [Footnote 68: Plato, Phædrus, p. 265.] [Footnote 69: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265-266. 265 D: [Greek: ei)s mi/an te i)de/an sunorô=nta a)/gein ta\ pollachê= diesparme/na, i(/n' e(/kaston o(rizo/menos dê=lon poi=ê| peri\ ou(= a)\n a)ei\ dida/skein e)the/lê|.] 265 E: [Greek: to\ pa/lin kat' ei)/dê du/nasthai te/mnein kat' a)/rthra, ê(=| pe/phuke, kai\ mê\ e)picheirei=n katagnu/nai me/ros mêde/n, kakou= magei/rou tro/pô| chrô/menon.] 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."] [Footnote 70: Plato, Phædrus, p. 266 B. [Greek: Tou/tôn dê\ e)/gôge au)to/s te e)rastê/s, ô)= Phai=dre, tô=n diaire/seôn kai\ sunagôgô=n, i(/n' oi(=o/s te ô)= le/gein te kai\ phronei=n; e)a/n te/ tin' a)/llon ê(gê/sômai dunato\n ei)s e(\n kai\ e)pi\ polla\ pephuko\s o(ra=|n, tou=ton diô/kô kato/pisthe met' i)/chnion ô(/ste theoi=o. kai\ me/ntoi kai\ tou\s duname/nous au)to\ dra=|n ei) me\n o)rthô=s ê)\ mê\ prosagoreu/ô, theo\s oi)=de; kalô= de\ ou)=n me/chri tou=de dialektikou/s.]] This is Dialectic (replies Phædrus); but it is not Rhetoric, as Thrasymachus and other professors teach the art. [Side-note: 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. Such 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] [Footnote 71: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 267-268.] [Footnote 72: Plato, Phædrus, p. 268 B. [Greek: e)re/sthai ei) prosepi/statai kai\ ou(sti/nas dei= kai\ o(po/te e(/kasta tou/tôn poiei=n, kai\ me/chri o(po/sou?]] [Footnote 73: Plato, Phædrus, p. 269.] [Side-note: 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 Hippokrates 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. [Footnote 74: Plato, Phædrus, p. 270 D. [Greek: A)=r' ou)ch ô(=de dei= dianoei=sthai peri\ o(touou=n phu/seôs? Prô=ton me\n, a(plou=n ê)\ polueide/s e)stin, ou(= peri\ boulêso/metha ei)=nai au)toi\ technikoi\ kai\ a)/llon dunatoi\ poiei=n? e)/peita de/, e)a\n me\n a(plou=n ê)=|, skopei=n tê\n du/namin au)tou=, ti/na pro\s ti/ pe/phuken ei)s to\ dra=|n e)/chon ê)\ ti/na ei)s to\ pathei=n u(po\ tou=? e)a\n de\ plei/ô ei)/dê e)/chê|, tau=ta a)rithmêsa/menos, o(/per e)ph' e(no/s, tou=t' i)dei=n e)ph' e(ka/stou, tô=| ti/ poiei=n au)to\ pe/phuken ê)\ tô=| ti/ pathei=n u(po\ tou=?]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 75: Plato, Phædrus, p. 277 B. [Greek: o(risa/meno/s te pa/lin kat' ei)/dê me/chri tou= a)tmê/tou te/mnein e)pistêthê=|.]] [Footnote 76: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 A. [Greek: _Prô=ton_, pa/sê| a)kribei/a| gra/psei te kai\ poiê/sei psuchê\n i)dei=n, po/teron e(\n kai\ o(/moion pe/phuken ê)\ kata\ sô/matos morphê\n polueide/s; tou=to ga/r phamen _phu/sin_ ei)=nai deiknu/nai. _Deu/teron_ de/ ge, o(/tô| ti/ poiei=n ê)\ pathei=n u(po\ tou= pe/phuken. _Tri/ton_ de\ dê\ diataxa/menos ta\ lo/gôn te kai\ psuchê=s ge/nê kai\ ta\ tou/tôn pathê/mata, di/eisi ta\s ai)ti/as, prosarmo/ttôn e(/kaston e(ka/stô|, kai\ dida/skôn oi(/a ou)=sa u(ph' oi(/ôn lo/gôn di' ê(\n ai)ti/an e)x a)na/gkês ê( me\n pei/thetai, ê( de\ a)peithei=.]] [Footnote 77: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D. [Greek: dei= mê\ tau=ta i(kanô=s noê/santa, meta\ tau=ta theô/menon au)ta\ e)n tai=s pra/xesin o)/nta te kai\ pratto/mena, _o)xe/ôs_ tê=| ai)sthê/sei du/nasthai e)pakolouthei=n], &c.] [Footnote 78: Plato, Phædrus, p. 272 A. [Greek: tau=ta de\ ê)/dê pa/nt' e)/chonti, _proslabo/nti kairou\s tou= po/te lekte/on kai\ e)pischete/on_, brachulogi/as te au)= kai\ e)leeinologi/as kai\ deinô/seôs, e(ka/stôn te o(/s' a)\n ei)/dê ma/thê| lo/gôn, tou/tôn _tê\n eu)kairi/an te kai\ a)kairi/an diagno/nti_, kalô=s te kai\ tele/ôs e)sti\n ê( te/chnê a)peirgasme/nê, _pro/teron d' ou)/_.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 79: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 273-274.] [Side-note: 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 defenceless against all assailants. It supersedes and enfeebles the memory, implanting only a false persuasion of knowledge without the reality.[80] [Footnote 80: Plato, Phædrus, p. 275 D-E. [Greek: tau)to\n de\ kai\ oi( lo/goi (oi( gegramme/noi); do/xais me\n a)\n ô(/s ti phronou=ntas au)tou\s le/gein e)a\n de/ ti e(/rê| tô=n legome/nôn boulo/menos mathei=n, e(/n ti sêmai/nei mo/non tau)to\n a)ei/. O(/tan de\ a(/pax graphê=|, kulindei=tai me\n pantachou= pa=s lo/gos o(moi/ôs para\ toi=s e)pai+/ousin, ô(s d' au)tô=s par' oi(=s ou)de\n prosê/kei, kai\ ou)k e)pi/statai le/gein oi(=s dei= ge kai\ mê/.]] [Side-note: 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 and 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] [Footnote 81: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 277-278. [Greek: ô(s oi( r(apsô|dou/menoi (lo/goi) a)/neu a)nakri/seôs kai\ didachê=s peithou=s e(/neka e)le/chthêsan], &c.] [Footnote 82: Plato, Phædrus, p. 276 A. [Greek: a)/llon o(rô=men lo/gon tou/tou a)delpho\n gnê/sion tô=| tro/pô| te gi/gnetai, kai\ o(/sô| a)mei/nôn kai\ dunatô/teros tou/tou phu/etai? . . . . O(/s met' e)pistê/mês gra/phetai e)n tê=| tou= mantha/nontos psuchê=|, dunato\s me\n a)mu=nai e(autô=|, e)pistê/môn de\ le/gein te kai\ siga=|n pro\s ou(\s dei=. To\n tou= ei)do/tos lo/gon le/geis zô=nta kai\ e)/mpsuchon, ou(= o( gegramme/nos ei)/dôlon a)/n ti le/goito dikai/ôs], &c. 278 A.] [Footnote 83: Plato, Phædrus, p. 278 C. [Greek: ei) me\n ei)dô\s ê(=| ta)lêthe\s e)/chei sune/thêke tau=ta (ta\ suggra/mmata) kai\ e)/chôn boêthei=n, ei)s e)/legchon i)ô\n peri\ ô(=n e)/grapse, kai\ le/gôn au)to\s dunato\s ta\ gegramme/na phau=la a)podei=xai], &c.] [Footnote 84: Plato, Phædrus, p. 276 A.] [Footnote 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 reason[86]) 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] [Footnote 86: See above, vol. ii. ch. xxi. p. 227.] [Footnote 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 dikastery[88] 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. [Footnote 88: Dion. Hal. De Isocrate Judicium, p. 576. [Greek: desma\s pa/nu polla\s dikanikô=n lo/gôn periphe/resthai/ phêsin u(po\ tô=n bibliopôlô=n A)ristote/lês], &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.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 90: Plato, Hipp. Major, p. 289.] From the pen of Isokrates also, we find various passages apparently directed against the viri Socratici including Plato (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] [Footnote 91: Isokrates, Orat. x. 1 (Hel. Enc.); Orat. v. (Philipp.) 12; Or. xiii. (Sophist.) 9-24; Orat. xv. (Permut.) sect. 285-290. [Greek: philosophi/an me\n ou)=n ou)k oi)=mai dei=n prosagoreu/ein tê\n mêde\n e)n tô=| paro/nti mê/te pro\s to\ le/gein mê/te pro\s to\ pra/ttein ô(/phelou=san--tê\n kaloume/nên u(po/ tinôn philosophi/an ou)k ei)=nai phêmi/], &c.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: oi( peri\ ta\s e)rôtê/seis kai\ a)pokri/seis, ou(\s a)ntilogikou\s kalou=sin--oi( peri\ ta\s e)/ridas spouda/zontes]--those who are powerful in contentious dialectic, and at the same time cultivate geometry and astronomy, which others call [Greek: a)doleschi/a] and [Greek: mikrologi/a] (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 [Greek: perittolo/giai] 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.] [Footnote 93: Athenæus, iii. p. 122, ii. 60; Dionys. Hal. Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 757.] [Side-note: 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, and 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] [Footnote 94: Plato, Phædrus, p. 277 D-E.] [Footnote 95: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 278-279.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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.] * * * * * [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 improvised 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. [Footnote 97: Plato, Phædrus, p. 235 A.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 98: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 259 E, 260 E, and 262 B.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 99: Plato, Phædrus, p. 266.] [Footnote 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 way 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. [Footnote 101: Plato, Phædrus, p. 263 A.] [Side-note: 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 what the truth is.[103] By anyone who does not know, the process will be performed without art, or at haphazard. [Footnote 102: Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 A. [Greek: ê( r(êtorikê\ te/chnê psuchagôgi/a tis dia\ lo/gôn], &c.] [Footnote 103: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 262 A-D, 273 D.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 104: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 270 E, 271 A-D. [Greek: Tri/ton de\ dê\ diataxa/menos ta\ lo/gôn te kai\ psuchê=s ge/nê, kai\ ta\ tou/tôn pathê/mata, di/eisi ta\s ai)ti/as, prosarmo/ttôn e(/kaston e(ka/stô|, kai\ dida/skôn oi(/a ou)=sa u(ph' oi(/ôn lo/gôn di' ê(\n ai)ti/an e)x a)na/gkês ê( me\n pei/thetai, ê( de\ a)peithei=.]] [Footnote 105: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E. [Greek: dei= dê\ tau=ta i(kanô=s noê/santa, meta\ tau=ta theô/menon au)ta\ e)n tai=s pra/xesin o)/nta te kai\ pratto/mena, _o)xe/ôs tê=| ai)sthê/sei du/nasthai e)pakolouthei=n_, ê)\ mêde\ ei)de/nai pô ple/on au)tô=n ô(=n to/te ê)/koue lo/gôn xunô/n.]] [Footnote 106: Plato, Phædrus, p. 270 C.] [Side-note: 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 impracticable 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. [Footnote 107: Plato, Gorg. p. 513 B, see supra, ch. xxiv.; Republic, vi. pp. 495-496.] [Side-note: 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 a 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 Plato 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". [Footnote 108: I repeat the citation from the Phædrus, one of the most striking passages in Plato, p. 271 D. [Greek: e)/peidê\ lo/gou du/namis tugcha/nei psuchagôgi/a ou)=sa, to\n me/llonta r(êtoriko\n e)/sesthai a)na/gkê ei)de/nai psuchê\ o(/sa ei)/dê e)/chei. e)/stin ou)=n to/sa kai\ to/sa, kai\ toi=a kai\ toi=a; o(/then oi( me\n toioi/de, oi( de\ toioi/de gi/gnontai. tou/tôn de\ dê\ diê|rême/nôn, lo/gôn au)= to/sa kai\ to/sa e)/stin ei)/dê, toio/nde e(/kaston. oi( me\n ou)=n toioi/de u(po\ tô=n toiô=nde logôn dia\ tê/nde tê\n aiti/an e)s ta\ toia/de eu)peithei=s, oi( de\ toioi/de dia\ ta/de duspeithei=s], &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."] [Side-note: 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 collectively[110]--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: though 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. [Footnote 109: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 273-274. [Greek: ê(\n ou)ch e(/neka tou= le/gein kai\ pra/ttein pro\s a)nthrô/pous dei= diaponei=sthai to\n sô/phrona, a)lla\ tou= theoi=s kecharisme/na me\n le/gein du/nasthai], &c. (273 E).] [Footnote 110: Thucyd. ii. 39-40-41.] [Footnote 111: Plato, Phædrus, p. 288 A.] [Footnote 112: See what is said by Aristotle about [Greek: ê( Gorgi/ou pragmatei/a] in the last chapter of De Sophisticis Elenchis.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: lektikou\s kai\ praktikou\s ei)=nai])--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 development 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. [Side-note: 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 deserves the name of art[116] 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. [Footnote 114: Plato, Phædr. pp. 268 B, 272 A.] [Footnote 115: What Longinus says about critical skill is applicable here also--[Greek: pollê=s e)/sti pei/ras teleutai=on e)pige/nnêma.] Isokrates (De Permut. Or. xv. sect. 290-312-316) has some good remarks about the impossibility of [Greek: e)pistê/mê] respecting particulars. Plato, in the Gorgias, puts [Greek: te/chnê], which he states to depend upon reason and foreknowledge, in opposition to [Greek: e)mpeiri/a] and [Greek: tribê/], which he considers as dependant on the [Greek: phu/sis stochastikê/]. But in applying the knowledge or skill called Art to particular cases, the [Greek: phu/sis stochastikê\] is the best that can be had (p. 463 A-B). The conception of [Greek: te/chnê] 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 [Greek: phu/sis, e)pistê/mê], and [Greek: mele/tê], 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 [Greek: te/chnê] and [Greek: e)pistê/mê], and in the estimate which he gives of all that it comprises, he leaves no outlying ground for [Greek: mele/tê]. 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 [Greek: kairo\s] or opportunity neither has been nor can be reduced to art and rule.] [Footnote 116: Plato, Gorgias, pp. 464-465.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 117: Plato, Gorg. 521 D.] [Footnote 118: Plato, Phædr. p. 228 A.] [Side-note: 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 private 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 Halikarnassus[120] 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. [Footnote 119: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 263-264.] [Footnote 120: Dionysius (Judicium De Lysiâ, pp. 487-493) gives an elaborate criticism on the [Greek: pragmatiko\s charaktê\r] 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 [Greek: deinotê\s] and to strong emotional effects.] [Footnote 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--[Greek: o(po/te ga\r _kai\ Lusi/an_ e)le/gchei, pa=san tê\n ê(mete/ran r(êtorikê\n e)/oiken e)le/gchein.] Demosthenes almost alone (in the opinion of Dionysius) contrived to avoid the fault, because he imitated Plato.] [Side-note: 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 at 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] [Footnote 122: See the Epistol. of Dion. Halikarn. to Cneius Pompey--De Platone--pp. 755-765.] [Footnote 123: Plato, Menexen. p. 237 seq. Stallbaum, Comm. in Menexenum, pp. 10-11.] [Footnote 124: Plato, Euthydêm. p. 306 A-C.] [Side-note: 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 Epistle[125] to the surviving friends of Dion. I have already touched upon these views in my eighth** Chapter, on the Platonic Dialogues generally, and have pointed 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] [Footnote 125: Plato, Epistol. vii. pp. 341-344.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 written 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. [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 127: A remark made by Sextus Empiricus (upon another doctrine which he is discussing) may be applied to this view of Plato--[Greek: to\ de\ le/gein o(/ti tê=| diomalismô=| tô=n pra/xeôn katalamba/nomen to\n e)/chonta tê\n peri\ to\n bi/on te/chnên, _u(perphtheggome/nôn e)/sti tê\n a)nthrô/pôn phu/sin_, kai\ eu)chome/nôn ma=llon ê)\ a)lêthê= lego/ntôn] (Pyrrh. Hyp. iii. 244).] [Side-note: 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 amount 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 ([Greek: a)pori/ai]) 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. [Side-note: 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: and 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. [Side-note: 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, points of view: and that it is a mistake to treat them as parts of one preconceived and methodical system. [Footnote 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, [Greek: dei= ga\r pisteu/ein to\n mantha/nonta]. 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.] [Side-note: 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. We 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. CHAPTER XXVII. PARMENIDES. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 repress 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. [Side-note: Circumstances and persons of the Parmenides.] Passing over the dramatic introduction[1] whereby the personages 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. [Footnote 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. [Side-note: 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 that 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. [Footnote 2: I have already given a short account of the Zenonian Dialectic, ch. ii. p. 93 seq.] [Side-note: 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 themselves to participation and partnership in the same sensible individual object."[4] [Footnote 3: Plato, Parmenid. p. 129 A. [Greek: ou) nomi/zeis ei)=nai au)to\ kath' au)to\ ei)=do/s ti o(moio/têtos, kai\ tô=| toiou/tô| ai)= a)/llo ti e)nanti/on, o(\ e)/stin a)no/moion? tou/toin de\ duoi=n o)/ntoin kai\ e)me\ kai\ se\ kai\ ta\ a)/lla a(\ dê\ polla\ kalou=men, metalamba/nein?]] [Footnote 4: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 129-130.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 5: Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 A. [Greek: Ô)= Sô/krates, ô(s a)/xios ei)= a)/gasthai tê=s o(rmê=s tê=s e)pi\ tou\s lo/gous; kai/ moi ei)pe/, _au)to\s su\ ou(/tô diê/|rêsai_ ô(s le/geis, chôri\s me\n ei)/dê au)ta\ a)/tta, chôri\s de\ ta\ tou/tôn au)= mete/chonta?]] 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. [Side-note: 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 times 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. [Footnote 6: Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 D. [Greek: Ou)damô=s, pha/nai to\n Sôkra/tên, a)lla\ tau=ta me/n ge, a(/per o(rô=men, tau=ta kai\ ei)=nai; ei)=dos de/ ti au)tô=n oi)êthê=nai ei)=nai mê\ li/an ê)=| a)/topon.] 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.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 7: Plato, Parmenid. p. 130 E. [Greek: Ne/os ga\r ei)= e)/ti, kai\ ou(/pô sou a)ntei/lêptai philosophi/a ô(s e(/ti a)ntilê/psetai, kat' e)mê\n do/xan, o(/te _ou)de\n au)tô=n_ a)tima/seis; nu=n de\ e)/ti _pro\s a)nthrô/pôn a)poble/peis do/xas_ dia\ tê\n ê(liki/an.]] * * * * * [Side-note: 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, that 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. [Footnote 8: Plato, himself, however, occasionally appeals [Greek: pro\s a)nthrô/pôn do/xas], and becomes [Greek: a)technô=s dêmê/goros], when it suits his argument; see Gorgias, 494 C.] [Footnote 9: Aristophan. Nubes, 145-170-1490. [Greek: ti/ ga\r matho/nt' e)s tou\s theou\s u(bri/zeton, kai\ tê=s selê/nês e)skopei=sthe tê\n e)/dran?] 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."] [Footnote 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. [Greek: ô)= Kalli/a, ei) me/n sou tô\ ui(e/e pô/lô ê)\ mo/schô e)gene/sthên], &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. [Side-note: 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? Is 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] [Footnote 11: Plato, Parmenid. p. 131. A similar argument, showing the impossibility of such [Greek: me/thexis], appears in Sextus Empiric. adv. Arithmeticos, sect. 11-20, p. 334 Fab., p. 724 Bek.] [Side-note: 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 something 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] [Footnote 12: Plato, Parmenid. p. 132. [Greek: Oi)=mai se e)k tou= toiou=de e(\n e(/kaston ei)=dos oi)/esthai ei)=nai. O(/tan _po/ll' a)/tta mega/la soi do/xê|_ ei)=nai, _mi/a tis i)/sôs dokei= i)de/a_ ê( au)tê\ ei)=nai _e)pi\ pa/nta i)do/nti_, o(/then _e(\n to\ me/ga ê(gei= ei)=nai_.]] [Footnote 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 [Greek: to\ ei)=dos] and [Greek: ta\ mete/chonta au)tou=], is denied by Proklus; who says that there can be no comparison, nor any [Greek: koino/tês], except between [Greek: ta\ o(motagê=]: and that the Form is not [Greek: o(motage\s] 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 [Greek: o( tri/tos a)/nthrôpos]. Against the Platonic [Greek: ei)/dê] considered as [Greek: chôrista/], it is a forcible argument. See Aristot. Metaphys. A. 990, b. 15 seq., where it is numbered among [Greek: oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]. We find from the Scholion of Alexander (p. 566 Brandis), that it was advanced in several different ways by Aristotle, in his work [Greek: Peri\ I)deô=n]: by his scholar Eudemus [Greek: e)n toi=s peri\ Le/xeôs]: and by a contemporary [Greek: sophistê\s] named Polyxenus, as well as by other Sophists.] [Side-note: 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 objects 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] [Footnote 14: Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 B. [Greek: mê\ _tô=n ei)dô=n_ e(/kaston ê)=| _tou/tôn noê/ma_, kai\ _ou)damou= au)tô=| prosê/kê e)ggi/gnesthai a)/llothi ê)\ e)n psuchai=s_. . . . Ti/ ou)=n? pha/nai, e(\n e(/kasto/n e)sti tô=n noêma/tôn, no/êma de\ ou)deno/s? A)ll' a)du/naton, ei)pei=n. A)lla\ tino/s? Nai/. O)/ntos ê)\ ou)k o)/ntos? O)/ntos. Ou)ch e(no/s tinos, o(\ e)pi\ pa=sin e)kei=no to\ no/êma e)po\n noei=, mi/an tina\ ou)=san i)de/an? Nai/.] Aristotle (Topic. ii. 113, a. 25) indicates one way of meeting this argument, if advanced by an adversary in dialectic debate--[Greek: ei) ta\s i)de/as _e)n ê(mi=n_ e)/phêsen ei)=nai].] [Footnote 15: Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 D. [Greek: ou)k a)na/gkê, ei) ta)/lla phê\| tô=n ei)dô=n mete/chein, ê)\ dokei=n soi e)k noê/mata o)/nta a)no/êta ei)=nai? A)ll' ou)de\ tou=to, pha/nai, e)/chei lo/gon.] The word [Greek: a)no/êta] here is used in its ordinary sense, in which it is the negation, not of [Greek: noêto/s] but of [Greek: noêtiko/s]. There is a similar confusion, Plato, Phædon, p. 80 B. Proklus (pp. 699-701, Stall.) is prolix but very obscure.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 16: Aristotle (Metaphys. A. 991, a. 20) characterises this way of presenting the Platonic Ideas as mere [Greek: kenologi/a] and poetical metaphor. See also the remarkable Scholion of Alexander, pp. 574-575, Brandis.] [Footnote 17: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 132-133. This is again a repetition, though differently presented, of the same argument--[Greek: o( tri/tos a)/nthrôpos]--enunciated p. 132 A.] [Side-note: 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 individual 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] [Footnote 18: Plato, Parmenid. p. 133 E.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 19: Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 A. [Greek: Ou)kou=n kai\ e)pistê/mê, au)tê\ me\n o(\ e)/stin e)pistê/mê, tê=s o(\ e)/stin a)lê/theia, au)tê=s a)\n e)kei/nês ei)/ê e)pistê/mê? . . . Ê( de\ par' ê(mi=n e)pistê/mê ou) tê=s par' ê(mi=n a)\n a)lêthei/as ei)/ê? kai\ au)= e(ka/stê ê( par' ê(mi=n e)pistê/mê tô=n par' ê(mi=n o)/ntôn e(ka/stou a)\n e)pistê/mê su/mbainoi ei)=nai?] 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--[Greek: to\ d' ei)=dos pro\s to\ ei)=dos dokei= le/gesthai, oi(=on au)tê\ e)pithumi/a au)tou= ê(de/os, kai\ au)tê\ bou/lêsis au)tou= a)gathou=.] Aristotle argues that there is no place in this doctrine for the [Greek: phaino/menon a)gatho/n], which nevertheless men often wish for, and he remarks, in the Nikom. Ethica, i. 4, 1096 b. 33--that the [Greek: au)to\-a)gatho\n] is neither [Greek: prakto\n] nor [Greek: ktêto\n a)nthrô/pô|].] [Footnote 20: Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 C. [Greek: A)/gnôston a)/ra ê(mi=n kai\ au)to\ to\ kalo\n o(\ e)/sti, kai\ to\ a)gatho/n, kai\ pa/nta a(\ dê\ ô(s i)de/as au)ta\s ou)/sas u(polamba/nomen.]] [Side-note: 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 to 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] [Footnote 21: An argument very similar is urged by Aristotle (Metaph. [Greek: Th]. 1050, b. 34) [Greek: ei) a)/ra tine/s ei)si phu/seis toiau=tai ê)\ ou)si/ai oi(/as le/gousin oi( e)n toi=s lo/gois ta\s i)de/as, polu\ ma=llon e)pistê=mon a)/n ti ei)/ê ê( au)toepistê/mê kai\ kinou/menon ê( ki/nêsis.]] [Footnote 22: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 A. [Greek: Tau=ta me\ntoi, ô)= Sô/krates, e)/phê o( Parmeni/dês, _kai\ e)/ti a)/lla pro\s tou/tois pa/nu polla\ a)nagkai=on e)/chein ta\ ei)/dê_, ei) ei)si\n au)tai ai( i)de/ai tô=n o)/ntôn], &c.