PLATO (_continued_)
_Metaphysics and psychology--Reason and pleasure--Criticism of the
ideas--Last ideals_
We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as a
whole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, having
less of vivid characterisation, less humour, less dramatic interest,
less perfect construction in every way, but, on the other hand,
peculiarly interesting as presenting a kind of after-criticism of his
own philosophy. In them Plato brings his philosophic conceptions into
striking relation with earlier or rival theories such as the Eleatic,
the Megarian, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and touches in these
connections on many problems of deep and permanent import.
The most remarkable feature in these later dialogues is the
disappearance, or even in some cases the apparently hostile criticism,
of the doctrine of Ideas, and consequently of Reminiscence as the
source of knowledge, and even, apparently, of Personal {155}
Immortality, so far as the doctrine of Reminiscence was imagined to
guarantee it. This, however, is perhaps to push the change of view too
far. We may say that Plato in these dialogues is rather the
psychologist than the metaphysician; he is attempting a revised
analysis of mental processes. From this point of view it was quite
intelligible that he should discover difficulties in his former theory
of our mental relation to the external reality, without therefore
seeing reason to doubt the existence of that reality. The position is
somewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to think
out the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty and
Over-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychological
difficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the other
as facts.
Throughout Plato's philosophy, amidst every variation of expression, we
may take these three as practically fixed points of belief or of faith,
or at least of hope; _first_, that Mind is eternally master of the
universe; _second_, that Man in realising what is most truly himself is
working in harmony with the Eternal Mind, and is in this way a master
of nature, reason governing experience and not being a product of
experience; and _thirdly_ (as Socrates said before his judges), that at
death we go to powers who are wise and good, and to men departed who in
their day shared in the divine wisdom and goodness,--that, in short,
there is something remaining for the dead, and better for those that
have done good than for those that have done evil.
The first of the 'psychological dialogues,' as we have called them, is
the _Philebus_. The question here is of the _summum bonum_ or chief
good. What is it? Is it pleasure? Is it wisdom? Or is it both? In
the process of answering these questions Plato lays down rules for true
definition, and establishes classifications which had an immense
influence on his successor Aristotle, but which need not be further
referred to here.
The general gist of the argument is as follows. Pleasure could not be
regarded as a sufficient or perfect good if it was entirely emptied of
the purely intellectual elements of anticipation and consciousness and
memory. This would be no better than the pleasure of an oyster. On
the other hand, a purely intellectual existence can hardly be regarded
as perfect and sufficient either. The perfect life must be a union of
both.
But this union must be an orderly and rational union; in other words,
it must be one in which Mind is master and Pleasure servant; the
finite, the regular, the universal must govern the indefinite,
variable, particular. Thus in the perfect life there are four
elements; in the body, earth, water, air, fire; in the soul, the
finite, the indefinite, the union of the {157} two, and the cause of
that union. If this be so, he argues, may we not by analogy argue for
a like four-fold order in the universe? There also we find regulative
elements, and indefinite elements, and the union of the two. Must
there not also be the Great Cause, even Divine Wisdom, ordering and
governing all things?
The second of the psychological series is the _Parmenides_, in which
the great Eleatic philosopher, in company with his disciple Zeno, is
imagined instructing the youthful Socrates when the two were on a visit
to Athens, which may or may not be historical (see above, p. 34). The
most striking portion of this dialogue is the criticism already alluded
to of Plato's own theory of Ideas, put into the mouth of Parmenides.
Parmenides ascertains from Socrates that he is quite clear about there
being Ideas of Justice, Beauty, Goodness, eternally existing, but how
about Ideas of such common things as hair, mud, filth, etc.? Socrates
is not so sure; to which Parmenides rejoins that as he grows older
philosophy will take a surer hold of him, and that he will recognise
the same law in small things and in great.
But now as to the nature of these Ideas. What, Parmenides asks, is the
relation of these, as eternally existing in the mind of God, to the
same ideas as possessed by individual men? Does each individual
actually _partake_ in the thought of God through {158} the ideas, or
are his ideas only _resemblances_ of the eternal? If he partakes, then
the eternal ideas are not one but many, as many as the persons who
possess them. If his ideas only resemble, then there must be some
basis of reference by which the resemblance is established, a _tertium
quid_ or third existence resembling both, and so _ad infinitum_.
Socrates is puzzled by this, and suggests that perhaps the Ideas are
only notions in our minds. But to this it is replied that there is an
end in that case of any reality in our ideas. Unless in some way they
have a true and causal relation with something beyond our minds, there
is an end of mind altogether, and with mind gone everything goes.
This, as Professor Jowett remarks, "remains a difficulty for us as well
as for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is the
stumbling-block of Kant's _Critic_, and of the Hamiltonian adaptation
of Kant as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'you
cannot criticise Revelation.' 'Then how do you know what is
Revelation, or that there is one at all?' is the immediate rejoinder.
'You know nothing of things in themselves.'--'Then how do you know that
there are things in themselves?' In some respects the difficulty
pressed harder upon the Greek than upon ourselves. For conceiving of
God more under the attribute of knowledge than we do, he was more under
the necessity of {159} separating the divine from the human, as two
spheres which had no communication with one another."
Next follows an extraordinary analysis of the ideas of 'Being' and
'Unity,' remarkable not only for its subtlety, but for the relation
which it historically bears to the modern philosophic system of Hegel.
"Every affirmation is _ipso facto_ a negation;" "the negation of a
negation is an affirmation;" these are the psychological (if not
metaphysical) facts, on which the analysis of Parmenides and the
philosophy of Hegel are both founded.
We may pass more rapidly by the succeeding dialogues of the series: the
_Theaetetus_ (already quoted from above, p. 89), which is a close and
powerful investigation of the nature of knowledge on familiar Platonic
lines; the _Sophist_, which is an analysis of fallacious reasoning; and
the _Statesman_, which, under the guise of a dialectical search for the
true ruler of men, represents once more Plato's ideal of government,
and contrasts this with the ignorance and charlatanism of actual
politics.
In relation to subsequent psychology, and more particularly to the
logical system of Aristotle, these dialogues are extremely important.
We may indeed say that the systematic logic of Aristotle, as contained
in the _Organon_, is little more than an abstract {160} or digest of
the logical theses of these dialogues. Definition and division, the
nature and principle of classification, the theory of predication, the
processes of induction and deduction, the classification and criticism
of fallacies,--all these are to be found in them. The only addition
really made by Aristotle was the systematic theory of the syllogism.
The _Laws_, the longest of Plato's works, seems to have been composed
by him in the latest years of his long life, and was probably not
published till after his death. It bears traces of its later origin in
the less artful juncture of its parts, in the absence of humour, in the
greater overloading of details, in the less graphic and appropriate
characterisation of the speakers. These speakers are three--an
Athenian, a Cretan, and a Spartan. A new colony is to be led forth
from Crete, and the Cretan takes advice of the others as to the
ordering of the new commonwealth. We are no longer, as in _The
Republic_, in an ideal world, a city coming down from, or set in, the
heavens. There is no longer a perfect community; nor are philosophers
to be its kings. Laws more or less similar to those of Sparta fill
about half the book. But the old spirit of obedience and
self-sacrifice and community is not forgotten; and on all men and
women, noble and humble alike, the duty is cast, to bear in common the
common burden of life.
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Thus, somewhat in sadness and decay, yet with a dignity and moral
grandeur not unworthy of his life's high argument, the great procession
of the Ideal Philosopher's dialogues closes.
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