[36] Wordsworth's 'Excursion.'
[37] He must not be confounded with Thomas Goodwin, also an
Independent, who was a member of the Assembly.
[38] This was not, so to speak, Robinson's private word. It was the
tradition of the Separatists. Greenwood writes from his prison to the
same effect in Elizabeth's days.
[39] The action of Nonconformity in reviving religious life, as in the
Free Church of the Canton de Vaud, is a very instructive chapter of
modern Continental ecclesiastical history.
ART. VI.--_The Dialogues of Plato._ Translated into English, with
Analyses and Introductions, by B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol
College, Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek. Four vols. 8vo. Oxford,
1871.
PROFESSOR JOWETT has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world
a complete English translation of Plato's 'Dialogues;' for it
certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands of
all, conveyed in language, divested, as far as possible, of mere
technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible
and alluring to average students of ancient or modern philosophy. And
as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself
is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted.
We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their integrity, without
foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which
the nature of Mr. Grote's great work rendered necessary, and of the
occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr.
Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful,
endeavour to present Plato--in part, at least--in a popular form to
the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philosophy, which
is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is
constantly working out with variations the same leading ideas, it is
essential to the English student to have the work complete. The
_Republic_, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and
Vaughan has for some time been before the world, is to a
considerable extent a _résumé_ of Plato's earlier views--an epitome of
Platonism, in fact; but a student may know the _Republic_ fairly well,
and yet have a vast deal to learn from such dialogues as the
_Theætetus_, the _Philebus_, the _Parmenides_, the _Timæus_--all very
difficult in their way; or from the more genial _Protagoras_, _Phædo_,
and _Gorgias_; or the more transcendental and imaginative _Phædrus_
and _Symposium_, which last may be called the most fascinating and
brilliant of the dialogues, excepting always the _Republic_ itself.
Some of the minor, easier, and shorter dialogues, which fall within
the range of average school reading--the _Apology_, the _Crito_, the
_Menexenus_, the _Lysis_, the _Charmides_, the _Ion_--hardly touch the
Socratic philosophy in its deeper sense; they are genial sketches of
the idiosyncrasies of the wise old man, or deal with matters distinct
from dialectics properly so called. Very little of Plato proper (so to
speak) will be learnt from these alone. But the subtle reasonings of
Plato, in some of his greater works, are sufficiently difficult to
make even the best Greek scholars glad to have occasional recourse to
studied English versions, on which they can with tolerable confidence
rely.
Mr. Jowett has not given us a general introductory dissertation on
Plato, or Socrates, or on the Sophists, or on the influence of
ῥητορικὴ, or on the progress of Greek philosophy--subjects in
themselves, as he doubtless felt, almost interminable, and already so
well discussed in Mr. Grote's great work, 'Plato and the other
Companions of Socrates,' and his 'History of Greece.' His preface,
comprised in the modest limits of four pages of large print, might
seem intended as a protest against the licence of writing long
introductions, which, after all, are, perhaps, seldom read. We could
have wished, indeed, to see some opinion expressed on a point of not
less interest than importance--how far the Socrates of Plato, who
differs so widely from the Socrates of Aristophanes, partook of the
Platonic _ideality_, and was a typical and imaginary talker, used as a
peg, so to speak, to hang speculative opinions upon, rather than the
real author of all or any of the conversations attributed to him by
his pupil. Mr. Jowett, however, though he has given us no general
introduction, has been liberal, even to diffuseness, in the special
introductions to the separate dialogues. In these, which are drawn
with a masterly hand, and are of great value and interest, he gives us
the object and scope, as well as the condensed and analyzed matter of
each dialogue, so as to form a most useful summary to the right
understanding of it. Such introductions, though they add greatly to
the bulk of the work, are necessary, and all editors and translators
of single dialogues have adopted them, _e.g._, Dr. Thompson in his
_Phædrus_ and _Georgias_, Mr. Cope in his translation of the latter
dialogue, Mr. Campbell in his _Theætetus_, Messrs. Davies and Vaughan
in their translation of the _Republic_, Professor Geddes in his
edition of the _Phædo_, and Stallbaum in all his dialogues. In fact,
the diffuseness and almost desultoriness of some dialogues--the
ποικιλία, or variety of matter introduced--render a clear and
well-arranged analysis of each absolutely necessary for the right
understanding of it. Such a work, with the further advantage of a good
index of Platonic words and topics, by Dr. Alfred Day, had been
published the year before (Bell and Daldy, 1870). By such aids, we
more easily attain the real scope of a dialogue than by the perusal of
the dialogue itself. A casual reader would think that the _Phædrus_
and the _Symposium_ are primarily essays on 'Platonic Love,' or the
_Gorgias_ a satire upon the vanity of the Sophists, and that each of
these ends with a topic totally alien from that with which it
commenced. Thus Plato might appear a desultory essayist rather than a
close thinker. But when a student is forewarned that the _Phædrus_ is,
in fact, a critical and psychological essay on the true principles of
rhetoric, or, rather, of dialectic as distinct from rhetoric; that the
point of the _Gorgias_ (in the words of the Master of Trinity) is 'a
discussion of the ethical principles which conduct to political
well-being,' or, as Mr. Jowett somewhat differently puts it, 'not to
answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the
true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men
with judgment according to the truth;' and that the _Symposium_ is a
sketch of the course of transcendental thought and education in the
science of abstract beauty, which can alone fit man for the
inheritance and enjoyment of a blessed eternity;--when all this is
made perfectly clear to a reader at the outset, he not only sees each
dialogue in quite a new light, but what is far more important, he then
only realizes why it was written, and what it was really designed to
inculcate. Thus much we have said, almost apologetically, for the
addition of so very much introductory matter in four octavo volumes,
already of a bulk sufficient to discourage some of the less
enterprising class of readers.
Viewed as a literary composition, and as emanating from one who has
the highest reputation for Greek scholarship, as well as for
Platonism, we must plainly say that Professor Jowett's work has its
serious demerits as well as its merits. The style is somewhat jaunty
rather than closely faithful to the original. It is throughout far
more of a paraphrase than of a translation, in the accurate sense of
the word. Over the verbal difficulties, the subtle syntactical
niceties, even the grammatical meaning of the more involved sentences,
the author passes very lightly. He shows that unconcern for Greek, as
mere Greek, that ῥᾳστώνη of an interpreter of philosophy
rather than of a philosopher's very words, which we should hardly have
looked for in a professor of the language. The grammarian, in fact, is
so merged in the philosopher that his peculiar province has become
quite secondary. No doubt considerable latitude must be conceded to
those who would win the attention of purely English readers. Between
the Greek and the English idioms, where no compromise can be made, the
preference must be given to the latter; otherwise, the version will
be, or, at least, is liable to be, somewhat stiff, pedantic, awkward,
and wanting in that brilliant and genial spirit of _talk_ that the
original undoubtedly had to a Greek, and which, in truth, gives the
chief fascination to the exquisite and perfect language of Plato.
With all this, and more that might be pleaded in Mr. Jowett's defence
or excuse, there are certainly very many of his renderings which show
a laxity that is neither necessary for the relief of the English
reader nor satisfactory to the accurate Greek scholar. There seem to
us even indications of haste, which, though not, perhaps, to be
wondered at, when the vastness of the whole work is considered, must
certainly be set down as a blemish in the performance of it. We may go
considerably further, and express our fears that actual errors in the
rendering are by no means very infrequent. We say this, not in a
random way, nor from a casual inspection, but after having carefully
gone over _five_ of the dialogues (_Phædo_, _Phædrus_, _Theætetus_,
_Philebus_, _Symposium_) _verbatim_ with Plato and Mr. Jowett's
translation. Some passages we have noted for critical remark, not, of
course, as exhausting all that could be said with truth, but as
examples of the kind of incompleteness, or vagueness, or faultiness of
rendering of which we have taken occasion rather seriously to
complain.