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 23: Plato, Parmenid. p. 134 D-E. [Greek: Ou)/koun ei) para\ tô=| theô=| au(/tê e)/stin ê( a)kribesta/tê despotei/a kai\ au(/tê ê( a)kribesta/tê e)pistê/mê, ou)/t' a)\n ê( despotei/a ê( e)kei/nôn] (i.e. [Greek: tô=n theô=n]) [Greek: ê(mô=n pote\ a)\n despo/seien, _ou)/t' a)\n ê( e)pistê/mê ê(ma=s gnoi/ê ou)de/ ti a)/llo tô=n par' ê(mi=n_; a)lla\ o(moi/ôs ê(mei=s t' e)kei/nôn ou)k a)/rchomen tê=| par' ê(mi=n a)rchê=|, ou)de gignô/skomen tou= thei/ou ou)de\n tê=| ê(mete/ra| e)pistê/mê, _e)kei=noi/ te au)=_] (sc. [Greek: oi( theoi/]) [Greek: kata\ to\n au)to\n lo/gon ou)/te despo/tai ê(mô=n ei)si\n _ou)/te gignô/skousi ta\ a)nthrô/peia pra/gmata theoi\ o)/ntes_. A)lla\ mê\ li/an, e)/phê] (Sokrates), [Greek: ê)=| thaumasto\s o( lo/gos, ei)/ tis theo\n a)posterê/seis tou= ei)de/nai.] 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.)] Nevertheless, 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] [Footnote 24: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 B.] * * * * * [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 dialogues.[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. [Footnote 25: Stallbaum, Prolegom. pp. 52-286-332.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 expects (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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: The 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: stoichei=a] or elements, [Greek: to\ e(/n] along with [Greek: to\ me/ga kai\ to\ mikro/n]) 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.] [Side-note: 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 theory 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 language[28]) 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? [Footnote 28: Arist. Met. A. 991, b. 1. [Greek: a)du/naton, chôri\s ei)=nai tê\n ou)si/an kai\ ou)= ê( ou)si/a.]] Two points deserve notice in this debate respecting the doctrine of Ideas:-- [Side-note: 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 be 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. [Footnote 29: Plato, Parmenid. 133 B. [Greek: ei)/ tis phai/ê mêde\ prosê/kein au)ta\ gignô/skesthai o)/nta toiau=ta oi(=a/ phamen dei=n ei)=nai ta\ ei)/dê. . . . a)pi/thanos a)\n ei)/ê o( a)/gnôsta au)ta\ a)nagka/zôn ei)=nai.] 134 A. [Greek: ê( de\ par' ê(mi=n e)pistê/mê ou) tê=s par' ê(mi=n a)\n a)lêthei/as ei)/ê? kai\ au)= e(ka/stê ê( par' ê(mi=n e(pistê/mê tô=n par' ê(mi=n o)/ntôn e(ka/stou a)\n e)pistê/mê xu/mbainoi ei)=nai?] 134 C. [Greek: a)/gnôston a)/ra ê(mi=n e)/sti kai\ au)to\ to\ kalo\n o(\ e)/sti, kai\ to\ a)gatho/n, kai\ pa/nta a(\ dê\ ô(s i)de/as au)ta\s ou)/sas u(polamba/nomen.]] 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. [Footnote 30: I shall discuss this in the coming chapter upon the Theætêtus.] [Footnote 31: Plato, Sophistês, pp. 248-249. This reasoning is put into the mouth of the Eleatic Stranger, the principal person in that dialogue.] [Side-note: 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 veteran)--"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 philosophy[33] 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. [Footnote 32: Plato, Parmenid. p. 132 A-B. The doctrine, that [Greek: poio/têtes] were [Greek: philai\ e)/nnoiai], 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.] [Footnote 33: See the beginning of Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle. [Greek: bathuta/tê ou)/sês tê=s toiau/tês pragmatei/as], &c. Simplikius (in Schol. ad Aristot. Categ. p. 68, a. 28, ed. Brandis) alludes to the Eretrian philosophers and Theopompus, who considered [Greek: ta\s poio/têtas] as [Greek: phila\s mo/nas e)nnoi/as diakenô=s legome/nas kat' ou)demi/as u(posta/seôs, oi(=on a)nthrôpo/têta ê)\ i(ppo/têta], &c.] [Footnote 34: Compare Republic, v. p. 476 B. [Greek: o( gignô/skôn gignô/skei ti\ ê)\ ou)de\n? Gignô/skei ti/], &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 [Greek: a)ki/nêtos ou)si/a], 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.] This 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, sometimes 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: ei)=dos] und [Greek: i)de/a] nicht sowie [Greek: lo/gos] 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).] [Footnote 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. [Greek: G]. 1010, b. 36 seq. [Greek: a)ll' e)/sti ti kai\ e(/teron para\ tê\n ai)/sthêsin, o(\ a)nagkê pro/teron ei)=nai tê=s ai)sthê/seô=s; to\ ga\r kinou=n tou= kinoume/nou _phu/sei pro/tero/n_ e)sti; ka)\n ei) le/getai pro\s a)/llêla tau=ta, ou)de\n ê(=tton.] See respecting the [Greek: pro/teron phu/sei], Aristot. Categor. p. 12, b. 5-15, and Metaphys. [Greek: D]. 1018, b. 12--[Greek: a(plô=s kai\ tê=| phu/sei pro/teron].] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 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-existent unchangeable Ens ([Greek: e(\n para\ ta\ polla\]): 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 _Unum Ens_--and the preposition _In_ (to be _in_ any thing)--are among the [Greek: pollachô=s lego/mena], 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: tou= e)/n tini ei)=nai], 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 [Greek: tro/pous tou= e)/n tini ei)=nai]. In the language of Aristotle, _genus_, _species_, [Greek: ei)=dos], and even _differentia_ are not [Greek: e)n u(pokeime/nô|], but are predicated [Greek: kath' u(pokeime/nou] (see Cat. p. 3, a. 20). The _proprium_ and _accidens_ alone are [Greek: e)n u(pokeime/nô|]. Here is a difference between his language and that of Plato, according to whom [Greek: to\ ei)=dos] is [Greek: e)n e(ka/stô| tô=n pollô=n] (Parmenid. 131 A). But we remark in that same dialogue, that when Parmenides questions Sokrates whether he recognises [Greek: ei)/dê au)ta\ kath' au)ta/] he first asks whether Sokrates admits [Greek: dikai/ou ti ei)=dos au)to\ kath' au(to/, kai\ kalou=, kai\ a)gathou=, kai\ pa/ntôn tô=n toiou/tôn]. Sokrates answers without hesitation, _Yes_. Then Parmenides proceeds to ask, Do you recognise an [Greek: ei)=dos] of man, separate and apart from all of us individual men?--or an [Greek: ei)=dos] 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 [Greek: ei)=dos] realised itself most easily and distinctly to the mind of Plato in the case of _accidents_. He would, therefore, naturally conceive [Greek: ta\ ei)/dê] as being [Greek: e)n u(pokeime/nô|], 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 [Greek: ei)=dos].] [Footnote 39: Aristotel. Metaphys. [Greek: D]. 1015-1016, I. 1052, a. 29 seq. [Greek: ta\ me\n dê\ ou(/tôs e(\n ê)\ suneche\s ê)\ o(/lon; ta\ de\ ô(=n a)\n o( lo/gos ei(=s ê)=|; toiau=ta de\ ô(=n ê( no/êsis mi/a], &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 [Greek: ê( ti/s grammatikê\] as [Greek: a)/tomon kai\ _e(\n a)rithmô=|_] (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.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 which 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. [Side-note: Continuation of the Dialogue--Parmenides admonishes Sokrates that be 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] [Footnote 41: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C. [Greek: Prô\| ga/r, pri\n gumnasthê=nai, ô)= Sô/krates, o(ri/zesthai e)picheirei=s kalo/n te/ ti kai\ di/kaion kai\ a)gatho\n kai\ e(\n e(/kaston tô=n ei)dô=n . . . kalê\ me\n ou)=n kai\ thei/a, ei)= i)/sthi, ê( o(rmê\ ê(\n o(rma=|s e)pi\ tou\s lo/gous; e(/lkuson de\ sauto\n kai\ gumna/sai, ma=llon dia\ tê=s dokou/sês a)chrê/stou ei)=nai kai\ kaloume/nês u(po\ tô=n pollô=n a)doleschi/as, e(/ôs e)/ti ne/os ei)=; ei) de\ mê\, se\ diapheu/xetai ê( a)lê/theia.]] [Footnote 42: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 E.] [Side-note: 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 both 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] [Footnote 43: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 A. [Greek: kai\ au)=this au)= e)a\n u(pothê=|, ei) e)/stin o(moio/tês ê)\ ei) mê/ e)sti, ti/ e)ph' e(kate/ras tê=s u(pothe/seôs sumbê/setai, kai\ au)toi=s toi=s u(potethei=si kai\ toi=s a)/llois kai\ pro\s au(ta\ kai\ pro\s a)/llêla.]] [Footnote 44: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 45: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 D. [Greek: ei) me\n ou)=n plei/ous ê)=men, ou)k a)\n a)/xion ê)=n dei=sthai; _a)prepê= ga\r ta\ toiau=ta pollô=n e)nanti/on le/gein_, a)/llôs te kai\ têlikou/tô|; a)gnoou=si ga\r oi( polloi\ o(/ti a)/neu tau/tês tê=s dia\ pa/ntôn diexo/dou kai\ pla/nês, a)du/naton e)ntucho/nta tô=| a)lêthei= nou=n schei=n.] 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 [Greek: gumnasi/a], here set out by the Platonic Parmenides, is so prodigious, that no one after Plato employed it. (Prok. ad Parmen. p. 801, Stallb.)] [Side-note: 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 trace 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. [Footnote 46: Plato, Parmenid. p. 137 A. [Greek: dei= ga\r chari/zesthai, _e)peidê\_ kai\ o(\ Zê/nôn le/gei, _au)toi/ e)smen_ . . . ê)\ bou/lesthe _e)peidê/per dokei= pragmateiô/dê paidia\n pai/zein_,] &c.] [Side-note: 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_. [Side-note: 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 can 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. [Footnote 47: See the connecting words between the first and second demonstration, pp. 142 A, 159. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tau=ta me\n ê)/dê e)ô=men ô(s phanera/, e)piskopô=men de\ pa/lin, e(\n ei) e)/stin, _a)=ra kai\ ou)ch ou(/tôs e)/chei ta)/lla tou= e(no\s ê)\ ou(/tô mo/non?_] Also p. 163 B.] [Footnote 48: Plato, Parmenid. ad fin. [Greek: Ei)rê/sthô toi/nun tou=to/ te kai\ o(/ti, ô(s e)/oiken, e(\n ei)/t' e)/stin ei)/te mê\ e)/stin, au)to/ te kai\ ta)/lla kai\ pro\s au(ta\ kai\ pro\s a)/llêla pa/nta pa/ntôs e)sti/ te kai\ ou)k e)sti kai\ phai/netai/ te kai\ ou) phai/netai.]] [Side-note: 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 said 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 Euthydemus[49]) 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 Proklus[51] 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 details of places, persons, and incidents, with which it begins.[52] [Footnote 49: Plato, Euthydem. p. 300 C. [Greek: A)ll' ou) tou=to e)rôtô=, a)lla\ ta\ pa/nta siga=| ê)\ le/gei? _Ou)de/tera kai\ a)mpho/tera_, e)/phê u(pharpa/sas o( Dionuso/dôros; eu)= ga\r oi)=da o(/ti tê=| a)pokri/sei ou)ch e(/xeis o(/, ti chrê=|.]] [Footnote 50: Plato, Sophist. p. 259 B. [Greek: ei)/te ô(s ti chalepo\n katanenoêkô\s chai/rei, tote\ me\n e)pi\ tha/tera tote\ d' e)pi\ tha/tera tou\s lo/gous e(/lkôn, ou)k a)/xia pollê=s spoudê=s e)spou/daken, ô(s oi( nu=n lo/goi phasi/n.]--Also p. 259 D. [Greek: To\ de\ tau)to\n e(/teron a)pophai/nein a(mê=| ge/ pê|, kai\ to\ tha/teron tau)to/n, kai\ to\ me/ga smikro/n, kai\ to\ o(/moion a)no/moion, kai\ chai/rein ou(/tô ta)nanti/a a)ei\ prophe/ronta e)n toi=s lo/gois, ou)/ te/ tis e)/legchos ou(=tos a)lêthino/s, a)/rti te tô=n o)/ntôn tino\s e)phaptome/nou dê=los neogenê\s ô)/n.]] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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. [Greek: Mari=nos]. 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 [Greek: to\ e(/n]: 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 of 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. [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 which 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 affirmation 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. [Footnote 54: I agree with Schleiermacher, in considering that the purpose of the Parmenides is nothing beyond [Greek: gumnasi/a], 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 [Greek: to\ e(\n] (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 [Greek: to\ e(\n] 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.] [Footnote 55: Plato, Parmenid. p. 135 C.] [Side-note: 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 attests[56] the difficulty of the problem. I agree with those early 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: a)pori/ai].] [Footnote 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 [Greek: a)/pous] or [Greek: kolobo\s] (Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8), sinning against the strict exigence which Plato in the Phædrus applies to the discourse of Lysias.] [Side-note: The Demonstrations or Antinomies considered. They include much unwarranted assumption and subtlety. Collection of unexplained perplexities or [Greek: a)pori/ai].] 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 amount 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 [Greek: a)pori/ai] (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. [Side-note: 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 to 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 attitude[58]--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 the 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. [Footnote 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--[Greek: o( ga\r Sôkra/tês a)/gatai ta\s a)pori/as], &c. (L. v. p. 252).] [Footnote 59: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 2, ad fin.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: gumnasi/a] here enjoined by the Platonic Parmenides is so prodigious, that no one after Plato employed it (Prokl. ad Parmenid. p. 306, p. 801, Stallb.). [Greek: ei) me\n ou)=n plei/ous ê)=men, ou)k a)\n a)/xion ê)=n dei=sthai. a)prepê= ga\r ta\ toiau=ta pollô=n e)nanti/on le/gein, a)/llôs te kai\ têlikou/tô|; a)gnoou=si ga\r oi( polloi\ o(/ti a)neu tau/tês tê=s dia\ pa/ntôn diexo/dou kai\ pla/nês a)du/naton e)ntucho/nta tô=| a)lêthei= nou=n schei=n.]] [Footnote 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--[Greek: chrê\ d' o(/per phula/ttesthai paragge/llomen a)pokrinome/nous, au)tou\s e)picheirou=ntas peira=sthai lantha/nein] (Anal. Priora, ii. p. 66, a. 33).] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 62: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 B.] [Footnote 63: Plato, Repub. vii. p. 524 E, and indeed the whole passage, pp. 523-524.] [Side-note: 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 Socratici_, 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 Palamêdes[66]) 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 ([Greek: e)pochê\]), and protest against precipitation in dogmatising,[68] which these latter converted into a formula and vindicated as a system. [Footnote 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 [Greek: gumnasi/as cha/rin, i(/na thlibome/nê ê( psuchê\ e)k tô=n e)ph' e(ka/tera e)picheirêma/tôn a)pogennê/sê| to\ tê=s a)lêthei/as phô=s.]] [Footnote 65: Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hypot. i. 8-12. [Greek: E)/sti de\ ê( skeptikê\ du/namis a)ntithetikê\ phainome/nôn te kai\ nooume/nôn kath' oi(ondê/pote tro/pon, a)ph' ê(=s e)rcho/metha, dia\ tê\n e)n toi=s a)ntikeime/nois pra/gmasi kai\ lo/gois i)sosthe/neian, to\ me\n prô=ton ei)s e)pochê\n to\ de\ meta\ tou=to ei)s a)taraxi/an . . . _i)sosthe/neian_ de\ le/gomen tê\n kata\ pi/stin kai\ a)pisti/an i)so/têta, ô(s mêde/na mêdeno\s prokei=sthai tô=n machome/nôn lo/gôn ô(s pisto/teron . . . susta/seôs de\ tê=s skeptikê=s e)stin a)rchê\ ma/lista _to\ panti\ lo/gô| lo/gon i)/son a)ntikei=sthai_.]] [Footnote 66: Plato, Phædrus, p. 261 D.] [Footnote 67: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 C-D.] [Footnote 68: Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 20-212. [Greek: tê\n tô=n dogmatikô=n prope/teian--tê\n dogmatikê\n prope/teian.]] [Side-note: 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 manoeuvres 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 any 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. [Greek: Zêtô=n eu(rê/seis ou) r(o/don a)lla\ ba/ton.] [Footnote 69: Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Parmen. pp. 97-99.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 transitional 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. [Footnote 71: Aristot. Metaphys. iv. 1015-1017, ix. 1052, a. 15; Anal. Poster. ii. p. 92, b. 14. [Greek: to\ d' ei)=nai ou)k ou)si/a ou)deni/. ou) ga\r ge/nos to\ o)/n.]--Topica, iv. p. 127, a. 28. [Greek: plei/ô ga\r ta\ pa=sin e(po/mena; oi(=on to\ o)\n kai\ to\ e(\n tô=n pa=sin e(pome/nôn e)/stin], 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 [Greek: pollakô=s lego/menon] (Schol. ad Aristot. Sophist. Elench. p. 320, b. 3, Brandis). Aristotle farther remarks that Plato considered [Greek: to\ ge/nos] as [Greek: e(\n a)rithmô=|], and that this was an error; we ought rather to say that Plato did not clearly discriminate [Greek: e(\n a)rithmô=|] from [Greek: e(\n ei)/dei] (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 [Greek: to\ o(mô/numon]--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 ([Greek: sunô/numon--o(mô/numon], and the intermediate [Greek: kat' a)nalogi/an]), though they had been partially noticed by Plato and even by Sokrates. [Greek: e(/ôs A)ristote/lous ou) pa/mpan e)/kdêlon ê)=n to\ o(mô/numon; a)lla\ Pla/tôn te ê)/rxato peri\ tou/tou ê)\ ma=llon e)kei/nou Sôkra/tês], Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. p. 323, b. 24, Brandis.] [Side-note: 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 neither 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. [Footnote 72: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 137 C, 142 B.] [Footnote 73: This part of the argument is the extreme of dialectic subtlety, p. 139 C-D-E.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Au)to\-E(\n] or Unum Ideale; which Plato himself affirmed, and which Aristotle impugned.[76] If this be what is meant, the dialogue Parmenides would present here, as in other places, a statement of difficulties understood by Plato as attaching to his own doctrines. [Footnote 75: This is the main point of Demonstration 1, and is stated pp. 139 D, 140 A, compared with p. 137 C.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Au)to\-E(\n]; 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 [Greek: E(\n] and [Greek: Polla\]--and the observations which Plato makes in the Philêbus upon [Greek: E(\n] and [Greek: Polla/]. 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.] [Side-note: Second Demonstration.] 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 first[77]--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_ itself (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] [Footnote 77: Plato, Parmenid. p. 142 A. [Greek: Bou/lei ou)=n e)pi\ tê\n u(po/thesin pa/lin e)x a)rchê=s e)pane/lthômen, e)a/n ti ê(mi=n e)paniou=sin a)lloi=on phanê=|?]] [Footnote 78: This shifting of the real hypothesis, though the terms remain unchanged, is admitted by implication a little afterwards, p. 142 B. [Greek: _nu=n de\_ ou)ch au(/tê e)/stin ê( u(po/thesis, _ei) e(\n e(\n_, ti/ chrê\ sumbai/nein, a)ll' _ei) e(\n e)/stin_.]] [Footnote 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 [Greek: o(\ e)/stin e(\n] should be [Greek: polla\]--that [Greek: o(\ e)/stin o(/moion] should be [Greek: a)no/moion]. 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.] [Footnote 80: Plato, Parmen. pp. 144 A-E, 145 A.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 81: Plato, Parmenid. p. 146 A-B.] [Footnote 82: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 146-147 C.] [Footnote 83: Plato, Parmenid. p. 148 A-D.] [Footnote 84: Plato, Parmenid. p. 149 A-D.] [Footnote 85: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 150-151 D.] [Footnote 86: Plato, Parmen. pp. 152-153-154 A.] [Footnote 87: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 154 B, 155 C. [Greek: kata\ dê\ pa/nta tau=ta, to\ e(\n au)to/ te au(tou= kai\ tô=n a)/llôn presbu/teron kai\ neô/teron e)/sti te kai\ gi/gnetai, kai\ ou(/te presbu/teron ou(/te neô/teron ou(/t' e)/stin ou(/te gi/gnetai ou(/te au(tou= ou(/te tô=n a)/llôn.]] [Footnote 88: Plato, Parmenid. p. 155 C-D.] Here 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: a)pori/ai] 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.] [Side-note: Demonstration 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 91: Plato, Parmenid. p. 156.] [Side-note: 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 no 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. [Footnote 92: Plato, Parmenid. p. 156 E. [Greek: a)ll' ê( _e)xai/phnês au(/tê phu/sis a)/topo/s tis e)gka/thêtai metaxu\ tê=s kinê/seô/s te kai\ sta/seôs_, e)n chro/nô| ou)deni\ ou)=sa, kai\ ei)s tau/tên dê\ kai\ e)k tau/tês to/ te kinou/menon metaba/llei e)pi\ to\ e(sta/nai, kai\ to\ e(sto\s e)pi\ to\ kinei=sthai. . . . kai\ to\ e(\n dê/, ei)/per e(/stêke/ te kai\ kinei=tai, metaba/lloi a)\n e)ph' e(ka/tera; mo/nôs ga\r a)\n ou(/tôs a)mpho/tera poioi=; metaba/llon d' e)xai/phnês metaba/llei, kai\ o(/te metaba/llei, e)n ou)deni\ chro/nô| a)\n ei)/ê, ou)de\ kinoi=t' a)\n to/te, ou)d' a)\n stai/ê.] [Greek: To\ e)xai/phnês--ê( e)xai/phnês phu/sis a)/topo/s tis]--may be compared to an infinitesimal; analogous to what is recognised in the theory of the differential calculus.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: to\ nu=n] as [Greek: mêde/n]--and nothing in time to be real except [Greek: to\ parô|chêko\s] and [Greek: to\ me/llon] (Plutarch, De Commun. Notitiis contra Stoicos, p. 1081 D).] [Side-note: 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 the 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. [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: to\ e)xai/phnês, a)/topo/s tis phu/sis]) 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 been 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 [Greek: to\ e)xai/phnês]) 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. [Footnote 94: Steinhart represents this idea of [Greek: to\ e)xai/phnês]--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.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: a)lloi/ôsis] or qualitative change, he recognised what he called [Greek: a)thro/an metabolê/n]--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_. [Side-note: 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 _Unum 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] [Footnote 96: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 160-161 A. [Greek: ei)=nai me\n dê\ tô=| e(ni\ ou)ch oi(=o/n te, ei)/per ge mê\ e)/sti, mete/chein de\ pollô=n ou)de\n kôlu/ei, a)lla\ kai\ a)na/gkê, ei)/per to/ ge e(\n e)kei=no kai\ mê\ a)/llo mê\ e)/stin. ei) me/ntoi mê/te to\ e(\n mê/t' _e)kei=no_ mê\ e)/stai, a)lla\ peri\ a)/llou tou o( lo/gos, ou)de\ phthe/ggesthai dei= ou)de/n; ei) de\ to\ e(\n e)kei=no kai\ mê\ a)/llo u(pokei=tai mê\ ei)=nai, kai\ tou= _e)kei/nou_ kai\ a)/llôn pollô=n a)na/gkê au)tô=| metei=nai.]] [Footnote 97: Plato, Parmenid. p. 161 C-D.] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 99: Plato, Parmenid. pp. 163-164 A.] [Side-note: 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 Number 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. [Footnote 100: Plato, Sophistes, pp. 258-259.] [Side-note: 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 substratum 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. [Footnote 101: Plato, Parmenid. p. 160 C.] [Footnote 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_. [Side-note: 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: for 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] [Footnote 103: Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 B. [Greek: A)/lla me/n pou dei= au)ta\ ei)=nai; ei) ga\r mêde\ a)/lla e)sti/n, ou)k a)\n peri\ tô=n a)/llôn le/goito.]] [Footnote 104: Plato, Parmenid. p. 164 D. [Greek: Ou)kou=n polloi\ o)/gkoi e)/santai, ei)=s e(/kastos phaino/menos, ô)\n de\ ou)/, ei)/per e(\n mê\ e)/stai. Ou(/tôs.]] [Footnote 105: Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 A. [Greek: O(/ti a)ei\ au)tô=n o(/tan ti/s ti la/bê| tê=| dianoi/a| ô(/s ti tou/tôn o(/n, pro/ te tê=s a)rchê=s a)/llê a)ei\ phai/netai a)rchê/, meta/ te tê\n teleutê\n e(te/ra u(poleipome/nê teleutê/, e(/n te tô=| me/sô| a)/lla mesai/tera tou= me/sou, smikro/tera de\ dia\ to\ mê\ du/nasthai e(no\s au)tô=n e(ka/stou lamba/nesthai, a)/te ou)k o)/ntos tou= e(no/s.]] [Footnote 106: Plato, Parmenid. p. 165 E. Compare p. 158 E. [Greek: toi=s a)/llois dê\ tou= e(no\s. . . . ê( de\ au)tô=n phu/sis kath' e(auta\ a)peiri/an (pa/resche).]] [Side-note: 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 [Greek: A)/peiron], Infinite, or Chaos: an object not real and absolute, but relative and variable according to the point of view of the subject. [Footnote 107: Plato, Parmenid. p. 127 E; compare this with the close of the eighth Demonstration, p. 165 E--[Greek: ei) e(no\s mê\ o)/ntos polla\ e)/stin].] [Side-note: 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 become 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] [Footnote 108: Plato, Parmenid. p. 166 A-B. [Greek: E(\n a)/ra ei) mê\ e)/sti, ta)/lla ou)/te e)/stin ou)/te doxa/zetai e(\n ou)/te polla/. . . . Ou)/d' a)/ra o(/moia ou)de\ a)no/moia. . . . Ou)de\ mê\n ta\ au)ta/ ge ou)d' e(/tera, ou)de\ a(pto/mena ou)de\ chôri/s, _ou)de\ a)/ll' o(/sa e)n toi=s pro/sthen diê/lthomen_] (compare [Greek: dielthei=n], p. 165 E) [Greek: _ô(s phaino/mena au)ta/, tou/tôn ou)/te ti e)/stin ou)/te phai/netai ta)/lla, e(\n ei) mê\ e)/stin_.]] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 109: Compare, with the passage cited in the last note, another passage, p. 159 B, at the beginning of Demonstration 5. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tau=ta me\n ê)/dê e)ô=men ô(s phanera/, e)piskopô=men de\ pa/lin, e(\n ei) e)/stin, a)=ra _kai\ ou)ch ou(/tôs e)/chei ta)/lla tou= e(no\s ê)\ ou(/tô mo/non_?] Here the purpose to prove [Greek: _ou)ch ou(/tôs_], immediately on the heels of [Greek: _ou(/tôs_], is plainly enunciated.] [Side-note: 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 strike, 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. [Footnote 110: Plato, Republ. v. 479 C. The allusion was to an eunuch knocking down a bat seated upon a reed. [Greek: Ai)no/s tis e)/stin ô(s a)nê/r te kou)k a)nê/r, O)/rnitha/ te kou)k o)/rnith' i)dô/n te kou)k i)dô/n, E)pi\ xu/lou te kou) xu/lou kathême/nên Li/thô| te kou) li/thô| ba/loi te kou) ba/loi.] 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).] CHAPTER XXVIII. THEÆTETUS. [Side-note: 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 Eukleides and Terpsion, intended to attract our sympathy and admiration towards the youthful Theætêtus. [Footnote 1: Plato, Theætêt. ad fin. p. 210.] [Footnote 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).] [Side-note: 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] I 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. [Footnote 3: Plato, Theætêt. p. 147 A. [Greek: Ou)d' a)/ra e)pistê/mên u(podêma/tôn suni/êsin, o( e)pistê/mên mê\ ei)dio/s? Ou) ga/r.]] [Footnote 4: Plato, Theætêt. p. 148. Oblong ([Greek: promê/keis]) 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.] [Side-note: 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] The 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] [Footnote 5: Plato, Theætêt. p. 148 E. [Greek: ô)di/neis, dia\ to\ mê\ keno\s a)ll' e)gku/môn ei)=nai.]] [Footnote 6: Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A, p. 150 A.] [Footnote 7: Plato, Theætêt. p. 149 A. [Greek: oi( de/, a)/te ou)k ei)do/tes, tou=to me\n ou) le/gousi peri\ e)mou=, o(/ti de\ a)topô/tato/s ei)mi, kai\ poiô= tou\s a)nthrô/pous a)porei=n.] 150 B-C [Greek: me/giston de\ tou=t' e(/ni tê=| ê(mete/ra| te/chnê|, basani/zein dunato\n ei)=nai panti\ tro/pô|, po/teron ei)/dôlon ê)\ pseu=dos a)poti/ktei tou= ne/ou ê( dianoi/a, ê)\ go/nimo/n te kai\ a)lêthe/s; e)pei\ to/de ge kai\ e)moi\ u(pa/rchei o(/per tai=s mai/ais; a)/gono/s ei)mi sophi/as], &c.] [Footnote 8: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 150 E, 151 A. [Greek: e)ni/ois me\n to\ gigno/meno/n moi daimo/nion a)pokôlu/ei xunei=nai, e)ni/ois de\ e)a=|; kai\ pa/lin ou(=toi e)pidido/asin.] 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.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 9: Plato, Theætêt. p. 151 D.] [Side-note: 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 are 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. [Footnote 10: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 151 E--152 A. _Theætêt._ [Greek: ou)k a)/llo ti/ e)stin e)pistê/mê ê)\ ai)/sthêsis. . . .] _Sokrat._ [Greek: Kinduneu/eis me/ntoi lo/gon ou) phau=lon ei)rêke/nai peri\ e)pistê/mês, a)ll' o(/n e)/lege kai\ Prôtago/ras; _tro/pon de/ tina a)/llon ei)/rêke ta\ au)ta\ tau=ta. Phêsi\ ga/r pou--Pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn me/tron a)/nthrôpon ei)=nai, tô=n me\n o)/ntôn, ô(s e)/sti--tô=n de\ mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k e)/stin._ A)ne/gnôkas ga/r pou?] _Theætêt._ [Greek: A)ne/gnôka kai\ polla/kis.] _Sokrat._ [Greek: Ou)kou=n ou(/tô pôs le/gei, ôs oi(=a me\n e(/kasta e)moi\ phai/netai, toiau=ta me/n e)stin e)moi\--oi(=a de\ soi/, toiau=ta de\ au)= soi/; a)nthrôpos de\ su/ te ka)gô/.] _Theætêt._ [Greek: Le/gei ga\r ou)=n ou(/tôs.] 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.] [Footnote 11: Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 E. [Greek: kai\ peri\ tou/tou _pa/ntes e(xê=s oi( sophoi\ plê\n Parmeni/dou xumphere/sthôn_, Prôtago/ras te kai\ Ê(ra/kleitos kai\ E)mpedoklê=s, kai\ tô=n poiêtô=n oi( a)/kroi tê=s poiê/seôs e(kate/ras, kômô|di/as me\n E)pi/charmos, tragô|di/as de\ O(/mêros.]] [Side-note: 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 Sokrates[12] 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 (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] [Footnote 12: Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A.] [Footnote 13: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 D. _Sokrat._ [Greek: Pagka/lôs a)/ra soi ei)/rêtai o(/ti e)pistê/mê ou)k a)/llo ti/ e)stin ê)\ ai)/sthêsis; kai\ _ei)s tau)to\n sumpe/ptôke_, kata\ me\n O(/mêron kai\ Ê(ra/kleiton kai\ pa=n to\ toiou=ton phu=lon, oi(=on r(eu/mata kinei=sthai ta\ pa/nta--kata\ de\ Prôtago/ran to\n sophô/taton, pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn a)/nthrôpon me/tron ei)=nai--kata\ de\ Theai/têton, tou/tôn ou(=tôs e)cho/ntôn, ai)/sthêsin e)pistê/mên gi/gnesthai.]] [Footnote 14: See the answer of Theætêtus and the words of Sokrates following, p. 157 C.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 language[16] 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 materially 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. [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 17: Dr. Routh, in a note upon his edition of the Euthydêmus of Plato (p. 286 C) observes:--"Protagoras docebat, [Greek: Pa/ntôn chrêma/tôn me/tron a)/nthrôpon ei)=nai, tô=n me\n o)/ntôn, ô(s e)/sti; tô=n de\ mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k e)/sti.] 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, [Greek: o(/ti e)pistê/mê ou)k a)/llo ti/ e)stin ê)\ ai)/sthêsis.]] [Side-note: 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; concerned 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 without back: which are not two things originally different and coming into conjunction, but two different aspects of the same indivisible fact. [Footnote 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."] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 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.)] [Side-note: 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 my 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 Ratio, 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 nature; 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. [Footnote 20: See M. Jouffroy, Préface à sa Traduction des OEuvres 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.] [Footnote 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 ([Greek: ta\ pro/s ti]) are "simul Naturâ, [Greek: kai\ sunanairei= a)/llêla]": but that in some Relata this is not true: for example, [Greek: to\ e)pistêto\n] is relative to [Greek: e)pistê/mê], yet still _it would seem prior_ to [Greek: e)pistê/mê (pro/teron a)\n do/xeie tê=s e)pistê/mês ei)=nai)]. There cannot be [Greek: e)pistê/mê] without some [Greek: e)pistêto/n]: but there may be [Greek: e)pistêto\n] without any [Greek: e)pistê/mê]. There are few things, if any (he says), in which the [Greek: e)pistêto\n] (cognoscibile) is _simul naturâ_ with [Greek: e)pistê/mê] (or cognitio) and cannot be without it. Upon which Simplikius remarks, What are these few things? [Greek: Ti/na de\ ta\ o)li/ga e)sti/n, e)ph' ô(=n a(/ma tô=| e)pistêtô=| ê( e)pistê/mê e)sti/n? Ta\ a)/neu u(/lês, ta\ noêta/, a(/ma tô=| kat' e)nergei/an a)ei\ e)stô/sê| e)pistê/mê e)/stin, ei)/te kai\ e)n ê(mi=n e)sti/ tis toiau/tê a)ei\ a)/nô me/nousa, . . . ei)/te kai\ e)n tô=| kat' e)nergei/an vô=| ei)/ tis kai\ tê\n no/êsin e)kei/nên e)pistê/mên e(/loito kalei=n. du/natai de\ kai\ dia\ tê\n tô=n koinô=n u(po/stasin ei)rê=sthai, tê\n e)x a)phaire/seôs; a(/ma ga\r tê=| u(posta/sei tou/tôn kai\ ê( e)pistê/mê e)sti/n. a)lêthe\s de\ kai\ e)pi\ tô=n a)naplasma/tôn tô=n te e)n tê=| phantasi/a| kai\ tô=n technitô=n; a(/ma ga\r chi/maira kai\ ê( e)pistê/mê chimai/ras.] 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. [Greek: G]. 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 [Greek: e)pistêto\n] correlate with [Greek: e)pistê/mê]: that in Relata, the potential correlates with the potential, and the actual with the actual. The Cognoscible is correlative, not with actual cognition ([Greek: e)pistê/mê]) but with potential Cognition, or with a potential Cognoscens. Aristotle therefore is right in saying that there may be [Greek: e)pistêto\n] without [Greek: e)pistê/mê], 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:-- [Greek: Kai/toi, phêsi/ ge o( Boêtho/s, ou)de\n kôlu/ei to\n a)rithmo\n ei)=nai kai\ di/cha tou= a)rithmou=ntos, ô(/sper oi)=mai to\ ai)sthêto\n kai\ di/cha tou= ai)sthanome/nou; spha/lletai de/, a(/ma ga\r ta\ pro\s ti/, kai\ ta\ duna/mei pro\s ta\ duna/mei; ô(/ste ei) mê\ kai\ a)rithmêtiko/n, ou)de\ to\ a)rithmêto/n] (Schol. ad Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 223, a. p. 393, Schol. Brandis). Compare Aristotel. Metaphysic. M. 1087, a. 15, about [Greek: to\ e)pi/stasthai duna/mei] and [Greek: to\ e)pi/stasthai e)nergei/a|]. About the essential co-existence of relatives--Sublato uno, tollitur alterum--see also Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathematicos, vii. 395, p. 449, Fabric.] [Side-note: 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 [Greek: noêto/n ti] correlating with Nous, distinct from the [Greek: doxasto/n ti] which correlates with [Greek: do/xa].[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 Cognoscens 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Noêta\] exist. To the rest of mankind [Greek: Noêta\] are non-apparent and non-existent.] [Footnote 23: Plato, Phædon, pp. 76-77. [Greek: i)/sê a)na/gkê tau=ta/ te] (Ideas or Forms) [Greek: ei)=nai, kai\ ta\s ê(mete/ras psucha\s pri\n kai\ ê(ma=s gegone/nai--kai\ ei) mê\ tau=ta, ou)de\ ta/de. U(perphuô=s, e)/phê o( Simmi/as, dokei= moi ê( au)tê\ a)na/gkê ei)=nai, kai\ ei)s kalo/n ge katapheu/gei o( lo/gos ei)s to\ o(moi/ôs ei)=nai tê/n te psuchê\n ê(mô=n pri\n gene/sthai ê(ma=s kai\ tê\n ou)si/an ê(\n su\ nu=n le/geis.] Compare p. 92 E of the same dialogue with the notes of Wyttenbach and Heindorf--"Haec autem [Greek: ou)si/a] Idearum, rerum intelligibilium, [Greek: au)tê=s e)sti\n] (_sc._ [Greek: tê=s psuchê=s]) ut hoc loco dicitur, est propria et possessio animæ nostræ," &c. About the essential implication of [Greek: Nou=s] with the [Greek: Noêta/], as well as of [Greek: to\ do/xazon] with [Greek: ta\ doxazo/mena], and of [Greek: to\ ai)sthano/menon] with [Greek: ta\ ai)sthêta/], 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. [Greek: to\n nou=n phame\n a)kribô=s ginô/skein, dio/ti au)to/s e)sti to\ noêto/n.] 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".] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 qualities, 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. [Footnote 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--[Greek: e)leu/theron ga/r ti kai\ au)texou/sion to\ logiko/n, o(/then ou)ch e(\n kai\ tau)to\n pa=sin e)/rgon a)nthrô/pois, ô(s e(ka/stô| ei)/dei tô=n a)lo/gôn zô/ôn; phu/sei ga\r mo/nê| ta\ toiau=ta kinei=tai, ta\ de\ phu/sei o(moi/ôs para\ pa=si/n e)stin; ai( de\ logikai\ pra/xeis a)/llai par' a)/llois kai\ ou)k e)x a)na/gkês ai( au(=tai para\ pa=sin] (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 absent objects as real and existing, though he neither sees nor touches them: he believes fully, that if he were in a certain position 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. [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: ge/nesis]--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 ([Greek: to\ gnôsto\n] with [Greek: to\ gnôstiko/n], [Greek: to\ ai)sthêto\n] with [Greek: to\ ai)sthêtiko/n], and never realised except in implication therewith.[27] [Footnote 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--[Greek: o(/ti mo/na ta\ pa/thê katalêpta/]. Aristokles refutes them by saying that there can be no [Greek: pa/thos] without both Object and Subject--[Greek: poiou=n] and [Greek: pa/schon]. And he goes on to declare that these three are of necessary co-existence or consubstantiality. [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n a)na/gkê ge tri/a tau=ta sunuphi/stasthai--to/ te pa/thos au)to/, kai\ to\ poiou=n, kai\ to\ pa/schon] (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 [Greek: pa/thos].] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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. It 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] [Footnote 29: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 153-154. [Greek: o(\ dê\ e(/kaston ei)=nai/ phamen chrô=ma, ou)/te to\ prosba/llon ou)/te to\ prosballo/menon e)/stai, a)lla\ metaxu/ ti e(kastô| i)/dion gegono/s.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 30: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 154-155. Compare the reasoning in the Phædon, pp. 96-97-101.] [Side-note: 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 made:--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. [Footnote 31: The Aristotelian Category of Relation ([Greek: ta\ pro\s ti/], 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_ [Greek: kath' au(to/] (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 [Greek: e)pistêto\n] and [Greek: e)pistê/mê], 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 [Greek: pro\s ti/] (Metaph. [Greek: G]. p. 1011, a. 20, b. 5). This is hardly true in the sense which [Greek: pro\s ti/] 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. [Side-note: 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 definite 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] [Footnote 32: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. [Greek: ô(s to\ pa=n ki/nêsis ê)=n, kai\ a)/llo para\ tou=to ou)de/n, tê=s de\ kinê/seôs du/o ei)/dê, plê/thei me\n a)/peiron e(ka/teron, du/namin de\ to\ me\n poiei=n e)/chon, to\ de\ pa/schein. E)k de\ tê=s tou/tôn o(mili/as te kai\ tri/pseôs pro\s a)/llêla gi/gnetai e)/kgona] plê/thei me\n a)/peira, di/duma de/--to\ me\n ai)sthêto/n, to\ de\ ai)/sthêsis], a)ei\ sunekpi/ptousa kai\ gennôme/nê meta\ tou= ai)sthêtou=.]] [Footnote 33: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 B.] [Footnote 34: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 E. [Greek: o( me\n o)phthalmo\s a)/ra o)/pseôs e)/mpleôs e)ge/neto kai\ o(ra=| dê\ to/te kai\ _e)ge/neto ou)/ ti o)/psis a)lla\ o)phthalmo\s o(rô=n_, to\ de\ xuggennê=san to\ chrô=ma leuko/têtos perieplê/sthê kai\ _e)ge/neto ou) leuko/tês au)=_ a)lla\ leuko/n, ei)/te xu/lon ei)/te li/thos ei)/te o(tiou=n xune/bê chrê=ma chrôsthê=nai tô=| toiou/tô| chrô/mati.] 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).] [Side-note: 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 thing _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] [Footnote 35: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: e)pei\ kai\ to\ poiou=n ei)=nai ti kai\ to\ pa/schon au)= ti e)pi\ e(no\s noê=sai, ô(/s phasin, ou)k ei)=nai pagi/ôs. Ou)/te ga\r poiou=n e)sti/ ti, pri\n a)\n tô=| pa/schonti xune/lthê|--ou)/te pa/schon, pri\n a)\n tô=| poiou=nti], &c.] [Footnote 36: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: to/ te/ tini xuneltho\n kai\ poiou=n a)/llô| au)= prospeso\n pa/schon a)nepha/nê.]] [Footnote 37: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 A. [Greek: ou)de\n ei)=nai e(\n au)to\ kath' au(to/, a)lla/ tini a)ei\ gi/gnesthai, to\ d' ei)=nai panta/chothen e)xairete/on], &c.] [Footnote 38: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 B. [Greek: dei= de\ kai\ kata\ me/ros ou(/tô le/gein kai\ peri\ pollô=n a)throisthe/ntôn, ô(=| dê\ a)throi/smati a)/nthrôpo/n te ti/thentai kai\ li/thon kai\ e(/kaston zô=o/n te kai\ ei)=dos.] In this passage I follow Heindorf's explanation which seems dictated by the last word [Greek: ei)=dos]. 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 [Greek: a)throi/smata]--a _man_, a _stone_, &c.] [Footnote 39: Plato, Theætêt. p. 157 E.] [Side-note: 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 the other; and no name can be truly predicated of either, which implies existence (either perpetual or temporary) apart from the other.[42] [Footnote 40: Plato, Theætêt. p. 159.] [Footnote 41: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 A.] [Footnote 42: Plato, Theætêt. p. 160 B. [Greek: e)/peiper ê(mô=n ê( a)na/gkê tê\n ou)si/an sundei= me/n, sundei= de ou)deni\ tô=n a)/llôn, ou)d' au)= ê(mi=n au)toi=s; a)llê/lois dê\ lei/petai sundede/sthai] (_i. e._ [Greek: to\n ai)sthano/menon] and [Greek: to\ poiou=n ai)stha/nesthai]). [Greek: Ô/ste ei)/te _tis ei)=nai ti/ o)noma/zei, tini\ ei)=nai, ê)\ tino/s, ê)\ pro/s ti, r(ête/on au)tô=|, ei)/te gi/gnesthai; au)to\ de\ e)ph' au(tou= ti ê)\ o)\n ê)\ gigno/menon ou)/te au)tô=| lekte/on, ou)/t' a)/llou le/gontos a)podekte/on_.] Compare Aristot. Metaphys. [Greek: G]. 6, p. 1011, a. 23.] [Side-note: 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 Object[43]--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 the 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 name, 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: phusio/logoi] 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 ([Greek: ê( de\ tou= ai)sthêtou= e)ne/rgeia kai\ tê=s ai)sthê/seôs ê( au)tê\ me/n e)sti kai\ mi/a, to\ d' ei)=nai ou) tau)to\n au)tai=s]). But this is not true when we speak of them potentially--[Greek: dichô=s ga\r legome/nês tê=s ai)sthê/seôs kai\ tou= ai)sthêtou=, tô=n me\n kata\ du/namin tô=n de\ kat' e)ne/rgeian, e)pi/ tou/tôn me\n sumbai/nei to\ lechthe/n, e)pi\ de\ tô=n e(te/rôn ou) sumbai/nei. A)ll' e)kei=noi a(plô=s e)/legon peri\ tô=n legome/nôn ou)ch a(plô=s.] 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.] [Footnote 44: The terms Ego and Mecum, to express the antithesis of these two [Greek: lo/gô| mo/non chôrista\], 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. [Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta _pô/s_ e)sti pa/nta; ê)\ ga\r ai)sthêta\ ta\ o)/nta ê)\ noêta/. e)sti\ d' ê( e)pistê/mê me\n ta\ e)pistêta/ _pôs_, ê( d' ai)/sthêsis ta\ ai)sthêta/.] The adverb [Greek: pôs] ([Greek: tro/pon tina/], 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 [Greek: noêta\] than about [Greek: ai)sthêta/]. That doctrine is completely independent of the theory, that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]. 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)--[Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta pô/s e)sti pa/nta]--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.)] [Side-note: 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 all 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 as objective--in this point of view the proposition is just and defensible.[47] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 46: Plato, Theætêt. p. 156 A. [Greek: tê=s de\ kinê/seôs du/o ei)/dê, plê/thei me\n a)/peiron e(ka/teron, du/namin de\ to\ me\n poiei=n e)/chon, to\ de\ pa/schein.]] [Footnote 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, [Greek: Th]. 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 (OEuvres, 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_. [Side-note: 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 Protagoras 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] [Footnote 48: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161. Compare Plato, Kratylus, p. 386 C, where the same argument is employed.] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 50: Plato, Theætêt. p. 170.] [Footnote 51: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 B. [Greek: Ou)kou=n tê\n au(tou= a)\n pseudê= xugchôroi=, ei) tê\n tô=n ê(goume/nôn au)to\n pseu/desthai o(mologei= a)lêthê= ei)=nai?]] [Footnote 52: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 C.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 53: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 172 A, 177 E.] [Footnote 54: Plato, Theætêt. p. 172.] Here then we discover the distinction which Plato would draw.[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. [Footnote 55: Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.] [Footnote 56: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179. [Greek: ei)/ pê| tou\s suno/ntas e)/peithen, o(/ti kai\ to\ me/llon e)/sesthai/ te kai\ do/xein ou)/te ma/ntis ou)/te tis a)/llos a)/meinon kri/neien a)\n ê)\ au)to\s au(tô=|.]] [Footnote 57: Plato, Theætêt. p. 178.] [Footnote 58: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 B. _Theodor._ [Greek: E)kei/nê| moi dokei= ma/lista a(li/skesthai o( lo/gos, a(lisko/menos kai\ tau/tê|, ê)=| ta\s tô=n a)/llôn do/xas kuri/as poiei=, au(=tai de\ e)pha/nêsan tou\s e)kei/nou lo/gous ou)damê=| a)lêthei=s ê(gou/menai.] _Sokrat._ [Greek: Pollachê=| kai\ a)/llê| a)\n to/ ge toiou=ton a(loi/ê, mê\ pa=san panto\s a)lêthê= do/xan ei)=nai; peri\ de\ to\ paro\n e(ka/stô| pa/thos, e)x ô(=n ai( ai)sthê/seis kai\ ai( kata\ tau/tas do/xai gi/gnontai . . . I)/sôs de\ ou)de\n le/gô, a)na/lôtoi ga/r, ei) e)/tuchon, ei)si/n.]] [Side-note: 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 been[59]--_That every opinion delivered by every man is true, to that man himself_. 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 to 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. [Footnote 59: Plato, Theætêt. p. 152 A. [Greek: Ou)kou=n ou(/tô pôs le/gei] (Protagoras) [Greek: ô(s oi(=a me\n e(/kasta e)moi\ phai/netai, toiau=ta me/n e)stin e)moi/--oi(=a de\ soi/, toiau=ta de\ au)= soi/.] 158 A. [Greek: ta\ phaino/mena e(ka/stô| tau=ta kai\ ei)=nai tou/tô| ô(=| phai/netai.] 160 C. [Greek: A)lêthê\s a)/ra e)moi\ ê( e)mê\ ai)/sthêsis; tê=s ga\r e)mê=s ou)si/as a)ei/ e)sti; kai\ e)gô\ kritê\s kata\ to\n Prôtago/ran tô=n te o)/ntôn e)moi/, ô(s e)/sti, kai\ tô=n mê\ o)/ntôn, ô(s ou)k e)/stin.] Comp. also pp. 166 D, 170 A, 177 C. Instead of saying [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] (in the passage just cited, p. 160 D), we might with quite equal truth put [Greek: A)lêthê\s a)/ra e)moi\ ê( e)mê\ _no/êsis_; tê=s ga\r e)mê=s ou)si/as a)ei/ e)/stin]. In this respect [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] and [Greek: no/êsis] are on a par. [Greek: No/êsis] is just as much relative to [Greek: o( noô=n] as [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] to [Greek: o( ai)sthano/menos]. 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 ([Greek: ou)k ô(sau/tôs ga\r kinou/metha], 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--[Greek: kai\ ou(/tôs ei)sa/gei to\ pro/s ti--tô=n pro/s ti ei)=nai tê\n a)lêthei/an] (Steinhart is of opinion that these words [Greek: tô=n pro/s ti ei)=nai tê\n a)lêthei/an] 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.] [Footnote 60: Aristotle, in commenting on the Protagorean formula, falls into a similar inaccuracy in slurring over the restrictive qualification annexed by Protagoras. Metaphysic. [Greek: G]. 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).] [Footnote 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."] [Side-note: 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 own 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 [Greek: dai/môn] 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] [Footnote 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.)] [Footnote 63: Sokrates himself states as much as this in the course of his reply to the doctrine of Protagoras, Theætêt. 