in order to show that the Eros is a divine madness (μανία), and is
given to us as the greatest happiness. It is a state of enthusiasm,
which here has a powerful, predominating aspiration towards the Idea
(_supra_, p. 30): but it is not an enthusiasm proceeding from the heart
and feeling, it is not an ordinary perception, but a consciousness
and knowledge of the ideal. Plato says that he must expound the
nature of the divine and human soul in order to demonstrate the
Eros. “The first point is that the soul is immortal. For what moves
itself is immortal and eternal, but what obtains its movement from
another is transient. What moves itself is the first principle, for
it certainly has its origin and first beginning in itself and derived
from no other. And just as little can it cease to move, for that alone
can cease which derives its motion from another.” Plato thus first
develops the simple Notion of the soul as of the self-moving, and,
thus far, an element in mind; but the proper life of the mind in and
for itself is the consciousness of the absolute nature and freedom
of the “I.” When we speak of the immortality of the soul, the idea
is most frequently present to us that the soul is like a physical
thing which has qualities of all kinds, and while these can certainly
be changed, it yet seems that, as being independent of them, it is
not subject to change. Now thought is one of these qualities, which
are thus independent of the thing; and thought is also here defined
as a thing, and as if it could pass away or cease to be. As regards
this point, the main feature of the idea is that the soul should be
able to subsist as an imperishable thing without having imagination,
thought, &c. With Plato the immortality of the soul is, on the other
hand, immediately connected with the fact that the soul is itself that
which thinks; and hence that thought is not a quality of soul, but its
substance. It is as with body, where the weight is not a quality, but
its substance; for as the body would no longer exist if the weight
were abstracted, the soul would not exist if thought were taken away.
Thought is the activity of the universal, not an abstraction, but the
reflection into self and the positing of self that takes place in all
conceptions. Now because thought is an eternal which remains at home
with itself in every change, soul preserves its identity in what is
different, just as, for instance, in sensuous perception it deals with
what is different, with outside matter, and is yet at home with itself.
Immortality has not then the interest to Plato which it has to us from
a religious point of view; in that to him it is associated in greater
measure with the nature of thought, and with the inward freedom of
the same, it is connected with the determination that constitutes the
principle of what is specially characteristic of Platonic philosophy,
it is connected with the supersensuous groundwork which Plato has
established. To Plato the immortality of the soul is hence likewise of
great importance.
He proceeds: “To seek to make clear the Idea of the soul would involve
investigation laborious for any but a god; but the tongue of man may
speak of this more easily through a figure.” Here follows an allegory
in which there is, however, something extravagant and inconsistent.
He says: “The soul resembles the united power of a chariot and
charioteer.” This image expresses nothing to us. “Now the horses” (the
desires) “of the gods and the charioteers are good, and of a good
breed. With us men, the charioteer at first takes the reins, but one
of the horses only is noble and good and of noble origin; the other
is ignoble and of ignoble origin. As might be expected, the driving
is very difficult. How mortal differ from immortal creatures, we
must endeavour to discover. The soul has the care of the inanimate
everywhere, and traverses the whole heavens, passing from one idea
to another. When perfect and fully winged, she soars upwards” (has
elevated thoughts), “and is the ruler of the universe. But the soul
whose wings droop roams about till she has found solid ground; then
she takes an earthly form which is really moved by her power, and the
whole, the soul and body, put together, is called a living creature,
a mortal.”[21] The one is thus the soul as thought, existence in and
for itself; the other is the union with matter. This transition from
thought to body is very difficult, too difficult for the ancients to
understand; we shall find more about it in Aristotle. From what has
been said, we may find the ground for representing Plato as maintaining
the dogma that the soul existed independently prior to this life, and
then lapsed into matter, united itself to it, contaminating itself by
so doing, and that it is incumbent on it to leave matter again. The
fact that the spiritual realizes itself from itself is a point not
sufficiently examined by the ancients; they take two abstractions,
soul and matter, and the connection is expressed only in the form of a
deterioration on the part of soul.
