eBook of George Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates: Vol. 3 of 4

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 ἀπορίαι	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.

 

 

 

 

These two are the two erotic dialogues of Plato. Phædrus is the originator of both.

I put together these two dialogues, as distinguished by a marked peculiarity. They are the two erotic dialogues of Plato. They have one great and interesting subject common to both: though in the Phædrus, this subject is blended with, and made contributory to, another. They agree also in the circumstance, that Phædrus is, in both, the person who originates the conversation. But they differ materially in the manner of handling, in the comparisons and illustrations, and in the apparent purpose.

Eros as conceived by Plato. Different sentiment prevalent in Hellenic antiquity and in modern times. Position of women in Greece.

The subject common to both is, Love or Eros in its largest sense, and with its manifold varieties. Under the totally different vein of sentiment which prevails in modern times, and which recognises passionate love as prevailing only between persons of different sex — it is difficult for us to enter into Plato’s eloquent exposition of the feeling as he conceives it. In the Hellenic point of view,1 upon which Plato builds, the attachment of man to woman was regarded as a natural impulse, and as a domestic, social, sentiment; 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

Eros, considered as the great stimulus to improving philosophical communion. Personal Beauty, the great point of approximation between the world of sense and the world of Ideas. Gradual generalisation of the sentiment.

Especially to Plato, who combined erotic and poetical imagination with Sokratic dialectics and generalising theory — this passion presented itself in the light of a stimulus introductory to the work of philosophy — an impulse at first impetuous and undistinguishing, but afterwards regulated towards improving communion and colloquy with an improvable youth. Personal beauty (this is5 the remarkable doctrine of Plato in the Phædrus) is the main point of visible resemblance between the world of sense and the world of Ideas: the Idea of Beauty has a brilliant representative of itself among concrete objects — the Ideas of Justice and Temperance have none. The contemplation of a beautiful youth, and the vehement emotion accompanying it, was the only way of reviving in the soul the Idea of Beauty which it had seen in its antecedent stage of existence. This was the first stage through which every philosopher must pass; but the emotion of love thus raised, became gradually in the better minds both expanded and purified. The lover did not merely admire the person, but also contracted the strongest sympathy with the feelings and character, of the beloved youth: delighting to recognise and promote in him all manifestations of mental beauty which were in harmony with the physical, so as to raise him to the greatest attainable perfection of human nature. The original sentiment of admiration, having been thus first transferred by association from beauty in the person to beauty in the mind and character, became gradually still farther generalised; so that beauty was perceived not as exclusively specialised in any one individual, but as invested in all beautiful objects, bodies as well as minds. The view would presently be farther enlarged. 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

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.

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

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

Purpose of the Symposion, to contrast this Platonic view of Eros with several different views of it previously enunciated by the other speakers; closing with a panegyric on Sokrates, by the drunken Alkibiades.

It is thus that Plato, in the Symposion, presents Love, or erotic impulse: a passion taking its origin in the physical and mental attributes common to most men, and concentrated at first upon some individual person — but gradually becoming both more intense and more refined, as it ascends in the scale of logical generalisation and comes into intimate view of the pure idea of Beauty. The main purpose of the Symposion is to contrast this Platonic view of Eros or Love — which is assigned to Sokrates in the dialogue, and is repeated by him from the communication of a prophetic woman named Diotima15 — with different views assigned to other speakers. Each of the guests at the Banquet — Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Sokrates — engages to deliver a panegyric on Eros: while Alkibiades, entering intoxicated after the speeches are finished, delivers a panegyric on Sokrates, in regard to energy and self-denial generally, but mainly and specially in the character of Erastes. The pure and devoted attachment of Sokrates towards Alkibiades himself — his inflexible self-command under the extreme of trial and temptation — the unbounded ascendancy which he had acquired over that insolent youth, who seeks in every conceivable manner to render himself acceptable to Sokrates — are emphatically extolled, and illustrated by singular details.

Views of Eros presented by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon.

Both Phædrus16 and Pausanias, in their respective encomiums upon Eros, dwell upon that God as creating within the human bosom by his inspirations the noblest self-denial and the most devoted heroism, together with the strongest incentives to virtuous behaviour. Pausanias however makes distinctions: recognising and condemning various erotic manifestations as abusive, violent, sensual — and supposing for these a separate inspiring Deity — Eros Pandêmus, contrasted with the good and honourable Eros Uranius17 or Cœlestis. In regard to the different views taken of Eros by Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon — the first is medical, physiological, cosmical18 — the second is comic and imaginative, even to exuberance — the third is poetical or dithyrambic: immediately upon which follows the analytical and philosophical exposition ascribed to Sokrates, opened in his dialectic manner by a cross-examination of his predecessor, and proceeding to enunciate the opinions communicated to him by the prophetess Diotima.

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

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

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

Panegyric — Sokrates admits that the influence of Eros is a variety of madness, but distinguishes good and bad varieties of madness, both coming from the Gods. Good madness is far better than sobriety.

Eros (he says) is, mad, irrational, superseding reason and prudence in the individual mind.27 This is true: yet still Eros exercises a beneficent and improving influence. Not all madness is bad. Some varieties of it are bad, but others are good. Some arise from human malady, others from the inspirations of the Gods: both of them supersede human reason and the orthodoxy of established custom28 — but the former substitute what is worse, the latter what is better. The greatest blessings enjoyed by man arise from madness, when it is imparted by divine inspiration. 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.

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.

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.

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

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 œstrus, and the reminiscence of the eternal Ideas (considered by Plato as the only true and real Entia), is inconsistent with that which is esteemed as sobriety: and is generated only by special inoculation from Eros or some other God. This last contrast, as I have just observed, is little marked in the Symposion. But on the other hand, the Symposion (especially the discourse of Sokrates and his repetition of the lessons of Diotima), insists much more upon the generalisation of the erotic impulse. In the Phædrus, we still remain on the ground of fervent attachment between two individuals — an attachment sentimental and virtuous, displaying itself in an intercourse which elicits from both of them active intelligence and exalted modes of conduct: in the Symposion, such intercourse is assimilated explicitly to copulation with procreative consequences, but it is represented as the first stage of a passion which becomes more and more expanded and comprehensive: dropping all restriction to any single individual, and enlarging itself not merely to embrace pursuits, and institutions, but also to the plenitude and great ocean of Beauty in its largest sense.

Elevating influence ascribed, both in Phædrus and Symposion, to Eros Philosophus. Mixture in the mind of Plato, of poetical fancy and religious mysticism, with dialectic theory.

The picture here presented by Plato, of the beneficent and elevating influence of Eros Philosophus, is repeated by Sokrates as a revelation made to him by the prophetess Diotima. It was much taken to heart by 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 — τὸ Καλὸν — τὸ αὐτὸ-καλὸν — the “full sea of the beautiful”. Not without reason does Diotima express a doubt whether Sokrates (if we mean thereby the historical Sokrates) could have followed so bold a flight. His wings might probably have failed 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 Pindar37 — according to the comparison of Dionysius of Halikarnassus.

Various remarks may be made, in comparing this exposition of Diotima in the Symposion with that which we read in the Phædrus and Phædon.

Differences between Symposion and Phædrus. In-dwelling conceptions assumed by the former, pre-natal experiences by the latter.

First, in the Phædrus and Phædon (also in the Timæus and elsewhere), the pre-existence of the soul, and its antecedent familiarity, greater or less, with the world of Ideas, — are brought into the foreground; so as to furnish a basis for that doctrine of reminiscence, which is one of the peculiar characteristics of Plato. The Form or Idea, when once disengaged from the appendages by which it has been overgrown, is said to be recognised by the mind and welcomed as an old acquaintance. But in the Symposion, no such doctrine is found. The mind is described as rising by gradual steps from the concrete and particular to the abstract and general, by recognising the sameness of one attribute as pervading many particulars, and by extending its comparisons from smaller groups of particulars to larger; until at length one and the same attribute is perceived to belong to all. The mind is supposed to evolve out of itself, and to generate in some companion mind, certain abstract or general conceptions, correlating with the Forms or Concepta without. The fundamental postulate here is, not that of pre-existence, but that of in-dwelling conceptions.

Nothing but metaphorical immortality recognised in Symposion.

Secondly, in the Phædrus and Phædon, the soul is declared to be immortal, à parte post as well as à parte ante. But in the Symposion, this is affirmed to be impossible.38 The soul yearns for, but is forbidden to reach, immortality: or at least can only reach immortality in a metaphorical sense, by its prolific operation — by generating in itself as long as it lasts, and in other minds who will survive it, a self-renewing series of noble thoughts and feelings — by leaving a name and reputation to survive in the memory of others.

Form or Idea of Beauty presented singly and exclusively in Symposion.

Thirdly, in Phædrus, Phædon, Republic, and elsewhere, Plato recognises many distinct Forms or Ideas — a world or aggregate of such Entia Rationis39 — among which Beauty is one, but only one. It is the exalted privilege of the philosophic mind to come into contemplation and cognition of these Forms generally. But in the Symposion, the Form of Beauty (τὸ καλὸν) is presented singly and exclusively — as if the communion with this one Form were the sole occupation of the most exalted philosophy.

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.

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.

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.

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

Symposion and Phædon — each is the antithesis and complement of the other.

The picture of Sokrates, in the Symposion, forms a natural contrast and complement to the picture of him in the Phædon; though the conjecture of Schleiermacher46 — that the two together are intended to make up the Philosophus, or third member of the trilogy promised in the Sophistês — is ingenious rather than convincing. The Phædon depicts Sokrates in his last conversation with his friends, immediately before his death; the Symposion presents him in the exuberance of life, health, and cheerfulness: in both situations, we find the same attributes manifested — perfect equanimity and self-command, proof against every variety of disturbing agency — whether tempting or terrible — absorbing interest in philosophical dialectic. The first of these two elements, if it stood alone, would be virtuous sobriety, yet not passing beyond the limit of mortal virtue: the last of the two superadds a higher element, which Plato conceives to transcend the limit of mortal virtue, and to depend upon divine inspiration or madness.47

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.

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

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

Platonic Symposion more ideal and transcendental than the Xenophontic.

We see thus that the Platonic Symposion is much more ideal, and departs farther from common practice and sentiment, than the Xenophontic. It discards all the common accessories of a banquet (musical or dancing artists), and throws the guests altogether upon their own powers of rhetoric and dialectic, for amusement. If we go through the different encomiums upon Eros, by Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Diotima — we shall appreciate the many-coloured forms and exuberance of the Platonic imagination, as compared with the more restricted range and common-place practical sense of Xenophon.56 All the Platonic speakers are accomplished persons — a man of letters, a physician, two successful poets, a prophetess: the Xenophontic personages, except Sokrates and Antisthenes, are persons of ordinary capacity. The Platonic Symposion, after presenting Eros in five different points of view, gives pre-eminence and emphasis to a sixth, in which Eros is regarded as the privileged minister and conductor to the mysteries of philosophy, both the lowest and the highest: the Xenophontic Symposion dwells upon one view only of Eros (developed by Sokrates) and cites Kallias as example of it, making no mention of philosophy. The Platonic Symposion exalts Sokrates, as the representative of Eros Philosophus, to a pinnacle of elevation which places him above human fears and weaknesses57 — coupled however with that 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.