171 D.: [Greek: a)ll' ê(mi=n a)na/gkê, oi)=mai, chrê=sthai ê(mi=n au)toi=s . . . kai\ ta\ dokou=nta a)ei/, tau=ta le/gein.] The necessity ([Greek: a)na/gkê]) 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 coeurs, 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.)] [Side-note: Argument--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 will 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. [Footnote 64: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 D. [Greek: o( d' a)/ra e)tu/gchanen ô)\n ei)s phro/nêsin ou)de\n belti/ôn batra/chou guri/nou, mê\ o(/ti a)/llou tou a)nthrô/pôn.] I substitute the dog or horse as illustrations.] [Side-note: 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, by appealing to what they thought the better parts of it against the worse. [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 65: Plato, Theætêt. p. 171 A. Sextus Empiric. (adv. Mathem. vii. 61) gives a pertinent answer to this objection.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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 fewer), 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. [Footnote 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.)] [Footnote 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."] [Side-note: Plato'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. [Side-note: 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 affirm. 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 Plato[70] here reckons among the authoritative infallible measures in respect to future events: a fifth may (like the rhetor Ælius Aristeides[71]) 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_. [Footnote 69: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A. [Greek: pa=s a)\n o(mologoi=].] [Footnote 70: Plato, Theætêt. p. 179 A, where Mr. Campbell observes in his note--"The [Greek: ma/ntis] is introduced as being [Greek: e)pistê/môn] of the future generally; just as the physician is of future health and disease, the musician of future harmony," &c.] [Footnote 71: See the five discourses of the rhetor Aristeides--[Greek: I(erô=n Lo/goi], 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.] [Side-note: 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 Plato'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 is 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] [Footnote 72: Plato, Theætêt. p. 161 E.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 74: Plato, Phædrus, p. 271 D-E; compare 258 A.] [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 autonomy 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 76: Aristotle says (Ethic. Nikomach. x. 1176, a. 15) [Greek: dokei= d' e)n a(/pasi toi=s toiou/tois _ei)=nai to\ phaino/menon tô=| spoudai/ô|_.] "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. [Greek: Ti/ e)/stin ai)/tion tou= sugkatati/thesthai/ tini? To\ phai/nesthai o(/ti u(pa/rchei. Tô=| ou)=n phainome/nô| o(/ti ou)ch u(pa/rchei, sugkatati/thesthai ou)ch oi(=o/n te.]] [Side-note: Import 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. [Side-note: 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 determined 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] He 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. [Footnote 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."] [Footnote 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. [Side-note: 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 failed 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] [Footnote 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. [Greek: No/mô| gluku/, no/mô| pikro/n, no/mô| thermo/n, no/mô| psuchro/n, no/mô| chroiê/; e)te/ê| de\ a)/toma kai\ keno/n. A(/per nomi/zetai me\n ei)=nai kai\ doxa/zetai ta\ ai)sthêta/, ou)k e)/sti de\ kata\ a)lêthei/an tau=ta; a)lla\ ta\ a)/toma mo/non kai\ ke/non.] Sextus Empiric. adv. Mathemat. vii. 135-139; Diog. Laert. ix. 72. See Mullach, Democriti Fragm. pp. 204-208. The discourse of Protagoras [Greek: Peri\ tou= o)/ntos], 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--[Greek: pro\s tou\s e(\n to\ o)\n ei)sa/gontas]. Allusion is probably made to the Platonic dialogues Parmenides and Sophistes.] [Footnote 80: Plato, Gorgias, p. 472.] [Side-note: 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 knowledge 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. [Footnote 81: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 152 A, 159 C.] [Side-note: 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] [Greek: Pa/nta me/trô| kai\ a)rithmô=| kai\ stathmô=|]--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. [Footnote 82: Aristotle (Metaphysic. [Greek: G]. p. 1010, a. 25 seq.) in arguing against Herakleitus and his followers, who dwelt upon [Greek: ta\ ai)sthêta\] as ever fluctuating and undefinable, urges against them that this is not true of _all_ [Greek: ai)sthêta/], 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 [Greek: ai)sthêta\] generally, you ought to predicate constancy and unchangeability, not flux and variation, since the former predicates are true of much the larger proportion of [Greek: ai)sthêta/]. See the Scholia on the above passage of Aristotle's Metaphysica, and also upon Book A. 991, a. 9.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 and 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] [Footnote 85: Plato, Theætêt. p. 163 A. [Greek: ei)s ga\r tou=to/ pou pa=s o( lo/gos ê(mi=n e)/teine, kai\ tou/tou cha/rin ta\ polla\ kai\ a)/topa tau=ta e)kinê/samen.]] [Footnote 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, the 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. [Footnote 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."] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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. [Side-note: 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 to know it at the same time. Therefore _to know_ is not the same as _to see_.[89] [Footnote 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_". [Footnote 90: Plato, Theætêt. p. 165 B. [Greek: to\ deino/taton e)rô/têma--a)phu/ktô| e)rôtê/mati], &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.] Again, 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:-- [Footnote 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).] [Footnote 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 ([Greek: ô(/sper e)k phare/tras r(êmati/skia ai)nigmatô/dê a)naspô=ntes a)potoxeu/ousin], 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, [Greek: A)/nthrôpos e(autô=| me/tron]--and equally opposed to that which Plato seems to imply as Protagorean--[Greek: Ai)/sthêsis = E)pistê/mê]. 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).] [Side-note: 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 correct. _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.-- [Footnote 93: Plato, Theætêt. p. 184 D. [Greek: deino\n ga/r pou, ei) pollai/ tines e)n ê(mi=n, ô(/sper e)n dourei/ois i(/ppois, ai)sthê/sis e)gkathêntai, a)lla\ mê\ ei)s mi/an tina\ i)de/an, ei)/te psuchê\n ei)/te o(/, ti dei= kalei=n, pa/nta tau=ta xuntei/nei, ê(=| dia\ tou/tôn oi(=on o)rga/nôn ai)sthano/metha o(/sa ai)sthêta/.]] 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] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 95: Plato, Theætêt. p. 185 D. [Greek: dokei= tê\n a)rchê\n ou)d' ei)=nai toiou=ton ou)de\n tou/tois o)/rganon i)/dion, ô(/sper e)kei/nois, a)ll' au)tê\ di' au(tê=s ê( psuchê\ ta\ koina/ moi phai/netai peri\ pa/ntôn e)piskopei=n.]] [Side-note: 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; 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. [Footnote 96: Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 B. [Greek: Tê\n de/ ge ou)si/an kai\ o(/ ti e)/ston kai\ tê\n e)nantio/têta pro\s a)llê/lô] (of hardness and softness) [Greek: kai\ tê\n ou)si/an au)= tê=s e)nantio/têtos, au)tê\ ê( psuchê\ _e)paniou=sa kai\ xumba/llousa pro\s a)/llêla kri/nein peira=tai ê(mi=n_ . . . Ou)kou=n ta\ me\n eu)thu\s genome/nois pa/resti phu/sei ai)stha/nesthai a)nthrô/pois te kai\ thêri/ois, o(/sa dia\ tou= sô/matos pathê/mata e)pi\ tê\n psuchê\n tei/nei; _ ta\ de\ peri\ tou/tôn a)nalogi/smata_, pro/s te ou)si/an kai\ ô)phelei/an _mo/gis_ kai\ e)n pollô=| chro/nô| dia\ pollô=n _pragma/tôn kai\ paidei/as paragi/gnetai, oi(=s a)\n kai\ paragi/gnêtai.]] [Side-note: 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 mind computing past and present in reference to future.[98] [Footnote 97: Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 D.** [Greek: e)n me\n a)/ra toi=s pathê/masin ou)k e)/ni e)pistê/mê, _e)n de\ tô=| peri\ e)kei/nôn sullogismô=|_; ou)si/as ga\r kai\ a)lêthei/as e)ntau=tha me/n, ô(s e)/oike, dunato\n a(/psasthai, e)kei= de\ a)du/naton.] The term [Greek: sullogismo\s] 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).] [Footnote 98: Plato, Theætêt. p. 186 A. [Greek: kalo\n kai\ ai)schro/n, kai\ a)gatho\n kai\ kako/n. Kai\ tou/tôn moi dokei= _e)n toi=s ma/lista pro\s a)/llêla skopei=sthai tê\n ou)si/an, a)nalogizome/nê_ (ê( psuchê\) _e)n e(autê=| ta\ gegono/ta kai\ ta\ paro/nta pro\s ta\ me/llonta_.] 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 [Greek: Ai)/sthêsis = E)pistê/mê]. In his sense of the word [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] 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 [Greek: ou)si/a, a)lêthei/a, e)nantio/tês, a)gatho/n, kako/n], &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. [Greek: Ai)/sthêsis = E)pistê/mê],--are completely distinct and independent, though Plato has chosen to implicate or identify them.] [Side-note: 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 many 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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: Plato'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 [Greek: Ai)/sthêsis = E)pistê/mê], 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 Sense[99]--Sensation--Sensible Perception--[Greek: Ai)/sthêsis]. The propositions in which our knowledge is embodied, affirm--not sensations detached and isolated, but--various relations of antecedence 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 opinion[100] 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 the 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 it[101] 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 ([Greek: lo/gon dou=nai kai\ de/xasthai]). [Footnote 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 [Greek: to\ ai)stha/nesthai] and [Greek: to\ noei=n]--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 ([Greek: to/ t' e)pi\ pa=si koino\n kai\ to\ e)pi\ tou/tois, ô(=| to\ e)/stin e)ponoma/zeis kai\ to\ ou)k e)/stin], p. 185 C). When Plato thus narrows the sense of [Greek: ai)/sthêsis], it is easy to prove that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is not [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]; 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 [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]: 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 [Greek: e)pistê/mê] to be [Greek: ai)/sthêsis], 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 [Greek: E)pistê/mê = Ai)/sthêsis]. 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 [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]. See Hamilton's edit. of Reid, Appendix, p. 844. Aristotle understands [Greek: ai)/sthêsis--ai)sthêtikê\ psuchê\] or [Greek: zôê/]--as occupying a larger sphere than that which Plato assigns to them in the Theætêtus. Aristotle recognises the five separate [Greek: ai)sthê/seis], each correlating with and perceiving its [Greek: i)/dion ai)sthêto/n]: he also recognises [Greek: ê( koinê\ ai)/sthêsis]--common sensation or perception--correlating with (or perceiving) [Greek: ta\ koina\ ai)sthêta/], which are _motion_, _rest_, _magnitude_, _figure_, _number_. The [Greek: koinê\ ai)/sthêsis] is not a distinct or sixth sense, apart from the five, but a general power inhering in all of them. He farther recognises [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] as discriminating, judging, comparing, knowing: this characteristic, [Greek: to\ kritoko\n] and [Greek: gnôstiko/n], is common to [Greek: ai)/sthêsis, phantasi/a, no/êsis], and distinguishes them all from appetite--[Greek: to\ o)rektiko/n, kinêtiko/n], &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 [Greek: e)/chei du/namin su/mphuton kritikê/n, ê(\n kalou=sin ai)/sthêsin.] 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 [Greek: nou=s] and [Greek: o)/rexis]--Intelligence and Appetite--recognising Sense as belonging to the head of Intelligence--see De Motu Animalium, 6, p. 700, b. 20. [Greek: tau=ta de\ pa/nta a)na/getai ei)s nou=n kai\ o)/rexin; kai\ ga\r ê( phantasi/a kai\ ê( ai)/sthêsis tê\n au)tê\n tô=| nô=| chô/ran e)/chousi; _kritika\ ga\r pa/nta_.] Compare also the Topica, ii. 4, p. 111, a. 18. It will thus be seen that while Plato severs pointedly [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] 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 [Greek: koinê\ ai)/sthêsis] 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 [Greek: E)pistê/mê = Ai)/sthêsis], but he employs a different manner of reasoning against it. See, _inter alia_, Anal. Poster. i. 31, p. 87, b. 28. He confines [Greek: e)pistê/mê] to one branch of the [Greek: noêtikê/]. The Peripatetic Straton, the disciple of Theophrastus, denied that there was any distinct line of demarcation between [Greek: to\ ai)stha/nesthai] and [Greek: to\ noei=n]: 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. [Greek: Kai/toi Stra/tôno/s ge tou= phusikou= lo/gos e)sti/n, a)podeiknu/ôn ô(s ou)d' ai)stha/nesthai topara/pan a)/neu tou= noei=n u(pa/rchei; kai\ ga\r gra/mmata polla/kis e)piporeuo/mena tê=| o)/psei, kai\ lo/goi prospi/ptontes tê=| a)koiê=| _dialantha/nousin ê(ma=s_ kai\ _diapheu/gousi pro\s e(te/rois to\n nou=n e)/chontas_; ei)=t' _au)=this e)panê=lthe_ kai\ _metathei= kai\ metadiô/kei tô=n proïeme/nôn e(/kaston a)nalego/menos_; ê(=| kai\ le/lektai. _Nou=s o(rê=|, kai\ nou=s a)kou/ei, ta\ de\ a)/lla kôpha\ kai\ tuphla/_;** ô(s tou= peri\ ta\ o)/mmata kai\ ô)=ta pa/thous, a)\n mê\ parê=| to\ phronou=n, ai)/sthêsin ou) poiou=ntos.] 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.] [Footnote 100: Plato, Theæt. p. 187 A. _Sokr._ [Greek: o(/môs de\ tosou=to/n ge probebê/kamen, ô(/ste mê\ zêtei=n au)tê\n (e)pistê/mên) e)n ai)sthê/sei topara/pan, a)ll' e)n e)kei/nô| tô=| o)no/mati, o(/, ti pot' e)/chei ê( psuchê/, o(/tan au)tê\ kath' au(tê\n pragmateu/êtai peri\ ta\ o)/nta.] _Theæt._ [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n tou=to/ ge kalei=tai, ô(s e)gô)=|mai, _doxa/zein_.] _Sokr._ [Greek: O)rthô=s ga\r oi)/ei.] Plato is quite right in distinguishing between [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] and [Greek: do/xa], looking at the point as a question of psychological classification. It appears to me, however, most probable that those who maintained the theory [Greek: E)pistê/mê = Ai)/sthêsis], made no such distinction, but included that which he calls [Greek: do/xa] in [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]. Unfortunately we do not possess their own exposition; but it cannot have included much of psychological analysis.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Nou=s] (which there represents [Greek: E)pistê/mê]) as contrasted with [Greek: do/xa]. 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 [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is _not_ [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]. It then attempts to go a step farther towards the affirmative, by declaring also that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is a mental process of computation, respecting the impressions of [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]--that it is [Greek: to\ sullogi/zesthai], which is equivalent to [Greek: to\ doxa/zein]: compare Phædrus, 249 B. But this affirmative attempt breaks down: for Sokrates cannot explain what [Greek: to\ doxa/zein] is, nor how [Greek: to\ doxa/zein pseudê=] is possible; in fact he says (p. 200 B) that this cannot be explained until we know what [Greek: e)pistê/mê] 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 restricted, 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. [Footnote 102: Compare Plato, Sophistes, pp. 232 E, 233 A.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: sullogismo\s] under the same respect to observed facts. Aristotle might probably have done so; but this is uncertain.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 104: Plato, Theæt. p. 187 B. It is scarcely possible to translate [Greek: doxa/zein] always by the same English word.] [Side-note: 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? How 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] [Footnote 105: Plato, Theæt. p. 187 C.] [Footnote 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. [Footnote 107: Plato, Theæt. p. 188-189.] [Footnote 108: Plato, Theæt. p. 190.] [Side-note: 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 tablet--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] [Footnote 109: Plato, Theæt. p. 191 C. [Greek: kê/rinon e)kmogei=on].] [Footnote 110: Plato, Theæt. p. 193-194.] [Footnote 111: Plato, Theæt. p. 195 D.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 112: Plato, Theæt. p. 196 C. [Greek: nu=n de\ ê)/toi ou)k e)/sti pseudê\s do/xa, ê)\ a(/ tis oi)=den, oi(=o/n te mê\ ei)de/nai; kai\ tou/tôn po/tera ai(rei=?]] [Side-note: 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 words _know_, _knowledge_, and their equivalents, as if the meaning of the words were ascertained, whereas the very problem debated is, to ascertain their meaning[113]--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] [Footnote 113: Plato, Theæt. p. 196 D.] [Footnote 114: Plato, Theæt. p. 197-198.] [Footnote 115: Plato, Theæt. p. 199 C. [Greek: ê( tô=n e)pistêmô=n metallagê/].] [Side-note: 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 versâ_? 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. [Footnote 116: Plato, Theæt. p. 199 E.] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 118: Plato, Theæt. p. 200 C.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 119: Plato, Theæt. p. 201 A. [Greek: ou(=toi ga/r pou tê=| e(autô=n te/chnê| pei/thousin, ou) dida/skontes, a)lla\ doxa/zein poiou=ntes a(\ a)\n bou/lôntai.]] [Footnote 120: Plato, Theæt. p. 201 B-C. [Greek: Ou)kou=n o(/tan dikai/ôs peisthô=si dikastai\ peri\ _ô(=n i)do/nti mo/non e)/stin ei)de/nai, a)/llôs de\ mê/_, tau=ta to/te _e)x a)koê=s kri/nontes_, a)lêthê= do/xan labo/ntes, a)/neu e)pistê/mês e)/krinan, o)rtha\ peisthe/ntes, ei)/per eu)= e)di/kasan?]] [Footnote 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 [Greek: to\ gignô/skein] 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, [Greek: Theai/têtos ka/thêtai, Theai/têtos pe/tetai]. That one of these propositions is false and the other true, can be known only by [Greek: ai)/sthêsis]--in the sense of that word commonly understood.] [Side-note: New 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] [Footnote 122: Plato, Theætêt. p. 201 D. [Greek: tê\n me\n meta\ lo/gou a)lêthê= do/xan e)pistê/mên ei)=nai; tê\n de\ a)/logon, e)kto\s e)pistê/mês; kai\ ô(=n me\n mê/ e)sti lo/gos, ou)k e)pistêta\ ei)=nai, _ou(tôsi\ kai\ o)noma/zôn_, a)\ d' e)/chei, e)pistêta/.] The words [Greek: ou(tôsi\ kai\ o)noma/zôn] are intended, according to Heindorf and Schleiermacher, to justify the use of the word [Greek: e)pistêta/], 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.] [Side-note: 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 them, when besides conceiving them correctly, you can also specify their component elements[124]--or give explanation. [Footnote 123: Plato, Theæt. pp. 201 E--202 A. [Greek: au)to\ ga\r kath' au(to\ e(/kaston o)noma/sai mo/non ei)/ê, proseipei=n de\ ou)de\n a)/llo dunato/n, ou)/th' ô(s e)/stin, ou)/th' ô(s ou)k e)/stin' ê)/dê ga\r a)\n ou)si/an ê)\ mê\ ou)si/an au)tô=| prosti/thesthai, dei=n de\ ou)de\n prosphe/rein, ei)/per au)to\ e)kei=no mo/non tis e)rei=; e)pei\ ou)de\ to\ _au)to/_, ou)de/ to\ _e)kei=no_, ou)de\ to _e(/kaston_, ou)de\ to _mo/non_, ou)de\ to\ _tou=to_, prosoiste/on, ou)d' a)/lla polla\ toiau=ta; tau=ta me\n ga\r peritre/chonta pa=si prosphe/resthai, e(/tera o)/nta e(kei/nôn oi(=s prosti/thetai.] Also p. 205 C.] [Footnote 124: Plato, Theæt. p. 202.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 126: Plato, Theæt. p. 206.] [Side-note: 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, &c. Accordingly, we cannot be said to know a waggon: we have only a true opinion about it. Such is the second sense of [Greek: lo/gos] 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] [Footnote 127: Plato, Theæt. p. 207-208 B. [Greek: e)/stin a)/ra meta\ lo/gou o)rthê\ do/xa, ê(\n ou)/pô dei= _e)pistê/mên_ kalei=n.]] [Side-note: 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 [Greek: lo/gos] 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 ([Greek: lo/gos]) 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] [Footnote 128: Plato, Theætêt. p. 208 C. [Greek: O(/per a)\n oi( polloi\ ei)/poien, to\ e)/chein ti sêmei=on ei)pei=n ô(=| tô=n a(pa/ntôn diaphe/rei to\ e)rôtêthe/n.]] [Footnote 129: Plato, Theætêt. p. 209.] [Side-note: Conclusion 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] [Footnote 130: Plato, Theætêt. p. 210 B. [Greek: ou)kou=n tau=ta me\n a(/panta ê( maieutikê\ ê(mi=n te/chnê a)nemiai=a/ phêsi gegenê=sthai kai\ ou)k a)/xia trophê=s?]] [Footnote 131: Plato, Theæt. p. 210 C. [Greek: e)a/n te gi/gnê| (e)gku/môn), beltio/nôn e)/sei plê/rês dia\ tê\n nu=n e)xe/tasin; e)a/n te keno\s ê)=s, ê(=tton e)/sei baru\s toi=s sunou=si kai\ ê(merô/teros, sôphro/nôs ou)k oi)o/menos ei)de/nai a(\ mê\ oi)=stha.] Compare also an earlier passage in the dialogue, p. 187 B.] * * * * * [Side-note: 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 of 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 133: See the emphatic passage, p. 195 B-C.] [Side-note: 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 hearer, 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] [Footnote 134: Plato, Theætêt. p. 208 E.] [Footnote 135: Plato, Theætêt. p. 151 C.] [Side-note: 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 investigation[136] (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] [Footnote 136: Plato, Theæt. p. 155. [Greek: ô(s pa/nu pollê\n scholê\n a)/gontes, pa/lin e)panaskepso/metha], &c.; also p. 172.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: The 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] [Footnote 138: Plato, Theæt. pp. 175-176.] [Footnote 139: Plato, Theæt. p. 177 B.] [Footnote 140: Plato, Theæt. p. 175 E.] [Side-note: 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 receiving 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. [Footnote 141: Plato, Sophistês, p. 253 C: [Greek: ê( tô=n e)leuthe/rôn e)pistê/mê].] [Side-note: 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 opinions 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 Sophistês[142] 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 discussing 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. [Footnote 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).] [Footnote 143: In the Sophistês, the Eleate establishes (to his own satisfaction) that [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n] is not [Greek: e)nanti/on tou= o)/ntos], but [Greek: e(/teron tou= o)/ntos] (p. 257 B), that it is one [Greek: ge/nos] among the various [Greek: ge/nê] (p. 260 B), and that it ([Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n koinônei=]) enters into communion or combination with [Greek: do/xa, lo/gos, phantasi/a], &c. It is therefore possible that there may be [Greek: pseudê\s do/xa] or [Greek: pseudê\s lo/gos], when you affirm, respecting any given subject, [Greek: e(/tera tô=n o)/ntôn] or [Greek: ta\ mê\ o)/nta ô(s o)/nta] (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 [Greek: pseudê\s do/xa] is there enunciated and impugned by Sokrates in a long argument. He calls it there [Greek: a)llodoxi/a, e(terodoxi/a, to\ e(terodoxei=n] (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 [Greek: pseudê\s do/xa] is impossible. Of these objections, urged by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, against the possibility of [Greek: a)llodoxi/a], 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n] 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.] [Side-note: 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 ultra-dogmatical, losing even the poetical richness and fervour which had once marked his affirmations, and substituting in their place a strict and compulsory orthodoxy. [Side-note: 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 Theætêtus[144]--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 Aristotelian[146] 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. [Footnote 144: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 173-176. Compare Republic, v. pp. 476-477, vii. p. 517.] [Footnote 145: See above, chap. xxiv. p. 355.] [Footnote 146: Ethic. Nikomach. x. 8, p. 1178, b. 9-25.] The 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] [Footnote 147: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478-479. The Theætêtus is more in harmony (in reference to [Greek: do/xa] and [Greek: e)pistê/mê]) with the Republic, than with the Sophistês and Politikus. In the Politikus (p. 309 C) [Greek: a)lêthê\s do/xa meta\ bebaiô/seôs] 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 [Greek: pro/r)r(êsis] and [Greek: pro/gnôsis], the same distinction as that which Plato draws between [Greek: do/xa] and [Greek: e)pistê/mê]--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.] CHAPTER XXIX. SOPHISTES--POLITIKUS. [Side-note: 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 same 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 dispute than his companions. He is far from being a God, but he is a divine man: for I call all true philosophers divine.