PLATO (_concluded_)
_Search for universals--The thoughts of God--God cause and
consummation--Dying to earth--The Platonic education_
If we attempt now, by way of appendix to this very inadequate summary
of the dialogues, to give in brief review some account of the main
doctrines of Plato, as they may be gathered from a general view of
them, we are at once met by difficulties many and serious. In the case
of a genius such as Plato's, at once ironical, dramatic, and
allegorical, we cannot be absolutely certain that in any given passage
Plato is expressing, at all events adequately and completely, his own
personal views, even at the particular stage of his own mental
development then represented. And when we add to this that in a long
life of unceasing intellectual development, Plato inevitably grew out
of much that once satisfied him, and attained not infrequently to new
points of view even of doctrines or conceptions which remained
essentially unchanged, a Platonic dogma in the strict sense must
clearly not be expected. One may, however, attempt in rough outline to
summarise the main {163} _tendencies_ of his thought, without
professing to represent its settled and authenticated results.
[251]
We may begin by an important summary of Plato's philosophy given by
Aristotle (_Met_. A. 6): "In immediate succession to the Pythagorean
and Eleatic philosophies came the work of Plato. In many respects his
views coincided with these; in some respects, however, he is
independent of the Italians. For in early youth he became a student of
Cratylus and of the school of Heraclitus, and accepted from them the
view that the objects of sense are in eternal flux, and that of these,
therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge. Then came Socrates, who
busied himself only with questions of morals, and not at all with the
world of physics. But in his ethical inquiries his search was ever for
universals, and he was the first to set his mind to the discovery of
definitions. Plato following him in this, came to the conclusion that
these universals could not belong to the things of sense, which were
ever changing, but to some other kind of existences. Thus he came to
conceive of universals as forms or _ideas_ of real existences, by
reference to which, and in consequence of analogies to which, the
things of sense in every case received their names, and became
thinkable objects."
From this it followed to Plato that in so far as the senses took an
illusive appearance of themselves giving {164} the knowledge which
really was supplied by reason as the organ of ideas, in the same degree
the body which is the instrument of sense can only be a source of
illusion and a hindrance to knowledge. The wise man, therefore, will
seek to free himself from the bonds of the body, and die while he lives
by philosophic contemplation, free as far as possible from the
disturbing influence of the senses. This process of _rational_
realisation Plato called Dialectic. The objects contemplated by the
reason, brought into consciousness on the occurrence of sensible
perception, but never caused by these, were not mere notions in the
mind of the individual thinker, nor were they mere properties of
individual things; this would be to make an end of science on the one
hand, of reality on the other. Nor had they existence in any mere
place, not even beyond the heavens. Their home was Mind, not this mind
or that, but Mind Universal, which is God.
In these 'thoughts of God' was the root or essence which gave reality
to the things of sense; they were the Unity which realised itself in
multiplicity. It is because things partake of the Idea that we give
them a name. The thing as such is seen, not known; the idea as such is
known, not seen.
[252]
The whole conception of Plato in this connection is based on the
assumption that there is such a thing as knowledge. If all things are
ever in change, then knowledge is impossible; but conversely, if there
is {165} such a thing as knowledge, then there must be a continuing
object of knowledge; and beauty, goodness, [253] reality are then no
dreams. The process of apprehension of these 'thoughts of God,' these
eternal objects of knowledge, whether occasioned by sensation or not,
is essentially a process of self-inquiry, or, as he in one stage called
it, of Reminiscence. The process is the same in essence, whether going
on in thought or expressed in speech; it is a process of _naming_. Not
that names ever resemble realities fully; they are only approximations,
limited by the conditions [254] of human error and human convention.
There is nevertheless an inter-communion between ideas and things. We
must neither go entirely with those who affirm the one (the Eleatics),
nor with those who affirm the many (the Heracliteans), but accept both.
There is a union in all that exists both of That Which _Is_, and of
that concerning which all we can say is that it is _Other_ than what
is. This 'Other,' through union with what is, attains to being of a
kind; while on the other hand, What Is by union with the 'Other'
attains to variety, and thus more fully realises itself.
[258]
That which Plato here calls 'What Is' he elsewhere calls 'The Limiting
or Defining'; the 'Other' he calls 'The Unlimited or Undefined.' Each
has a function in the divine process. The thoughts of God attain
realisation in the world of things which change and pass, through the
infusion {166} of themselves in, or the superimposing of themselves
upon, that which is Nothing apart from them,--the mere negation of what
is, and yet necessary as the 'Other' or correlative of what is. Thus
we get, in fact, _four_ forms of existence: there is the Idea or
Limiting (apart); there is the Negative or Unlimited (apart), there is
the Union of the two (represented in language by subject and
predicate), which as a whole is this frame of things as we know it; and
fourthly, there is the _Cause_ of the Union, which is God. And God is
cause not only as the beginning of all things, but also as the measure
and law of their perfection, and the end towards which they go. He is
the Good, and the cause of Good, and the consummation and realisation
of Good.
This absolute Being, this perfect Good, we cannot see, blinded as we
are, like men that have been dwelling in a cave, by excess of light.
We must, therefore, look on Him indirectly, as on an image of Him, in
our own souls and in the world, in so far as in either we discern, by
reason, that which is rational and good.