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

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.

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?

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

 

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

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

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

This is Dialectic (replies Phædrus); but it is not Rhetoric, as Thrasymachus and other professors teach the art.

View of Sokrates — that there is no real Art of Rhetoric, except what is already comprised in Dialectic — The rhetorical teaching is empty and useless.

What else is there worth having (says Sokrates), which these professors teach? The order and distribution of a discourse: first, the exordium, then recital, proof, second proof, refutation, recapitulation at the close: advice how to introduce maxims or similes: receipts for moving the anger or compassion of the dikasts. 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

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.

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

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

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

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

This blending of philosophy with rhetoric, which pervades the criticisms on Lysias in the Phædrus, is farther illustrated by the praise bestowed upon Isokrates in contrast with Lysias. Isokrates occupied that which Plato in Euthydêmus calls “the border country between philosophy and politics”. Many critics declare (and I think with probable reason86) that Isokrates is the person intended (without being named) in the passage just cited from the Euthydêmus. In the Phædrus, Isokrates is described as the intimate friend of Sokrates, still young; and is pronounced already superior in every way to Lysias — likely to become superior in future to all the rhetors that have ever flourished — and destined probably to arrive even at the divine mysteries of philosophy.87

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 dikastery88 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.

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

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

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

 

 

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Date of the Phædrus — not an early dialogue.

I have already observed that I dissent from the hypothesis of Schleiermacher, Ast, and others, who regard the Phædrus either as positively the earliest, or at least among the earliest, of the Platonic dialogues, composed several years before the death of Sokrates. I agree with Hermann, Stallbaum, and those other critics, who refer it to a much later period of Plato’s life: though I see no sufficient evidence to determine more exactly either its date or its place in the chronological series of dialogues. The views opened in the second half of the dialogue, on the theory of rhetoric and on the efficacy of written compositions as a means of instruction, are very interesting and remarkable.

Criticism given by Plato on the three discourses — His theory of Rhetoric is more Platonic than Sokratic.

The written discourse of Lysias (presented to us as one greatly admired at the time by his friends, Phædrus among them) is contrasted first with a pleading on the same subject (though not directed towards the attainment of the same end) by Sokrates (supposed to be 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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”.

Plato’s ideal grandeur compared with the rhetorical teachers — Usefulness of these teachers for the wants of an accomplished man.

Indeed it seems that Plato himself regarded it as unattainable — and as only worth aiming at for the purpose of pleasing the Gods, not with any view to practical benefit, arising from either speech or action among mankind.109 This is a point to be considered, when we compare his views on Rhetoric with those of Lysias and the other rhetors, whom he here judges unfavourably and even contemptuously. The work of speech and action among mankind, which Plato sets aside as unworthy of attention, was the express object of solicitude to Lysias, Isokrates, and rhetors generally: that which they practised efficaciously themselves, and which they desired to assist, cultivate, and improve in others: that which Perikles, in his funeral oration preserved by Thucydides, represents as the pride of the Athenian people collectively110 — combination of full freedom of preliminary contentious debate, with energy in executing the resolution which might be ultimately adopted. These rhetors, by the example of their composed speeches as well as by their teaching, did much to impart to young men the power of expressing themselves with fluency and effect before auditors, either in the assembly or in the dikastery: as Sokrates here fully admits.111 Towards this purpose it was useful to analyse the constituent parts of a discourse, and to give an appropriate name to each part. Accordingly, all the rhetorical teachers (Quintilian included) continued such analysis, though differing more or less in their way of performing it, until the extinction of Pagan civilisation. Young men were taught to learn by heart regular discourses,112 — to compose the like for themselves — to understand the difference between such as were well or ill composed — and to acquire a command of oratorical means for moving or convincing the hearer. All this instruction had a practical value: 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.

The Rhetorical teachers conceived the Art too narrowly: Plato conceived it too widely. The principles of an Art are not required to be explained to all learners.

The teaching of these rhetors thus contributed to the security, dignity, and usefulness of the citizens, by arming them for public speech and action. But it was essentially practical, or empirical: it had little system, and was founded upon a narrow theory. Upon these points Plato in the Phædrus attacks them. He sets little value upon the accomplishments arming men for speech and action (λεκτικοὺς καὶ πρακτικοὺς εἶναι) — and he will not allow such teaching to be called an Art. He explains, in opposition to them, what he himself conceived the Art of Rhetoric to be, in the comprehensive way which I have above described.

 

But if the conception of the Art, as entertained by the Rhetors, is too narrow — that of Plato, on the other hand, is too wide.

First, it includes the whole basis of science or theory on which the Art rests: it is a Philosophy of Rhetoric, expounded by a theorist — rather than an Art of Rhetoric, taught to learners by a master. To teach the observance of certain rules or precepts is one thing: to set forth the reasons upon which those rules are founded, is another — highly important indeed, and proper to be known by the teacher; yet not necessarily communicated, or even communicable, to all learners. Quintilian, in his Institutio Rhetorica, gives both:— an ample theory, as well as an ample 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.

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 art116 except what is general — capable of being rationally anticipated and prescribed beforehand — then to include in art the special treatment required for the multiplicity of particular cases; the analogy of the medical art, which he here instructively invokes, would be against him on this point.

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.

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 Halikarnassus120 declares Lysias to be inferior to some other orators — while ascribing to him marked oratorical superiority on various other points. Yet Plato, in specifying his objections against the erotic discourses of Lysias, does not show that it offends against the sound general principle which he himself lays down respecting the art of persuasion — That the topics insisted on by the persuader shall be adapted to the feelings and dispositions of the persuadend. Far from violating this principle, Lysias kept it in view, and employed it to the best of his power — as we may see, not merely by his remaining orations, but also by the testimonies of the critics:121 though he did not go through the large preliminary work of scientific classification, both of different minds and different persuasive apparatus, which Plato considers essential to a thorough comprehension and mastery of the principle.

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

Continuous discourse, either written or spoken, inefficacious as a means of instruction to the ignorant.

Another important subject is also treated in the Phædrus. Sokrates delivers views both original and characteristic, respecting the efficacy of continuous discourse — either written to be read, or spoken to be heard without cross-examination — as a means of instruction. They are re-stated — in a manner substantially the same, though with some variety and fulness of illustration — in Plato’s seventh Epistle125 to the surviving friends of Dion. I have already touched upon these views in my eighth Chapter, on the Platonic Dialogues generally, and have 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

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.

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.

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 (ἀπορίαι) involved in philosophia prima and its very high abstractions, are left behind unsolved and indeterminate. But though the modern course of philosophy is preferable to the ancient, it is not for that reason to be considered as satisfactory. These metaphysical difficulties are not diminished either in force or relevancy, because modern writers choose to leave them unnoticed. Plato and Aristotle were quite right in propounding them as problems, the solution of which was indispensable to the exigencies and consistent schematism of the theorising intelligence, as well as to any complete discrimination between sufficient and insufficient evidence. Such they still remain, overlooked yet not defunct.

Plato’s idéal philosopher can only be realised under the hypothesis of a pre-existent and omniscient soul, stimulated into full reminiscence here.

Now all these questions would be solved by the idéal philosopher whom Plato in the Phædrus conceives as possessing knowledge: a person who shall be at once a negative Sokrates in excogitating and enforcing all the difficulties — and an affirmative match for Sokrates, as respondent in solving them: a person competent to apply this process to all the indefinite variety of individual minds, under the inspirations of the moment. This is a magnificent idéal. Plato affirms truly, that those teachers who taught rhetoric and philosophy by writing, could never produce such a pupil: 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.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

Character of dialogues immediately preceding — much transcendental assertion. Opposite character of the Parmenides.

In the dialogues immediately preceding — Phædon, Phædrus, Symposion — we have seen Sokrates manifesting his usual dialectic, which never fails him: but we have also seen him indulging in a very unusual vein of positive affirmation and declaration. He has unfolded many novelties about the states of pre-existence and post-existence: he has familiarised us with Ideas, Forms, Essences, eternal and unchangeable, as the causes of all the facts and particularities of nature: he has recognised the inspired variety of madness, as being more worthy of trust than sober, uninspired, intelligence: he has recounted, with the faith of a communicant fresh from the mysteries, revelations made to him by the prophetess Diotima, — respecting the successive stages of exaltation whereby gifted intelligences, under the stimulus of Eros Philosophus, ascend into communion with the great sea of Beauty. All this is set forth with as much charm as Plato’s eloquence can bestow. But after all, it is not the true character of Sokrates:— I mean, the Sokrates of the Apology, whose mission it is to make war against the chronic malady of the human mind — false persuasion of knowledge, without the reality. It is, on the contrary, Sokrates himself infected with the same chronic malady which he combats in others, and requiring medicine against it as much as others. Such is the exact character in which Sokrates appears in the Parmenides: which dialogue I shall now proceed to review.

Sokrates is the juvenile defendant — Parmenides the veteran censor and cross-examiner. Parmenides gives a specimen of exercises to be performed by the philosophical aspirant.

The Parmenides announces its own purpose as intended to 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.

Circumstances and persons of the Parmenides.

Passing over the dramatic introduction1 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.

Sokrates is one among various auditors, who are assembled to hear Zeno reading aloud a treatise of his own composition, intended to answer and retort upon the opponents of his preceptor Parmenides.

Manner in which the doctrine of Parmenides was impugned. Manner in which his partisan Zeno defended him.

The main doctrine of the real Parmenides was, “That Ens, the absolute, real, self-existent, was One and not many”: which doctrine was impugned and derided by various opponents, deducing from it absurd conclusions. Zeno defended his master by showing that the opposite doctrine ( — “That Ens, the absolute, self-existent universe, is Many — ”) led to conclusions absurd in an equal or greater degree. If the Absolute were Many, the many would be both like and unlike: but they cannot have incompatible and contradictory attributes: therefore Absolute Ens is not Many. Ens, as Parmenides conceived it, was essentially homogeneous and unchangeable: even assuming it to be Many, all its parts must be homogeneous, so that what was predicable of one must be predicable of all; it might be all alike, or all unlike: but it could not be both. Those who maintained the plurality of Ens, did so on the ground of apparent severalty, likeness, and unlikeness, in the sensible world. But Zeno, while admitting these phenomena in the sensible world, as relative to us, apparent, and subject to the varieties of individual estimation — denied their applicability to absolute and self-existent Ens.2 Since absolute Ens or Entia are Many (said the opponents of Parmenides), they will be both like and unlike: and thus we can explain the phenomena of the sensible world. The absolute (replied Zeno) cannot be both like and unlike; therefore it cannot be many. We must recollect 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.