[2] [Footnote 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: [Greek: ê)/dê me\n ou)=n tis a)pephê/nato kai\ tô=n pro/teron ou(/tôs], &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.] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 3: Plato, Politik. p. 257 E.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 4: Plato, Sophist. p. 217 B. [Greek: e)pei\ diakêkoe/nai ge/ phêsin i(kanô=s kai\ ou)k a)mnêmonei=n.]] [Footnote 5: Plato, Sophist. pp. 216-217.] [Footnote 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.)] [Side-note: Plato 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. [Footnote 7: Plato, Politikus, pp. 283 B, 286-287.] [Footnote 8: Plato, Politikus, p. 285 D. [Greek: _Xen_.--Ti/ d' au)=? nu=n ê(mi=n ê( peri\ tou= politikou= zê/têsis e(/neka au)tou= tou/tou probe/blêtai ma=llon ê)\ tou= peri\ pa/nta dialektikôte/rois gi/gnesthai? _Ne/os Sôkr_.--Kai\ tou=to dê=lon o(/ti tou= peri\ pa/nta.] Again, p. 288 D. [Greek: to/ te au)= pro\s tê\n tou= problêthe/ntos zê/têsin, ô(s a)\n r(a=|sta kai\ ta/chista eu)/roimen, deu/teron a)ll' ou) prô=ton o( lo/gos a)gapa=|n paragge/lei, polu\ de\ ma/lista kai\ prô=ton tê\n me/thodon au)tê\n tima=|n, tou= kat' ei)/dê dunato\n ei)=nai diairei=n], &c.] [Side-note: 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 distinct 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? [Footnote 9: Plato, Sophist. p. 216 E.] [Side-note: 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 the 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] [Footnote 10: Plato, Sophist. p. 218 E.] [Footnote 11: Plato, Sophist. p. 220 B. [Greek: Neustikou= mê\n to\ me\n ptêno\n phu=lon o(rô=men, to\ de\ e)/nudron.] It deserves notice that Plato here considers the air as a fluid in which birds swim.] [Footnote 12: Plato, Sophist. pp. 219-221.] [Footnote 13: Plato, Sophist. p. 221 A-B. [Greek: Nu=n a)/ra tê=s a)spalieutikê=s--ou) mo/non tou)/noma, a)lla\ kai\ to\n lo/gon peri\ au)to\ tou)/rgon, ei)lê/phamen i(kanô=s.]] [Side-note: 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 given 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 Xenophon[14] 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. [Footnote 14: Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 12.] [Side-note: 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 the 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] [Footnote 15: Plato, Sophist. p. 222 A.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: thê/ra], _hunting_--[Greek: thê/ra ga\r pampolu/ ti pra=gma/ e)sti, perieilêmme/non o)no/mati nu=n schedo\n e(ni/] (Plato, Legg. viii. 822-823-824, and Euthyd. p. 290 B). He includes both [Greek: stratêgikê\] and [Greek: phtheiristikê\] as varieties of [Greek: thêreutikê/], Sophist. p. 227 B. Compare also the interesting conversation about [Greek: thê/ra a)nthrô/pôn] between Sokrates and Theodotê, Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 11, 7; and between Sokrates and Kritobulus, ii. 6, 29.] [Footnote 17: Plato, Sophist. p. 223 A.] [Side-note: 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: those 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. [Footnote 18: Plato, Sophist. p. 224 B.] [Side-note: Also, by a third.] 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 us[20])--and the trained practitioners or wranglers, who dispute not about particular incidents, but about just and unjust in general, and other 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] [Footnote 19: Plato, Sophist. p. 219 E.] [Footnote 20: Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. [Greek: _Xe/nos_.--Tou= de\ a)ntilogikou=, to\ me\n o(/son peri\ ta\ xumbolai=a a)mphisbêtei=tai me/n, ei)kê= de\ kai\ a)technô=s peri\ au)to\ pra/ttetai, tau=ta _thete/on me\n ei)=dos_, e)pei/per au)to\ die/gnôken ô(s e(/teron o)\n o( lo/gos; a)ta\r e)pônumi/as ou)/th' u(po\ tô=n e)/mprosthen e)/tuchen, ou)/te nu=n u(ph' ê(mô=n tuchei=n a)/xion. _Theaitêt_.--A)lêthê=; kata\ _smikra\_ ga\r li/an kai\ _pantodapa\_ diê/|rêtai.] These words illustrate Plato's view of an [Greek: ei)=dos] 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.] [Footnote 21: Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. [Greek: to\ de/ ge e)/ntechnon, kai\ peri\ _dikai/ôn au)tô=n_ kai\ a)di/kôn kai\ peri\ tô=n _a)/llôn o(/lôs_ a)mphisbêtou=n, a)=r' ou)k e)ristiko\n au)= le/gein ei)thi/smetha?]] [Footnote 22: Plato, Sophist. p. 225 E.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 23: Plato, Sophist. pp. 226-227. 227 A: [Greek: tê=| tô=n lo/gôn metho/dô| spoggistikê=s ê)\ pharmakoposi/as ou)de\n ê(=tton ou)de/ ti ma=llon tugcha/nei me/lon, ei) to\ me\n smikra/, to\ de\ mega/la ê(ma=s ô)phelei= kathai=ron. _Tou= ktê/sasthai ga\r e(/neken nou=n pasô=n technô=n to\ xuggene\s kai\ to\ mê\ xuggene\s katanoei=n peirôme/nê, tima=| pro\s tou=to, e)x i)/sou pa/sas_, kai\ tha/tera tô=n e(te/rôn kata\ tê\n o(moio/têta ou)de\n ê(gei=tai geloio/tera, _semno/teron de/ ti to\n dia\ stratêmikê=s ê)\ phtheiristikê=s dêlou=nta thêreutikê\n ou)de\n neno/miken_, a)ll' _ô(s to\ polu\ chauno/teron_. Kai\ dê\ kai\ nu=n, o(/per ê)/rou, ti/ proserou=men o)/noma xumpa/sas duna/meis, o(/sai sô=ma ei)/te e)/mpsuchon ei)/te a)/psuchon ei)lê/chasi kathai/rein, ou)de\n au)tê=| dioi/sei, poi=on ti lechthe\n eu)prepe/staton ei)=nai do/xei; _mo/non e)che/tô chôri\s_ tô=n tê=s psuchê=s katha/rseôn pa/nta xundê=san o(/sa a)/llo ti kathai/rei.] To maintain the equal scientific position of [Greek: phtheiristikê/], as two different species under the genus [Greek: thêreutikê/], 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 [Greek: ei)=dê] or Forms of vulgar and repulsive objects, such as [Greek: thri\x] and [Greek: pê=los]. [Greek: Neos ga\r ei)= e)/ti, kai\ ou)/pô sou= a)ntei/lêptai philosophi/a ô(s e)/ti a)ntilê/psetai kat' e)mê\n do/xan, o(/te ou)de\n au)tô=n a)tima/seis; nu=n d' e)/ti pro\s a)nthrô/pôn a)poble/peis do/xas dia\ tê\n ê(liki/an.] See above, ch. xxvii. p. 60, in my review of the Parmenidês.] [Side-note: In 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 must 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 ([Greek: mo/non e)che/tô chôri\s]) from the correlative and opposing class.[25] [Footnote 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 [Greek: E(\n kai\ Pa=n]. 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.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: o(moio/têtes] 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.] [Side-note: The 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] [Footnote 26: Plato, Sophist. pp. 228-229.] [Footnote 27: Plat. Soph. p. 229 C. [Greek: A)gnoi/as d' ou)=n me/ga ti/ moi dokô= kai\ chalepo\n a)phôrisme/non o(ra=|n ei)=dos, pa=si toi=s a)/llois au)tê=s a)nti/stathmon me/resi . . . To\ mê\ kateido/ta ti, dokei=n ei)de/nai.]] [Side-note: 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 real 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] [Footnote 28: Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D-E.] [Side-note: 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 upon persons what appears like reality when seen from a distance, but what is seen to be not like reality when contemplated closely.[31] [Footnote 29: Plato, Sophist. p. 231 B. [Greek: tê=s de\ paideutikê=s a( peri\ tê\n ma/taion doxosophi/an gigno/menos e)/legchos e)n tô=| nu=n lo/gô| paraphane/nti mêde\n a)/ll' ê(mi=n ei)=nai lege/sthô plê\n ê( ge/nei gennai/a sophistikê/.]] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 31: Plato, Sophist. pp. 235-236.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 32: Plato, Sophist. pp. 236 E--237 A. [Greek: pa/nta tau=ta e)sti mesta\ a)pori/as a)ei\ e)n tô=| pro/sthen chro/nô| kai\ nu=n. O(/pôs ga\r ei)po/nta chrê\ pseudê= le/gein ê)\ doxa/zein o)/ntôs ei)=nai, kai\ tou=to phthegxa/menon e)nantiologi/a| mê\ xune/chesthai, panta/pasi chalepo/n . . . Teto/lmêken o( lo/gos ou(=tos u(pothe/sthai to\ mê\ o)\n ei)=nai; pseu=dos ga\r ou)k a)\n a)/llôs e)gi/gneto o)/n.]] 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 half[33] the dialogue. Near the close, but only then, he reverts to the definition of the Sophist. [Footnote 33: From p. 236 D to p. 264 D.] [Side-note: 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, to 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 35: Plato, Sophist. p. 238-239.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 36: Plato, Sophist. pp. 239-240. [Greek: katagela/setai/ sou tô=n lo/gôn, o(/tan ô(s ble/ponti le/gê|s au)tô=|, prospoiou/menos ou)/te ka/toptra ou)/te u(/data gignô/skein, ou)/te to\ para/pan o)/psin; to\ d' e)k tô=n lo/gôn e)rôtê/sei se mo/non.]] [Footnote 37: Plato, Sophist. p. 240 B.] [Footnote 38: Plato, Sophist. p. 241 B. [Greek: tô=| ga\r mê\ o)/nti to\ o)\n prosa/ptein ê(ma=s polla/kis a)nagka/zesthai, diomologêsame/nous nu=n dê/ pou tou=to ei)=nai pa/ntôn a)dunatô/taton.]] 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). [Side-note: 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. The 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] [Footnote 39: Plato, Sophist. p. 242 D-E.] [Side-note: 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.[39] 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. [Footnote 40: Plato, Sophist. p. 243 B.] [Side-note: 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 different 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] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 42: Plato, Sophist. p. 245 A-C.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 43: Plato, Sophist. p. 245 E.] [Footnote 44: Plato, Sophist. p. 246 A. [Greek: e)/oike/ ge e)n au)toi=s oi(=on gigantomachi/a tis ei)=nai dia\ tê\n a)mphisbê/têsin peri\ tê=s ou)si/as pro\s allê/lous.]] [Side-note: 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 as 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 tenable[45] 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. [Footnote 45: Plato, Sophist. p. 246 B-C. [Greek: noêta\ a)/tta kai\ a)sô/mata ei)/dê biazo/menoi tê\n a)lêthinê\n ou)si/an ei)=nai; ta\ de\ e)kei/nôn sô/mata kai\ tê\n legome/nên u(p' au)tô=n] (_i. e._ the Materialists) [Greek: a)lê/theian kata\ smikra\ diathrau/ontes e)n toi=s lo/gois, ge/nesin a)nt' ou)si/as pherome/nên tina\ prosagoreu/ousin.]] [Side-note: 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 _something_--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. [Footnote 46: Plato, Sophist. p. 246 C. [Greek: para\ me\n tô=n e)n ei)/desin au)tê\n (tê\n ou)si/an) titheme/nôn r(a=|on; ê(merô/teroi ga/r; para\ de\ tô=n ei)s sô=ma pa/nta e(lko/ntôn bi/a|, chalepô/teron; _i)/sôs de\ kai\ schedo\n a)du/naton_. A)ll' ô(=de/ moi dokei= peri\ au)tô=n dra=|n . . . Ma/lista me/n, ei)/ pê| dunato\n ê)=n, _e)/rgô| belti/ous_ au)tou\s poiei=n; ei) de\ tou=to mê\ e)gchôrei=, _lo/gô| poiô=men_, u(potithe/menoi _nomimô/teron_ au)tou\s ê)\ _nu=n e)the/lontas a)\n a)pokri/nasthai_.]] [Footnote 47: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 A. [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n to/ ge dunato/n tô| paragi/gnesthai kai\ a)pogi/gnesthai, pa/ntôs ei)=nai/ ti phê/sousin.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 48: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 B. [Greek: A)pokri/nontai . . . tê\n me\n psuchê\n au)tê\n dokei=n sphi/si sô=ma/ ti kektê=sthai, phro/nêsin de\ kai\ tô=n a)/llôn e(/kaston ô(=n ê)rô/têkas, ai)schu/nontai to\ tolma=|n ê)\ mêde\n tô=n o)/ntôn au)ta\ o(mologei=n, ê)\ pa/nt' ei)=nai sô/mata dii+schuri/zesthai.]] [Footnote 49: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 C-D. [Greek: ei) ga/r ti kai\ smikro\n e)the/lousi tô=n o)/ntôn sugchôrei=n a)sô/maton, e)xarkei=. to\ ga\r e)pi/ te tou/tois a(/ma kai\ e)p' e)kei/nois o(/sa e)/chei sô=ma xumphue\s gegono/s, ei)s o(\ ble/pontes a)mpho/tera _ei)=nai_ le/gousi, tou=to au)toi=s r(ête/on.]] [Footnote 50: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 D-E. [Greek: le/gô dê\ to\ kai\ o(poianou=n kektême/non _du/namin_, ei)/t' ei)s to\ poiei=n e(/teron o(tiou=n pephuko\s ei)/t' ei)s to\ pathei=n kai\ smikro/taton u(po\ tou= phaulota/tou, ka)\n ei) mo/non ei)sa/pax, pa=n tou=to o)/ntôs ei)=nai; ti/themai ga\r o(/ron o(ri/zein ta\ o)/nta, ô(s e)/stin ou)k a)/llo ti plê\n _du/namis_.]] [Side-note: 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 (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. [Footnote 51: Plato, Sophist. p. 248 A. [Greek: tou\s tô=n ei)dô=n phi/lous].] [Side-note: 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 something 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 52: Plato, Sophist. p. 250 C.] [Side-note: 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 says[53]) 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. [Footnote 53: Plato, Sophist. p. 250 D.] [Side-note: 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 the 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] [Footnote 54: Plato, Sophist. p. 251 B. [Greek: ô(s a)du/naton ta/ te polla\ e(\n kai\ to\ e(\n polla\ ei)=nai], &c.] [Footnote 55: Plato, Sophist. p. 251 E.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 56: Plato, Sophist. p. 252 D.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 56: Plato, Sophist. p. 252 E.] [Side-note: 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 awkwardly--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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 58: Plato, Sophist. p. 253 B. [Greek: a)=r' ou) met' e)pistê/mês tino\s a)nagkai=on dia\ tô=n lo/gôn poreu/esthai to\n o)rthô=s me/llonta dei/xein poi=a poi/ois sumphônei= tô=n genô=n kai\ poi=a a)/llêla ou) de/chetai?]] [Footnote 59: Plato, Sophist. p. 253 D-E.] [Footnote 60: Plato, Sophist. p. 254 A. [Greek: O( de/ ge philo/sophos, tê=| tou= o)/ntos a)ei\ dia\ logismô=n proskei/menos i)de/a|, dia\ to\ lampro\n au)= tê=s chô/ras ou)damô=s eu)pe/tês o)phthê=nai; ta\ ga\r tê=s tô=n pollô=n psuchê=s o)/mmata karterei=n pro\s to\ thei=on a)phorô=nta a)du/nata.]] [Side-note: 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 ( = 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] [Footnote 61: Plato, Sophist. p. 254 D. [Greek: to\ de/ ge o)\n mikto\n a)mphoi=n; _e)sto\n_ ga\r a)/mphô pou.]] [Footnote 62: Plato, Sophist. p. 254 E. [Greek: ti/ pot' au)= nu=n ou(/tôs ei)rê/kamen to/ te tau)to\n kai\ tha/teron? po/tera du/o ge/nê tine\ au)tô/, tô=n me\n triô=n a)/llô], &c.] [Footnote 63: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 B. [Greek: mete/cheton mê\n a)/mphô tau)tou= kai\ thate/rou . . . Mê\ toi/nun le/gômen ki/nêsi/n _g' ei)=nai_ tau)to\n ê)\ tha/teron, mêd' au)= sta/sin.]] [Footnote 64: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 D.] [Side-note: 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 in 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. [Footnote 65: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 E. [Greek: kai\ dia\ pa/ntôn ge au)tê\n phê/somen ei)=nai dielêluthui=an (tê\n thate/rou phu/sin) e(\n e(/kaston ga\r e(/teron ei)=nai tô=n a)/llôn, _ou) dia\ tê\n au)tou= phu/sin_, a)lla\ dia\ to\ mete/chein tê=s i)de/as tê=s thate/rou.]] [Footnote 66: Plato, Sophist. p. 256 A. [Greek: tê\n ki/nêsin dê\ tau)to/n t' ei)=nai kai\ mê\ tau)to\n o(mologête/on kai\ ou) duscherante/on], &c.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 67: Plato, Sophist. p. 256 C. [Greek: ou)ch e(/teron a)]r' e)sti/ pê| kai\ e(/teron kata\ to\n nu=n dê\ lo/gon.]] [Footnote 68: Plato, Sophist. p. 256 D. [Greek: ou)kou=n dê\ saphô=s ê( ki/nêsis o)/ntôs ou)k o)/n e)sti kai\ o)\n, e)pei/per tou= o)/ntos mete/chei?]] [Footnote 69: Plato, Sophist. p. 257 A. [Greek: kai\ to\ o)/n a)/r' ê(mi=n, o(/sa per e)/sti ta\ a)/lla, kata\ tosau=ta ou)k e)/stin; e)kei=na ga\r ou)k o)\n e(\n me\n au)to/ e)stin, a)pe/ranta de\ to\n a)rithmo\n ta)/lla ou)k e)/stin au)=.]] [Side-note: 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 to 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. [Footnote 70: Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B. [Greek: O(po/tan to\ mê\ o)\n le/gômen, ô(s e)/oiken, ou)k e)nanti/on ti le/gomen tou= o)/ntos, a)ll' e(/teron mo/non . . . Oi(=on o(/tan ei)pôme/n _ti mê\ me/ga_, to/te ma=llo/n ti/ soi phaino/metha to\ smikro\n ê)\ to\ i)/son dêlou=n tô=| r(ê/mati.] Plato here means to imply that [Greek: to\ smikro\n] is the real contrary of [Greek: to\ me/ga]. When we say [Greek: mê\ me/ga], we do not necessarily mean [Greek: smikro/n]--we may mean [Greek: i)/son]. Therefore [Greek: to\ mê\ me/ga] does not (in his view) imply the contrary of [Greek: me/ga].] [Footnote 71: Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B. [Greek: Ou)k a)/r' e)nanti/on, o(/tan a)po/phasis le/gêtai, sêmai/nein sugchôrêso/metha, tosou=ton de\ mo/non, o(/ti tô=n a)/llôn ti mênu/ei to\ mê\ kai\ to\ ou) protithe/mena tô=n e)pio/ntôn o)noma/tôn, ma=llon de\ tô=n pragma/tôn peri\ a)/tt' a)\n ke/êtai ta\ e)piphtheggo/mena u(/steron tê=s a)popha/seôs o)no/mata.]] [Footnote 72: Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B. [Greek: ê( tê=s thate/rou mori/ou phu/seôs kai\ tê=s tou= o)/ntos pro\s a)/llêla a)ntikeime/nôn a)ntithesis ou)de\n ê)=tton, ei) the/mis ei)pei=n au)tou= tou= o)/ntos ou)si/a e)sti/n; ou)k e)nanti/on e)kei/nô| sêmai/nousa, a)lla\ tosou=ton mo/non, e(/teron e)kei/nou.]] [Side-note: 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 Diversum. 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] [Footnote 73: Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B-C. [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n bebai/ôs e)sti\ tê\n au)tou= phu/sin e)/chon . . . e)na/rithmon tô=n pollô=n o)/ntô=n ei)=dos e(/n.]] [Footnote 74: Plato, Sophist. pp. 258 E--259 A. [Greek: ê(mei=s ga\r peri\ me\n e)nanti/ou tino\s au)tô=| chai/rein pa/lai le/gomen, ei)/t' e)/stin ei)/te mê\ lo/gon e)/chon ê)\ kai\ panta/pasin a)/logon], &c. [Greek: to\ me\n e(/teron metascho\n tou= o)/ntos _e)/sti_ me\n dia\ tau/tên tê\n me/thexin, ou) mê\n e)kei=no ge ou)= me/teschen, a)ll' e(/teron, e(/teron de\ tou= o)/ntos o)/n e)sti saphe/stata e)x a)na/gkês ei)=nai mê\ o)/n], &c.] [Side-note: 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 really 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] [Footnote 75: Plato, Sophist. p. 259 A-C. [Greek: o(\ de\ nu=n ei)rê/kamen ei)=nai to\ mê\ o)/n, ê)\ peisa/tô tis ô(s ou) kalô=s le/gomen e)le/gxas, ê)\ me/chri per a)\n a)dunatê=|, lekte/on kai\ e)kei=nô| katha/per ê(mei=s le/gomen . . . to\ tau=ta _e)a/santa ô(s dunata/_. . . .] 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.] [Footnote 76: Plato, Sophist. p. 259 D. [Greek: e)kei/nê| kai\ kat' e)kei=no o(/ phêsi tou/tôn peponthe/nai po/teron.]] [Footnote 77: Plato, Sophist. p. 259 B, E. [Greek: dia\ ga\r tê\n a)llê/lôn tô=n ei)dô=n sumplokê\n o( lo/gos ge/gonen ê(mi=n.] 252 B: [Greek: oi( mêde\n e)ô=ntes koinôni/a| pathê/matos e(te/rou tha/teron prosagoreu/ein.]] [Footnote 78: Plato, Sophist. p. 260 A. [Greek: pro\s to\ to\n lo/gon ê(mi=n tô=n o)/ntôn e(/n ti genô=n ei)=nai.] 258 B: [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n bebai/ôs e)sti\ tê\n au(tou= phu/sin e)/chon.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 79: Plato, Sophist. p. 260 C-D-E.] [Side-note: 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 different 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] [Footnote 80: Plato, Sophist. pp. 261-262.] [Footnote 81: Plato, Sophist. p. 262 E. [Greek: lo/gon a)nagkai=on, o(/tan per ê)=|, tino\s ei)=nai lo/gon; mê\ de/ tinos a)du/naton . . . Ou)kou=n kai\ _poi=o/n tina_ au)to\n ei)=nai dei=?]] [Footnote 82: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 B [Greek: O)/ntôn de/ ge o)/nta e(/tera peri\ sou=.] That is, [Greek: e(/tera tô=n o)/ntôn],--being the explanation given by Plato of [Greek: ta\ mê\ o)/nta].] [Footnote 83: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 D.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 84: Plato, Sophist. pp. 263-264. 264 A-B: [Greek: Ou)kou=n e)/peiper lo/gos a)lêthê\s ê)=n kai\ pseudê/s, tou/tôn d' e)pha/nê dia/noia me\n au)tê=s pro\s e(autê\n psuchê=s dia/logos, do/xa de\ dianoi/as a)poteleu/têsis, phai/netai de\ o(\ le/gomen (phantasi/a) su/mmixis ai)sthê/seôs kai\ do/xês, a)na/gkê dê\ kai\ tou/tôn tô=| lo/gô| xuggenô=n o)/ntôn pseudê= te au)tô=n e)/nia kai\ e)ni/ote ei)=nai?]] 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. * * * * * [Side-note: 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, together 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 85: Plato, Sophist. p. 267 A-D.] [Footnote 86: Plato, Sophist. p. 268 A. [Greek: to\ de\ thate/rou schê=ma, dia\ tê\n e)n toi=s lo/gois kuli/ndêsin, e)/chei pollê\n u(popsi/an kai\ pho/bon ô(s a)gnoei= tau=ta a(\ pro\s tou\s a)/llous ô(s ei)dô\s e)schêma/tistai.]] [Side-note: 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 man, since he has no real knowledge--but the imitator of the wise man, or Sophist. [Footnote 87: Plato, Sophist. p. 268 B. [Greek: to\n me\n dêmosi/a| te kai\ makroi=s lo/gois pro\s plê/thê dunato\n _ei)rôneu/esthai_ kathorô=; to\n de\ i)di/a| te kai\ brache/si lo/gois a)nagka/zonta to\n prosdialego/menon e)nantiologei=n au)to\n au)tô=|.]] * * * * * [Side-note: 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 [Greek: e)nantiopoiologiko\s] and [Greek: ei)/rôn], to employ the two original Platonic words, neither of which is easy to translate. [Side-note: 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 Athenians 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] [Footnote 88: Xen. Memor. i. 2, 14, [Greek: toi=s de\ dialegome/nois au)tô=| pa=si chrô/menon e)n toi=s lo/gois o(/pôs bou/loito.] Compare, to the same purpose, i. 4, 1, where we are told that Sokrates employed his colloquial Elenchus as a means of chastising ([Greek: kolastêri/ou e(/neka]) 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."] [Footnote 89: Plato, Apolog. p. 37 E. [Greek: e)a/n te ga\r le/gô, o(/ti tô=| theô=| a)peithei=n tou=t' e)/stin, kai\ dia\ tou=t' a)du/naton ê(suchi/an a)/gein, ou) pei/sesthe/ moi ô(s ei)rôneuome/nô|.] Xen. Memor. iv. 4, 9. [Greek: a)rkei= ga\r] (says Hippias to Sokrates), [Greek: o(/ti tô=n a)/llôn katagela=|s, e)rôtô=n kai\ e)le/gchôn pa/ntas, au)to\s de\ ou)deni\ the/lôn u(pe/chein lo/gon, ou)de\ gnô/mên a)pophai/nesthai peri\ ou)deno/s.] 