“But as to the immortal,” continues Plato, “if we do not express it
in accordance with an apprehending thought, but form an ordinary
conception of it, owing to our lack of insight and power to comprehend
the nature of God, we conclude that the immortal life of God is that
which has a body and soul which, however, are united in one nature
(συμπεφυκότα),[22] i.e. not only externally but intrinsically made one.
Soul and body are both abstractions, but life is the unity of both;
and because God’s nature is to popular conception the holding of body
and soul unseparated in one, He is the Reason whose form and content
are an undivided unity in themselves.” This is an important definition
of God—a great idea which is indeed none other than the definition
of modern times. It signifies the identity of subjectivity and
objectivity, the inseparability of the ideal and real, that is, of soul
and body. The mortal and finite is, on the contrary, correctly defined
by Plato as that of which the existence is not absolutely adequate to
the Idea, or, more definitely, to subjectivity.
Plato now further explains what happens in the life of the divine
Being, which drama the soul thus has before it, and how the wasting
of its wings occurs. “The chariots of the gods enter in bands, led
by Zeus, the mighty leader, from his winged chariot. An array of
other gods and goddesses follow him, marshalled in eleven bands. They
present—each one fulfilling his work—the noblest and most blessed of
scenes. The colourless and formless and intangible essence requires
thought, the lord of the soul, as its only spectator, and thus
true knowledge takes its rise. For there it sees what is (τὸ ὄν),
and lives in the contemplation of reality, because it follows in
an ever-recurring revolution” (of ideas). “In this revolution” (of
gods), “it beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge, not in the
form of what men call things, for it sees what in truth is absolute
(τὸ ὄντως ὄν).” This is thus expressed as though it were something
which had happened. “When the soul returns from thus beholding, the
charioteer puts up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat
and nectar to drink. This is the life of the gods. But other souls,
through fault of charioteer or horses, fall into confusion, with
broken wings depart from these heavenly places, cease to behold the
truth, nourish themselves on opinion as their food, and fall to the
ground; according as a soul has beheld more or less of truth, it takes
a higher or lower place. In this condition it retains a recollection
of what it has seen, and if it perceives anything beautiful or right,
it is rapt in amazement. The wings once more obtain strength, and
the soul, particularly that of a philosopher, recollects its former
condition in which, however, it had not seen what was beautiful, just,
etc., but beauty and justice themselves.”[23] Thus because the life
of the gods is for the soul, when in individual beauty it is reminded
of the universal, it is implied that in the soul, as thus absolutely
existing, there is the Idea of the beautiful, good and just, as
absolute and as potentially and actually universal. This constitutes
the general principle of the Platonic conception. But when Plato speaks
of knowledge as of a recollection, he knows all the time that this is
only putting the matter in similes and metaphors; he did not ask, as
theologians used gravely to do, whether the soul had existed before its
birth, and, if so, in what particular place. It cannot be said of Plato
that he had any such belief, and he never speaks of the matter in the
sense that theologians did; in the same way he never spoke about a Fall
from a perfect state, for example, as if man had to look on the present
life as an imprisonment. But what Plato expressed as the truth is that
consciousness in the individual is in reason the divine reality and
life; that man perceives and recognizes it in pure thought, and that
this knowledge is itself the heavenly abode and movement.