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

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

 

Plato now puts into the mouth of Parmenides — the advocate of One absolute and unchangeable Ens, separated by an impassable gulf from the sensible world of transitory and variable appearances or phenomena — objections against what is called the Platonic theory of Ideas: that is, the theory of an intelligible world, comprising an indefinite number of distinct intelligible and unchangeable Forms — in partial relation and communication with another world of sensible objects, each of which participates in one or more of these Forms. We thus have the Absolute One pitted against the Absolute Many.

What Ideas does Sokrates recognise? Of the Just and Good? Yes. Of Man, Horse, &c.? Doubtful. Of Hair, Mud, &c.? No.

What number and variety of these intelligible Forms do you recognise — (asks Parmenides)? Likeness and Unlikeness — One and Many — Just, Beautiful, Good, &c. — are all these Forms absolute and existent per se? Sokr. — Certainly they are. Parm. — Do you farther recognise an absolute and self-existent Form of Man, apart from us and all other individuals? — or a Form of fire, water, and the like? Sokr. — I do not well know how to answer:— I have often been embarrassed with the question. Parm. — Farther, do there exist distinct intelligible Forms of hair, mud, dirt, and all the other mean and contemptible objects of sense which we see around? Sokr. — No — certainly — no such Forms as these exist. Such objects are as we see them, and nothing beyond: it would be too absurd to suppose Forms of such like things.6 Nevertheless there are 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.

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

 

 

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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.

 

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Parmenides now produces various objections against the Platonic variety of dualism: the two distinct but partially inter-communicating worlds — one, of separate, permanent, unchangeable, Forms or Ideas — the other, of individual objects, transient and variable; participating in, and receiving denomination from, these Forms.

Objections of Parmenides — How can objects participate in the Ideas. Each cannot have the whole Idea, nor a part thereof.

1. How (asks Parmenides) can such participation take place? 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

 

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Dilemma put by Parmenides — Acuteness of his objections.

Here then, Parmenides entangles himself and his auditors in the perplexing dilemma, that philosophical and dialectic speculation is impossible, unless these Forms or Ideas, together with the participation of sensible objects in them, be granted; while at the same time this cannot be granted, until objections, which appear at first sight unanswerable, have been disposed of.

The acuteness with which these objections are enforced, is remarkable. I know nothing superior to it in all the Platonic writings. Moreover the objections point directly against that doctrine which Plato in other dialogues most emphatically insists upon, and which Aristotle both announces and combats as characteristic of Plato — the doctrine of separate, self-existent, absolute, Forms or Ideas. They are addressed moreover to Sokrates, the chief exponent of that doctrine here as well as in other dialogues. And he is depicted as unable to meet them.

The doctrine which Parmenides attacks is the genuine Platonic theory of Ideas. His objections are never answered in any part of the Platonic dialogues.

It is true that Sokrates is here introduced as juvenile and untrained; or at least as imperfectly trained. And accordingly, Stallbaum with others think, that this is the reason of his inability to meet the objections: which (they tell us), though ingenious and plausible, yet having no application to the genuine Platonic doctrine about Ideas, might easily have been answered if Plato had thought fit, and are answered in other 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.

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.

Philosophers are usually advocates, each of a positive system of his own.

In most philosophers, doubtless, this is what we do find. Each starts with some favourite conclusions, which he believes to be true, and which he supports by all the arguments in their favour, as far as his power goes. If he mentions the arguments against them, he usually answers the weak, slurs over or sneers at the strong: at any rate, he takes every precaution that these counter arguments shall appear unimportant in the eyes of his readers. His purpose is, like that of a speaker in the public assembly, to obtain assent and belief: whether the hearers understand the question or not, is a matter of comparative indifference: at any rate, they must be induced to embrace his conclusion. Unless he thus foregoes the character of an impartial judge, to take up that of an earnest advocate; unless he bends the whole force of his mind to the establishment of the given conclusion — he becomes suspected as deficient in faith or sincerity, and loses much in persuasive power. For an earnest belief, expressed with eloquence and feeling, is commonly more persuasive than any logic.

Different spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search.

Now whether this exclusive devotion to the affirmative side of certain questions be the true spirit of philosophy or not, it is certainly not the spirit of Plato in his Dialogues of Search; wherein he conceives the work of philosophy in a totally different manner. He does not begin by stating, even to himself a certain conclusion at which he has arrived, and then proceed to prove that conclusion to others. The search or debate (as I have observed in a preceding chapter) has greater importance in his eyes than the conclusion: nay, in a large proportion of his dialogues, there is no conclusion at all: we see something disproved, but nothing proved. The negative element has with him a value and importance of its own, apart from the affirmative. He is anxious to set forth what can be said against a given conclusion; even though not prepared to establish any thing in its place.

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.

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 language28) can the essence be separated from that of which it is the essence? How can the Form, essentially One, belong at once to a multitude of particulars?

Two points deserve notice in this debate respecting the doctrine of Ideas:—

Difficulties about the Cognizability of Ideas. If Ideas are absolute, they cannot be cognizable: if they are cognizable, they must be relative. Doctrine of Homo Mensura.

1. Parmenides shows, and Sokrates does not deny, that these Forms or Ideas described as absolute, self-existent, unchangeable, must of necessity be unknown and unknowable to us.29 Whatever we do know, or can know, is relative to us; — to our actual cognition, or to our cognitive power. If you declare an object to 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.

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.

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 philosophy33 explicitly raised: and, as far as we know, for the first time. Are the Forms or Ideas mere conceptions of the mind and nothing more? Or are they external, separate, self-existent realities? The opinion which Sokrates had first given declared the latter: that which he now gives declares the former. He passes from the pure Objective (i.e., without Subject) to the pure Subjective (i.e., without Object). Parmenides, in his reply, points out that there cannot be a conception of nothing: that if there be Conceptio, there must be Conceptum aliquid:34 and that this Conceptum or Concept is what is common to a great many distinct similar Percepta.

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

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.

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 (ἓν παρὰ τὰ πολλὰ): there will then be no greater difficulty in understanding how it can be partaken by, or be at once in, many distinct particulars, than in understanding (what is at bottom the same question) how one and the same attribute can belong at once to many different objects: how hardness or smoothness can be at once in an indefinite number of hard and smooth bodies dispersed everywhere.38 The object and the attribute are both of them relative to the same percipient and concipient mind: we may perceive or conceive many objects as distinct individuals — we may also conceive them all as resembling in a particular manner, making abstraction of the individuality of each: both these are psychological facts, and the latter of the two is what we mean when we say, that all of them possess or participate in one and the same attribute. The concrete term, and its corresponding abstract, stand for the same facts of sense differently conceived. Now the word one, when applied to the attribute, has a different meaning from one when applied to an individual object. Plato speaks sometimes elsewhere as if he felt this diversity of meaning: not however in the Parmenidês, though there is great demand for it. But Aristotle (in this respect far superior) takes much pains to point out that Unum Ens — and the preposition In (to be in any thing) — are among the πολλαχῶς λεγόμενα, having several different meanings derived from one primary or radical by diverse and distant ramifications.39 The important logical distinction between Unum numero and Unum specie (or genere, &c.) belongs first to Aristotle.40

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.

Continuation of the Dialogue — Parmenides admonishes Sokrates that he has been premature in delivering a doctrine, without sufficient preliminary exercise.

Parmenides now continues the debate. He has already fastened upon Sokrates several difficult problems: he now proposes a new one, different and worse. Which way are we to turn then, if these Forms be beyond our knowledge? I do not see my way (says Sokrates) out of the perplexity. The fact is, Sokrates (replies Parmenides), you have been too forward in producing your doctrine of Ideas, without a sufficient preliminary exercise and enquiry. Your love of philosophical research is highly praiseworthy: but you must employ your youth in exercising and improving yourself, through that continued philosophical discourse which the vulgar call useless prosing: otherwise you will never attain truth.41 You are however right in bestowing your attention, not on the objects of sense, but on those objects which we can best grasp in discussion, and which we presume to exist as Forms.42

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

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

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.

Exhibition of Parmenides — Nine distinct deductions or Demonstrations, first from Unum Est — next from Unum non Est.

The remaining portion of the dialogue, half of the whole, is occupied with nine distinct deductions or demonstrations given by Parmenides. The first five start from the assumption, Unum Est: the last four from the assumption, Unum non Est. The three first draw out the deductions from Unum Est, in reference to Unum: the fourth and fifth draw out the consequences from the same premiss, in reference to Cætera. Again, the sixth and seventh start from Unum non Est, to trace what follows in regard to Unum: the eighth and ninth adopt the same hypothesis, and reason it out in reference to Cætera.

The Demonstrations in antagonising pairs, or Antinomies. Perplexing entanglement of conclusions given without any explanation.

Of these demonstrations, one characteristic feature is, that they are presented in antagonising pairs or Antinomies: except the third, which professes to mediate between the first and second, though only by introducing new difficulties. We have four distinct Antinomies: the first and second, the fourth and fifth, the sixth and seventh, the eighth and ninth, stand respectively in emphatic contradiction with each other. Moreover, to take the demonstrations separately — the first, fifth, seventh, ninth, end in conclusions purely negative: the other four end in double and contradictory conclusions. The purpose is formally proclaimed, of showing that the same premisses, ingeniously handled, can be made to yield these contradictory results.47 No attempt is made to reconcile the contradictions, except partially by means of the third, in reference to the two preceding. In regard to the fourth and fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth and ninth, no hint is given that they 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.

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 Euthydemus49) puts into the mouth of the Sophist Dionysodorus as an answer of slashing defiance — and of that intentional evolution of contradictions which Plato occasionally discountenances, both in the Euthydemus and elsewhere.50 And we know from Proklus51 that there were critics in ancient times, who depreciated various parts of the Parmenides as sophistical. Proklus himself denies the charge with some warmth. He as well as the principal Neo-Platonists between 200-530 A.D. (especially his predecessors and instructors at Athens, Jamblichus, Syrianus, and Plutarchus) admired the Parmenides as a splendid effort of philosophical genius in its most exalted range, inspired so as to become cognizant of superhuman persons and agencies. They all agreed so far as to discover in the dialogue a sublime vein of mystic theology and symbolism: but along with this general agreement, there was much discrepancy in their interpretation of particular parts and passages. The commentary of Proklus attests the existence of such debates, reporting his own dissent from the interpretations sanctioned by his venerated masters, Plutarchus and Syrianus. That commentary, in spite of its prolixity, is curious to read as a specimen of the fifth century, A.D., in one of its most eminent representatives. Proklus discovers a string of theological symbols and a mystical meaning throughout the whole dialogue: not merely in the acute argumentation which characterises its middle part, but also in the perplexing antinomies of its close, and even in the dramatic details of places, persons, and incidents, with which it begins.52

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.

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.

This negative purpose is expressly announced by Plato himself. All dogmatical purpose, extending farther, is purely hypothetical, and even inconsistent with what is declared.