Let us take first the opening of the _Symposium_, of which the
following is a _close_ translation, made with due regard to tenses,
moods, arrangement of words, and other niceties of the original:
'_Apollodorus._ I flatter myself I am pretty well practised
in the matter you are asking about. The fact is, only the
day before yesterday I chanced to be going up to town from
my house at Phalerum, when an acquaintance of mine, who had
caught sight of me from behind, called to me from a
distance, and with a joke on my name as he called,
exclaimed, "_Ho there! you, Apollodorus, of Phalerum, wait
for me!_" So I stopped till he came up. "Why, Apollodorus!"
he said, "I was looking for you just now, as I wanted to
hear a full account about the party Agathon gave to
Socrates and Alcibiades and the rest of the company who
were present at the feast,--in a word, to learn what was
said in their speeches about _Love_. Another friend did
indeed essay to give me some account--he had heard it from
Phoenix, the son of Philippus, and he said that you also
knew--but, to confess the truth, he had nothing definite to
tell. Do _you_, therefore, give me information in full; for
none so fit as yourself to report the conversations of your
bosom-friend. But first tell me," he said, "Were you
present yourself at this party, or not?"'
We do not think that the above, though quite a literal version,
strikes on the English ear as in any way harsh. Whether the much
looser rendering of Professor Jowett has a more truly English ring, or
any other advantage, as a set-off to the evident laxity of it, we
leave as an open question for others to decide. Here it is _in
extenso_:--
'I believe that I am prepared with an answer. For the day
before yesterday I was coming from my own home at Phalerum
to the city, and one of my acquaintances who had caught a
sight of the back of me at a distance, in a merry mood
commanded me to halt. "Apollodorus," he cried, "O thou man
of Phalerum, halt!" So I did as I was bid; and then he
said, "I was looking for you, Apollodorus, only just now,
that I might hear about the discourses in praise of love,
which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others,
at Agathon's supper. Phoenix, the son of Philip, told
another person who told me of them, and he said that you
knew; but he was himself very indistinct, and I wish that
you would give me an account of them. Who but you should be
the reporter of the words of your friend? And first tell
me," he said, "were you present at this meeting?"'
It might, perhaps, seem to savour of pedantry, to remark, that the
nice distinctions between the aorists διαπυθέσθαι and διήγησαι and the
imperfect διηγεῖτο, are needlessly slurred over; but the clause παίζων
ἅμα τῇ κλήσει must mean something more than 'in merry mood.' We do not
know precisely what the joke was; but probably φαληρὸς or φαλαρὸς was
applied to one who had a bare patch on his head, a white whisker
perhaps, or some such facial peculiarity.
Let this, however, pass. We admit there is no serious error here, but
the passage will fairly well illustrate the kind of paraphrastic
version Professor Jowett has generally adopted,--we do not say
wrongly, for we repeat that it is quite a matter of taste and
judgment; and neither of these qualities in so experienced a scholar
is it our desire to impugn. His object was to give the _matter_ of
Plato, certainly not to compose 'a crib' for young students. But,
whatever the motive was, we are rather afraid that this slipshod way
of translating, and of inverting or perverting the order of the Greek
words, not unfrequently borders closely on inaccuracy. For instance,
and not to go further than the first chapter of this same _Symposium_
(p. 173, A.), Apollodorus says, in his impulsive way, that he has kept
close company with Socrates for something less than three years;
'Before that, I used to run from one to another without any fixed
object; and though I persuaded myself I was doing something, I was the
most miserable of men; aye, as miserable as you (Glaucon) are, in
thinking you ought to do anything rather than study philosophy.'
The point of the passage is the hit at his friend as one of the
χρηματιστικοὶ (not 'traders,' but) those absorbed in
money-making, and the eulogy of his own novitiate in philosophy. In
Mr. Jowett's version the passage stands thus: 'I used to be running
about the world, thinking that I was doing something, and would have
done anything rather than be a philosopher; I was almost as miserable
as you are now.' A little further down (173, D.) he appears to us to
miss the true sense, or, at least, to misrepresent it. The friend
(ἕταιρος) says to Apollodorus, 'How ever you came to be
called by this name, "The Excitable," I know not; for in your
conversations you are always the same; you are savage at yourself and
everybody else except Socrates.'
An impulsive man does things by fits and starts, and does not, like
Apollodorus, in this matter at least, follow a consistent course. We
doubt if the right meaning is conveyed by the following: 'True in this
to your old name, which, however deserved, I know not how you
acquired, of Apollodorus the madman, for your humour is always to be
out of humour with yourself and with everybody except Socrates.'
One more instance of what seems a very slovenly rendering, we will add
from _Symp._, p. 179, E. In this passage every clause of the original
seems, for some reason inexplicable to us, to be disarranged, and the
whole to be hashed up, as it were, into a new hodge-podge:--
'Far other was the reward of the true love of Achilles
towards his lover Patroclus--his lover and not his love
(the notion that Patroclus was the beloved one is a foolish
error into which Æschylus has fallen, for Achilles was
surely the fairer of the two, fairer also than all the
other heroes; and he was much younger, as Homer informs us,
and he had no beard). And greatly as the gods honour the
virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the
beloved to the lover is more admired, and valued, and
rewarded by them, for the lover has a nature more divine
and more worthy of worship. Now Achilles was quite aware,
for he had been told by his mother, that he might avoid
death, and return home, and live to a good old age, if he
abstained from slaying Hector. Nevertheless, he gave his
life to revenge his friend, and dared to die, not only on
his behalf, but after his death. Wherefore the gods
honoured him even above Alcestis, and sent him to the
Islands of the Blest.'
What Plato really says, with all the logical accuracy of carefully
balanced sentences, is as follows:--
'Far different was the honour they paid to Achilles, the
son of Thetis, in sending him to the Islands of the Blest,
because when he knew from his mother that he was destined
to die on the field if he slew Hector, but if he did not,
to return home and die old, he had the courage to make the
nobler choice,--to take the part of his lover Patroclus and
avenge his death, and so not only to die for him, but to do
more, to die after him (_i.e._, when he could no longer
help him). _That_ was the reason why the gods held him in
such extraordinary regard, and paid him such special
honour, viz., because he held his lover in such high
esteem. Æschylus, by the way, talks absurdly in saying that
it was Achilles who was the lover of Patroclus. For
Achilles was much better looking, not only than Patroclus,
but than all the heroes without exception; and besides
that, beardless, and so greatly his junior, as Homer
affirms. But, be that as it may, it is a truth that the
gods do hold in special honour this chivalrous spirit when
it is shown in attachment to another; albeit they feel more
regard and admiration, and have more disposition to confer
benefits, when the favourite shows affection for his lover,
than when the lover does so towards his favourite; for the
lover has more of the divine in him than the favourite,
since he is inspired by them. For these reasons also they
honoured Achilles more than Alcestis, by sending him to the
Isles of the Blest.'
A comparison of these two versions will show how widely--we had nearly
said, how recklessly--the Greek Professor departs from the letter of
his author. A conspicuous example of this occurs also at p. 194, E.,
where about one hundred Greek words are expressed in less than seventy
of English; whereas the differences of idiom require, as a rule, in
really accurate translation from Greek, the use of, at the very least,
one-third more English words. The difficulty to us is to see wherein
lies the gain on the side of the loose paraphrase--unless, perhaps, in
brevity, _i.e._, in giving something less than Plato gives. Even as a
matter of accuracy, we might object to the rendering of τὴν ἀρετὴν τὴν
περὶ τὸν ἔρωτα, 'the virtue of love.' It means evidently, 'bravery
shown in the cause of love,' which surely is a very different thing.