[269]
Thus God is not only the cause and the end of all good, He is also the
cause and the end of all knowledge. Even as the sun is not only the
most glorious of all visible objects, but is also the cause of the life
and beauty of all other things, and the provider of the light whereby
we see them, so also {167} is it for the eye of the soul. God is its
light, God is the most glorious object of its contemplation, God we
behold imaged forth in all the objects which the soul by reason
contemplates.
[260]
The ideas whereof the 'Other' (or, as he again calls it, the 'Great and
Small' or 'More and Less,' meaning that which is unnamable, or wholly
neutral in character, and which may therefore be represented equally by
contradictory attributes) by participation becomes a resemblance, Plato
compared to the 'Numbers' of the Pythagoreans (cf. above, p. 25).
Hence, Aristotle remarks (_Met_. A. 6), Plato found in the ideas the
originative or formative Cause of things, that which made them what
they were or could be called,--their _Essence_; in the 'Great and
Small' he found the opposite principle or _Matter_ (Raw Material) of
things.
In this way the antithesis of Mind and Matter, whether on the great
scale in creation or on the small in rational perception, is not an
antithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other,
so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative,
formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated,
receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself apart from
the other.
[262]
This relation of 'Being' with that which is 'Other than Being' is
Creation, wherein we can {168} conceive of the world as coming to be,
yet not in [261] Time. And in the same way Plato speaks of a third
form, besides the Idea and that which receives it, namely, 'Formless
Space, the mother of all things.' As Kant might have formulated it,
Time and Space are not prior to creation, they are forms under which
creation becomes thinkable.
[271]
The 'Other' or Negative element, Plato more or less vaguely connected
with the evil that is in the world. This evil we can never expect to
perish utterly from the world; it must ever be here as the antithesis
of the good. But with the gods it dwells not; here in this mortal
nature, and in this region of mingling, it must of necessity still be
found. The wise man will therefore seek to die to the evil, and while
yet in this world of mortality, to think immortal things, and so as far
as may be flee from the evil. Thereby shall he liken himself to the
divine. For it is a likening to the divine to be just and holy and
true.
[273]
This, then, is the _summum bonum_, the end of life. For as the
excellence or end of any organ or instrument consists in that
perfection of its parts, whereby each separately and the whole together
work well towards the fulfilling of that which it is designed to
accomplish, so the excellence of man must consist in a perfect ordering
of all his parts to the perfect working of his whole organism as a
{169} [276] rational being. The faculties of man are three: the Desire
of the body, the Passion of the heart, the Thought of the soul; the
perfect working of all three, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and
consequently the perfect working of the whole man, is Righteousness.
From this springs that ordered tranquillity which is at once true
happiness and perfect virtue.
[277]
Yet since individual men are not self-sufficient, but have separate
capacities, and a need of union for mutual help and comfort, the
perfect realisation of this virtue can only be in a perfect civic [278]
community. And corresponding with the three parts of the man there
will be three orders in the community: the Workers and Traders, the
Soldiers, and the Ruling or Guardian class. When all these perform
their proper functions in perfect harmony, then is the perfection of
the whole realised, in Civic Excellence or Justice.
[281]
To this end a careful civic education is necessary, _first_, because to
_know_ what is for the general good is difficult, for we have to learn
not only in general but in detail that even the individual good can be
secured only through the general; and _second_, because few, if any,
are capable of seeking the general good, even if they know it, without
the guidance of discipline and the restraints of law. Thus, with a
view to its own perfection, and the good of all {170} its members,
Education is the chief work of the State.
It will be remembered (see foregoing page) that in Plato's division of
the soul of man there are three faculties, Desire, Passion, Reason; in
the division of the soul's perfection three corresponding virtues,
Temperance, Courage, Wisdom; and in the division of the state three
corresponding orders, Traders, Soldiers, Guardians. So in Education
there are three stages. First, _Music_ (including all manner of
artistic and refining influences), whose function it is so to attemper
the desires of the heart that all animalism and sensualism may be
eliminated, and only the love and longing for that which is lovely and
of good report may remain. Second, _Gymnastic_, whose function it is
through ordered labour and suffering so to subdue and rationalise the
passionate part of the soul, that it may become the willing and
obedient servant of that which is just and true. And third,
_Mathematics_, by which the rational element of the soul may be trained
to realise itself, being weaned, by the ordered apprehension of the
'diamond net' of laws which underlie all the phenomena of nature, away
from the mere surface appearances of things, the accidental,
individual, momentary,--to the deep-seated realities, which are
necessary, universal, eternal.
And just as there was a perfectness of the soul {171} transcending all
particular virtues, whether of Temperance or Courage or Wisdom, namely,
that absolute Rightness or Righteousness which gathered them all into
itself, so at the end of these three stages of education there is a
higher mood of thought, wherein the soul, purified, chastened,
enlightened, in communing with itself through _Dialectic_ (the Socratic
art of questioning transfigured) communes also with the Divine, and in
thinking out its own deepest thoughts, thinks out the thoughts of the
great Creator Himself, becomes one with Him, finds its final
realisation through absorption into Him, and in His light sees light.
{172}