Such, in my judgment, is the drift of the contradictory demonstrations here put into the mouth of Parmenides respecting Unum and Cætera. Thus far at least, we are perfectly safe: for we are conforming strictly to the language of Plato himself in the dialogue: we have no proof that he meant anything more. Those who presume that he must have had some ulterior dogmatical purpose, place themselves upon hypothetical ground: but when they go farther and attempt to set forth what this purpose was, they show their ingenuity only by bringing out what they themselves have dropped in. The number of discordant hypotheses attests56 the difficulty of the problem. I agree with those 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.

The Demonstrations or Antinomies considered. They include much unwarranted assumption and subtlety. Collection of unexplained perplexities or ἀπορίαι.

That the demonstrations include assumption both unwarranted and contradictory, mingled with sophistical subtlety (in the modern sense of the words), is admitted by most of the commentators: and I think that the real 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 ἀπορίαι (such as those enumerated in the second book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica) brought against a doctrine which yet Plato declares to be the indispensable condition of all reasoning. It concludes with a string of demonstrations by which contradictory conclusions (Both and Neither) are successively proved, and which appear like a reductio ad absurdum of all demonstration. But at the time when Plato composed the dialogue, I think it not improbable that these difficulties and contradictions appeared even to himself unanswerable: in other words, that he did not himself see any answers and explanations of them. He had tied a knot so complicated, that he could not himself untie it. I speak of the state of Plato’s mind when he wrote the Parmenides. At the dates of other dialogues (whether earlier or later), he wrote under different points of view; but no key to the Parmenides does he ever furnish.

Even if Plato himself saw through these subtleties, he might still choose to impose and to heap up difficulties in the way of a forward affirmative aspirant.

If however we suppose that Plato must have had the key present to his own mind, he might still think it right to employ, in such a dialogue, reasonings recognised by himself as defective. It is the task imposed upon Sokrates to find out and expose these defective links. There is no better way of illustrating how universal is the malady of human intelligence — unexamined belief and over-confident affirmation — as it stands proclaimed to be in the Platonic Apology. Sokrates is exhibited in the Parmenides as placed under the screw of the Elenchus, and no more able than others 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 attitude58 — until he can extricate himself from such difficulties and contradictions. But that he shall not extricate himself without arduous mental effort, is the express intention of Parmenides: just as the Xenophontic Sokrates proceeds with the youthful Euthydemus and the Platonic Sokrates with Lysis, Theætetus, and others. Plausible subtlety was not unsuitable for such a lesson.59 Moreover, in the Parmenides, Plato proclaims explicitly that the essential condition of the lesson is to be strictly private: that a process so roundabout and tortuous cannot be appreciated by ordinary persons, and would be unseemly before an audience.60 He selects as respondent the youngest person in the company, one still younger than Sokrates: because (he says) such a person will reply with artless simplicity, to each question as the question may strike him — not carrying his mind forward to the ulterior questions for which his reply may furnish the handle — not afraid of being entangled in puzzling inconsistencies — not solicitous to baffle the purpose of 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.

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

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 Palamêdes66) did not profess any systematic theory of scepticism; but he could prove by ingenious and varied dialectic, both the thesis and the antithesis on several points of philosophy, by reasons which few, if any, among his hearers could answer. In like manner the Platonic Parmenides enunciates his contradictory demonstrations as real logical problems, which must exercise the sagacity and hold back the forward impulse of an eager philosophical aspirant. Even if this dilemma respecting Unum Est and Unum non Est, be solved, Parmenides intimates that he has others in reserve: so that either no tenable positive result will ever be attained — or at least it will not be attained until after such an amount of sagacity and patient exercise as Sokrates himself declares to be hardly practicable.67 Herein we may see the germ and premisses of that theory which was afterwards formally proclaimed by Ænesidemus and the professed Sceptics: the same holding back (ἐποχὴ), and protest against precipitation in dogmatising,68 which these latter converted into a formula and vindicated as a system.

In order to understand fully the Platonic Antinomies, we ought to have before us the problems of the Megarics and others. Uselessness of searching for a positive result.

Schleiermacher has justly observed,69 that in order to understand properly the dialectic manœuvres of the Parmenides, we ought to have had before us the works of that philosopher himself, of Zeno, Melissus, Gorgias, and other sceptical reasoners of the age immediately preceding — which have unfortunately perished. Some reference to these must probably have been present to Plato in the composition of this dialogue.70 At the same time, if we accept the dialogue as being (what it declares itself to be) a string of objections and dialectical problems, we shall take care not to look for 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. Ζητῶν εὑρήσεις οὐ ῥόδον ἀλλὰ βάτον.

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.

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.

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

 

 

 

Here then is a piece of dialectic, put together with ingenuity, showing that everything can be denied, and that nothing can be affirmed of the subject — Unum. All this follows, if you concede the first step, that Unum is not Multa. If Unum be said to have any other attribute except that of being Unum, it would become at once Multa. It cannot even be declared to be either the same with itself, or different from any thing else; because Idem and Diversum are distinct natures from Unum, and if added to it would convert it into Multa.75 Nay it cannot even be affirmed to be itself: it cannot be named or enunciated: if all predicates are denied, the subject is denied along with them: the subject is nothing but the sum total of its predicates — and when they are all withdrawn, no subject remains. As far as I can understand the bearing of this self-contradictory demonstration, it appears a reductio ad absurdum of the proposition — Unum is not Multa. Now Unum which is not Multa designates the Αὐτὸ-Ἓν or Unum Ideale; which Plato himself affirmed, and which Aristotle impugned.76 If this be what is meant, the dialogue Parmenides would present here, as in other places, a statement of difficulties understood by Plato as attaching to his own doctrines.

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 first77 — but in reality taking up a different hypothesis under the same words. In the first hypothesis, Si Unum est, was equivalent to, Si Unum est Unum: nothing besides Unum being taken into the reasoning, and est serving merely as copula. In the second, Si Unum est, is equivalent to, Si Unum est Ens, or exists: so that instead of the isolated Unum, we have now Unum Ens.78 Here is a duality consisting of Unum and Ens: which two are considered as separate or separable factors, coalescing to form the whole Unum Ens, each of them being a part thereof. But each of these parts is again dual, containing both Unum and Ens: so that each part may be again divided into lesser parts, each of them alike dual: and so on ad infinitum. Unum Ens thus contains an infinite number of parts, or is Multa.79 But even Unum 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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The third Demonstration is mediatorial but not satisfactory — The hypothesis of the Sudden or Instantaneous found no favour.

To understand these nine Demonstrations properly, therefore, we ought to consider eight among them (1-2, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9) as four Antinomies, or couples establishing dialectic contradictions: and the third as a mediator satisfactory between the couples — announced as if it reconciled the contradictions of the first Antinomy, and capable of being adapted, in the same character with certain modifications, to the second, third, and fourth Antinomy. Whether it reconciles them successfully — in other words, whether the third Demonstration will itself hold good — is a different question. It will be found to involve the singular and paradoxical (Plato’s own phrase) doctrine of the extra-temporal Suddenly — conceiving Time as a Discretum and not a Continuum. This doctrine is intended by Plato here as a means of rendering the fact of change logically conceivable and explicable. He first states briefly the difficulty (which we know to have been largely insisted on by Diodorus Kronus and other Megarics) of logically explaining the fact of change — and then enunciates this doctrine as the solution. We plainly see that it did not satisfy others — for the puzzle continued to be a puzzle long after — and that it did not even satisfy Plato, except at the time when he composed the Parmenides — since neither the doctrine itself (the extra-temporal break or transition) nor the very peculiar phrase in which it is embodied (τὸ ἐξαίφνης, ἄτοπός τις φύσις) occur in any of his other dialogues. If the doctrine were really tenable, it would have been of use in dialectic, and as such, would have 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 τὸ ἐξαίφνης) to explain qualitative change, does not admit the same either as to quantitative change, or as to local motion, or as to generation and destruction.95 The doctrine served the purpose of the Platonic Parmenides, as ingenious, original, and provocative to intellectual effort: but it did not acquire any permanent footing in Grecian dialectics.

The two last Antinomies, or four last Demonstrations, have, in common, for their point of departure, the negative proposition, Si Unum non est: and are likewise put together in parallel couples (6-7, 8-9), a Demonstration and a Counter-Demonstration — a Both and a Neither: first with reference to the subject Unum — next with reference to the subject Cætera.

Review of the two last Antinomies. Demonstrations VI. and VII.

Si Unum est — Si Unum non est. Even from such a proposition as the first of these, we might have thought it difficult to deduce any string of consequences — which Plato has already done: from such a proposition as the second, not merely difficult, but impossible. Nevertheless the ingenious dialectic of Plato accomplishes the task, and elicits from each proposition a Both, and a Neither, respecting several predicates of Unum as well as of Cætera. When you say Unum non est (so argues the Platonic Parmenides in Demonstration 6), you deny existence respecting Unum: but the proposition Unum non est, is distinguishable from Magnitudo non est — Parvitudo non est — and such like: propositions wherein the subject is different, though the predicate is the same: so that 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

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

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.

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.

The last couple of Demonstrations — 8 and 9 — composing the fourth Antinomy, are in some respects the most ingenious and singular of all the nine. Si Unum non est, what is true about Cætera? The eighth demonstrates the Both of the affirmative predicates, the ninth proves the Neither.

Demonstrations VIII. and IX. — Analysis of Demonstration VIII.

Si Unum non est (is the argument of the eighth), Cætera must nevertheless somehow still be Cætera: otherwise you could not talk about Cætera.103 (This is an argument like that in Demonstration 6: What is talked about must exist, somehow.) But if Cætera can be named and talked about, they must be different from something, — and from something, which is also different from them. What can this Something be? Not certainly Unum: for Unum, by the Hypothesis, does not exist, and cannot therefore be the term of comparison. Cætera therefore must be different among themselves and from each other. But they cannot be compared with each other by units: for Unum does not exist. They must therefore be compared with each other by heaps or multitudes: each of which will appear at first sight to be an unit, though it be not an unit in reality. There will be numbers of such heaps, each in appearance one, though not in reality:104 numbers odd and even, great and little, in appearance: heaps appearing to be greater and less than each other, and equal to each other, though not being really so. Each of these heaps will appear to have a beginning, middle, and end, yet will not really have any such: 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

Demonstration VIII. is very subtle and Zenonian.

This Demonstration 8, with its strange and subtle chain of inferences, purporting to rest upon the admission of Cætera without Unum, brings out the antithesis of the Apparent and the Real, which had not been noticed in the preceding demonstrations. Demonstration 8 is in its character Zenonian. It probably coincides with the proof which Zeno is reported (in the earlier half of this dialogue) to have given against the existence of any real Multa. If you assume Multa (Zeno argued), they must be both like and unlike, and invested with many other opposite attributes; but this is impossible; therefore the assumption is untrue.107 Those against whom Zeno reasoned, contended for real Multa, and against a real Unum. Zeno probably showed, and our eighth Demonstration here shows also, — that Multa under this supposition are nothing real, but an assemblage of indefinite, ever-variable, contradictory appearances: an Ἄπειρον, Infinite, or Chaos: an object not real and absolute, but relative and variable according to the point of view of the subject.