So, too, in p. 183, A., δουλείας δουλεύειν οἵας οὐδ' ἂν δοῦλος οὐδεὶς,
is not 'to be a servant of servants,' but 'to perform services such as
no menial would.' In p. 186, E., ἡ ἰατρικὴ πᾶσα διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου
κυβερνᾶται, 'it is by the influence of love (_i.e._, a knowledge of
the natural loves and desires) that the whole art of the physicians is
regulated,' Mr. Jowett wrongly refers τοῦ θεοῦ to Æsculapius, whereas
Ἔρως is clearly meant. Just below (p. 187, B.), ὁ ῥυθμὸς ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος
καὶ βραδέος γέγονε, is not 'rhythm is composed of elements short and
long'--a proposition hardly intelligible--but 'time (in music) is made
up of quick and slow,' _i.e._, when two instruments either slacken or
quicken their pace so as to harmonize with each other and keep true
time. And in p. 205, D., τὸ μὲν κεφάλαιόν ἐστι πᾶσα ἡ τῶν ἀγαθῶν
ἐπιθυμία καὶ τοῦ εὐδαιμονεῖν, ὁ μέγιστός τε καὶ δολερὸς ἔρως παντὶ, is
not, 'You may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is
due to the great and subtile power of love,' but 'Love is, in its most
general sense, all that desire which men feel for good things and for
happiness--that greatest of all loves, which every man finds so
deceptive.' The meaning is, that no form of love is so generally
deceptive and disappointing as the desire to be happy. Again, in p.
206, D., is a passage very badly rendered. All the delicate and
accurate points in the imagery are missed, and the coyness of an
animal not in a state of desire, compared with the free and ecstatic
surrender of itself to the favourite when it is so disposed, so
exquisitely expressed by the Platonic words, is not expressed at all,
or in phrases neither appropriate nor significant. The sense, in fact,
is very superficially given. The philosopher is speaking of mental,
not of bodily τόκος, and means to say that when an idea has been
conceived, the author of it keeps it to himself till he can find a
congenial person (the καλὸς, and not the αἰσχρὸς) who will help him to
bring it into the world. The same notion exactly occurs in _Theætet._,
p. 150, and is repeated more explicitly shortly below, p. 209, B.,
though even that passage is very inaccurately rendered:--
'And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in
him, and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity
desires to beget and generate. And he wanders about seeking
beauty, that he may beget offspring--for in deformity he
will beget nothing--and embraces the beautiful rather than
the deformed; and when he finds a fair, and noble, and
well-nurtured soul, and there is a union of the two in one
person, he gladly embraces him, and to such an one he is
full of fair speech about virtue, and the nature and
pursuits of a good man.'
In this version the words, 'and there is a union of the two in one
person,' are hardly intelligible. But in a correct rendering, as
follows, their meaning is at once apparent:--
'When, again, one of these (viz., whose aspirations are for
mental rather than for bodily offspring) has been pregnant
with some great idea from early youth--as may be expected
in one possessing a god-like nature--and when at length,
the proper age having arrived, he first feels a desire to
bring forth and give it birth, then he, too, I take it,
goes about looking for the beautiful, on which (_i.e._, in
contact with which) he may generate; for on the unsightly
he will never be able to do so. Accordingly, he not only
likes to keep company (ἀσπάζεται) with the persons (bodies)
which are comely rather than with those which are ugly,
as being in a condition of pregnancy, but, whenever he
falls in with a soul which is beautiful, noble, and apt
to learn, then he does heartily welcome the union of the
two (viz., the handsome body combined with the beautiful
soul); and in his converse with such a man as this, he at
once finds himself at no loss for words about virtue, and
the duties that a good man ought to engage in, and his
pursuits.'
Of course, all this is said in respect of that philosophic and
unsensual παιδεραστία which is a favourite fiction with Plato. A
well-disposed youth, who has some idea or theory to communicate, is
supposed to keep it to himself till he meets with some older friend,
whose mental qualities, as well as bodily appearance, inspire him with
affection and confidence. The result is the τόκος ἐν καλῷ, the
bringing out the idea or eliciting and giving tangible form to it, by
the aid, the sympathy, and the co-operation of the good-looking and
congenial friend.
A little below (p. 210, D.), an erroneous rendering goes far to make
nonsense of a very grand and transcendental passage--one of the first
passages, probably, in all Plato. The philosopher says, that a youth
should be trained gradually in the science of beauty, rising ever
higher and higher in the objects of his admiration, 'that by looking
to the beautiful, now wide in its scope (πολὺ ἤδη), he may no longer
by a menial service (δουλεύων ὥσπερ οἰκέτης) to the beauty in some
one--that is, being content to admire the comeliness of a stripling,
or of some particular person, or institution--became a feeble and
trifling character, but, betaking himself to the vast ocean of beauty,
and contemplating it, may give birth to many fine and stately
discourses and sentiments on the boundless field of philosophy.'
The confusion of Mr. Jowett's rendering here appears to us
extraordinary. 'Being not like a servant in love with the beauty of
one youth, or man, or institution, himself a slave, mean and
calculating, but looking at the abundance of beauty, and drawing
towards the sea of beauty, and creating and beholding(!) many fair and
noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom.'
We are compelled to ask, in all earnestness, Would such construing as
this be tolerated from a boy of the sixth form in any public school in
the kingdom? Our suspicions are aroused, that the Oxford Greek
Professor has admitted aid from less competent hands, and, in a too
generous confidence, has failed to look closely over the contributions
which he invited and received. Plato, we cannot doubt, in the above
passage, has been expounding his own aspirations for leaving behind
him what he elsewhere calls 'offspring of the mind,'--viz., immortal
records of his own genius in the composition of his Dialogues. He goes
on to speak of the ultimate attainment of that highest καλὸν, the
knowledge of abstract science, or rather of science, ἐπιστήμη, in the
abstract; and in language evidently borrowed from the economy of the
Eleusinian mysteries, he proceeds to ask what must be the happiness of
those who, as the result of a right discipline on earth, attain
hereafter to the enjoyment of the τὸ θεῖον μονοεῖδες, the Beatific
Vision of God, or rather (if we might say) of 'Godness,' unmixed with
human frailties and imperfections. The passage itself reads almost
like one inspired; and it is very remarkable how exalted and spiritual
an idea of the Deity Plato had realized. He seems to transcend the
_anthropomorphic_ doings and sayings attributed to the Jehovah of the
Old Testament. In rendering such a passage, Mr. Jowett should have
devoted especial pains to attain the closest accuracy possible, for
every word is a jewel. Yet he wrongfully renders τὰ καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα,
'fair actions,' and τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, 'fair notions,' (p. 211, C.),
whereas 'institutions' (laws, &c.), and 'lessons,' or 'instructions,'
are really meant; and the important words, ἐκεῖνο ᾧ δεῖ θεωμένου,
'contemplating that beauty by and with the proper faculty, _i.e._, νῷ,
with mind, not with mere eyes,' he omits, apparently because ὁρῶντι ᾧ
ὁρατὸν τὸ καλὸν occurs a little further on.
We have devoted some space to the examination of the _Symposium_,
because we have found in it, perhaps more than elsewhere, indications
of hasty and superficial rendering. Yet Mr. Jowett himself says, in
his introduction, 'Of all the works of Plato, the _Symposium_ is the
most perfect in form,--more than any other Platonic dialogue, it is
Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty "as of a statue."'