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 [Greek: ei)rônei/a], 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--[Greek: Au)tê\ e)kei/nê ê( eiôthui=a _ei)rônei/a Sôkra/tous_] (Plato, Repub. i. p. 337 A); and again--[Greek: prou)/legon o(/ti su\ a)pokri/nasthai me\n ou)k e)thelêsois, _ei)rôneu/soio_ de\ kai\ pa/nta ma=llon poiê/sois ê)\ a)pokri/noio, ei)/ tis ti/ se e)rôta=|.] So also in the Symposion, p. 216 E, Alkibiades says about Sokrates [Greek: _ei)rôneuo/menos_ de\ kai\ pai/zôn pa/nta to\n bi/on pro\s tou\s a)nthrô/pous diatelei=.] 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?" [Greek: spouda/zei tau=ta Sôkra/tês ê)\ pai/zei?] Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, &c., do not seem to have been [Greek: ei)/rônes] at all, as far as our scanty knowledge goes. The words [Greek: ei)/rôn, ei)rôniko/s, ei)rônei/a] seem to include more than is implied in our words _irony_, _ironical_. Schleiermacher translates the words [Greek: a(plou=n mimê/tên, ei)rôniko\n mimê/tên], 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.] [Side-note: 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 it 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 Sophists[92]--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] [Footnote 90: Plato, Sophist. p. 223. [Greek: ne/ôn plousi/ôn kai\ e)ndo/xôn thê/ra].] [Footnote 91: In the opening words of the Platonic Protagoras, we read as a question from the friend or companion of Sokrates, [Greek: Po/then, ô)= Sô/krates, phai/nei? ê)\ _a)po\ kunêgesi/ou tou=_ peri\ tê\n A)lkibia/dou ô(/ran?] 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).] [Footnote 92: Plato, Sophist. p. 225 C. [Greek: To\ de/ ge e)/ntechnon kai\ peri\ dikai/ôn au)tôn kai\ a)di/kôn kai\ peri\ tô=n a)/llôn o(/lôs a)mphisbêtou=n.] Spengel says truly--in his [Greek: Sunagôgê\ Technô=n] 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."] [Footnote 93: Plato, Theætet. p. 175 C.] [Footnote 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.)] [Side-note: 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" ([Greek: ê( ge/nei gennai/a sophistikê\]), 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 a 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. [Footnote 95: Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D. [Greek: pri\n a)\n e)le/gchôn tis to\n e)legcho/menon ei)s ai)schu/nên katastê/sas, ta\s toi=s mathê/masin e)mpodi/ous do/xas e)xelô/n, katharo\n a)pophê/nê| kai\ tau=ta ê(gou/menon, a(/per oi)=den ei)de/nai mo/na, plei/ô de\ mê/.]] [Footnote 96: Plato, Sophist. p. 231 C.] [Footnote 97: Plato, Sophist. p. 230 E.] [Side-note: 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. Now 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. [Footnote 98: Plato, Sophistês, p. 233 C. [Greek: doxastikê\n a)/ra tina\ peri\ pa/ntôn e)pistê/mên o( sophistê\s ê(mi=n, a)ll' ou)k a)lêthei/an e)/chôn a)nape/phantai.] 234 B: [Greek: mimê/mata kai\ o(mô/numa tô=n o)/ntôn.] When the Eleate here says about the Sophists (p. 233 B), [Greek: dokou=si pro\s tau=ta e)pistêmo/nôs e)/chein au)toi\ pro\s a(/per a)ntile/gousin], 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. [Greek: e)k tau/têsi dê\ tê=s e)xeta/seôs pollai\ me\n a)pe/chtheiai/ moi gego/nasi kai\ oi(=ai chalepô/tatai kai\ baru/tatai, ô(/ste polla\s diabola\s a)p' au)tô=n gegone/nai, o)/noma/ te tou=to le/gesthai, sopho\s ei)=nai; oi)=ontai ga/r me e(ka/stoth' oi( paro/ntes tau=t' ei)=nai sopho\n a(\ a)\n a)/llon e)xele/gxô.]] [Side-note: 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 (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 falsely[99]--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. [Footnote 99: Plato, Sophist. pp. 240-241. Compare 260 E.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 100: Plato, Sophist. p. 251 B-C. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 14 C.] [Side-note: 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 probably 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. [Side-note: 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 of Antisthenes; which naturally arise among argumentative men yet untrained in the generalities of grammar and logic. [Side-note: 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? [Footnote 101: Plato, Sophist. p. 251 C-D. [Greek: I(/na toi/nun pro\s a(/pantas ê(mi=n o( lo/gos ê)=| tou\s pô/pote peri\ ou)si/as kai\ o(tiou=n dialechthe/ntas, e)/stô kai\ pro\s tou/tous kai\ pro\s tou\s a)/llous, o(/sois e)/mprosthen dieile/gmetha, ta\ nu=n ô(s e)n e)rôtê/sei lechthêso/mena.]] 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. [Side-note: 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, 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 103: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 D-E. [Greek: le/gô dê\ to\ kai\ o(poianou=n kektême/non _du/namin_, ei)/t' ei)s to\ poiei=n e(/teron o(tiou=n pephuko\s ei)/t' ei)s to\ pathei=n** kai\ smikro/taton u(po\ tou= phaulota/tou, ka)\n ei) mo/non ei)sa/pax, pa=n tou=to o)/ntôs ei)=nai; ti/themai ga\r o(/ron o(ri/zein ta\ o)/nta, ô(s e)/stin ou)k a)/llo ti plê\n _du/namis_.]] [Side-note: 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 confuting 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] [Footnote 104: Plato, Sophist. p. 247 E. [Greek: to\ kai\ o(poianou=n kektême/non du/namin], &c.] [Side-note: 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--[Greek: to\ o)\n] and [Greek: to\ gigno/menon]. 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. [Footnote 105: Plato, Sophist. p. 248 C.] [Side-note: Plato 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. [Footnote 106: Plato, Sophist. p. 248 D. [Greek: ei) prosomologou=si tê\n me\n psuchê\n ginô/skein, tê\n d' ou)si/an gignô/skesthai . . . Ti/ de/? to\ ginô/skein ê)\ gignô/skesthai phate\ poi/êma ê)\ pa/thos ê)\ a)mpho/teron?]] 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. [Side-note: 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 exists 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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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:--and 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. [Footnote 107: See my notice of the Theætêtus, in the chapter immediately preceding, where I have adverted to Plato's reasoning in the Sophistês.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 108: Plato, Sophist. p. 249 B. [Greek: xumbai/nei d' ou)=n a)kinê/tôn te o)/ntôn nou=n mêdeni\ peri\ mêdeno\s ei)=nai mêdamou=.]] [Footnote 109: Plato, Sophist. p. 249 C.] [Side-note: 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 (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. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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, along 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, [Greek: Trage/laphoi], &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] [Footnote 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 ([Greek: o(mô/numon]), 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. [Greek: D]. 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? [Greek: kai\ dê\ kai\ to\ pa/lai te kai\ nu=n kai\ a)ei\ zêtou/menon kai\ a)ei\ a)porou/menon, tou=to e)sti, ti/s ê( ou)si/a] (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, [Greek: ou)si/a], stands at the head: there are then other varieties more or less approaching to this proper type: some of them which [Greek: mikro\n ê)\ ou)the\n e)/chei tou= o)/ntos.] (Metaphys. vi. 1029, b. 9.)] [Side-note: Different 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. [Footnote 111: Plato, Sophist. p. 250 E.] [Side-note: 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, but 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] [Footnote 112: In the Timæus (pp. 35-36-37), Plato declares these three elements--[Greek: Tau)to/n, Tha/teron, Ou)si/a]--to be the three constituent elements of the cosmical soul, and of the human rational soul.] [Footnote 113: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 B. [Greek: Mete/cheton mê\n a)/mphô (ki/nêsis kai\ sta/sis) tau)tou= kai\ thate/rou. . . .] [Greek: Mê\ toi/nun le/gômen ki/nêsin g' _ei)=nai_ tau)to\n ê)\ tha/teron, mêd' au)= sta/sin.] He had before said--[Greek: A)ll' ou)/ ti mê\n ki/nêsi/s ge kai\ sta/sis ou)th' e(/teron ou)/te tau)to/n _e)stin_] (p. 255 A). Plato here says, It is true that [Greek: ki/nêsis _mete/chei_ tau)tou=], but it is not true that [Greek: ki/nêsi/s e)sti tau)to/n]. Again, p. 259 A. [Greek: to\ me\n e(/teron metascho\n tou= o)/ntos _e)/sti_ me\n dia\ tau/tên tê\n me/thexin, ou) mê\n e)kei=no/ ge ou)= mete/schen a)ll' e(/teron.] He understands, therefore, that [Greek: e)sti], 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 [Greek: A)/nthrôpo/s _e)stin_ a)gatho/s--A)/nthrôpo/s _e)sti_ kako/s]: and when he admitted only identical propositions, such as [Greek: A)/nthrôpo/s _e)stin_ a)/nthrôpos--A)/gatho/s _e)stin_ a)gatho/s.] He assumed that [Greek: e)sti], 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--[Greek: A)/nthrôpos _mete/chei_ kaki/as], or other propositions in which [Greek: e)sti] 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 this, 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. [Footnote 114: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 C-D. [Greek: tô=n o)/ntôn ta\ me\n au)ta\ kath' au(ta/, ta/ de\ pro\s a)/llêla a)ei\ _le/gesthai_ . . . To\ d' e(/teron a)ei\ pro\s e(/teron . . . Nu=n de\ a)technô=s ê(mi=n o(/, ti per a)\n e(/teron ê)=|, sumbe/bêken e)x a)na/gkês _e(te/rou tou=to o(/per e)sti\n ei)=nai_.] These last words partly anticipate Aristotle's explanation of [Greek: ta\ pro/s ti] (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 [Greek: le/gesthai] and [Greek: ei)=nai] as equivalent; which is not very consistent with the sense which he assigns to [Greek: e)stin] in predication: see the note immediately preceding.] [Footnote 115: Plato, Sophist. p. 255 E. [Greek: pe/mpton dê\ tê\n thate/rou phu/sin lekte/on e)n toi=s ei)/desin ou)=san, e)n oi(=s proairou/metha . . . kai\ dia\ pa/ntôn ge au)tê\n au)tô=n phê/somen ei)=nai dielêluthui=an; e(\n e(/kaston ga\r e(/teron ei)=nai tô=n a)/llôn ou) dia\ tê\n au(tou= phu/sin, a)lla\ dia\ to\ _mete/chein tê=s i)de/as tê=s thate/rou_.]] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 116: Plato, Sophist. pp. 255-256.] Here we arrive at Plato's explanation of Non-Ens, [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n]: 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] [Footnote 117: Plato, Sophist. pp. 256-257.] [Side-note: Plato's doctrine--That Non-Ens is nothing more than different from Ens.] When we say Non-Ens, therefore (continues Plato), we do not mean 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] [Footnote 118: Plato, Sophist. p. 258 C. [Greek: o(/ti to\ mê\ o)\n bebai/ôs e)sti\ tê\n au)tou= phu/sin e)/chon . . . ou(/tô de\ kai\ to\ mê\ o)\n kata\ tau)to\n ê)=n te kai\ e)/stin mê\ o)/n, e)na/rithmon tô=n pollô=n o)/ntôn ei)=dos e(/n.]] 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 times[119] (_i.e._ an indefinite number of negative predications may be made concerning it). [Footnote 119: Plato, Sophist. pp. 258 E-259 A. [Greek: ê(mei=s ga\r peri\ me\n e)nanti/ou tino\s au)tô=| (tô=| o)/nti) chai/rein pa/lai le/gomen, ei)/t' e)/stin ei)/te mê\ lo/gon e)/chon ê)\ kai\ panta/pasin a)/logon; o(\ de\ nu=n ei)rê/kamen ei)=nai to\ mê\ o)/n], &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] [Footnote 120: Plato, Sophist. p. 260 B.] [Side-note: Communion 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] [Footnote 121: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 A. [Greek: Theai/têtos ka/thêtai . . . Theai/têtos pe/tetai.]] [Footnote 122: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 B. [Greek: le/gei de\ au)tô=n] ([Greek: tô=n lo/gôn] of the two propositions) [Greek: o( me\n a)lêthê\s ta\ o)/nta, ô(s e)sti peri\ sou= . . . O( de\ dê\ pseudê\s e(/tera tô=n o)/ntôn . . . Ta\ mê\ o)/nt' a)/ra ô(s o)/nta le/gei . . . O)/ntôn de/ ge o)/nta e(/tera peri\ sou=. Polla\ me\n ga\r e)/phamen o)/nta peri\ e(/kaston ei)=nai/ pou, polla\ de\ ou)k o)/nta.]] [Footnote 123: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 D. [Greek: Peri\ dê\ sou= lego/mena me/ntoi tha/tera ô(s ta\ au)ta/, kai\ mê\ o)/nta ô(s o)/nta, panta/pasin, ô(s e)/oiken, ê( toiau/tê su/nthesis e)/k te r(êma/tôn gignome/nê kai\ o)noma/tôn o)/ntôs te kai\ a)lêthô=s gi/gnesthai lo/gos pseudê/s.] It is plain that this explanation takes no account of negative propositions: it applies only to affirmative propositions.] [Side-note: 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, true 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 [Greek: e)/stin] 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. [Footnote 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 expressions[125] 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. [Footnote 125: Plato, Sophistês, p. 259 A-B. Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Sophistes, vol. iv. p. 134, of his translation of Plato.] [Side-note: 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 use 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 just[127] 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. [Footnote 126: Plato, Sophist. pp. 247-248.] [Footnote 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 be 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 the 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. [Footnote 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, [Greek: o(/lôs ga\r ai( a)potha/seis e)ggonoi/ ei)si tê=s e(tero/têtos tê=s noera=s; dia\ tou=to ga\r _ou)ch i(/ppos_, o(/ti e(/teron--kai\ dia\ tou=to _ou)k a)/nthrôpos_, o(/ti a)/llo.] 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n kath' au(to\] from [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n kata\ sumbebêko/s]), 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_--[Greek: kata\ sumbebêko/s]. Plato includes, in the essence of the Different, that which belongs to it only by accident. Aristotle in more than one place distinguishes [Greek: diaphora\] from [Greek: e)nanti/ôsis]--not always in the same language. In Metaphysic. I. p. 1055 a. 33, he considers that the root of all [Greek: e)nanti/ôsis] is [Greek: e(/xis] and [Greek: ste/rêsis], 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 [Greek: Peri\ E(rmênei/as] 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).] [Footnote 129: Plato, Sophist. p. 258 B. [Greek: ou)k e)nanti/on e)kei/nô| sêmai/nousa, a)lla\ _tosou=ton mo/non_, e(/teron e)kei/nou.] 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. [Greek: A)/llo ti ou)=n e(/teros, ê)= d' o(/s] (Dionysodorus), [Greek: ô)\n li/thou, ou) li/thos ei)=? kai\ e(/teros ô)\n chrusou=, ou) chruso\s ei)=? E)/sti tau=ta. Ou)kou=n kai\ o( Chaire/dêmos, e)/phê, e(/teros ô)\n patro/s, ou)k a)\n patê\r ei)/ê?] (Plat. Euthydem. p. 298 A).] [Footnote 130: Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B.] [Footnote 131: Plato, Sophist. pp. 257 E, 258 A. [Greek: O)/ntos dê\ pro\s o)\n a)nti/thesis, ô(s e)/oik', ei)=nai xumbai/nei to\ _mê\ kalo/n_. . . . O(moi/ôs a)/ra to\ mê\ me/ga, kai\ to\ me/ga au)to\ _ei)=nai_ lekte/on.] Plato distinctly recognises here Forms or Ideas [Greek: tô=n a)popha/seôn], 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.] [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 argument, 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. [Side-note: 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 attesting 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] [Footnote 132: Plato, Sophist. pp. 247 D-E, 248 D-E.] [Footnote 133: Plato, Sophist. p. 246 D.] [Side-note: 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 at 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 [Greek: e)/stin] 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 [Greek: e)/stin], as marking identity between subject and predicate--from [Greek: mete/chei], as marking accidental communion between the two. Again, there were men in Plato's day who maintained that Non-Ens ([Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n]) was inconceivable and impossible. Plato, in refuting these philosophers, gives a definition of Ens ([Greek: to\ o)\n]), 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. [Side-note: 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 sense 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 ([Greek: doxa/zôn]) 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 ([Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n]). 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n] is [Greek: o)/n ti]. 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n]: 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n], as not being a negation [Greek: tou= o)/ntos], but simply a something [Greek: e(/teron tou= o)/ntos], the different views of Aristotle about [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n], 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 [Greek: to\ keno/n], and that the two elements of things were [Greek: to\ plê=res] and [Greek: to\ keno/n], for which he used the expressions [Greek: de\n] and [Greek: ou)de/n]. 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 [Greek: e)n tê=| Politei/a|], which seems a mistake for [Greek: e)n tô=| Sophi/stê|].] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Ei)sagôgê/], sets down the explanation of [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n] 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 [Greek: Prolego/mena tê=s Pla/tônos philosophi/as]: c. 21, p. 215 of the same edition. Proklus, in his Commentary on the Parmenidês, speaks in much the same manner about [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n]--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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n]. 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 [Greek: e)nanti/on tou= o)/ntos] and admits only what is [Greek: e(/teron tou= o)/ntos]. 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 [Greek: to\ mê\ o)/n]--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 is 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 ([Greek: ei)/dê--ge/nesis--chôrista/]), 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 constantly 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] [Footnote 136: Socher, p. 266; Schleiermacher, Einleitung zum Sophistes, p. 134; Cousin, Oeuvres 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.] [Footnote 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, [Greek: to\ pa/schein] is affirmed of the Ideas: in the latter passage, [Greek: to\ pa/schein mêde/n].] [Footnote 138: Plato, Sophist p. 245 E. Yet he afterwards talks of [Greek: to\ lampro\n tou= o)/ntos a)ei\] as contrasted with [Greek: to\ skoteino\n tou= mê\ o)/ntos], p. 254 A, which seems not consistent.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: ei)dô=n phi/loi] 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).] [Footnote 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 [Greek: ta\ ei)/dê e)sta/nai e)n tê=| phu/sei] 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 [Greek: ki/nêsis] and [Greek: sta/sis] among the [Greek: ei)/dê] (p. 129 E). It will be found, however, that when Parmenides comes to question Sokrates, What [Greek: ei)/dê] do you recognise? attributes and subjects only (the latter with hesitation) are included: no such thing as actions, processes, events--[Greek: to\ poiei=n kai\ pa/schein] (p. 130). In Republic vii. 529 D, we find mention made of [Greek: to\ o)\n ta/chos] and [Greek: ê( ou)=sa bradu/tês], which implies [Greek: ki/nêsis] as among the [Greek: ei)/dê]. In Theætêt. pp. 152 D, 156 A, [Greek: ki/nêsis] is noted as the constituent and characteristic of Fieri--[Greek: to\ gigno/menon]--which belongs to the domain of sensible perception, as distinguished from permanent and unchangeable Ens.] [Side-note: 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: first, 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 ([Greek: lo/gô| chôrista\--tô=| ei)nai, chôrista/]) 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. [Footnote 141: Aristot. Metaphys. A. 991-992.] [Footnote 142: Aristot. Metaph. vi. 1038, a-b. The Scholion of Alexander here (p. 763, b. 36, Brandis) is clearer than Aristotle himself. [Greek: To\ prokei/meno/n e)sti dei=xai ô(s ou)de\n tô=n katho/lou ou)si/a e)/stin; ou)/te ga\r o( katho/lou a)/nthrôpos ê)\ o( katho/lou i(/ppos, ou)/te a)/llo ou)de/n; a)ll' e(/kaston au)tôn _dianoi/as a)po/maxi/s_ e)stin _a)po\ tô=n kath' e(/kasta_ kai\ prô/tôs kai\ ma/lista legome/nôn ou)siô=n kai\ o(moi/ôma.]] [Footnote 143: Plato, Sophist. p. 249 C-D. [Greek: Tô=| dê\ philoso/phô| kai\ tau=ta ma/lista timô=nti pa=sa a)na/gkê dia\ tau=ta mê/te tô=n e(\n ê)\ kai\ ta\ polla\ ei)/dê lego/ntôn to\ pa=n e(stêko\s a)pode/chesthai, tô=n te au)= pantachê=| to\ o)\n kinou=ntôn mêde\ to\ para/pan a)kou/ein; a)lla\ kata\ tê\n tô=n pai/dôn eu)chê/n, o(/sa a)ki/nêta/ te kai\ kekinême/na, to\ o)/n te kai\ to\ pa=n, xunampho/tera le/gein.] 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).] [Side-note: 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 words 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. [Footnote 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, the 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] [Footnote 145: Plato, Sophist. p. 262 C.] [Footnote 146: Plato, Sophist. p. 262 E. [Greek: Lo/gon a)nagkai=on, o(/tan per ê)=|, tino\s ei)=nai lo/gon, _mê\ de/ tinos_, a)du/naton . . . Ou)kou=n kai\ poio/n tina au)to\n ei)=nai dei=?] Compare p. 237 E. In the words here cited Plato unconsciously slides back into the ordinary acceptation of [Greek: mê/ ti]: that is, to [Greek: mê\] in the sense of negation. If we adopt that peculiar sense of [Greek: mê/], which the Eleate has taken so much pains to prove just before in the case of [Greek: to\ mê\ o)\n] (that is, if we take [Greek: mê\] as signifying not negation but simply difference), the above argument will not hold. If [Greek: ti/s] signifies one subject (A), and [Greek: mê/ tis] signifies simply another subject (B) different from A ([Greek: e(/teron]), the predicate [Greek: a)du/naton] cannot be affirmed. But if we take [Greek: mê/ tis] in its proper sense of negation, the [Greek: a)du/naton] will be so far true that [Greek: ou)k a)/nthrôpos, ou) Theai/têtos], cannot be the subject of a proposition. Aristotle says the same in the beginning of the Treatise De Interpretatione (p. 16, a. 30).] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 147: Aristotel. De Interpr. init. with Scholia of Ammonius, p. 98, Bekk.] [Footnote 148: In the Kratylus of Plato Sokrates maintains that names may be true or false as well as propositions, pp. 385 D, 431 B.] [Side-note: 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 applies 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 false. 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: e)pistê/mê = ai)/sthêsis]. 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.] [Footnote 150: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 C.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: do/xa] and [Greek: lo/gos] may be false. The long interval between the two is occupied with the reasoning about Ens and Non-Ens.] [Footnote 152: Plato, Sophist. p. 263 E. [Greek: ta\ mê\ o)/nta ô(s o)/nta lego/mena], &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.] [Footnote 153: Plato, Sophist. p. 257 B.] [Side-note: 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 disputants 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. [Footnote 154: Aristotel. Metaphys. vii. 1043, b. 25. [Greek: ô(/ste ê( a)pori/a ê(\n oi( A)ntisthe/neioi kai\ oi( ou(/tôs _a)pai/deutoi_ ê)po/roun, e)/chei tina\ kairo/n], &c. Compare respecting this paradox or [Greek: the/sis] 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 [Greek: to\ a)ntilo/gein] 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.] [Side-note: 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.[155] He cannot avoid postulating thus much: though he likewise postulates a great deal more, which ought not to be granted. [Footnote 155: See the remarks in Aristotel. Metaphys. [Greek: G]. 