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

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Plato here blends together three distinct theories for the purpose of confuting them; yet he also professes to urge what can be said in favour of them. Difficulty of following his exposition.

The one main theme intended for examination here (as Sokrates12 expressly declares) is the doctrine — That Cognition is sensible perception. Nevertheless upon all the three opinions, thus represented as cognate or identical,13 Sokrates bestows a lengthened comment (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

The doctrine of Protagoras is completely distinct from the other doctrines. The identification of them as one and the same is only constructive — the interpretation of Plato himself.

It is not improbable that the three doctrines, here put together by Plato and subjected to a common scrutiny, may have been sometimes held by the same philosophers. Nevertheless, the language16 of Plato himself shows us that Protagoras never expressly affirmed knowledge to be sensible Perception: and that the substantial identity between this doctrine, and the different doctrine maintained by Protagoras, is to be regarded as a construction put upon the two by Plato. That the theories of Herakleitus and Empedokles differed 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.

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.

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.

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.

Evidence from Plato proving implication of Subject and Object, in regard to the intelligible world.

That this general doctrine is true, not merely respecting the facts of sense, but also respecting the facts of mental conception, opinion, intellection, cognition — may be seen by the reasoning of Plato himself in other dialogues. How, for example, does Plato prove, in his Timæus, the objective reality of Ideas or Forms? He infers them from the subjective facts of his own mind. The subjective fact called Cognition (he argues) is generically different from the subjective fact called True Opinion: therefore the Object correlating with the One must be distinct from the Object correlating with the other: there must be a Noumenon or νοητόν τι correlating with Nous, distinct from the δοξαστόν τι which correlates with δόξα.22 So again, in the Phædon,23 Sokrates proves the pre-existence of the human soul from the fact that there were pre-existent cognizable Ideas: if there were knowable Objects, there must also have been a Subject 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

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.

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.

Object always relative to Subject — Either without the other, impossible. Plato admits this in Sophistes.

I cannot therefore agree with Plato in regarding the Protagorean doctrine — Homo Mensura — as having any dependance upon, or any necessary connection with, the other theory (canvassed in the Theætêtus) which pronounces cognition to be sensible perception. Objects of thought exist in relation to a thinking Subject; as Objects of sight or touch exist in relation to a seeing or touching Subject. And this we shall find Plato himself declaring in the Sophistes (where his Eleatic disputant is introduced as impugning a doctrine substantially the same as that of Plato himself in the Phædon, Timæus, and elsewhere) as well as here in the Theætêtus. In the Sophistes, certain philosophers (called the Friends of Forms or Ideas) are noticed, who admitted that all sensible or perceivable existence (γένεσις — Fientia) was relative to a (capable) sentient or percipient — but denied the relativity of Ideas, and maintained that Ideas, Concepts, Intelligible Entia, were not relative but absolute. The Eleate combats these philosophers, and establishes against them — That the Cogitable or Intelligible existence, Ens Rationis, was just as much relative to an Intelligent or Cogitant subject, as perceivable existence was relative to a Subject capable of perceiving — That Existence, under both varieties, was nothing more than a potentiality, correlating with a counter-potentiality (τὸ γνωστὸν with τὸ γνωστικόν, τὸ αἰσθητὸν with τὸ αἰσθητικόν, and never realised except in implication therewith.27

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

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

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

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.

Sokrates now re-states that larger doctrine, in general terms, as follows.

Statement of the doctrine of Herakleitus — yet so as to implicate it with that of Protagoras.

The universe is all flux or motion, divided into two immense concurrent streams of force, one active, the other passive; adapted one to the other, but each including many varieties. One of these is Object: the other is, sentient, cognizant, concipient, Subject. Object as well as Subject is, in itself and separately, indeterminate and unintelligible — a mere chaotic Agent or Patient. It is only by copulation and friction with each other that they generate any definite or intelligible result. Every such copulation, between parts adapted to each other, generates a twin offspring: two correlative and inseparable results infinitely diversified, but always born in appropriate pairs:32 a 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

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

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

Exposition of the Protagorean doctrine, as given here by Sokrates is to a great degree just. You cannot explain the facts of consciousness by independent Subject and Object.

Such is the exposition which Sokrates is here made to give, of the Protagorean doctrine. How far the arguments, urged by him in its behalf, are such as Protagoras himself either really urged, or would have adopted, we cannot say. In so far as the doctrine asserts essential fusion and implication between Subject and Object, with actual multiplicity of distinct Subjects — denying the reality either of absolute and separate Subject, or of absolute and separate Object43 — I think it true and instructive. We are reminded that when we affirm any thing about an Object, there is always (either expressed or tacitly implied) a Subject or Subjects (one, many, or all), to whom the Object is what it is declared to be. This is the fundamental characteristic of consciousness, feeling, and cognition, in all their actual varieties. All of them are bi-polar or bi-lateral, admitting of being looked at either on 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.

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

It is to be remembered, that the doctrine here criticised is brought forward by the Platonic Sokrates as a doctrine not his own, but held by others; among whom he ranks Protagoras as one.

Having thus set forth in his own language, and as an advocate, the doctrine of Protagoras, Sokrates proceeds to impugn it: in his usual rambling and desultory way, but with great dramatic charm and vivacity. He directs his attacks alternately against the two doctrines: 1. Homo Mensura: 2. Cognition is sensible perception.

I shall first notice what he advances against Homo Mensura.

Arguments advanced by the Platonic Sokrates against the Protagorean doctrine. He says that it puts the wise and foolish on a par — that it contradicts the common consciousness. Not every one, but the wise man only, is a measure.

It puts every man (he says) on a par as to wisdom and intelligence: and not only every man, but every horse, dog, frog, and other animal along with him. Each man is a measure for himself: all his judgments and beliefs are true: he is therefore as wise as 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

 

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

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.

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.

Plato, when he impugns the doctrine of Protagoras, states that doctrine without the qualification properly belonging to it. All belief relative to the condition of the believing mind.

Such are the objections urged by Sokrates against the Protagorean doctrine — Homo Mensura. There may have been perhaps in the treatise of Protagoras, which unfortunately we do not possess, some reasonings or phrases countenancing the opinions against which Plato here directs his objections. But so far as I can collect, even from the words of Plato himself when he professes to borrow the phraseology of his opponent, I cannot think that Protagoras ever delivered the opinion which Plato here refutes — That every opinion of every man is true. The opinion really delivered by Protagoras appears to have been59 — That every opinion delivered by every man is true, to that man 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.

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 δαίμων like Sokrates: I might denounce opponents as worthless men, deficient in all the sentiments which distinguish men from brutes, and meriting punishment as well as disgrace. If I used all these harsh phrases, I should only imitate what many authors of repute think themselves entitled to say, about THEIR beliefs and convictions. Yet in reality, I should still be proclaiming nothing beyond my own feelings:— the force of emotional association, and antipathy towards opponents, which had grown round these convictions in my own mind. Whether I speak in accordance with others, or in opposition to others, in either case I proclaim my own reports, feelings and judgments — nothing farther. I cannot escape from the Protagorean limit or measures.63

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Plato70 here reckons among the authoritative infallible measures in respect to future events: a fifth may (like the rhetor Ælius Aristeides71) disregard the advice of physicians, and follow prescriptions enjoined to him in his own dreams, believing them to be sent by Æsculapius the Preserving God. Each of these persons judges differently about the road to future health: but each is alike a measure to himself: the belief of each is relative to his own mental condition and predispositions. You, or I, may believe that one or other of them is mistaken: but here another measure is introduced — your mind or mine.

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

Contrast with the Treatise De Legibus — Plato assumes infallible authority — sets aside Dialectic.

Though Sokrates, and Plato so far forth as follower of Sokrates, employed a colloquial method based on the fundamental assumption of the Protagorean formula — autonomy of each individual mind — whether they accepted the formula in terms, or not; yet we shall find Plato at the end of his career, in his treatise De Legibus, constructing an imaginary city upon the attempted deliberate exclusion of this formula. We shall find him there monopolising all teaching and culture of his citizens from infancy upwards, barring out all freedom of speech or writing by a strict censorship, and severely punishing dissent from the prescribed orthodoxy. But then we shall also find that Plato in that last stage of his life — when he constitutes himself as lawgiver, the measure of truth or falsehood for all his citizens — has at the same time discontinued his early commerce with the Sokratic Dialectics.

Plato in denying the Protagorean formula, constitutes himself the measure for all. Counter-proposition to the formula.

On the whole then, looking at what Plato says about the Protagorean doctrine of Relativity — Homo Mensura — first, his statement what the doctrine really is, next his strictures upon it — we may see that he ascribes to it consequences which it will not fairly carry. He impugns it as if it excluded philosophy and argumentative scrutiny: whereas, on the contrary, it is the only basis upon which philosophy or “reasoned truth” can stand. Whoever denies the Protagorean 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

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.

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.

This state of mind in reference to belief is usual with most men, not less at the present day than in the time of Plato and Protagoras. It constitutes the natural intolerance prevalent among mankind; which each man (speaking generally), in the case of his own beliefs, commends and exults in, as a virtue. It flows as a natural corollary from the sentiment of belief, though it may be corrected by reflection and social sympathy. Hence the doctrine of Protagoras — equal right of private judgment to each man for himself — becomes inevitably unwelcome.

Aristotle failed in his attempts to refute the Protagorean formula — Every reader of Aristotle will claim the right of examining for himself Aristotle’s canons of truth.

We are told that Demokritus, as well as Plato and Aristotle, wrote against Protagoras. The treatise of Demokritus is lost: but we possess what the two latter said against the Protagorean formula. In my judgment both 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

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.

Such is not the case with all the facts of sense. The conditions of unanimity are best found among select facts of sense — weighing, measuring, &c.

But though some facts of sense are thus equivocal, generating dissension rather than unanimity among different individuals — such is by no means true of the facts of sense taken generally.82 On the contrary, it is only these facts — the world of reality, experience, and particulars — which afford a groundwork and assurance of unanimity in human belief, under all varieties of teaching or locality. Counting, measuring, weighing, are facts of sense simple and fundamental, and comparisons of those facts: capable of being so exhibited that no two persons shall either see them differently or mistrust them. Of two persons exposed to the same wind, one may feel cold, and the other not: but both of them will see the barometer or thermometer alike.83 Πάντα μέτρῳ καὶ ἀριθμῷ καὶ σταθμῷ — would be the perfection of science, if it could be obtained. Plato himself recognises, in more than one place, the irresistible efficacy of weight and measure in producing unanimity; and in forestalling those disputes which are sure to arise where weight and measure cannot be applied.84 It is therefore among select facts of sense, carefully observed and properly compared, that the groundwork of unanimity is to be sought, so far as any rational and universal groundwork for it is attainable. In other words, it is here that we must seek for the basis of knowledge or cognition.