Special care, therefore, should have been taken in presenting it
accurately to the English reader. Turn we now to the _Phædo_,--that
remarkable essay, which has exercised more influence than some are
willing to suppose on all subsequent theology, and which, though of
little weight as an argument in _proof_ of the immortality of the
soul, is of such special interest as standing alone among the writings
of the age in advocating anything approaching to the Christian idea of
a good man's hopes and prospects of a happy existence hereafter. For
even Aristotle, it is well known, in a professed treatise on the laws
and ends that influence men's action (the 'Ethics'), in no case
appeals to moral responsibility, obedience to Divine commands, or the
hopes of a happy eternity. He does not seem to rise above the
conception of the half-conscious Homeric ghost or εἴδωλον wandering
disconsolate in the shades below. And even of this state of existence
he speaks doubtfully (Eth. i. ch. x.) In this treatise, the _Phædo_,
we may say at once, and with pleasure, Mr. Jowett has given us a
tolerably close, as well as a fairly accurate rendering throughout. It
is hard indeed to believe that the two dialogues can have been
translated by the same hand. Let us cite, as a good example, the
following extract (p. 66, B.):--
'And when they consider all this, must not true
philosophers make a reflection, of which they will speak to
one another in such words as these: We have found, they
will say, a path of speculation which seems to bring us and
the argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the
body, and while the soul is mingled with this mass of evil,
our desire will not be satisfied, and our desire is of the
truth? For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by
reason of the mere requirement of food; and also is liable
to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search
after truth, and by filling us as full of loves, and lusts,
and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly,
prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a
thought. For whence come wars, and fightings, and
factions--whence, but from the lusts of the body? For wars
are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be
acquired for the sake and in the service of the body; and
in consequence of all these things, the time which ought to
be given to philosophy is lost. Moreover, if there is time,
and an inclination towards philosophy, yet the body
introduces a turmoil, and confusion, and fears into the
course of speculation, and hinders us from seeing the
truth; and all experience shows that if we would have pure
knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body, and the
soul in herself must behold all things in themselves; then,
I suppose, that we shall attain that which we desire, and
of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom: not
while we live, but after death, as the argument shows; for
if, while in company with the body, the soul cannot have
pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow--either
knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all,
after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be
in herself alone and without the body.'
There is not a word we could wish altered in the above, except,
indeed, that 'a path of speculation which seems to bring us _and the
argument_ to the conclusion,' should rather have been, 'a kind of path
which carries us on, _with reason for our guide_ (μετὰ τοῦ λόγου), in
the speculation.' A little below (67, B.), μὴ καθαρῷ καθαροῦ
ἐφάπτεσθαι, is not exactly, 'no impure thing is allowed to approach
the pure'--a version that savours too much of the language of
Christian theology--but, 'to realize the pure with that faculty which
is not itself pure,' _i.e._, with νοῦς not entirely dissociated from
σῶμα. The abstract, he says, cannot be realized by the intellect while
bound up with the concrete. In p. 80, B., τὸ νοητὸν and τὸ ἀνόητον are
not 'the intelligible and the unintelligible;' nor, in p. 81, D., is
τὸ ὁρατὸν, 'sight.' Everyone knows that τὰ αἰσθητὰ, 'the sensuous,' or
things which are the objects of sense, are opposed to τὰ νοητὰ, those
which are abstract, and can be realized only by the mind; and a soul,
or ghost, is said μετέχειν τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, not as 'cloyed with sight,' but
as 'having yet something of the visible,' or concrete, _i.e._, some
lingering remnants of _body_, which render it visible.
The passage in p. 82, E., is rather difficult, and has been
misunderstood by others. Mr. Jowett's rendering is, 'the soul is only
able to view existence through the bars of a prison, and not in her
own nature; she is wallowing in the mire of all ignorance; and
philosophy, seeing the horrible nature of her confinement, and that
the captive through desire is led to conspire in her own captivity,'
&c. We think that τοῦ εἱργμοῦ ἡ δεινότης means, 'the strong tie, or
hold, that the prison--_i.e._, the body--has on the soul;' and that
ὅτι δι' ἐπιθυμίας ἐστὶ means, 'that it, the prison, is actually
_liked_.' Thus, says Plato, attached as the soul is to the allurements
and pleasures of the body, the latter 'helps the captive to remain in
captivity.' Thus, in Æsch., Prom. v. 39:
Τὸ συγγενές τοι δεινὸν ἥ θ' ὁμιλία,
and elsewhere, δεινὸν, 'a serious matter,' is opposed to φαῦλον, what
is trifling and unimportant.
On the whole, this version of the _Phædo_ is well and carefully
executed. As a treatise, it is of the highest interest, if only from
the firm belief it everywhere shows in the immortality of the soul--a
belief which is nothing short of a real faith, and which seems almost
to _labour_ at demonstration by varied and often very subtle
arguments, as if the writer was half conscious, all the while, that
demonstration in such a matter is quite beyond the province either of
logic or physics. But 'dialectics' were thought equal to any
difficulty. Says Cebes (p. 72, E.), 'Yes, I entirely think so; we are
not walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief
that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that _the living
spring from the dead_; and that the souls of the dead are in
existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the
evil.' In this remarkable passage we recognise the same sublime faith
which gave birth to the ecstatic exclamation, 'I _know_ that my
Redeemer liveth,' and also the germs of the doctrine of a Resurrection
in τὸ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι τοὺς τεθνηκότας. No pagan writer before Plato had
attained to such exalted ideas of the destiny of a good man, _to be
with God_ in the life hereafter. He is full of hope, Socrates says (p.
63, B.), that he shall meet in the other world the wise and the good
who have departed hence before him, and still more sure that he shall
go to those blessed beings whom (with his usual acquiescence in the
popular mythology) he calls ἀγαθοὶ δεσπόται. The doctrine of
Resurrection is not really distinct from that of Metempsychosis, both
being in fact held by Orphic or Pythagorean teachers (ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος,
p. 70, C.), as was that of a final judgment, often insisted on by
Plato, as by Pindar and Æschylus before him. The fixed notion with the
ancient physicists was, that _soul_ (ψυχὴ, or vitality) was air
(πνεῦμα, _spiritus_, _animus_, ἄνεμος),--for all turn upon this
notion. When a person died, his last gasp was supposed to be the vital
air or soul leaving the body, and departing into its kindred and
eternal ether. The air, in fact, was thought to be full of souls; and
each nascent form, whether of man or animal, in drawing its first
breath, might inhale _a life_, _i.e._, the actual ψυχὴ that had
animated some former body. Hence arose the notion of cycles of
existence, of more or less duration, and of triple lives of probation
on earth (Pind. ol. ii. 68). This doctrine of a return to earth after
some period of residence in Hades is plainly affirmed, _Phæd._, p.
107, E., and 113, A., and _Phædr._, p. 249. One of the penalties of a
misspent life was thought to be a detention on earth in an inferior
and grovelling state of existence. 'If we tell the wicked' (says
Socrates in _Theætetus_, p. 177, A.) 'that if they do not get rid of
that cleverness of theirs, that place which is pure and free from evil
will never receive them after they are dead, but that here on earth
they will have to pass an existence like to themselves--bad
associating with bad; all this they will hear as the language of fools
addressed to men of cunning and genius.'
The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the
soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (_Phæd._, p. 70, A.), 'the
moment it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a
puff of wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical
value attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the
seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things
abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded
as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous force
and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no idea.
In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than
ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, B.), 'the soul is
really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect
of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the
danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear
to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would
have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily
quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with
their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal,
there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of
the highest virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην
γενέσθαι).' Life, then, according to Plato, should be a constant
process of assimilation to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, _Theæt._, p. 176, B.), a
discipline and a learning how to die (_Phæd._, p. 67, D.), because God
is the type and fount as it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth.