ββ. Knowledge in the form of soul, is more clearly dealt with in
the Phædo, where Plato has further developed the ideas about the
immortality of the soul. What in the Phædrus is kept definitely apart
as myth and truth respectively, and which is made to appear as such,
appears less evidently so in the Phædo—that celebrated dialogue in
which Plato makes Socrates speak of the immortality of the soul. That
Plato should have connected this discussion with the account of the
death of Socrates has in all time been matter of admiration. Nothing
could seem more suitable than to place the conviction of immortality
in the mouth of him who is in the act of leaving life, and to make
this conviction living to us through the scene, just as, on the other
hand, a death-scene like this is made living to us through that
conviction. We must at the same time remark that in what is fitting the
following conditions are implied. It must first be really appropriate
for the dying person to occupy himself with himself instead of with
the universal, with this certainty of himself as a “this” instead of
with the Truth. We hence here meet with the ordinary point of view
but slightly separated from that of the Notion, but, although this is
so, this ordinary point of view is far removed from sinking into that
coarse conception of the soul which considers it to be a thing, and
asks about its continuance or subsistence as if it were a thing. Thus
we find Socrates expressing himself to the effect that the body and
what relates to the body is a hindrance in striving after wisdom, the
sole business of Philosophy, because the sensuous perception shows
nothing purely, or as it is in itself, and what is true becomes known
through the removal of the spiritual from the corporeal. For justice,
beauty and such things are what alone exists in verity; they are that
to which all change and decay is foreign; and these are not perceived
through the body, but only in the soul.[24]
We see in this separation the essence of the soul not considered in
a material category of Being, but as the universal; we see it still
more in what follows, by which Plato proves immortality. A principal
point in this argument is that already considered, that the soul has
existed before this life, because learning is only a recollection,[25]
and this implies that the soul is already implicitly what it becomes.
We must not think that the bald conception of innate ideas is hereby
indicated—such an expression implies the existence of ideas by nature,
as though our thoughts were in part already implanted, and had in part
a natural existence which did not first produce itself through the
movement of the mind. But Plato mainly founds the idea of immortality
on the fact that what is put together is liable to dissolution and
decay, while the simple can in no manner be dissolved or destroyed;
what is always like itself and the same, is, however, simple. The
beautiful, the good, the like, being simple, are incapable of all
change; that, on the contrary, in which these universals are, men,
things, &c., are the changeable. They are perceptible by the senses,
while the former is the supersensuous. Hence the soul which is in
thought, and which applies itself to this, as to what is related
to it, must therefore be held to have itself a simple nature.[26]
Here, then, we again see that Plato does not take simplicity as the
simplicity of a thing—not as if it were of anything like a chemical
ingredient, for example, which can no longer be represented as
inherently distinguished; this would only be empty, abstract identity
or universality, the simple as an existent.
But finally the universal really does appear to take the form of an
existent, as Plato makes Simmias assert: a harmony which we hear is
none else than a universal, a simple which is a unity of the diverse;
but this harmony is associated with a sensuous thing and disappears
with it, just as music does with the lyre. On the other hand Plato
makes Socrates show that the soul is not a harmony in this sense,
for the sensuous harmony first exists after its elements, and is
a consequence that follows from them. The harmony of the soul is,
however, in and for itself, before every sensuous thing. Sensuous
harmony may further have diversities within it, while the harmony of
the soul has no quantitative distinction.[27] From this it is clear
that Plato receives the reality of the soul entirely in the universal,
and does not place its true being in sensuous individuality, and hence
the immortality of the soul cannot in his case be understood in the
ordinary acceptation, as that of an individual thing. Although later
on we come across the myth of the sojourn of the soul after death in
another and more brilliant earth,[28] we have seen above (pp. 40, 41)
what kind of heaven this would be.
γ. The development and culture of the soul must be taken in connection
with what precedes. However the idealism of Plato must not be thought
of as being subjective idealism, and as that false idealism which
has made its appearance in modern times, and which maintains that we
do not learn anything, are not influenced from without, but that all
conceptions are derived from out of the subject. It is often said
that idealism means that the individual produces from himself all
his ideas, even the most immediate. But this is an unhistoric, and
quite false conception; if we take this rude definition of idealism,
there have been no idealists amongst the philosophers, and Platonic
idealism is certainly far removed from anything of the kind. In the
seventh book of his Republic (p. 518 Steph., pp. 333, 334 Bekk.) Plato
says in connection with what I have already stated (pp. 27-29), and in
particular reference to the manner in which this learning is created,
by which the universal which before was secreted in the mind, developes
out of it alone: “We must believe of science and learning (παιδείας),
that its nature is not as some assert” (by this he means the Sophists),
“who speak of culture as though knowledge were not contained within
the soul, but could be implanted therein as sight into blind eyes.”