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

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.

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

Here Sokrates makes out a good case against the answer in its present wording. But we may fairly doubt whether those who affirmed the matter of knowledge to consist in the facts of sense, ever meant to exclude memory. They meant probably the facts of sense both as perceived and as remembered; though the wording cited by Plato does not strictly include so much. Besides, we must recollect, that Plato includes in the meaning of the word Knowledge or Cognition an idea of perfect infallibility: distinguishing it generically from the highest form of opinion. But memory is a fallible process: sometimes quite trustworthy — under other circumstances, not so. Accordingly, memory, in a general sense, cannot be put on a level with present perception, nor said to generate what Plato calls knowledge.

Argument from the analogy of seeing and not seeing at the same time .

The next argument of Plato is as follows. You can see, and not see, the same thing at the same time: for you may close one of your eyes, and look only with the other. But it is impossible to know a thing, and not to know it at the same time. Therefore to know is not the same as to see.89

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”.

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:—

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. —

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 Αἴσθησις = Ἐπιστήμη, as it is conducted by Plato, exhibits a remarkable advance in psychological analysis. In analysing the mental phenomena, Plato displayed much more subtlety and acuteness than his predecessors — as far at least as we have the means of appreciating the latter. It is convenient to distinguish intellect from sensation (or sensible perception) and emotion, though both of them are essential and co-ordinate parts of our mental system, and are so recognised by Plato. It is also true that the discrimination of our sensations from each other, comparisons of likeness or unlikeness between them, observation of co-existence or sequence, and apprehension of other relations between them, &c., are more properly classified as belonging to intellect than to sense. But the language of psychology is, and always has been, so indeterminate, that it is difficult to say how much any writer means to include under the terms Sense99 — Sensation — Sensible Perception — αἴσθησις. The 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 opinion100 or belief; a mental process, which, though presupposing sensations and based upon them, he affirms to be carried on by the mind through itself, not through any special bodily organ. In this respect it agrees with what he calls knowledge or cognition. Opinion or belief is the lowest form, possessed in different grades by all men, of this exclusively mental process: knowledge or cognition is the highest form of 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 it101 or you have it not — but there is no mistake possible.

2. That it apprehends what Plato calls the real essence of things, and real truth, which, on the contrary, Opinion does not apprehend.

3. That the person who possesses it can maintain his own consistency under cross-examination, and can test the consistency of others by cross-examining them (λόγον δοῦναι καὶ δέξασθαι).

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 meaning113 — takes up another path of enquiry. He distinguishes between possessing knowledge, — and having it actually in hand or on his person: which distinction he illustrates by comparing the mind to a pigeon-cage. A man hunts and catches pigeons, then turns them into the cage, within the limits of which they fly about: when he wants to catch any one of them for use, he has to go through a second hunt, sometimes very troublesome: in which he may perhaps either fail altogether, or catch the wrong one instead of the right. The first hunt Sokrates compares to the acquisition of knowledge: the second, to the getting it into his hand for use.114 A man may know, in the first sense, and not know, in the second: he may have to hunt about for the cognition which (in the first sense) he actually possesses. In trying to catch one cognition, he may confound it with another: and this constitutes false opinion — the confusion of two cognita one with another.115

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.

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

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

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

 

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 elements124 — or give explanation.

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

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

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 λόγος or rational explanation. But neither in this sense will the proposition hold — That knowledge is right opinion coupled with rational explanation. For suppose that a man can enumerate, spell, and write correctly, all the syllables of the name Theætêtus — which would fulfil the conditions of this definition: yet, if he mistakes and spells wrongly in any other name, such as Theodôrus, you will not give him credit for knowledge. You will say that he writes Theætêtus correctly, by virtue of right opinion simply. It is therefore possible to have right opinion coupled with rational explanation, in this second sense also, — yet without possessing knowledge.127

Third meaning. To assign some mark, whereby the thing to be explained differs from everything else. The definition will not hold. For rational explanation, in this sense, is already included in true opinion.

3. A third meaning of this same word λόγος or rational explanation, is, that in which it is most commonly understood — To be able to assign some mark whereby the thing to be explained differs from every thing else — to differentiate the thing.128 Persons, who understand the word in this way, affirm, that so long as you only seize what the thing has in common with other things, you have only a true opinion concerning it: but when you seize what it has peculiar and characteristic, you then possess knowledge of it. Such is their view: but though it seems plausible at first sight (says Sokrates), it will not bear close scrutiny. For in order to have a true opinion about any thing, I must have in my mind not only what it possesses in common with other things, but what it possesses peculiar to itself also. Thus if I have a true opinion about Theætêtus, I must have in my mind not only the attributes which belong to him in common with other men, but also those which belong to him specially and exclusively. Rational explanation (λόγος) in this sense is already comprehended in true opinion, and is an essential ingredient in it — not any new element superadded. It will not serve therefore as a distinction between true opinion and knowledge.129

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

 

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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

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

Comparison of the Philosopher with the Rhetor. The Rhetor is enslaved to the opinions of auditors.

A portion of the dialogue to which I have not yet adverted, illustrates this anxiety for the preliminary training of the ratiocinative power, as an indispensable qualification for any special research. “We have plenty of leisure for investigation136 (says Sokrates). We are not tied to time, nor compelled to march briefly and directly towards some positive result. Engaged as we are in investigating philosophical truth, we stand in pointed contrast with politicians and rhetors in the public assembly or dikastery. We are like freemen; they, like slaves. They have before them the Dikasts, as their masters, to whose temper and approbation they are constrained to adapt themselves. They are also in presence of antagonists, ready to entrap and confute them. The personal interests, sometimes even the life, of an individual are at stake; so that every thing must be sacrificed to the purpose of obtaining a verdict. Men brought up in these habits become sharp in observation and emphatic in expression; but merely with a view to win the assent and approbation of the master before them, as to the case in hand. No free aspirations or spontaneous enlargement can have place in their minds. They become careless of true and sound reasoning — slaves to the sentiment of those whom they address — and adepts in crooked artifice which they take for wisdom.137

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

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.

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 Sophistês142 is announced as a continuation of the Theætêtus (carried on by the same speakers, with the addition of the Eleate), yet the objections taken by Sokrates in the Theætêtus against the possibility of false opinion, are not even noticed in the Sophistês — much less removed. Other objections to it are propounded and dealt with: but not those objections which had arrested the march of Sokrates in the Theætêtus.143 Sokrates and Theætêtus hear the Eleatic Stranger 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.

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.

Contrast between the philosopher and the practical statesman — between Knowledge and Opinion.

The contrast between the philosopher and the man engaged in active life — which is so emphatically set forth in the Theætêtus144 — falls in with the distinction between Knowledge and Opinion — The Infallible and the Fallible. It helps the purpose of the dialogue, to show what knowledge is not: and it presents the distinction between the two on the ethical and emotional side, upon which Plato laid great stress. The philosopher (or man of Knowledge, i.e. Knowledge viewed on its subjective side) stands opposed to the men of sensible perception and opinion, not merely in regard to intellect, but in regard to disposition, feeling, character, and appreciation of objects. He neither knows nor cares about particular things or particular persons: all his intellectual force, and all his emotional interests, are engaged in the contemplation of Universals or Real Entia, and of the great pervading cosmical forces. He despises the occupations of those around him, and the actualities of life, like the Platonic Sokrates in the Gorgias:145 assimilating himself as much as possible to the Gods; who have no other occupation (according to the Aristotelian146 Ethics), except that of contemplating and theorising. He pursues these objects not with a view to any ulterior result, but because the pursuit is in itself a life both of virtue and happiness; neither of which are to be found in the region of opinion. Intense interest in speculation is his prominent characteristic. To dwell amidst these contemplations is a self-sufficing life; even without any of the aptitudes or accomplishments admired by the practical men. If the philosopher meddles with their pursuits, he is not merely found incompetent, but also incurs general derision; because his incompetence becomes manifest even to the common-place citizens. But if they meddle with his speculations, they fail not less disgracefully; though their failure is not appreciated by the unphilosophical spectator.

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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 Xenophon14 that Sokrates considered Dialectic to be founded, both etymologically and really, upon the distribution of particular things into genera or classes. But we find little or no intentional illustration of this process in any of the conversations of the Xenophontic Sokrates: and we are farther struck by the fact that Plato, in the two dialogues which we are here considering, assigns all the remarks on the process of classification, not to Sokrates himself, but to the nameless Eleatic Stranger.

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

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.

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 us20) — 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

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

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 (μόνον ἐχέτω χωρὶς) from the correlative and opposing class.25

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

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

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

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

We have already seen that Plato discussed this same question in the Theætêtus, and that after trying and rejecting many successive hypotheses to show how false supposition, or false affirmation, might be explained as possible, by a theory involving no contradiction, he left the question unsolved. He now resumes it at great length. It occupies more than half33 the dialogue. Near the close, but only then, he reverts to the definition of the Sophist.

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

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

Stating the case in this manner, we find that to suppose falsely, or affirm falsely, is a contradiction. But there is yet another possible way out of the difficulty (the Eleate continues).

The Eleate turns from Non-Ens to Ens. Theories of various philosophers about Ens.

Let us turn for a moment (he says) from Non-Ens to Ens. 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

Difficulties about Ens are as great as those about Non-Ens.

Now when I look at these various theories (continues the Eleate), I find that I do not follow or understand them; and that I know nothing more or better about Ens than about Non-Ens. I thought, as a young man, that I understood both: but I now find that I understand neither.40 The difficulties about Ens are just as great as those about Non-Ens. What do these philosophers mean by saying that Ens is double or triple? that there are two distinct existing elements — Hot and Cold — or three? What do you mean by saying that Hot and Cold exist? Is existence any thing distinct from Hot and Cold? If so, then there are three elements in all, not two. Do you mean that existence is something belonging to both and affirmed of both? Then you pronounce both to be One: and Ens, instead of being double, will be at the bottom only One.

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

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

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

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 tenable45 when sifted by reason. By these last are understood (so Schleiermacher and others think, though in my judgment erroneously) Eukleides and the Megaric school of philosophers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Here the Eleate breaks off without solution. He declares his purpose to show, That Ens is as full of puzzle as Non-Ens,

Here the Eleate breaks off his enquiry, without solving the problems which he has accumulated. My purpose was (he says53) to show that Ens was just as full of difficulties and embarrassments as Non-Ens. Enough has been said to prove this clearly. When we can once get clear of obscurity about Ens, we may hope to be equally successful with Non-Ens.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

 

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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.

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

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.

 

 

 

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Dialogue closed. Remarks upon it. Characteristics ascribed to a Sophist.