'The release from evil,' ἀποφυγὴ κακῶν, was a favourite topic with
Plato, whose mind had received a strongly cynical impression from the
prevalent selfishness and injustice of the Athenians, and especially
from the crowning act of fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in
putting Socrates to death. That, in his view, was simply to extinguish
truth, to banish justice, to ignore intellectuality, reason, and
philosophy as the guides of life. His speculations on the _origin_ of
evil, and the permission of its existence on earth, are very
interesting. In the grand passage (_Theætet._, p. 176, A.), he thinks
that its existence, as a correlative of good, is a necessary law,
_i.e._, there would be no such thing as _good_ if it were not in
contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of cold only by the
opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted state of life.
But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit--the Semitic doctrine of a
Satan--as the personal author of evil. In _Republ._, ii. p. 379, C.,
he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is more of
evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all things
that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for _some other causes'_
(ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan mind did
not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan nations had
no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235). Of penal
abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea; in truth,
the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, _Phædr._, p. 249, A.; τὸ
τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, _Gorg._, p. 523, B.), as well as
of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into the
other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners respectively
go. (_Gorg._, p. 526, B.) So _Phædo_, p. 113, D.:--
'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of
each severally conveys them, first of all, they have
sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and
piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither
well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and mount such
conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the
lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil
deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have
done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards
of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those
who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of
their crimes--who have committed many and terrible deeds of
sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like--such are
hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and
_they never come out_.' (Jowett, p. 464.)
The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of
the _Republic_.
Thinkers will not be deterred from asking themselves, with all
solemnity and in all love of truth, How far is this doctrine of a hell
really a revealed truth, or a Platonic speculation, or both? If it is
both one and the other, either Plato anticipated Christian Revelation,
or Revelation confirmed Plato. Plato, without doubt, did not _invent_
a doctrine which was familiar to the Semitic theology long before him.
Still, it may be true that the Platonic theories are totally
independent of Jewish traditions, and that the belief in a penal state
of existence after death (so clearly developed in the well-known
passage of Virgil, _Æn._, vi. 735, _seq._), like that of a last
Judgment, had its origin rather in the speculation of mystics, and
passed into the popular theology of Christian teachers. The doctrine
of retribution for sin (τίσις) may be clearly traced to the
Pythagorean dogma δράσαντι παθεῖν, so often insisted upon by
Æschylus,--'the doer must suffer.' It was manifest to all, that such
suffering was no rule upon earth, since many villains escaped
scot-free; and therefore a filling up of the measure hereafter was
thought a necessary condition for the sinner. The beneficence of
Christianity consisted primarily in this, that it held out a hope that
such a debt of suffering could be paid vicariously; whereas the only
hope of release held out by Plato (p. 114, A.) was the forgiveness of
the persons who had been wronged on earth. This ancient idea of a
stern law of reciprocity, 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'
is distinctly attributed by Aristotle, who calls it τὸ ἀντιπεπονθὸς,
to Pythagoras, Eth. N. V. ch. 8. Be this as it may, it is a very
interesting fact that Plato, the first writer of pagan antiquity who
describes a bright, supernal heaven, the abode of gods and blessed men
who hold converse with them, and a dismal, infernal abode of fire
(_Phædo_, p. 110-113,) derives all his imagery in describing the
latter from the effects of volcanic outbreaks, to which he even
definitely compares it (p. 111, D.) His description of heaven, which
in the _Phædrus_ (p. 247, C.) he places far above the sky, the
ὑπερουράνιος τόπος, with some reference to the Hesiodic doctrine of a
supernal firmament or floor, in the _Phædo_ is a singular compound of
the Homeric Olympus and the Elysium and Isles of the Blest in the
legends of the earlier poets. Those legends placed Elysium below, and
the Isles of the Blest _on_ the earth. Plato's heaven is on the earth
indeed, but on a part of it elevated far above the Mediterranean
basin, where, he says, men live in a comparatively dim and misty
atmosphere. His account suggests the idea that he had heard some
tradition of the healthy and prosperous life of the natives on the
sunny slopes of the giant Himalaya mountains. But Plato's heaven is
also, to a considerable extent, the heaven of the Revelation. Both are
described in very materialistic terms. To this day, the popular notion
of heaven is undoubtedly associated with saints in white garments,
crowns and thrones of gold and gems, music, brightness, and eternal
hallelujahs. One little coincidence between the Platonic and the
Apocalyptic account is too remarkable to be omitted. In Plato (p. 110,
D.) we are told that, besides silver and gold, heaven is spangled with
gems of which earthly gems are but fragments, σάρδια τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας
καὶ σμαράγδους. In the fourth chapter of the Revelation (ver. 3) we
read, ἰδοὺ θρόνος ἔκειτο ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου καθήμενος·
καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἦν ὅμοιος ὁράσει λίθῳ ἰάσπιδι καὶ σαρδίνῳ (al.
σαρδίῳ)· καὶ ἶρις κυκλόθεν τοῦ θρόνου ὅμοιος ὁράσει σμαραγδίνῳ.
Scarcely less remarkable is the coincidence of the _four rivers_ that
surround the abode of shades in the under world (_Phædo_, p. 112, E.),
and the four rivers that encompassed the 'Garden of Eden' (Genesis ii.
10-14). As for the river Acheron and the Acherusian lake, not only
does the word contain, like _Achelöus_, the root _aq_, water, but the
involved notion of ἄχος, 'grief,' suggested its fitness as
an infernal river, not less than the Κώκυτος, named from
groans. The disappearance of a river in a chasm or 'swallow,' like the
Styx in Arcadia and the Erasinus in Argolis, also gave credibility to
the existence of infernal rivers, as much as volcanic ebullitions
seemed to be proofs of subterranean fire lakes. But it is rather
curious that a geographical identity in name should exist between the
Acherusian lake and river in Thesprotia (Thucyd., i. 46), and the
semi-mythical lake and river in the above passages of the _Phædo_. The
tendency to localize adits to the regions below was very strong; so
the lake Avernus, and the promontory of Tænarus, and the καταῤῥάκτης ὀδὸς
at Colonus (Soph. Œd. Col. 1590) were all regarded with awe as places
giving direct communication with the shades below.
The simple but very touching narrative of the death of Socrates at the
conclusion of the dialogue, sets forth in golden words the calm
resignation, the perfect faith and happiness of the death of a truly
good man. The brevity and want of detail in the last scene is very
remarkable. Mr. Jowett gives it thus:--
'Socrates alone retained his calmness. What is this strange
outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that
they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a
man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience.
When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our
tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs
began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to
the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and
then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he
pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel, and
he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards,
and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them
himself, and said, When the poison reaches the heart, that
will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the
groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered
himself up, and said (they were his last words)--he said,
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay
the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there
anything else? There was no answer to this question: but in
a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants
uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes
and mouth.'
We will make bold to observe on this celebrated passage, that it bears
the impress of a dramatic scene rather than of a history. That Plato
himself was not present as an eye-witness is expressly told us at the
beginning of the dialogue (p. 59, B.) The narrative, to say nothing of
the improbability of the execution of a distinguished criminal taking
place before a company of friends at a social meeting, seems to us
framed in ignorance of the medical nature of either narcotic or
alkaloid poisons, and to have been compiled to suit the popular
notions of the effects of κώνειον (whether the word means 'hemlock' or
some other compound drug). The idea was, as is clear from the verse in
the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes--
εὐθὺς γὰρ ἀποπήγνυσι τἀντικνήμια,--
that death by this poison was caused by a gradual _freezing up_, or
suspension of vital power, beginning at the lower extremities, and
creeping up to the heart. Whether a vigorous old man would die in this
easy, gradual, and painless way by any known poison, is a medical
question we should like to see answered. It may be observed, too, that
if the poison were a narcotic, like laudanum, the 'walking about' was
precisely the wrong course to take. _That_ is the method specially
adopted to prevent and counteract the numbness caused by an overdose
of morphia or laudanum. That Socrates was really poisoned, there can
be no doubt; but the deed was probably done, as we think, in the
darkness of a prison, and the Platonic scene was invented to give a
vivid picture of the grand old man's calmness and dignity to the last.