The idea that knowledge comes entirely from without is in modern times
found in empirical philosophies of a quite abstract and rude kind,
which maintain that everything that man knows of the divine nature
comes as a matter of education and habituation, and that mind is thus a
quite indeterminate potentiality merely. Carried to an extreme, this is
the doctrine of revelation in which everything is given from without.
In the Protestant religion we do not find this rude idea in its
abstract form, for the witness of the spirit is an essential part of
faith, _i.e._ faith demands that the individual subjective spirit shall
on its own account accept and set forth the determination which comes
to it in the form of something given from without. Plato speaks against
any such idea, for, in relation to the merely popularly expressed myth
given above, he says: “Reason teaches that every man possesses the
inherent capacities of the soul and the organ with which he learns.
That is, just as we might imagine the eye not capable of turning from
darkness to light otherwise than with the whole body, so must we be
turned with the whole soul from the world of Becoming” (contingent
feelings and ideas) “to that of Being, and the soul must gradually
learn to endure this sight, and to behold the pure light of Being. But
we say that this Being is the good. The art of so doing is found in
culture, as being the art of the conversion of the soul—that is, the
manner in which a person can most easily and effectually be converted;
it does not seek to implant (ἐμποιῆσαι) sight, but—inasmuch as he
already possesses it only it has not been properly turned upon himself
and hence he does not see the objects that he ought to see—it brings it
into operation. The other virtues of the soul are more in conformity
with the body; they are not originally in the soul, but come gradually
through exercise and habit. Thought (τὸ φρονῆσαι) on the contrary,
as divine, never loses its power, and only becomes good or evil
through the manner of this conversion.” This is what Plato establishes
in regard to the inward and the outward. Such ideas as that mind
determines the good from out of itself are to us much more familiar
than to Plato; but it was by Plato that they were first maintained.
_c._ In that Plato places truth in that alone which is produced through
thought, and yet the source of knowledge is manifold—in feelings,
sensations, &c.—we must state the different kinds of knowledge, as
given by Plato. Plato is entirely opposed to the idea that the truth
is given through sensuous consciousness, which is what is known and
that from which we start; for this is the doctrine of the Sophists
with which we met in dealing with Protagoras, for instance. As regards
feeling, we easily make the mistake of placing everything in feeling,
as indeed that Platonic rage for beauty contained the truth in the
guise of feeling; but this is not the true form of the truth, because
feeling is the entirely subjective consciousness. Feeling as such is
merely a form with which men make the arbitrary will the principle of
the truth, for what is the true content is not given through feeling;
in it every content has a place. The highest content must likewise
be found in feeling; to have a thing in thought and understanding is
quite different from having it in heart and feeling, _i.e._ in our
most inward subjectivity, in this “I”; and we say of the content that
it is for the first time in its proper place when it is in the heart,
because it then is entirely identical with our individuality. The
mistake, however, is to say that a content is true because it is in
our feeling. Hence the importance of Plato’s doctrine that the content
becomes filled by thought alone; for it is the universal which can
be grasped by the activity of thought alone. Plato has defined this
universal content as Idea.
At the close of the sixth book of the Republic (pp. 509-511 Steph.; pp.
321-325 Bekk.) Plato distinguishes the sensuous and the intellectual in
our knowledge more exactly, so that in each sphere he again presents
two modes of consciousness. “In the sensuous (ὁρατόν) the one division
is the external manifestation, for in it are shadows, reflections in
water, and also in solid, smooth, and polished bodies, and the like.