We have here the conclusion of this abstruse and complicated dialogue, called Sophistês. It ends by setting forth, as the leading characteristics of the Sophist — that he deals in short question and answer so as to make the respondent contradict himself: That he talks with small circles of listeners, upon a large variety of subjects, on which he possesses no real knowledge: That he mystifies or imposes upon his auditors; not giving his own sincere convictions, but talking for the production of a special effect. He is ἐναντιοποιολογικὸς and εἴρων, to employ the two original Platonic words, neither of which is easy to translate.

These characteristics may have belonged to other persons, but they belonged in an especial manner to Sokrates himself.

I dare say that there were some acute and subtle disputants in Athens to whom these characteristics belonged, though we do not know them by name. But we know one to whom they certainly belonged: and that was, Sokrates himself. They stand manifest and prominent both in the Platonic and in the Xenophontic dialogues. The attribute which Xenophon directly predicates about him, that “in conversation he dealt with his interlocutors just as he pleased,”88 is amply exemplified by Plato in the Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthyphron, Lachês, Charmides, Lysias, Alkibiadês I. and II., Hippias I. and II., &c. That he cross-examined and puzzled every one else without knowing the subjects on which he talked, better than they did — is his own declaration in the Apology. That the 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

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 Sophists92 — belonged in still higher perfection to Sokrates. It not only formed the business of his life, but is extolled by Plato elsewhere,93 as the true walk of virtuous philosophy. But there was undoubtedly this difference between Sokrates and the Sophists, that he conversed and argued gratuitously, delighting in the process itself: while they both asked and received money for it. Upon this point, brought forward by Plato both directly and with his remarkable fertility in multiplying indirect allusions, the peculiarity of the Sophist is made mainly to turn. To ask or receive a fee for communicating knowledge, virtue, aptitude in debate, was in the view of Sokrates and Plato a grave enormity: a kind of simoniacal practice.94

The art which Plato calls “the thoroughbred and noble Sophistical Art” belongs to Sokrates and to no one else. The Elenchus was peculiar to him. Protagoras and Prodikus were not Sophists in this sense.

We have seen also that Plato assigns to what he terms “the thoroughbred and noble Sophistic Art” (ἡ γένει γενναία σοφιστικὴ), the employment of the Elenchus, for the purpose of destroying, in the minds of others, that false persuasion of existing knowledge which was the radical impediment to their imbibing acquisitions of real knowledge from the teacher.95 Here Plato draws 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.

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.

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 falsely99 — that a false proposition was self-contradictory, inasmuch as Non-Ens was inconceivable and unutterable. I do not see how the argument which Plato here ascribes to the Sophist, can be reconciled with the character which he had before given of the Sophist — as a man who passed his life in disputation and controversy; which involves the perpetual arraigning of other men’s opinions as false. A professed disputant may perhaps be accused of admitting nothing to be true: but he cannot well be charged with maintaining that nothing is false.

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

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.

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.

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?

Then again, Parmenides — and those who affirm that Ens Totum was essentially Unum, denying all plurality — had difficulties on their side to surmount. Ens could not be identical with Unum, nor was the name Ens, identical with the thing named Ens. Moreover, though Ens Unum was Totum, yet Totum was not identical with Ens or with Unum. Totum necessarily implied partes: but the Unum per se was indivisible or implied absence of parts. Though it was true therefore that Ens was both Unum and Totum, these two were both of them essentially different from Ens, and belonged to it only by way of adjunct accident. Parmenides was therefore wrong in saying that Unum alone existed.

Plato’s refutation throws light upon the doctrine of Antisthenes.

The reasoning here given from Plato throws some light upon the doctrine just now cited from Antisthenes. You cannot say (argues Plato against the advocates of duality) that two elements (Hot and Cold) are both of them Entia or Existent, because by so doing you call them one. You cannot say (argues Antisthenes) that Sokrates is good, brave, old, &c., because by such speech you call one thing three. Again, in controverting the doctrine of Parmenides, Plato urges, That Ens cannot be Unum, because it is Totum (Unum having no parts, while Totum has parts): but it may carry with it the accident Unum, or may have Unum applied to it as a predicate by accident. Here again, we have difficulties similar to those which perplexed Antisthenes. For the same reason that Plato will not admit, That Ens is Unum — Antisthenes will not admit, That Man is good. It appeared to him to imply essential identity between the predicate and the subject.

All these difficulties and others to which we shall come presently, noway peculiar to Antisthenes — attest the incomplete formal logic of the time: the want of a good theory respecting predication and the function of the copula.

Plato’s argument against the Materialists.

Pursuing the purpose of establishing his conclusion (viz. That Ens involved as many perplexities as Non-Ens), Plato comes to the two opposite sects:— 1. Those (the Materialists) who recognised bodies and nothing else, as the real Entia or Existences. 2. Those (the Friends of Forms, the Idealists) who maintained that incorporeal and intelligible Forms or Species were the only real existences; and that bodies had no existence, but were in perpetual generation and destruction.102

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

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

Plato’s argument against the Idealists or Friends of Forms. Their point of view against him.

Plato now presents this same definition to the opposite class of philosophers: to the Idealists, or partisans of the incorporeal — or of self-existent and separate Forms. These thinkers drew a marked distinction between the Existent and the Generated — between Ens and Fiens — τὸ ὂν and τὸ γιγνόμενον. Ens or the Existent was eternal and unchangeable: Fiens or the Generated was always in change or transit, coming or going. We hold communion (they said) with the generated or transitory, through our bodies and sensible perceptions: we hold communion with unchangeable Ens through our mind and by intellection. They did not admit the definition of existence just given by Plato. They contended that that definition applied only to Fiens or to the sensible world — not to Ens or the intelligible world.105 Fiens had power to act and be acted upon, and existed only under the condition of being so: that is, its existence was only temporary, conditional, relative: it had no permanent or absolute existence at all. Ens was the real existent, absolute and independent — neither acting upon any thing nor being acted upon. They considered that Plato’s definition was not a definition of Existence, or the Absolute: but rather of Non-Existence, or the Relative.

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.

The definition of existence, here given by Plato, and the way in which he employs it against the two different sects of philosophers — Materialists and Idealists — deserves some remark.

Plato’s reasoning — compared with the points of view of both.

According to the Idealists or Immaterialists, Plato’s definition of existence would be supposed to establish the case of their opponents the Materialists, who recognised nothing as existing except the sensible world: for Plato’s definition (as the Idealists thought) fitted the sensible world, but fitted nothing else. Now these Idealists did not recognise the sensible world as existent at all. They considered it merely as Fiens, ever appearing and vanishing. The only Existent, in their view, was the intelligible world — Form or Forms, absolute, eternal, unchangeable, but neither visible nor perceivable by any of the other senses. This is the opinion against which Plato here reasons, though in various other dialogues he gives it as his own opinion, or at least, as the opinion of his representative spokesman.

In this portion of the present dialogue (Sophistês) the point which he makes is, to show to the Idealists, or Absolutists, that their Forms are not really absolute, or independent of the mind: that the existence of these forms is relative, just as much as that of the sensible world. The sensible world exists relatively to our senses, really or potentially exercised: the intelligible world 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.

The argument of Plato goes to an entire denial of the Absolute, and a full establishment of the Relative.

This argument, then, of Plato against the Idealists is an argument against the Absolute — showing that there can be no Object of intelligence or conception without its obverse side, the intelligent or concipient Subject. The Idealists held, that by soaring above the sensible world into the intelligible world, they got out of the region of the Relative into that of the Absolute. But Plato reminds them that this is not the fact. Their intelligible world is relative, not less than the sensible; that is, it exists only in communion with a mind or Subject, but with a Cogitant or intelligent Subject, not a percipient Subject.

Coincidence of his argument with the doctrine of Protagoras in the Theætêtus.

The argument here urged by Plato coincides in its drift and result with the dictum of Protagoras — Man is the measure of all things. In my remarks on the Theætêtus,107 I endeavoured to make it appear that the Protagorean dictum was really a negation of the Absolute, of the Thing in itself, of the Object without a Subject:— 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.

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

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.

Difference between Concrete and Abstract, not then made conspicuous. Large meaning here given by Plato to Ens — comprehending not only objects of Perception, but objects of Conception besides.

In the time of Plato, distinction between the two classes of words, Concrete and Abstract, had not become so clearly matter of reflection as to be noted by two appropriate terms: in fact, logical terminology was yet in its first rudiments. It is therefore the less matter of wonder that Plato should not here advert to the relation between the two, or to the different sense in which existence might properly be predicable of both. He agrees with the materialists or friends of the Concrete, in affirming that sensible objects, Man, Horse, Tree, exist (which the Idealists or friends of the Abstract denied): but he differs from them by saying that other Objects, super-sensible and merely intelligible, exist also — namely, Justice, Virtue, Whiteness, Hardness, and other Forms or Attributes. He admits that these last-mentioned objects do not make themselves manifest to the senses; but they do make themselves manifest to the intelligence or the conception: and that is sufficient, in his opinion, to authenticate them as existent. The word existent, according to his definition (as given in this dialogue), includes not only all that is or may be perceived, but also all that is or may be known by the mind; i.e., understood, conceived, imagined, talked or reasoned about. Existent, or Ens, is thus made purely relative: having its root in a Subject, but ramifying by its branches in every direction. It bears the widest possible sense, co-extensive with Object universally, either of perception or conception. It includes all fictions, as well as all (commonly called) realities. The conceivable and the existent become equivalent.

Narrower meaning given by Materialists to Ens — they included only Objects of Perception. Their reasoning as opposed to Plato.

Now the friends of the Concrete, against whom Plato reasons, used the word existent in a narrower sense, as comprising only the concretes of the sensible world. They probably admitted the existence of the abstract, 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, Τραγέλαφοι, &c., on the other. A Centaur is just as intelligible and conceivable as either a man or a horse; and according to this definition of Plato, would be as much entitled to be called really existent. The attributes of man and horse are real, because the objects themselves are real and perceivable: the class man and the class horse is real, for the same reason: but the attributes of a Centaur, and the class Centaurs, are not real, because no individuals possessing the attributes, or belonging to the class, have ever been perceived, or authenticated by induction. Plato’s Materialist opponents would here have urged, that if he used the word existent or Ens in so wide a sense, comprehending all that is conceivable or nameable, fiction as well as reality — they would require some other words to distinguish fiction from reality — Centaur from Man: which is what most men mean when they speak of one thing as non-existent, another thing as existent. At any rate, here is an equivocal sense of the word Ens — a wider and a narrower sense — which, we shall find frequently perplexing us in the ancient metaphysics; and which, when sifted, will often prove, that what appears to be a difference of doctrine, is in reality little more than a difference of phraseology.110

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.

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

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.

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.