1005, b. 2, 1006, a. 6. He calls it [Greek: a)paideusi/a--a)paideusi/a tô=n a)nalutikô=n]--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 [Greek: a)pai/deutoi]. Aristotle calls Antisthenes and his followers [Greek: a)pai/deutoi], in the passage cited in the preceding note.] [Side-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 race 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_. [Footnote 156: Plato, Politikus, p. 268 D. [Greek: me/ros a)ei\ me/rous a)phairoume/nous e)p' a)/kron e)phiknei=sthai to\ zêtou/menon.] Ueberweg thinks that Aristotle, when he talks of [Greek: ai( gegramme/nai diaire/seis] alludes to these logical distributions in the Sophistês and Politikus (Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 153-154).] [Footnote 157: Politik. p. 287 C.] [Footnote 158: Politik. p. 263 C.] [Footnote 159: Politik. pp. 262 B, 265 A. [Greek: dei= mesotomei=n ô(s ma/lista], &c.] [Footnote 160: Politikus, p. 262 D-E.] [Footnote 161: Politikus, p. 262 D. [Greek: semnu=non au(to\ e(auto/], &c.] [Side-note: 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 names[162]--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. [Footnote 162: Politikus, p. 262 E. [Greek: Ludou\s de\ ê)\ Phru/gas ê)/ tinas e(te/rous pro\s a(/pantas ta/ttôn a)po/schizoi to/te, ê(ni/ka a)poroi= ge/nos a)/ma kai\ me/ros eu(ri/skein e(ka/teron tô=n schisthe/ntôn.]] [Side-note: 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--there 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: pe/ras] and [Greek: tô=n e(\n e)kei/nôn].] 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. [Footnote 164: He states this expressly, Politik. p. 286 D.] [Footnote 165: Plato, Politik. p. 285 D.] [Side-note: 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 higher 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] [Footnote 166: Plato, Politik. pp. 285 E--286 A. [Greek: tou\s plei/stous le/lêthen o(/ti toi=s me\n tô=n o)/ntôn r(a|di/ôs katamathei=n ai)sthêtai/ tines o(moio/têtes pephu/kasin, a(\s ou)de\n chalepo\n dêlou=n, o(/tan au)tô=n tis boulê/thê| tô=| lo/gon ai)tou=nti peri\ tou, mê\ meta\ pragma/tôn a)lla\ chôri\s lo/gou r(a|di/ôs e)ndei/xasthai; toi=s d' au)= megi/stois ou)=si kai\ timiôta/tois ou)k e)/stin ei)/dôlon ou)de\n pro\s tou\s a)nthrô/pous ei)rgasme/non e)nargô=s, ou(= deichthe/ntos], &c. About the [Greek: ei)/dôlon ei)rgasme/non e)nargô=s], 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.] [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: ai)/sthêsis]) 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 [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] 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 he 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] [Footnote 167: Plato, Theæt. pp. 185-186. See above p. 161.] [Footnote 168: Plato, Politikus, p. 285 B. [Greek: de/on, o(/tan me\n tê\n tô=n pollô=n tis pro/teron ai)/sthêtai koinôni/an, mê\ proaphi/stasthai pri\n a)\n e)n au)tê=| ta\s diaphora\s i)/dê| pa/sas o(po/sai per e)n ei)/desi kei=ntai; ta\s de\ au)= pantodapa\s a)nomoio/têtas, o(/tan e)n plê/thesin o)phthô=si, mê\ dunato\n ei)=nai dusôpou/menon pau/esthai, pri\n a)\n xu/mpanta ta\ oi)kei=a e)nto\s mia=s o(moio/têtos e(/rxas ge/nous tino\s ou)si/a| periba/lêtai.]] [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: chôrista\ lo/gô| mo/non]). 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, wherever 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 them[173]--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. [Footnote 169: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 249 C, 265 D-E.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: periagôgê\] which he there prescribes--[Greek: a)po\ tou= gignome/nou ei)s to\ o)/n]--and the remarks respecting observations in astronomy and acoustics, p. 529.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: a)sô/mata, ka/llista, me/gista, timiô/tata], Politikus, p. 286 A) on which they are perpetually dissenting.] [Footnote 173: Plato, Phædrus, p. 266 B. [Greek: tou/tôn dê\ e)/gôge au)to/s te e)rastê\s tô=n diaire/seôn kai\ sunagôgô=n . . . tou\s duname/nous au)to\ dra=|n . . . kalô= dialektikou/s.] The reason which Sokrates gives in the Phædrus for his attachment to dialectics, that he may become competent in discourse and in wisdom ([Greek: i(/n' oi(=o/s te ô)= le/gein kai\ phronei=n]), is the same as that which the Eleate assigns in recommendation of the logical exercises in the Politikus.] [Footnote 174: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 271 D, 277 B. [Greek: o(risa/meno/s te pa/lin kat' ei)/dê me/chri tou= a)tmê/tou te/mnein e)pistê/thê|.]] [Footnote 175: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265 E, 270 E. [Greek: e)oi/koi a)\n ô(/sper tuphlou= porei/a|.]] 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. [Side-note: Comparison of the Politikus with the Parmenidês.] As a dialogue illustrative of this method, the Politikus (as I have 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 176: Plato, Politikus, p. 283 B. [Greek: pro\s dê\ to\ no/sêma to\ toiou=ton], and the long series of questions and answers which follows to show that the prolixity is unavoidable, pp. 285 C, 286 B-E.] [Footnote 177: Plato, Parmenid. p. 136 D-E.] CHAPTER XXX. POLITIKUS. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 Platonic 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] [Footnote 1: The treatment of this subject begins, Politik. p. 283 C, where Plato intimates that the coming remarks are of wide application.] [Footnote 2: Plato, Politik. p. 283 E. [Greek: _di/ttas_ a)/ra _tau/tas ou)si/as_ kai\ kri/seis tou= mega/lou kai\ tou= smikrou= thete/on.]] [Footnote 3: Plato, Politik. p. 284 E. [Greek: to\ me/trion, to\ pre/pon, to\n kairo/n, to\ de/on], &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.] [Footnote 4: Plato, Politik. p. 283 D. [Greek: kata\ tê\n tê=s gene/seôs a)nagkai/an ou)si/an].--284 A-C. [Greek: pro\s tê\n tou= metri/ou ge/nesin].] [Footnote 5: Plato, Politik. p. 284 C.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 6: Plato, Politik. pp. 286 D, 287 A. Compare Plato, Philêbus, p. 36 D.] [Side-note: Plato'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 Sokratic[7]) 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. [Footnote 7: Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 8, 7, iii. 10, 12.] [Side-note: 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 antithesis of [Greek: Pe/ras] and [Greek: A)/peiron] (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. [Footnote 8: Plato, Protagor. p. 357 B.] [Footnote 9: Plato, Phædon, p. 69 B.] [Footnote 10: Plato, Philêbus, pp. 25 C, 27 D, 57. [Greek: du/o a)rithmêtikai\ kai\ du/o metrêtikai/ . . . tê\n didumo/têta e)/chousai tau/tên, o)no/matos de\ e(no\s kekoinôme/nai.] This same bipartition, however, is noticed in another passage of the Politikus, p. 258 D-E.] [Side-note: 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 to 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] [Footnote 11: Plato, Politikus, pp. 258 B, 259 B.] [Footnote 12: Xenophon, Memorab. iii. 9, 10.] [Footnote 13: Plato, Politik. p. 260 C-E. [Greek: to\ me\n tô=n basile/ôn ge/nos ei)s tê\n au)tepitaktikê\n the/ntes], &c.] [Footnote 14: Plato, Politik. pp. 267 B, 268 C.] [Footnote 15: Plato, Politik. p. 268.] [Footnote 16: Plato, Politik. p. 275 D-E.] [Side-note: 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) rendered their condition more endurable, though still full of difficulty and hardship.[18] [Footnote 17: Plato, Politik. pp. 274-275 B.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: oi( muthikô=s sophizo/menoi--ta\ u(pe\r ê(ma=s], Metaphys. B. 1000, a. 15-18, [Greek: L]. 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 ([Greek: sophi/zesthai]): 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 ([Greek: oi( nu=n u(po\ pollô=n ou)k o)rthô=s a)pistou=ntai], 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 ([Greek: kubernê/tês], 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 ([Greek: ei)s tê\n au)tou= periôpê\n]), 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 ([Greek: thaumasto\s o)/gkos], 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, [Greek: e)pi\ smikrota/tou bai=non podo\s i)e/nai], 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".] [Side-note: Distinction 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 impracticable)--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] [Footnote 19: Plato, Politik. p. 281 D-E.] [Footnote 20: Plato, Politik. p. 287 D.] [Footnote 21: Plato, Politik. pp. 288-289.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 23: Plato, Politik. p. 291 C.] [Side-note: 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 scientific 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] [Footnote 24: Plato, Politik. p. 292 D.] [Footnote 25: Plato, Politik. pp. 292 C, 293 B.] [Footnote 26: Plato, Politik. p. 293 E. [Greek: tau/tên to/te kai\ kata\ tou\s toiou/tous o(/rous ê(mi=n mo/nên o)rthê\n politei/an ei)=nai r(ête/on, o(/sas de\ a)/llas le/gomen, ou) gnêsi/as ou)d' o)/ntôs ou)/sas lekte/on.]] [Side-note: 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 own 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] [Footnote 27: Plato, Politik. pp. 292 D-E, 297 B, 300 E.] [Footnote 28: Plato, Politik. p. 293 B-E.] [Footnote 29: Plato, Politik. p. 297 A. [Greek: ou) gra/mmata tithei\s a)lla\ tê\n te/chnên no/mon parecho/menos.]] [Footnote 30: Plato, Politik. pp. 300 C, 295 B-C.] [Footnote 31: Plato, Politik. p. 296 C-D.] [Footnote 32: Plato, Politik. p. 297 A.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 33: Plato, Politik. pp. 298-299. 299 B: [Greek: Kai\ toi/nun e)/ti deê/sei the/sthai no/mon e)pi\ pa=si tou/tois, a)/n tis kubernêtikê\n kai\ to\ nautiko\n ê)\ to\ u(gieino\n kai\ i)atrikê=s a)lêthei/an . . . zêtô=n phai/nêtai para\ ta\ gra/mmata kai\ sophizo/menos o(tiou=n peri\ ta\ toiau=ta, prô=ton me\n mê/te i)atriko\n au)to\n mê/te kubernêtiko\n o)noma/zein, a)lla\ meteôro/logon a)dole/schên tina\ sophistê\n ei)=th' ô(s diaphthei/ronta a)/llous neôte/rous kai\ a)napei/thonta e)piti/thesthai kubernêtikê=|], &c.] [Footnote 34: Plato, Polit. p. 299 C. [Greek: a)\n de\ para\ tou\s no/mous kai\ ta\ gegramme/na do/xê| pei/thein ei)/te ne/ous ei)/te presbu/tas, kola/zein toi=s e)scha/tois. Ou)de\n ga\r dei=n tô=n no/môn, ei)=nai sophô/teron; ou)de/na ga\r a)gnoei=n to/ te i)atriko\n kai\ to\ u(gieino\n ou)de\ to\ kubernêtiko\n kai\ nautiko/n; e)xei=nai ga\r tô=| boulome/nô| mantha/nein gegramme/na kai\ pa/tria e)/thê kei/mena.]] [Footnote 35: Plato, Polit. p. 299 D-E. [Greek: ô(/ste o( bi/os, ô(n kai\ nu=n chalepo/s, ei)s to\n chro/non e)kei=non a)bi/ôtos gi/gnoit' a)\n to\ para/pan.]] [Side-note: 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, from 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] [Footnote 36: Plato, Politik. p. 300 A-B, 301 B-C.] [Footnote 37: Plato, Politik. p. 300 C. [Greek: deu/teros plou=s].] [Footnote 38: Plato, Politik. p. 301 D.] [Footnote 39: Plato, Polit. p. 302 A. [Greek: ê)\ e)kei=no ê(mi=n thaumaste/on ma=llon, ô(s i)schuro/n ti po/lis e)sti\ phu/sei?]] [Side-note: 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 best 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] [Footnote 40: Plato, Polit. pp. 302-303 B-C. [Greek: tou\s koinônou\s tou/tôn tô=n politeiô=n pasô=n, plê\n tê=s e)pistê/monos, a)phairete/on ô(s ou)k o)/ntas politikou\s a)lla\ stasiastikou/s, kai\ ei)dô/lôn megi/stôn prosta/tas o)/ntas kai\ au)tou\s ei)=nai toiou/tous, megi/stous de\ o)/ntas mimêta\s kai\ go/êtas megi/stous gi/gnesthai tô=n sophistô=n sophista/s.]] [Footnote 41: Plato, Polit. p. 302 B. [Greek: ti/s dê\ tô=n ou)k o)rthô=n politeiô=n tou/tôn ê(/kista chalepê\ suzê=n, pasô=n chalepô=n ou)sô=n, kai\ ti/s baruta/tê?] Also p. 303 A-B.] [Side-note: 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 will 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] [Footnote 42: Plato, Polit. pp. 304-305.] [Footnote 43: Plato, Polit. p. 305 D. [Greek: tê\n ga\r o)/ntôs ou)=san basilikê\n ou)k au)tê\n dei= pra/ttein, a)ll' a)/rchein tô=n duname/nôn pra/ttein, gignô/skousan tê\n a)rchê/n te kai\ o(rmê\n tô=n megi/stôn e)n tai=s po/lesin e)gkairi/as te pe/ri kai\ a)kairi/as, ta\s d' a)/llas ta\ prostachthe/nta dra=|n.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 44: Plato, Polit. pp. 306-307. [Greek: tê\n basilikê\n sumplokê/n].] [Footnote 45: Plato, Polit. pp. 306 A-B, 307 C, 308 B.] [Footnote 46: Plato, Polit. pp. 308-309-310.] [Side-note: 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 excess 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] [Footnote 47: Plato, Polit. p. 309 A.] [Footnote 48: Plato, Polit. pp. 309 C, 310 E.] [Footnote 49: Plato, Polit. p. 311 B-C.] * * * * * [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 scale, in the Cyropædia--on a small scale, in the OEconomicus. 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. [Footnote 50: Plato, Polit. pp. 259 C-D, 305 D.] [Footnote 51: See the preface to Xenophon's Cyropædia; also Cyropæd. i. 6, 20; and his Oecon. c. 21, and c. 13, 4, where we see the difference between the Xenophontic idea, and the Platonic idea, of [Greek: o( a)rchiko\s a)nthrô/pôn, oi( thei=oi kai\ a)gathoi\ kai\ e)pistê/mones a)/rchontes].] [Side-note: 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, analogous 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] [Footnote 52: Compare Plato, Republic, i. pp. 340-341.] [Footnote 53: Plato, Protag. pp. 322, 325 A.] [Side-note: 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 embodied 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] [Footnote 54: Plato, Protag. pp. 327-328.] [Side-note: 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 Politikus[55] with the portion of the Protagoras[56] 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. [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 56: Plato, Protag. pp. 321-328.] [Side-note: 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 community 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] [Footnote 57: Plato, Politik. p. 299 B. [Greek: a)\n tis . . . zêtô=n phai/nêtai para\ ta\ gra/mmata kai\ sophizo/menos o(tiou=n peri\ ta\ toiau=ta.] 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--[Greek: au)to/matoi ga\r e)mphu/ontai a)kou/sês tê=s e)n e(ka/stê| (po/lei) politei/as], &c.] [Side-note: 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 ([Greek: par)r(êsi/a])[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 only 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. [Footnote 58: See Euripides, Ion, 671. [Greek: e)k tô=n A)thênô=n m' ê( tekou=s' ei)/ê gunê/, ô(/s moi ge/noito mêtro/then par)r(êsi/a.] Also Euripid. Hippolyt. 424, and Plato, Gorgias, p. 461 E, where Sokrates says to Polus--[Greek: deina\ me/nt' a)\n pa/thois, ei) A)thê/naze a)phiko/menos, ou)= tê=s E(lla/dos, plei/stê e)sti\n e)xousi/a tou= le/gein, e)/peita su\ e)ntau=tha tou/tou mo/nos a)tuchê/sais], &c.] [Footnote 59: Plato, Polit. p. 299 E.] [Side-note: 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. 2. _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. [Side-note: 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 the 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 doctrine[60] 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 men[61]--"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 is 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] [Footnote 60: Plato, Republ. i. p. 342 C. [Greek: A)lla\ mê\n a)/rchousi ge ai( te/chnai kai\ kratou=sin e)kei/nou ou)= per ei)si\ te/chnai.]] [Footnote 61: Plato, Republ. ii. pp. 370 B, 374 B--395-397 E. [Greek: ou)k e)/sti diplou=s a)nê\r par' ê(mi=n ou)de\ pollaplou=s, e)peidê\ e(/kastos e(\n pra/ttei] (p. 397 E).] [Footnote 62: Plato, Republ. iv. p. 433.] [Side-note: 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 [Greek: Peri\ O)noma/tôn O)rtho/têtos]--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--[Greek: Peri\ Politei/as O)rtho/têtos]--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-giving 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] [Footnote 63: The exact expression occurs in Politikus, pp. 293 E, 294 A. [Greek: nu=n de\ ê)/dê phanero\n o(/ti tou=to boulêso/metha, to\ peri\ tê=s tô=n a)/neu no/môn a)rcho/ntôn o)rtho/têtos dielthei=n ê(ma=s.] The [Greek: o)rthê/, a)lêthinê/, gnêsi/a, politei/a] are phrases employed several times--pp. 292 A-C, 293 B-E, 296 E, 297 B-D. 300 D-E: [Greek: o( a)lêthino/s, o( e)/ntechnos]. 300 E: [Greek: tê\n a)lêthinê\n e)kei/nên, tê\n tou= e(no\s meta\ te/chnês a)/rchontos politei/an]. 302 A-E. Plato sometimes speaks as if a bad [Greek: politei/a] were no [Greek: politei/a] at all--as if a bad [Greek: no/mos] were no [Greek: no/mos] 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--[Greek: a)=r' ei) mê\ dikai/ôs poli/tês, ou) poli/tês?]] [Footnote 64: Plato, Kratylus, p. 388 E. [Greek: Ou)/k a)/ra panto\s a)ndro\s o)/noma the/sthai e)/stin, a)lla/ tinos o)nomatourgou/; ou(=tos d' e)/stin, ô(s e)/oiken, o( nomothe/tês, o(\s dê\ tô=n dêmiourgô=n spaniô/tatos e)n a)nthrô/pois gi/gnetai.] Compare Politik. p. 292 D.] [Footnote 65: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 430, 431 D, 430 C.] [Footnote 66: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 431 E, 436 B.] [Footnote 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--[Greek: ti/s dida/skalo/s e)sti tou= E(llêni/zein?]] 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. [Side-note: 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 aggregate[68] which is consecrated under the empire of law and 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] [Footnote 68:The want of coherence, or of reference to any common and distinct End, among the bundle of established [Greek: No/mima] is noted by Aristotle, Polit. vii. 2, 1324, b. 5: [Greek: dio\ kai\ tô=n plei/stôn nomi/môn chu/dên, ô(s ei)pei=n _keime/nôn_ para\ toi=s plei/stois, o(/môs, ei)/ pou/ ti pro\s e(\n oi( no/moi ble/pousi, tou= kratei=n stocha/zontai Krê/tê| pro\s tou\s pole/mous sunte/taktai schedo\n ê)\ te paidei/a kai\ to\ tô=n no/môn plê=thos.] 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. [Greek: I)=so/n toi kua/mous te phagei=n, kephala/s te tokê/ôn.] 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.] [Footnote 69: Plato, Polit. p. 306 A. [Greek: basilikê\ sumplokê/], &c. Schleiermacher in his Introduction to the Politikus (pp. 254-256) treats this [Greek: basilikê\ sumplokê\] 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 Charmides 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. [Side-note: 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--[Greek: ou)de\ gru/]--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. CHAPTER XXXI. KRATYLUS. 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? [Side-note: 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 or 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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)--[Greek: lo/gos bathu\s kai\ a)po/r)r(êtos o( peri\ phu/seôs o)noma/tôn, po/teron, ô(s oi)/etai A)ristote/lês, the/sei ei)=nai ta\ o)no/mata, ê)\, ô(s nomi/zousin oi( a)po\ tê=s Stoa=s, phu/sei.] Aristotle assumes the question in favour of [Greek: the/sei], 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.] [Footnote 3: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C, 391 A.] [Side-note: 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 own 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] [Footnote 4: Aristot. De Interpretat. ii. 1-2: [Greek: O)/noma me\n ou)=n e)sti\ phônê\ sêmantikê\ kata\ sunthê/kên a)/neu chro/nou . . . to\ de\ kata\ sunthê/kên, o(/ti phu/sei tô=n o)noma/tôn ou)de/n e)stin], &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 [Greek: kata\ sunthê/kên], though he does not deny that they are or may be significant [Greek: phu/sei]. [Greek: To\ a)po\ tau)toma/tou] (p. 397 A) is another phrase for expressing the opinion opposed to [Greek: o)noma/tôn o)rtho/tês].] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 6: Plato, Kratyl. p. 386 D. [Greek: dê=lon dê\ o(/ti au)ta\ au(tô=n ou)si/an e)/chonta/ tina be/baio/n e)sti ta\ pra/gmata, ou) pro\s ê(ma=s ou)de\ u(ph' ê(mô=n, e)lko/mena a)/nô kai\ ka/tô tô=| ê(mete/rô| phanta/smati, a)lla\ kath' au(ta\ pro\s tê\n au(tôn ou)si/an e)/chonta ê(=|per pe/phuken.]] [Footnote 7: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 A.] [Footnote 8: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. [Greek: Ou)kou=n kai\ to\ o)noma/zein pra=xis ti/s e)stin, ei)/per kai\ to\ le/gein pra=xis tis ê)=n peri\ ta\ pra/gmata? . . . Ai( de\ pra/xeis e)pha/nêsan ê(mi=n ou) pro\s ê(ma=s ou)=sai, a)ll' au(tô=n tina i)di/an phu/sin e)/chousai? . . . Ou)kou=n kai\ o)nomaste/on ê(=| pe/phuke ta\ pra/gmata o)noma/zein te kai\ o)noma/zesthai, kai\ ô(=|, a)ll' ou)ch ê(=| a)\n ê(mei=s boulêthô=men, ei)/per ti toi=s e)/mprosthen me/llei o(mologou/menon ei)=nai? kai\ ou(/tô me\n a)\n ple/on ti poioi=men kai\ o)noma/zoimen, a)/llôs de\ ou)/?] 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).] [Footnote 9: Plato, Kratyl. p. 388 C. [Greek: O)/noma a)/ra didaskaliko/n ti/ e)stin o)/rganon, kai\ diakritiko\n tê=s ou)si/as, ô(/sper kerki\s u(pha/smatos.] See Boethius ap. Schol. ad Aristot. Interp. p. 108, a. 40. Aristotle (De Interpr. iv. 3) says: [Greek: e)/sti de\ lo/gos a(/pas me\n sêmantiko/s, ou)ch ô(s o)/rganon de/, a)lla\ kata\ sunthê/kên.] Several even of the Platonic critics consider Plato's choice of the metaphor [Greek: o)/rganon] as inappropriate: but modern writers on logic and psychology often speak of names as "_instruments_ of thought".] [Footnote 10: Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 A. [Greek: o( nomothe/tês, o(\s dê\ tô=n dêmiourgô=n spaniô/tatos e)n a)nthrô=pois gi/gnetai.]] [Side-note: 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, 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] [Footnote 11: Plato, Kratyl. p. 389 B-C. [Greek: au)to\ o( e)/sti kerki/s . . . pa/sas me\n dei= to\ tê=s kerki/dos e)/chein ei)=dos . . . ou)ch oi(=on a)\n au)to\s boulê/thê, a)ll' oi(=on e)pephu/kei.]] 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 lawgiver[13] 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] [Footnote 12: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 389 D, 390 A. [Greek: to\ e(ka/stô| phu/sei pephuko\s o)/noma to\n nomothe/tên e)kei=non ei)s tou\s phtho/ggous kai\ ta\s sullaba\s dei= e)pi/stasthai tithe/nai, kai\ ble/ponta _pro\s au)to\ e)kei=no o(\ e)/stin o)/noma_, pa/nta ta\ o)no/mata poiei=n te kai\ ti/thesthai, _ei) me/llei ku/rios ei)=nai o)noma/tôn the/tês_. . . . Ou(/tôs a)xiô/seis kai\ to\n nomothe/tên to/n te e)ntha/de kai\ to\n e)n toi=s barba/rois, e(/ôs a)\n to\ _tou= o)no/matos ei)=dos_ a)podidô=| _to\ prosê=kon e(ka/stô| e)n o(poiaisou=n sullabai=s_, ou)de\n chei/rô nomothe/tên ei)=nai to\n e)ntha/de ê)\ to\n o(pouou=n a)/llothi?]] [Footnote 13: Plato, Kratyl. p. 424 D-E.] [Footnote 14: Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 C.] [Side-note: Names 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. [Footnote 15: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 425-426.] [Side-note: 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 sounds, 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. [Footnote 16: Plato, Parmenid. p. 133 E.] [Footnote 17: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393 D, 432.] [Footnote 18: Plato, Kratyl. p. 422 D. [Greek: tô=n o)noma/tôn ê( o)rtho/tês toiau/tê tis e)bou/leto ei)=nai, oi(=a dêlou=n oi(=on e(/kasto/n e)sti tô=n o)/ntôn.]--423 D: [Greek: ou) kai\ _ou)si/a dokei=_ soi ei)=nai e(ka/stô|, ô(/sper kai\ chrô=ma kai\ a(\ nu=n dê\ e)le/gomen? prô=ton au)tô=| tô=| chrô/mati kai\ tê=| phônê=| ou)k e)/stin ou)si/a tis e(kate/rô| au)tô=n kai\ toi=s a)/llois pa=sin, _o(/sa êxi/ôtai tau/tês tê=s prosrê/seôs tou= ei)=nai?_ . . . Ti/ ou)=n?** ei)/ tis au)to\ tou=to mimei=sthai du/naito, e(ka/stou** tê\n ou)si/an, gra/mmasi/ te kai\ sullabai=s, a)=r' ou)k a)\n dêloi= e(/kaston o(\ e)/stin?] 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] [Footnote 19: Plato, Kratyl. p. 390 D. Respecting the person called [Greek: o( dialektiko/s], whom Plato describes as grasping Ideas, or Forms, Essences, and employing nothing else in his reasoning--[Greek: lo/gon didou\s kai\ lamba/nôn tê=s ou)si/as]--see Republic, vi. p. 511 B, vii. pp. 533-534-537 C.] [Footnote 20: Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 A. [Greek: o( peri\ o)noma/tôn techniko/s], &c.] [Side-note: 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 name-giver: though he deprecates the supposition generally, as a mere evasion or subterfuge, introduced to escape the confession of real ignorance.