Be this as it may, it may be fairly assumed that the deep injustice of
the Athenian republic in thus removing from a scene of usefulness, and
of harmless, if somewhat unpopular banter, this great teacher, rankled
very deeply in the heart of Plato. It is the real source of that most
favourite of all topics, that theme on which all his disquisitions on
moral worth turn--ἀδικία, or injustice. This may be called the
key-note of the _Republic_, as it is, in fact, of the _Gorgias_ and
the _Protagoras_, not to mention the very numerous passages in other
dialogues. Plato is ever fond of putting in the mouth either of
Socrates or his friends passages which he could hardly have uttered,
for they have a clear reference to the want of success in his
'Apologia' at the trial, through the non-use of clap-trap, δημηγορία,
and ῥητορική. (See _Gorgias_, p. 486, A.; _Theætet._, p. 172, C., 174,
C.) Modern writers on morals or casuistry do not, directly, at least,
take _injustice_ as the basis of all their teaching, even though, in a
sense, all vice is a form of injustice, either to oneself or one's
neighbour. The fate of Socrates, and the reasons of it, bear some
analogy to the unpopularity and harsh treatment which great moral
reformers have received in almost every country and under every form
of government. The alleged interference both in public and private
affairs, the resistance to popular indulgences and vicious pleasures,
and the persistent _lecturing_ men of deadened conscience, are more
than human nature is prepared to stand, if pressed beyond a certain
point. In the _Theætetus_ (p. 149, A.), Socrates sums up the popular
odium against himself in these words: 'They say of me that I am an
exceedingly strange being, who drives men to their wits' end;' and in
the _Apology_ he distinctly traces the διαβολὴ, or misrepresentation
of his motives and practices, to the ridicule brought upon him (some
twenty years before) by the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes. But the real
cause of his unpopularity was the fearless way in which he told
unpalatable truths: as that men should care for their souls more than
for their money, and that a life without self-examination was not
worth the living, ὁ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (_Apol._, p.
29, E., 36, C., 38, A.) This was stronger doctrine, at least so far as
concerns the preference of money to all religious cares, than could
safely be preached now-a-days from a pulpit in London. We remember the
case of a clergyman being quite recently bemobbed and rather roughly
treated because he attempted to do so. No! the sophist and the
Christian moralist alike must give way when resistance to the career
of human feeling is pressed too far, just as a river will surmount or
wash away altogether the dam constructed to check its course.
Before parting with the _Phædo_, we must be allowed to cite one
passage, describing the earlier career of Socrates as a philosopher,
because it has always seemed to us the true key to the understanding
of the widely different views taken by Aristophanes and Plato of the
real character of Socrates. The passage occurs in p. 96, A., and is
rendered by Mr. Jowett thus:
'When I was young, Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know
that department of philosophy which is called Natural
Science; this appeared to me to have lofty aims, as being
the science which has to do with the causes of things, and
which teaches why a thing is, and is created and destroyed;
and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of
such questions as these: Is the growth of animals the
result of some decay which the hot and cold principle
[principles] contract, as some have said? Is the blood the
element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or
perhaps nothing of this sort--but the brain may be the
originating power of the perceptions of hearing, and sight,
and smell, and memory, and opinion may come from them, and
science may be based on memory and opinion when no longer
in motion, but at rest.... Then I heard (p. 97, B.) some
one who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which
he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I
was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared
admirable, and I said to myself, If mind is the disposer,
mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular
in the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to
find out the cause of the generation or destruction or
existence of anything, he must find out what state of being
or suffering or doing was best for that thing, and
therefore a man had only to consider the best for himself
and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that
the same science comprised both. And I rejoiced to think
that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of
existence such as I desired, and I imagined that he would
tell me first whether the earth is flat or round; and then
he would further explain the cause and the necessity of
this, and would teach me the nature of the best, and show
that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in
the centre, he would explain that this position was the
best, and I should be satisfied if this were shown to me,
and not want any other sort of cause.'
Now this avowal on the part of Socrates, that in his earlier career he
was a follower of the physical philosophers, goes far to explain
several important points. In the first place, it explains to us the
propriety, and in some sense the _justice_, of Aristophanes' sketch of
Socrates, some twenty years earlier than we know of the philosopher's
mind from Plato, viz., as a speculator on meteorics after the fashion
of Anaxagoras himself, a star-gazer, a lecturer on clouds and thunder
and circling motions, rain and mist, and phenomena celestial and
subterranean. We know, indeed, from Diogenes Laertius, ii. 4, that
Socrates had been a hearer of Archelaus, himself a pupil of
Anaxagoras. And thus we understand why Socrates was identified with
the other sophists or schoolmen of the day, who taught 'wisdom'
generally, ethics not less than physics. As subverters of the
established traditions about the gods, and exponents of truth to the
best of their knowledge, they met with the same opposition and the
same obloquy, in their day, that the Huxleys and the Darwins, and
other conspicuous men of our own times, are not wholly exempt from.
Their teaching was thought to be 'latitudinarian,' and so they were
credited with many views from which they would have recoiled with
horror. In the _Nubes_ (902), Socrates is charged with denying the
existence of justice, and defending the proposition by the example of
the gods, who themselves set it at nought, as when Zeus maltreated and
imprisoned his own father, Cronus; and in the same play (1415), the
lawfulness of a son beating his father is maintained as a part of the
new-fangled Socratic creed. Now in the second book of the _Republic_
(p. 377, _fin._), this case of Cronus is expressly repudiated by
Socrates as monstrous and unnatural; as also the doctrine that a son
may lawfully beat his own father for wrong-doing. In a very curious
passage of the 'Wasps' (1037), Aristophanes bitterly blames the
Athenians for not having supported him in putting down the _nuisance_
of the philosophers, whom he calls ἠπίαλοι and πυρετοὶ, 'agues' and
'fevers,' teachers of parricide, and base informers. By not giving the
prize, he says, to his play of the 'Clouds,' only the year before,
they had frustrated all his hopes of crushing and extinguishing the
philosophers. Now, these philosophers are represented as headed by
Socrates, and Socrates was the very worst of them. That he was at that
period (about twenty years before his death) essentially a sophist,
and incurring with the rest of them the odium of the popular opinion,
seems undeniable. The precise views that he held on ethics, and
consequently the exact nature of his teaching at that period, we have
no other means of knowing. But it seems inconceivable that
Aristophanes should have so grossly misrepresented his character with
the slightest chance of success; and we know that it was his ardent
desire that his play of the 'Clouds' should succeed. On the whole, we
should say, there is a greater chance that Aristophanes truly
represented the feeling of his age about Socrates than Plato, who, at
best, gives us the Socrates as endeared to his private friends--the
man of matured thought, and possibly of much altered and more
chastened views. Nor ought we to forget that Plato is as severe
against the Sophists generally as Aristophanes is against Socrates in
particular. All high teaching at Athens--all that we include in the
idea of a college education--was done by the Sophists. The art of
ῥητορικὴ was one of the most important: we can see the effect of the
training incidentally in the style and the speeches of Euripides and
Thucydides. Socrates saw that the ethical principles of the Sophists
were wrong, and he engaged in the dangerous task of trying to reform
them.