Here we arrive at Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens, τὸ μὴ ὂν: the main problem which he is now setting to himself. Non-Ens is equivalent to, different from Ens. It is the Form or Idea of Diversum, considered in reference to Ens. Every thing is Ens, or partakes of entity, or existence. Every thing also is different from Ens, or partakes of difference in relation to Ens: it is thus Non-Ens. Every thing therefore is at the same time both Ens, and Non-Ens. Nay, Ens itself, inasmuch as it is different from all other things, is Non-Ens in reference to them. It is Ens only as one, in reference to itself: but it is Non-Ens an infinite number of times, in reference to all other things.117

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

I say nothing about contrariety (concludes Plato), or about any thing contrary to Ens; nor will I determine whether Non-Ens in this sense be rationally possible or not. What I mean by Non-Ens is a particular case under the general doctrine of the communion or combination of Forms: the combination of Ens with Diversum, composing that which is different from Ens, and which is therefore Non-Ens. Thus Ens itself, being different from all other Forms, is Non-Ens in reference to them all, or an indefinite number of times119 (i.e. an indefinite number of negative predications may be made concerning it).

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

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

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 ἔστιν had not yet been understood by him in its function of pure and simple copula. The idea that the substantive verb when used in a proposition must mark existence or essence, is sufficiently apparent in several of his reasonings.

I shall now say a few words on Plato’s explanation of Non-Ens. It is given at considerable length, and was, in the judgment of Schleiermacher, eminently satisfactory to Plato himself. Some of Plato’s expressions125 lead me to suspect that his satisfaction was not thus unqualified: but whether he was himself satisfied or not, I cannot think that the explanation ought to satisfy others.

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 just127 what Parmenides said about Non-Ens. Plato’s definition of Ens appears to me to make out the case of Parmenides about Non-Ens; and to render the Platonic explanation — different from Ens — open to quite as many difficulties, as those which attach to Non-Ens in the ordinary sense.

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.

Plato’s view of the negative is erroneous. Logical maxim of contradiction.

The view which Plato here takes of the negative deserves the greater notice, because, if it were adopted, what is called the maxim of contradiction would be divested of its universality. Given a significant proposition with the same subject and the same predicate, each taken in one and the same signification — its affirmative and its negative cannot both be true. But if by the negative, you mean to make a new affirmation, different from that contained in the affirmative — the maxim just stated cannot be broadly maintained as of universal application: it may or may not be valid, as the case happens to stand. The second affirmation may be, as a matter of fact, incompatible with the first: but this is not to be presumed, from the mere fact that it is different from the first: proof must be given of such incompatibility.

Examination of the illustrative propositions chosen by Plato — How do we know that one is true, the other false?

We may illustrate this remark by looking at the two propositions which Plato gives as examples of true and false. Theætêtus is sitting down — Theætêtus is flying. Both the examples are of affirmative propositions: and it seems clear that Plato, in all this reasoning, took no account of negative propositions: those which simply deny, affirming nothing. The second of these propositions (says Plato) affirms what is not, as if it were, respecting the subject But how do we know this to be so? In the form of the second proposition there is nothing to show it: there is no negation of any thing, but simply affirmation of a different positive attribute. Although it happens, in this particular case, that the two attributes are incompatible, and that the affirmation of the one includes the negation of the other — yet there is nothing in the form of either proposition to deny the other:— no formal incompatibility between them. Both are alike affirmative, with the same subject, but different predicates. These two propositions therefore do not serve to illustrate the real nature of the negative, which consists precisely in this formal incompatibility. The proper negative belonging to the proposition — Theætêtus is sitting down — would be, Theætêtus is not sitting down. Plato ought to maintain, if he followed out his previous 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.

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

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 ἔστιν appeared to him incompatible with any other. But we perceive in this dialogue, that Plato also did not conceive the substantive verb as performing the simple function of copula in predication: on the contrary he distinguishes ἔστιν, as marking identity between subject and predicate — from μετέχει, as marking accidental communion between the two. Again, there were men in Plato’s day who maintained that Non-Ens (τὸ μὴ ὂν) was inconceivable and impossible. Plato, in refuting these philosophers, gives a definition of Ens (τὸ ὂν), which puts them in the right — fails in stating what the true negative is — and substitutes, in place of simple denial, a second affirmation to overlay and supplant the first.

Doctrine of the Sophistês — contradicts that of other Platonic dialogues.

To complete the examination of this doctrine of the Sophistês, respecting Non-Ens, we must compare it with the doctrine on the same subject laid down in other Platonic dialogues. It will be found to contradict, very distinctly, the opinion assigned by Plato to Sokrates both in the Theætêtus and in the fifth Book of the Republic:134 where Sokrates deals with Non-Ens in its usual 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 (δοξάζων) or cogitant Mind: that it is uncognizable and incogitable, correlating only with Non-Cognition or Ignorance. Now we find that this doctrine (of Sokrates, in Theætêtus and Republic) is the very same as that which is affirmed, in the Sophistês, to be taken up by the delusive Sophist: the same as that which the Eleate spends much ingenuity in trying to refute, by proving that Non-Ens is not the negation of Ens, but only that which differs from Ens, being itself a particular variety of Ens. It is also the same doctrine as is declared, both by the Eleate in the Sophistês and by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, to imply as an undeniable consequence, that the falsehood of any proposition is impossible. “A false proposition is that which speaks the thing that is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν). But this is an impossibility. You can neither know, nor think, nor speak, the thing that is not. You cannot know without knowing something: you cannot speak without speaking something (i. e. something that is).” Of this consequence — which is expressly announced as included in the doctrine, both by the Eleate in the Sophistês and by the Platonic Sokrates in the Theætêtus — no notice is taken in the Republic.135

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 (εἴδη — γένεσις — χωριστά), both as the characteristic dogma, and the untenable dogma, of the Platonic philosophy: it is exactly the same issue which the Eleate in the Sophistês takes with the Friends of Forms. He proves that Ens is just as full of perplexity, and just as difficult to understand, as Non-Ens:138 whereas, in the other Platonic dialogues, Ens is 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

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 (λόγῳ χωριστὰ — τῷ εἰναι, χωριστά) or abstraction, and though we may reason about them apart, and must often reason about them apart.142 Now it is this implication and conjunction of the Universal with its particulars, which is the doctrine of the Sophistês, and which distinguishes it from other Platonic dialogues, wherein the Universal is transcendentalized — lodged in a separate world from particulars. No science or intelligence is possible (says the Eleate in the Sophistês) either upon the theory of those who pronounce all Ens to be constant and unchangeable, or upon that of those who declare all Ens to be fluent and variable. We must recognise both together, the constant and the variable, as equally real and as making up the totality of Ens.143 This result, though not stated in the language which Aristotle would have employed, coincides very nearly with the Aristotelian doctrine, in one of the main points on which Aristotle distinguishes his own teaching from that of his master.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Recommendation of logical bipartition.

The above-mentioned principle — dichotomy or bipartition into two equal or nearly equal halves, each resting upon a characteristic form — is to be applied as far as it will go. Many different schemes of partition upon this principle may be found, each including forms subordinated one to the other, descending from the more comprehensive to the less comprehensive. It is only when you can find no more parts which are forms, that you must be content to divide into parts which are not forms. Thus after all the characteristic forms, for dividing the human race, have been gone through, they may at last be partitioned into Hellênes and Barbari, Lydians and non-Lydians, Phrygians and non-Phrygians: in which divisions there is no guiding form at all, but only a capricious distribution into fractions with separate names162 — meaning by capricious, a distribution founded on some feeling or circumstance peculiar to the distributor, or shared by him only with a few others; such as the fact, that he is himself a Lydian or a Phrygian, &c.

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.

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.

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

Province of sensible perception — is not so much narrowed by Plato here as it is in the Theætêtus.

This explanation given by Plato, in itself just, deserves to be compared with his view of sensible objects as knowable, and of sense as a source of knowledge. I noticed in a preceding chapter the position which Sokrates is made to lay down in the Theætêtus,167 — That (αἴσθησις) sensible perception reaches only to the separate impressions of sense, and does not apprehend the likeness and other relations between them. I have also noticed the contrast which he establishes elsewhere between Esse and Fieri: i.e., between Ens which alone (according to him) is knowable, and the perpetual flux of Fientia which is not knowable at all, but is only matter of opinion or guess-work. Now in the dialogue before us, the Politikus, there is no such marked antithesis between opinion and knowledge. Nor is the province of αἴσθησις so strictly confined: on the contrary, Plato here considers sensible perception as dealing with Entia, and as appreciating resemblances and other relations between them. It is by an attentive study and comparison of these facts of sense that Forms are detected. “When a man (he says) has first perceived by sense the points of communion between the Many, he must not desist from attentive observation until he has discerned in that communion all the differences which reside in Forms: and when 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

Comparison of the Sophistês with the Phædrus.

These passages may be compared with others of similar import in the Phædrus.169 Plato here considers the Form, not as an Entity per se separate from and independent of the particulars, but as implicated in and with the particulars: as a result reached by the mind through the attentive observation and comparison of particulars: as corresponding to what is termed in modern language abstraction and generalisation. The self-existent Platonic Ideas do not appear in the Politikus:170 which approximates rather to the Aristotelian doctrine:— that is, the doctrine of the universal, logically distinguishable from its particulars, but having no reality apart from them (χωριστὰ λόγῳ μόνον). But in other dialogues of Plato, the separation between the two is made as complete as possible, especially in the striking passages of the Republic: wherein we read that the facts of sense are a delusive juggle — that we must turn our back upon them and cease to study them — and that we must face about, away from the sensible world, to contemplate Ideas, the separate and unchangeable furniture of the intelligible world — and that the whole process of acquiring true Cognition, consists in passing from the higher to the lower Forms or Ideas, without any misleading illustrations of sense.171 Here, in the Sophistês and Politikus, instead of having the Universal behind our backs when the particulars are before our faces, we see it in and amidst particulars: the illustrations of sense, instead of deluding us, being declared to conduce, 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 them173 — analysis and synthesis. We are enjoined to divide and analyse the larger genera into their component species until we come to the lowest species which can no longer be divided: also, conversely, to conjoin synthetically the subordinate species until the highest genus is attained, but taking care not to omit any of the intermediate species, in their successive gradations.174 Throughout all this process, as described both in the Phædrus and in the Politikus, the eye is kept fixed upon the constituent individuals. The Form is studied in and among the particulars which it comprehends: the particulars are looked at in groups put together suitably to each comprehending Form. And in both dialogues, marked stress is laid upon the necessity of making the division dichotomous; as well as according to Forms, and not according to fractions which are not legitimate Forms.175 Any other method, we are told, would be like the wandering of a blind man.

What distinguishes the Sophistês and Politikus from most other dialogues of Plato, is, that the method of logical classification is illustrated by setting the classifier to work upon one or a few given subjects, some in themselves trivial, some important. Though the principles of the method are enunciated in general terms, yet their application to the special example is kept constantly before us; so that we are never permitted, much less required, to divorce the Universal from its Particulars.

Comparison of the Politikus with the Parmenidês.

As a dialogue illustrative of this method, the Politikus (as I 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.

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