[21] [Footnote 21: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397, 425, 438.] [Side-note: 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--dissents also from the theory of Protagoras: and would have rested his dissent from it on very different grounds. [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 fact[22]--That though there are some matters 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. [Footnote 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. [Greek: O(/tan ou)=n ei)/pê| o( skeptiko\s "_ou)de\n o(ri/zô_" . . . tou=to/ phêsi le/gôn to\ _e(autô=| phaino/menon peri\ tô=n prokeime/nôn_, ou)k a)paggeltikô=s, meta\ pepoithê/seôs a)pophaino/menos, a)ll' o(\ pa/schei, diêgou/menos. . . . Kai\ ô(/sper o(le/gôn "_peripatô=_," ou(/tôs o( le/gôn "_pa/nta e)sti\n a)o/rista_" sussêmai/nei kath' ê(ma=s to\ ô(s _pro\s e)me ê)\ ô(s e)moi\ phai/netai_; ô(s ei)=nai to\ lego/menon toiou=ton "o(/sa e)pêlthon tô=n dogmatikô=s zêtoume/nôn, toiau=ta/ moi phai/netai_, ô(s mêde\n au)tô=n tou= machome/nou prou)/chein moi\ dokei=n kata\ pi/stin ê)\ a)pisti/an".]] [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: Analogy of physical processes (cutting and burning) appealed to by Sokrates--does not sustain his inference against Protagoras.] In 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 individual 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. [Footnote 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--[Greek: _ta\ me\n phu/sei, para\ pa=si ta\ au)ta/_; ta\ de\ o)no/mata ou) para\ pa=si ta\ au)ta/; ô/ste ta\ phu/sei o)/nta ou)/k e)stin o)no/mata, kai\ ta\ o)no/mata ou)k ei)si phu/sei.] 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 [Greek: ou)si/an be/baion tô=n pragma/tôn]--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 [Greek: phu/sei], 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 ([Greek: to\ phu/sei]) 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.] [Side-note: 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. [Side-note: 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 doctrine 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. [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: Protagoras 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 age, 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. [Footnote 26: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 387-389, where [Greek: pro\s ê(ma=s] is considered as equivalent to [Greek: ô(s a)\n ê(mei=s boulô/metha--ê(=| a)\n ê(mei=s boulê/thômen]--both of them being opposed to [Greek: oi(=on e)pephu/kei--to\ kata\ phu/sin--i)di/an au)tô=n phu/sin e)/chousai.] 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."] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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, fundamental 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. [Footnote 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.)] * * * * * [Side-note: 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 proper 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 fundamental 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] [Footnote 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. [Greek: Oi)kei=a ga/r e)stin o)no/mata pa/sê| ta/xei tô=n pragma/tôn, thei=a me\n toi=s thei/ois, dianoêta\ de\ toi=s dianoêtoi=s, doxasta\ de\ toi=s doxastoi=s.] 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:--[Greek: O( Pla/tôn kai\ toi=s theoi=s dialekto\n a)pone/mei tina/, ma/lista me\n a)po\ tô=n o)neira/tôn tekmairo/menos kai\ tô=n chrêsmô=n.] 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 [Greek: o)rtho/tês o)noma/tôn] 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."] [Footnote 30: I cite various specimens of the etymologies given by Plato:-- 1. [Greek: A)game/mnôn--o( a)gasto\s kata\ tê\n e)pimonê/n]--in consequence of his patience in remaining ([Greek: monê\]) with his army before Troy (p. 395 A). 2. [Greek: A)treu\s--kata\ to\ a)teire/s, kai\ kata\ to\ a)/treston, kai\ kata\ to\ a)têro/n] (p. 395 C). 3. [Greek: Pe/lops--o( to\ e)ggu\s (pe/las) mo/non o(rô=n kai\ to\ parachrê=ma] (p. 395 D). 4. [Greek: Ta/ntalos--tala/ntatos] (p. 395 E). 5. [Greek: Zeu\s--Di/a--Zê=na--di' o(\n _zê=n_ a)ei\ pa=si toi=s zô=sin u(pa/rchei]--ut proprie unum debuerit esse vocabulum [Greek: Diazê=na]. Stallbaum, ad. p. 396 A. Proklus admired these etymologies (ad Timæum, ii. p. 226, ed. Schneid.). 6. [Greek: Oi( theoi\]--Sun, Moon, Earth, Stars, Uranus--[Greek: a(/te au)ta\ o(rôntes pa/nta a)ei\ i)o/nta dro/mô| kai\ the/onta, a)po\ tau/tês tê=s phu/seôs tê=s tou= thei=n _theou\s_ au)tou\s e)ponoma/sai] (p. 397 D). 7. [Greek: Dai/mones--o(/ti phro/nimoi kai\ daê/mones ê)=san, dai/monas au)tou\s ôno/masen] (Hesiod) (p. 398 B). 8. [Greek: Ê)/rôs]--either from [Greek: e)/rôs], as one sprung from the union of Gods with human females: or from [Greek: e)rôta=|n] or [Greek: ei)/rein],--from oral or rhetorical attributes, as being [Greek: r(ê/tores kai\ e)rôtêtikoi/] (p. 398 D). 9. [Greek: Di/philos--Dii+\ phi/los] (p. 399 B). 10. [Greek: A)/nthrôpos--o( a)nathrô=n a(\ o)/pôpen] (p. 399 C). 11. [Greek: Psuchê\]--a double derivation is proposed: first, [Greek: to\ a)na/psuchon], next, a second, _i.e._ [Greek: psuchê\ = phuse/chê, ê)\ phu/sin o)chei= kai\ e)/chei], which second is declared to be [Greek: technikô/teron], and the former to be ridiculous (pp. 399 E, 400 A-B). 12. [Greek: Sô=ma = to\ sê=ma tê=s phuchê=s], because the soul is buried in the body. Or [Greek: sô=ma], 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, [Greek: mousikê/, mantikê/, i)atrikê/, toxikê/] (p. 405). 15. [Greek: Mou=sa--mousikê\], from [Greek: mô=sthai] (recognised in Liddell and Scott from [Greek: ma/ô] p. 406 A). [Greek: A)phrodi/tê] from [Greek: a)phrou= ge/nesin], the Hesiodic derivation (p. 406 B-D). 16. [Greek: A)ê\r--o(/ti ai)/rei ta\ a)po\ tê=s gê=s--ê)\ o(/ti a)ei\ r(ei=--ê)\ o(/ti pneu=ma e)x au)tou= gi/gnetai r(e/ontos]--quasi [Greek: a)êto/r)r(oun. Ai)thê\r--o(/ti a)ei\ thei= peri\ to\n a)e/ra r(e/ôn] (p. 410 B). 17. [Greek: Phro/nêsis--phora=s kai\ r(ou= no/êsis u(polabei=n phora=s]. This and the following are put as derivatives from the Herakleitean theory (p. 411 D-E). [Greek: No/êsis = tou= ne/ou e)/sis. Sôphrosu/nê--sôtêri/a phronê/seôs]. This is recognised by Aristotle in the Nikom. Ethica, vi. 5. 18. [Greek: E)pistê/mê = e)pistême/nê--ô(s pherome/nois toi=s pra/gmasin e(pome/nês tê=s psuchê=s] (p. 412 A). 19. [Greek: Dikaiosu/nê--e)pi\ tê=| tou= dikai/ou sune/sei] (p. 412 C). 20. [Greek: Kaki/a = to\ kakô=s i)o/n. Deili/a--tê=s psuchê=s desmo\s i)schuro/s--o(\ dei= li/an. A)retê\ = a)eirei/tê]--that which has an easy and constant flux, or perhaps [Greek: ai(retê/] (p. 415 B-D). [Greek: Ai)schro\n = to\ a)eischorou=n--to\ a)ei\ i)/schon to\n r(ou=n] (p. 416 B). [Greek: Su/mphero\n = tê\ a(/ma phora\n tê=s psuchê=s meta\ tô=n pragma/tôn] (p. 417 A). [Greek: Lusite/loun = to\ tê=s phora=s lu/on to\ te/los] (p. 417 C-E). [Greek: Blabero\n = to\ bla/pton to\n r(ou=n]. 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. [Greek: Zugo\n = duogo/n] (p. 418 D). 22. [Greek: Eu)phrosu/nê--a)po\ tou= eu)= pra/gmasi tê\n psuchê\n xumphe/resthai = eu)pherosu/nê] (p. 419 D). 23. [Greek: Thumo\s--a)po\ tê=s thu/seôs kai\ ze/seôs tê=s psuchê=s. E)pithumi/a--ê( e)pi\ to\n thumo\n i)ou=sa du/namis] (p. 419 E). 24. [Greek: To\ o)/n = to\ ou)= tugcha/nei zê/têma, to\ o)/noma. O)nomasto\n = o)/n, ou)= ma/sma e)sti/n. (Ma/sma = zê/têma: mai/esthai = zêtei=n)] (p. 421 A). 25. [Greek: A)lêthei/a--thei/a a)/lê], or [Greek: ê( thei/a tou= o)/ntos phora/. Pseu=dos] from [Greek: eu(/dein], with [Greek: psi=] 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:-- [Greek: E)pistê/mê--o(/ti i(/stêsin ê(mô=n e)pi\ toi=s pra/gmasi tê\n psuchê/n. I(stori/a--o(/ti i(/stêsi to\n r(ou=n. Pisto\n--i(sta=|n panta/pasi sêmai/nei. Mnê/mê--monê\ e)n tê=| psuchê=|] (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. [Greek: A)mathi/a = ê( tou= a(/ma theô=| i)o/ntos porei/a. A)kolasi/a = ê( a)kolouthi/a toi=s pra/gmasin] (p. 437 C). Sokrates contrasts the two theories of [Greek: sta/sis] and [Greek: ki/nêsis], and says that he believes the first Name-Givers to have apportioned names in conformity to the theory of [Greek: ki/nêsis], but that he thinks they were mistaken in adopting that theory (p. 439 C).] [Side-note: These 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 "a valuable discovery of modern times" (so Schleiermacher[32] terms it) that Plato meant all or most of them as mere parody and 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] [Footnote 31: Dionys. Hal. De Comp. Verb. a. 16, p. 196, Schaefer. [Greek: ta\ kra/tista de\ ne/mô, ô(s prô/tô| to\n u(pe\r e)tumologi/as ei)sa/gonti lo/gon, Pla/tôni tô=| Sôkratikô=|, pollachê=| me\n kai\ a)/llothi, ma/lista de\ e)n tô=| Kratu/lô|.] 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.] [Footnote 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 [Greek: pseude/tuma], 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).] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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, successfully 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: peri\ o)rtho/têtos tô=n o)noma/tôn] (Heindorf and Schleiermacher, with better reason, infer from the passage nothing more than the circumstance that Protagoras taught [Greek: o)rthoepei/an] 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.).] [Footnote 35: Plato, Kratylus, c. 4-5, pp. 386-387.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: Plato 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: who (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, Kratylus, 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] [Footnote 37: Schleiermacher, Introd. to Krat. pp. 7-10; Lassalle, Herakleit. ii. p. 387.] [Footnote 38: Plato, Kratylus, p. 391 B.] [Footnote 39: See, as an example, his derivation of [Greek: _Di/philos_] from [Greek: Dii+/ phi/los], p. 399: [Greek: _Mou=sa_], p. 406: [Greek: dai/môn] from [Greek: daê/môn], p. 398: for [Greek: _A)phrodi/tê_] he takes the Hesiodic etymology, p. 406. [Greek: _A)/rês_] and [Greek: _a)/r)r(ên_] (p. 407). His derivation of [Greek: _ai)thê/r_--a)po\ tou= a)ei\ the/ein] (p. 410) is given twice by Aristotle (De Coelo, 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 [Greek: psuchê/], quasi [Greek: phuse/chê, a)po\ tou= tê\n phu/sin o)chei=n kai\ e)/chein] (Kratyl. p. 400). Yet Proklus cites this as serious, Scholia in Kratylum, p. 4, ed. Boissonnade. Plato, in the Treatise De Legibus, derives [Greek: cho/ros] from [Greek: chara/] and [Greek: no/mos] from [Greek: nou=s] or [Greek: no/os] (ii. 1, p. 654 A, xii. 8, p. 957 D).] [Footnote 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 [Greek: thumo/s], "probably rightly derived from [Greek: thu/ô] by Plat. Crat. 419 E, [Greek: a)po\ tê=s thu/seôs kai\ ze/seôs tê=s psuchê=s.]" 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 [Greek: phu/sei] (see pp. 17-19).] [Footnote 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 [Greek: ai)/sthêsis] from [Greek: a)i+/ssô]: again in the same dialogue, p. 62 A, [Greek: thermo\s] from [Greek: kermati/zein]. In Legg. iv. 714, we have [Greek: tê\n tou= nou= dianomê\n e)ponoma/zontas no/mon]. In Phædrus, p. 238 C, we find [Greek: e)/rôs] derived from [Greek: e)r)r(ôme/nôs r(ôsthei=sa]. Aristotle derives [Greek: o)/sphus] from [Greek: i)sophue/s], Histor. Animal. i. 13, p. 493, a. 22: also [Greek: di/kaion] from [Greek: di/cha], Ethic. Nikom. v. 7, 1132, a. 31; [Greek: methu/ein--meta\ to\ thu/ein], Athenæus, ii. 40. The Pseudo-Aristotelian treatise [Greek: Peri\ Ko/smou] (p. 401, a. 15) adopts the Platonic etymology of [Greek: Di/a-Zê=na] as [Greek: di' o(\n zô=men] Plutarch, De Primo Frigido, c. 9, p. 948, derives [Greek: kne/phas] from [Greek: keno\n pha/ous]. The Emperor Marcus Antoninus derives [Greek: a)kti/s], the ray of the Sun, [Greek: a)po\ tou= e)ktei/nesthai], 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.] [Side-note: 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 generally 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 he[43] repeatedly designates as [Greek: ei)ko/ta], 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 once[44]) who stepped beyond the ordinary regions of human affirmation. Occasionally he proposes alternative and distinct etymologies: feeling 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] [Footnote 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).] [Footnote 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 [Greek: Theo\s a)po\ tou= thei=n], 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 [Greek: theo\s a)po\ tou= thei=nai], 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 [Greek: Zeu\s-Di/a-Zê=na] (p. 396 B). Yet this is reproduced in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise, [Greek: Peri\ Ko/smou] (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 [Greek: a)/nthrôpos] from [Greek: a)nathrô=n a)\ o(/pôpen]. 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.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 many 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 question, 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] [Footnote 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. [Greek: mantikê\] derived from [Greek: manikê\] by the insertion of [Greek: t], which Sokrates declares to be done in bad taste, [Greek: oi( de\ nu=n a)peiroka/lôs to\ _tau=_ e)pemba/llontes mantikê\n e)ka/lasan.] 2. [Greek: oi)ônistikê\], quasi [Greek: oi)onoi+stikê\], from [Greek: oi)/êsis, nou=s, i(stori/a]. Compare the etymology of [Greek: E)/rôs], 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.] [Footnote 47: See what Aristotle says about [Greek: Pa/ntê] in the first chapter of the treatise De Coelo; also about [Greek: au)to/maton] from [Greek: au)to\ ma/tên], 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 [Greek: pa/schein] repetunt, non per ignorantiam lapsi, sed allusionis quandam gratiam aucupati videntur."] [Footnote 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).] [Side-note: 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 ordinary 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] [Footnote 49: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 393-394.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 50: Plato, Kratyl. p. 425 A. [Greek: tê=| o)nomastikê=|, ê)\ r(êtorikê=|, ê)\ ê(/tis e)sti\n ê( te/chnê.]] [Footnote 51: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 424 B-E, 426 A, 434 A.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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_ naturally 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] [Footnote 53: Plato, Kratyl. p. 426 D-E. [Greek: krou/ein, thrau/ein, e(rei/kein], &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.] [Footnote 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] [Footnote 55: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 426 B, 427 D.] [Side-note: 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 a 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] [Footnote 56: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 401 C--402 B. 436 E: [Greek: ô(s tou= panto\s i)o/ntos te kai\ pherome/non kai\ r(e/ontos phame\n sêmai/nein ê(mi=n tê\n ou)si/an ta\ o)no/mata.] Also p. 439 B.] [Footnote 57: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 415-416-417, &c.] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 58: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 409**-411 C. [Greek: Ai)tiô=ntai dê\ ou) to\ e)/ndon to\ para\ sphi/si pa/thos ai)/tion ei)=nai tau/tês tê=s do/xês, a)ll' au)ta\ ta\ pra/gmata ou(/tô pephuke/nai], &c. "He that is giddy thinks the world turns round," &c.] [Footnote 59: Plato, Kratyl. p. 418 C. [Greek: Oi)=stha ou)=n o(/ti mo/non tou=to dêloi= to\ a)rchai=on o)/noma tê\n dia/noian tou= theme/nou?] Also p. 419 A.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 60: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 394 B, 399 B, 414 C, 418 A.] [Footnote 61: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 397 B, 409 B.] * * * * * [Side-note: Sokrates 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. [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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 [Greek: phu/sei kai\ ou) the/sei] 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 a 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] [Footnote 63: Plato, Kratyl. p. 429 B-C. _Sokr._ [Greek: Pa/nta a)/ra ta\ o)no/mata o)rthôs kei=tai?] _Krat._ [Greek: O(/sa ge o)no/mata e)/sti.] _Sokr._ [Greek: Ti/ ou)=n? E(rmoge/nei tô=|de po/teron mêde\ o)/noma tou=to kei=sthai phô=men, ei) mê/ ti au)tô=| E(rmou= gene/seôs prosê/kei, ê)\ kei=sthai me/n, ou) me/ntoi o)rthô=s ge?] _Krat._ [Greek: Ou)de\ kei=sthai e)/moige dokei=, _a)lla\ dokei=n kei=sthai_. ei)=nai de\ e(te/rou tou=to tou)/noma, ou(=per kai\ ê( phu/sis ê( to\ o)/noma dêlou=sa.] The critics say that these last words ought to be read [Greek: ê)\n to\ o)/noma dêloi=], 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 [Greek: no/mos] in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 42-47, and Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. p. 392.] [Footnote 64: Plato, Krat. p. 436 C. [Greek: A)lla\ mê ou)ch ou(/tôs e)/chê|, a)ll' a)nagkai=on ê)=|, ei)do/ta ti/thesthai to\n tithe/menon ta\ o)no/mata; ei) de\ mê/, o(/per pa/lai e)gô\ e)/legon, ou)d' a)\n o)no/mata ei)/ê. Me/giston de/ soi e)/stô tekmê/rion o(/ti ou)k e)/sphaltai tê=s a)lêthei/as o( tithe/menos; ou) ga\r a)\n pote ou(/tô xu/mphôna ê)=n au)tô=| a(/panta. ê)\ _ou)k e)neno/eis au)to\s le/gôn ô(s pa/nta kat' au)to\ kai\ e)pi\ tau)to\n e)gi/gneto ta\ o)no/mata?_] 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.] [Footnote 65: Plato, Krat. c. 111, pp. 435-436.] [Side-note: 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 non-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] [Footnote 66: Plato, Kratyl. p. 387 C. [Greek: e)a\n de\ mê/, e)xamartê/setai/ te kai\ ou)de\n poiê/sei.] Compare p. 389 A.] [Footnote 67: Plato, Kratyl. p. 430 A. [Greek: phe/re dê/, e)a/n pê| diallachthô=men, ô= Kra/tule], &c.] [Footnote 68: Plato, Krat. p. 435 C. [Greek: e)moi\ me\n ou)=n kai\ au)tô=| a)re/skei me\n kata\ to\ dunato\n o(/moia ei)=nai ta\ o)no/mata toi=s pra/gmasin; a)lla\ mê\ ô(s a)lêthô=s glischra\ ê)=| ê( o)lkê\ au)tê\ tê=s o(moio/têtos, a)nagkai=on de\ ê)=| kai\ tô=| phortikô=| tou/tô| proschrê=sthai, tê=| xunthê/kê|, ei)s o)noma/tôn o)rtho/têta; e)pei\ i)/sôs kata/ ge to\ dunato\n ka/llist' a)\n le/goito, o(/tan ê)\ pa=sin ê)\ ô(s plei/stois o(moi/ois le/gêtai, tou=to d' e)sti\ prosêkousin, ai)/schista de\ tou)nanti/on.]] [Side-note: 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, which 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] [Footnote 69: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 432-434.] [Footnote 70: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 434-435.] [Side-note: 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 be received as true--whether the name-giver believed in it or not.[72] [Footnote 71: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 B-C. [Greek: E)/ti toi/nun to/de skepsômetha, o(/pôs mê\ ê(ma=s ta\ polla\ tau=ta o)no/mata e)s tauto\n tei/nonta e)xapata=|, kai\ tô=| o)/nti me\n oi( the/menoi au(ta\ _dianoêthe/ntes te e)/thento_ ô(s i)o/ntôn a)pa/ntôn a)ei\ kai\ r(eo/ntôn--_phai/nontai ga\r e)/moige kai\ au)toi\ ou)/tô dianoêthê=nai_--to\ d', ei) e)/tuchen, ou)ch ou)/tôs e)/chei], &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.] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 74: Plato, Krat. pp. 438-439. 438 E:--[Greek: di' a)llê/lôn ge, ei)/ pê| xuggenê= e)sti/, kai\ au)ta\ di' au(tô=n.]] [Side-note: 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. [Footnote 75: Plato, Krat. p. 439 C-D. [Greek: ske/psai o( e)/gôge polla/kis o)neirô/ttô, po/teron phô=me/n ti ei)=nai au)to\ kalo\n kai\ a)gatho\n kai\ e(\n e(/kaston tô=n o)/ntôn ou(/tôs, ê)\ mê/? . . . mê\ ei) pro/sôpo/n ti/ e)sti kalo\n ê)/ ti tô=n toiou=tôn, kai\ dokei= tau=ta pa/nta r(ei=n; a)ll' au)to\ to\ kalo\n ou) toiou=ton a)ei/ e)stin oi(=o/n e)stin?]] 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 known 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. [Footnote 76: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D--440 A. [Greek: A)=r' ou)=n oi(=o/n te _proseipei=n au)to\ o)rthôs_, ei) a)ei\ u(pexe/rchetai, prô=ton me\n o(/ti, e)keino/ e)stin, e)/peita o(/ti toiou=tôn? ê)\ a)na/gkê a)/ma ê(mô=n lego/ntôn a)/llo au)to\ eu)thu\s gi/gnesthai kai\ u(pexie/nai, kai\ mêke/ti ou(/tôs e)/chein? . . . A)lla\ mê\n ou)d' a)\n gnôsthei/ê ge u(p' ou)deno/s. . . . A)ll' ou)de\ gnôsin ei)=nai pha/nai ei)ko/s, ei) metapi/ptei pa/nta chrê/mata kai\ mêde\n me/nei.]] [Side-note: 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] [Footnote 77: Plato, Kratyl. p. 440 C. [Greek: Tau=t' ou)=n po/tero/n pote ou(/tôs e)/chei, ê)\ e)kei/nôs ô(s oi( peri\ Ê(ra/kleito/n te le/gousi kai\ a)/lloi polloi/, mê\ ou) r(a=|dion ê)=| e)piske/psasthai, ou)de\ pa/nu nou=n e)/chontos _a)nthrô/pou e)pitre/psanta o)no/masin au(to\n kai\ tê\ au(tou= psuchê\n therapeu/ein_, pepisteuko/ta e)kei/nois kai\ toi=s theme/nois _au)ta/_, dii+schuri/zesthai ô(s ti ei)do/ta, kai\ au)tou= te kai\ tô=n o)/ntôn katagignô/skein, ô(s ou)de\n u(gie\s ou)deno/s, a(lla\ pa/nta ô/sper kera/mia r(ei=], &c.] [Footnote 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. * * * * * [Side-note: 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 against 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. [Footnote 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).] [Footnote 80: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 B, 391 B.] [Footnote 81: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 428 A, 440 D.] [Footnote 82: Plato, Kratyl. pp. 384 C. 391 A. [Greek: suzêtei=n e(/toimo/s ei)mi kai\ soi\ kai\ Kratu/lô| koinê=| . . . o(/ti ou)k ei)dei/ên a)lla\ skepsoi/mên meta\ sou=.]] [Side-note: 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] each 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 brought 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. [Footnote 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. [Greek: dê=lon o(/ti o( the/menos prô=tos ta\ o)no/mata, oi(=a ê(gei=to ei)=nai ta\ pra/gmata, toiau=ta e)ti/theto kai\ ta\ o)no/mata.] 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 [Greek: nomothe/tês techniko/s]] [Footnote 84: Plato, Kratyl. p. 436 D.] [Footnote 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--[Greek: lektikê\ phantasi/a]) 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".] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 perpetual 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. [Footnote 87: Plato, Kratyl. p. 439 D. [Greek: A)=r' ou)=n oi(=on te proseipei=n au)to\ o)rthôs, ei) a)ei\ u(pexe/chetai?]] [Footnote 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. [Side-note: 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 of true names _à priori_, but he sets forth the real nameable permanent essences, to which these names might be assimilated: the 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. [Footnote 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 [Greek: phu/sei]), 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--onomatopoeic 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."] [Footnote 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.] [Side-note: 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 Name-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] [Footnote 91: See Mr. John Stuart Mill's Logic, Book i. ch. viii.] [Footnote 92: Plato, Republic, ii. p. 369 seq., where the [Greek: ge/nesis] 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 [Greek: a)rchê] of the City (p. 369 B) as Plato there presents it, is Aristotelian rather than Platonic.] [Footnote 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