But secondly, the Platonic passage gives us a clue to that sympathy
which Socrates, or at least Plato, always shows for the Eleatic school
of philosophy as represented by Zeno and Parmenides. 'Of all the
pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato speaks of the Eleatic with the
greatest respect,' says Mr. Jowett (Preface to _Philebus_, p. 227).
That school was a reaction from the teaching of the Ionic physicists,
Thales, Anaximenes, and others, who were speculators on natural
phenomena without any true system of induction. Anaxagoras' doctrine
of Νοῦς, or pervading intelligence, though purely a pantheistic one,
stood half-way between the two schools. Xenocrates, the founder of the
Eleatics, taught that Creation emanated from a One Being, and not from
a fortuitous concurrence of atoms, from water or air, or states of
repose, or flux, or any other mere physical reason. In the Philebus
(p. 28, C., and p. 30, D.) we find an express eulogy and sympathy with
Anaxagoras, whose views were in truth much more adapted to the
doctrine of ἰδέαι and abstractions than the materialistic views of the
Ionic school. And in the _Parmenides_, one of the most obscure of the
Platonic dialogues, the discussions on τὸ ἓν, The One, and the
relations of the real to the phenomenal, though a great advance over
the Eleatic doctrines, which, as Mr. Jowett says, 'had not gone beyond
the contradictions of matter, motion, space, and the like' (Introd.
_Parmen._, p. 234), still are based on the views of Zeno in the main.
Parmenides, indeed, was 'the founder of idealism, and also of
dialectic, or, in modern phraseology, of metaphysics and logic.'
(_Ibid._)
We proceed now to the _Theætetus_, one of the most important, as well
as difficult, of the Platonic dialogues. To this Mr. Jowett has
written a rather long but excellent Introduction, replete with large
views of the Platonic philosophy, and containing many original and
striking remarks, _e.g._ (p. 329): 'The Greeks, in the fourth century
before Christ, had no words for "subject" and "object," and no
distinct conception of them; yet they were always hovering about the
question involved in them.' (We should be inclined to say, that the
familiar distinction between τὰ νοητὰ and τὰ αἰσθητὰ, to a considerable
extent represented our terms 'subjective' and 'objective.') Again (p.
328): 'The writings of Plato belong to an age in which the power of
analysis had outrun the means of knowledge; and through a spurious use
of dialectic, the distinctions which had been already "won from the
void and formless infinite," seemed to be rapidly returning to their
original chaos.' And (p. 353), 'The relativity of knowledge' (viz., to
the individual mind) 'is a truism to us, but was a great psychological
discovery in the fifth century before Christ.' In p. 360 the remark is
a shrewd one: 'The ancient philosophers in the age of Plato thought of
science' (_i.e._, ἐπιστήμη, exact knowledge) 'only as pure
abstraction, and to this _opinion_ (δόξα) stood in no relation.' The
subject of _Theætetus_, 'What _is_ knowledge?' involving, as it
doubtless does, some satire on Sophists, who professed to teach what
they were themselves unable to explain, has been well called 'A
critical history of Greek psychology as it existed down to the fourth
century.' In this treatise, the views of the earlier philosophers,
that there is no test of existence or reality except perception,
αἴσθησις, are impugned. Plato did not, perhaps, himself hold the
opinion that objective truth existed, independently of opinion; but
his favourite theory of ἰδέαι, or abstracts, implied the existence of
_some_ typical, eternal, absolute standard of goodness and justice, as
well as of the beautiful. If this were not the case, then all moral as
well as all physical οὐσίαι would depend on our sense of them. There
would be no φύσει δίκαιον, but only νόμῳ δίκαιον. That would be right
in every state which the laws enacted; and thus in two neighbouring
states one course of acting (say, lying or stealing, or promiscuous
intercourse) would be right, because it is legalised; in another it
would be wrong, because punishable by the law. Nor is this difficulty
wholly imaginary, as Aristotle felt. (Eth. Nic. V. ch. 7.) The old
law, for instance, sanctioned polygamy, as modern usage does in some
parts of the East; while the law of Europe condemns it. So in the case
of murder: a Greek thought it a solemn and absolute duty to slay the
slayer of his father; while we should regard it as one murder added to
another. There was a good deal of sense therefore in what Protagoras
taught, that 'man is the measure,' μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. If I feel it hot,
it _is_ hot to me; if cold, then it _is_ cold: or if wine tastes sour,
or bitter, because my digestion is in an abnormal state, then to me it
_is_ sour or bitter; and it is no use to argue with me that it is not,
but you must set right my disordered stomach, and then the wine will
taste as it should. Apply this doctrine to the diversities of
religious belief; the Christian says the Buddhist and the Mahommedan
are wrong; and each of these retort the same on the Christian and on
each other. A thing cannot be absolutely true _merely_ because this or
that party asserts it, which is but a 'petitio principii.' Protagoras
would have said, had he lived much later, and not altogether absurdly,
'If this form of religion is one that you embrace from conviction, and
with entire faith in it, then to you it _is_ true.' And after saying
this to the Christian, he would have turned to the Buddhist and the
Mahommedan, and have repeated the same formula to each.
Now Plato, to make the victory over Protagoras more complete, first
shows, in the _Theætetus_, that he, Protagoras, by his doctrine of
μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, virtually holds the same opinion as those (1) who
make αἴσθησις the sole test of truth; (2) who, like Heraclitus, allow
of no fixed existence, but hold that πάντα γίγνεται, states of things
are always _coming into being_, because everything is in a state of
perpetual flux. For it is evident that each of these views denies any
permanent, stable, or objective existence of anything. Even a
momentary perception is a fleeting sensation, not a true and real
sense. While I say this paper is 'white,' _some_ discoloration of it
occurred while the monosyllable was being pronounced, and therefore it
was not true that the paper was _absolutely_ white. It appears to us
that the question which Mr. Jowett moots as a difficulty in his
Introduction (p. 326) is not really very important: 'Would Protagoras
have identified his own thesis, "Man is the measure of all things,"
with the other, "All knowledge is sensible perception?" Secondly,
would he have based the relativity of knowledge on the Heraclitean
flux?' The latter, we think, Protagoras clearly does, when he says (p.
168, B.) ἵλεῳ τῇ διανοίᾳ ξυγκαθεὶς ὡς ἀληθῶς σκέψει, τί ποτε λέγομεν
κινεῖσθαί τε ἀποφαινόμενοι τὰ πάντα τό τε δοκοῦν ἑκάστῳ τοῦτο καὶ
εἶναι ἰδιώτῃ τε καὶ πόλει. To us it appears that Plato classed them
together, simply because they are logically coherent and inseparable.
He insists that all sensations imply a patient and an agent. Fire does
not burn if there is nothing for it to consume. Colour is non-existent
(being a mere effect of light), unless there is an eye to behold it.
That indeed is true, and Epicurus and Lucretius also perceived (Lucr.,
ii. 795) that three conditions are wanted to produce colour--viz.,
light, an object to be seen, and an eye to see it. It is quite true,
that a person sees a red or a blue cloth on a table while he looks at
it, but that when he turns his back upon it, it has _no_ colour,
because one of the three conditions, the sight, has been withdrawn.
Mr. Jowett seems, however (with the disciples of a modern school), to
press this doctrine of relativity too far in asserting (Introd., p.
332), 'There would be no world, if there neither were, nor never had
been, any one to perceive the world.' For we cannot escape from the
conclusion that the world must have existed (in the sense in which we
know of existence) prior to life, _i.e._, any perceptive faculty,
being placed upon it.