The second section, of which this is only the resemblance, includes
animals, plants” (this concrete life), “and everything in art. The
intelligible (νοητόν) is also divided into two parts. In the one
sub-division the soul uses the sensuous figures given before, and is
obliged to work on hypotheses (ἐξ ὑποθέσεων) because it does not go to
the principle but to the result.” Reflection, which is not on its own
account sensuous, but undoubtedly belongs to thought, mingles thought
with the first sensuous consciousness, although its object is not as
yet a pure existence of the understanding. “The other division” (what
is thought in the soul itself) “is that in which the soul, proceeding
from an hypothesis, makes its way (μέθοδον) to a principle which is
above hypotheses, not by means of images, as in the former cases, but
through the ideas themselves. Those who study geometry, arithmetic, and
kindred sciences, assume the odd and the even, the figures, three kinds
of angles, and the like. And since they start from these hypotheses,
they do not think it necessary to give any account of them, for
everybody is supposed to know them. You further know that they make
use of figures which are risible, and speak of them, although they
are not thinking of them, but of the ideals which they represent; for
they think of the” (absolute) “square itself and of its diagonals, and
not of the” (sensuous) “images that they draw. And so it is with other
things.” Thus, according to Plato, this is certainly the place where
real knowledge begins, because we have nothing further to do with the
sensuous as such; at the same time this is not the true knowledge which
considers the spiritual universal on its own account, but the arguing
and reasoning knowledge that forms universal laws and particular kinds
or species out of what is sensuous. “These figures which they draw or
make, and which also have shadows and images in water, they use only as
images, and seek to behold their originals, which can only be seen with
the understanding” (διανοίᾳ).—“That is true.”—“This I have named above
that species of the intelligible, in inquiring into which the soul
is compelled to use hypotheses, not proceeding to a first principle,
because it is not able to get above those hypotheses, but employing
those secondary images as images which are made absolutely similar to
the originals in every respect”—“I understand that you are speaking of
geometry and the kindred arts”—“Now learn about the other division of
the intelligible in which reason (λόγος) itself is concerned, since
by the power of the dialectic it makes use of hypotheses, not as
principles but only as hypotheses—that is to say, as steps and points
of departure in order to reach a region above hypotheses, the first
principle of all” (which is in and for itself), “and clinging to this
and to that which depends on this, it descends again to the result,
for it requires no sensuous aid at all, but only ideas, and thus it
reaches the ideas finally through the ideas themselves.” To know this
is the interest and business of Philosophy; this is investigated by
pure thought in and for itself, which only moves in such pure thoughts.
“I understand you, but not perfectly. You seem to me to wish to assert
that what is contemplated in Being and Knowledge through the science
of dialectic is clearer than what is contemplated by the so-called
sciences which have hypotheses as their principle, and where those who
contemplate them have to do so with the understanding and not with the
senses. Yet because in their contemplation they do not ascend to the
absolute principle, but speculate from hypotheses, they appear not to
exercise thought (νοῦν) upon these objects, although these objects are
cognizable by thought if a principle is added to them (νοητῶν ὄντων
μετὰ ἀρχῆς). The methods (ἕξιν) of geometry and its kindred sciences
you appear to me to call understanding; and that because it stands
midway between reason (νοῦς) and ‘sensuous’ opinion (δόξα).”—“You have
quite grasped my meaning. Corresponding to these four sections, I
will suppose four faculties (παθήματα) in the soul—conceiving reason
(νόησις) has the highest place (ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνωτάτῳ), understanding the
second; the third is called faith (πίστις)”—the true conception for
animals and plants in that they are living, homogeneous and identical
with ourselves; “and the last the knowledge of images (εἰκασία),”
opinion. “Arrange them according to the fact that each stage has as
much clearness (σαφηνείας) as that to which it is related has truth.”
This is the distinction which forms the basis of Plato’s philosophy,
and which came to be known from his writings.