What appears to have struck Plato most strongly in considering the
doctrine of Protagoras was this--that if everybody is right, or as
right as any other, all reasoning, argument, persuasion, in fine, the
whole science of dialectics, becomes _ipso facto_ useless and absurd
(p. 161, E.) There are no such characters as _wise_ and _foolish_.
Protagoras himself felt the difficulty, but evaded it thus: the wise
man is not one who tries to argue a person out of his convictions,
_e.g._, that justice is only tyranny, or that sweet is bitter, but who
so trains and educates the mind or appetite that the sounder and
better view will spontaneously present itself. Thus a good sophist or
a wise legislator will endeavour so to educate and so to govern, that
right and reasonable views will approve themselves to the people.
Again, in judging of what will be good or useful in the end, sagacity
is needed, which clearly is not the property of everyone alike. A
thing is right or wrong only as individual conviction or the law of a
State makes it so for the time being; but in advising a certain course
of action, where result, and therefore, forethought are involved, one
counsellor may be greatly superior to another (p. 172). Hence, as
legislation is prospective, it is not true that one man's opinion as
to the wisdom or expediency of a measure is as good as another's; but
there are some things at least in which one man's must be better than
another's judgment.
It was thus that Protagoras endeavoured to reconcile the obvious fact
that some men were more clever than others, with the theory that all
morality is based on mere human opinion. And those persons would take
a very shallow view who think that all this is merely an ingenious
quibbling. The difficulties which Protagoras attempted to solve are
real ones, and only thinkers know to what extent all questions, both
of religion and casuistry, are bound up with them.
We proceed to perform, somewhat in brief, the less agreeable task of
showing that Mr. Jowett's version of the _Theætetus_, though always
fluent and pleasant to read, is not always as accurate as might have
been desired.
In p. 149, A., Socrates playfully asks Theætetus if he has never heard
that he, Socrates, is the son of a midwife, by name, Phænaretè, μάλα
γενναίας τε καὶ βλοσυρᾶς, 'a sour-faced old lady,' we should say. Mr.
Jowett somewhat oddly renders this phrase, a 'midwife, brave and
burly.' The epithets mean something very different. The first is an
ironical allusion to the humble station of the professional midwife,
the latter to the alarm which her presence might inspire in the
timid.... For βλοσυρὸν is something that shocks and causes terror, as in
Æschylus, Suppl. 813; Eumen. 161. To this real or supposed parentage
of the philosopher, a joke is directed by Aristophanes in the _Nubes_,
137--
καὶ φροντίδ' ἐξήμβλωκας ἐξευρημένην.
Perhaps also the Φαιναρέτη in Acharn. 49, may have reference to this
person. In p. 151, B., προσφέρου πρὸς ἐμὲ is not 'come to me,' but
'behave towards me,' 'deal with me.' And in p. 156, A., ἀντίτυποι
ἄνθρωποι are not 'repulsive' mortals (at least, according to our
established use of the word), but 'refractory,' 'men on whom one can
make no impression,' but from whom a blow rebounds as a hammer does
from an anvil. Antisthenes and the cynical party seem to be meant. In
p. 156, D., we come to a very obscure passage. Mr. Jowett's version
is, 'And the slower elements have their motions in the same place and
about things near them, and thus beget; but the things begotten are
quicker, for their motions are from place to place.' This is not very
intelligible. For ἡ κίνησις, it seems to us that we should read ἡ
γένεσις. The figure of speech is taken from the notion of sexual
contact, and by πρὸς τὰ πλησιάζοντα τὴν κίνησιν ἴσχει, Socrates seems
to mean that certain impressions or objects meet certain senses,
_e.g._, sounds the ear, scents the nose, objects the eye, but
severally 'have their rate of motion according to the speed of those
faculties with which they naturally unite;' but, he adds, the
sensations of hearing, smelling, seeing are more instantaneously
perceived, when once produced, because the γένεσις or production of
such sensation takes place ἐν φορᾷ, while the αἴσθησις and the
αἰσθητὸν are moving in space towards each other, and thus, as it were,
the offspring partakes of the speed of the parents. In plain words,
sight and sound and smell are produced at very different intervals of
time, but are equally sudden sensations _when_ produced; and even
those which are more slowly generated are as quickly felt. (Compare
Aristot., Eth. x. ch. iii. s. 4. πάσῃ (κινήσει) γὰρ οἰκεῖον εἶναι
δοκεῖ τάχος καὶ βραδυτής.) In p. 159, D., ἡ γλυκύτης πρὸς τοῦ οἴνου
περὶ αὐτὸν φερομένη seems to us to mean, the sense of sweetness from
the wine moving to and coming upon _the patient_,' τὸν πάσχοντα
(unless, indeed, we should read περὶ αὐτὴν, _i.e._, γλῶσσαν, which
would render the meaning rather clearer). Mr. Jowett's version is,
'the quality of sweetness which arises out of, and is moving about the
wine.' Just below, περὶ δὲ τὸν οἶνον γιγνομένην καὶ φερομένην
πικρότητα, the words καὶ φερομένην read very like an interpolation, as
an attentive consideration of the passage, we think, will show.
In p. 161, A., we come upon some rather loose rendering. Theætetus
asks Socrates whether he has not been all along speaking in irony, and
whether, having proved that black is white, he is not prepared equally
to prove that white is black. This, of course, is a playful satire on
his skill in dialectics. The words ἀλλὰ πρὸς θεῶν εἰπὲ, ἦ αὖ οὐχ οὕτως
ἔχει, literally mean, 'But tell me in heaven's name, is not all this,
on the other hand, _not_ so?' And so just below, Socrates says, 'You
are, indeed, a lover of arguments and a worthy good soul, my
Theodorus, for thinking that I am a mere bag of words, and can easily
bring them out when wanted, and prove that, on the other hand, these
things are _not_ so.' In the very next words, τὸ δὲ γιγνόμενον οὐκ
ἐννοεῖς, there is a joke, and not a bad one, on the doctrine, οὐδὲν
ἔστιν ἀλλὰ πάντα γίγνεται. Mr. Jowett's version of the whole passage
seems rather careless: 'But I should like to know, Socrates, by heaven
I should, whether you mean to say that all this is untrue? Socrates:
You are fond of argument, Theodorus, and now you innocently fancy that
I am a bag full of arguments, and can easily pull one out which will
prove the reverse of all this. But you do not see that in reality none
of these arguments come from me. They all come from him who talks with
me. I only know just enough to extract them from the wisdom of
another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness.' The last words,
ἀποδέξασθαι μετρίως, more accurately mean, 'to take it from its parent
fairly well,' _i.e._, as a theme for discussion. The phrase μητρόθεν
δέχεσθαι, said of the nurse taking a newly-born infant, is playfully
alluded to.
In p. 161, C., Mr. Jowett's version but poorly represents the real
sense of a keenly ironical passage:--'Then, when we were reverencing
him as a god, he might have condescended to inform us that he was no
wiser than a tadpole, and did not even aspire to be a man: would not
this have produced an overpowering effect?' The exact words of Plato
are these: 'In which case he would have commenced his address to us in
grand style, and very contemptuously, by letting us see that we have
been looking up to him, as to a god, for his wisdom, while he all the
time was in no degree superior, in respect of intelligence, to a
tadpole, not to say to any other man.' The point is, that if
Protagoras had commenced his work entitled 'Truth,' with the
proposition, 'A pig is the measure of all things' (_i.e._, the
standard by which feelings and notions are to be tested), 'he would
have well shown his contempt of men who foolishly took _him_ for an
authority.' Of course the very object and heart's desire of Protagoras
in writing such a book was to be thought supremely clever. Hence the
irony is apparent.