# Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Lectures on Greek Philosophy (1888)/Plato

Lectures on Greek Philosophy, Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier (1888 ed., Vol. 2). (E. L. Lushington, & A. Grant, Eds.) Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. pp. 304-365
PLATO.
1. We now enter on the study of a philosophy which has attracted more notice and excited a deeper interest than any other within the whole compass of antiquity—I mean the philosophy of Plato. The best way to attain to a distinct understanding of the general scope and character of this, and indeed of every other philosophy, is by attending to the errors and oversights which it was designed to correct and supplement. Upheld by the ability of the Sophists, sensationalism was the dominant system, as it was the prevailing error, of the time, and accordingly it was against sensationalism and its conclusions that the philosophy of Plato was directed. Sensationalism is supported by the natural sentiments of mankind; it is the scheme which suggests itself most readily to the untutored understanding; it is a product of ordinary thinking. When left to ourselves, we are naturally of opinion that all our knowledge comes to us through the senses, that the senses are the main, indeed the sole means and instruments of cognition, and this opinion is nothing but the doctrine of sensationalism. ​So that the system against which the philosophy of Plato was directed, presented itself in a twofold character: it was a vulgar error, an inadvertency incident to our natural and unreflective thinking; and it was, moreover, an error supported and ratified and reduced to system by the exertions of the Sophistical philosophers. And corresponding to the two-fold character of this sensational scheme, the philosophy of Plato had a twofold aim: it had to correct sensationalism considered as a product of ordinary thinking, as the creed of the unreflective mind; and also considered as a philosophical and systematised speculation. Platonism, therefore, in its general character, is to be regarded as at once a rectification of the inadvertencies incident to natural or ordinary thinking, and of the aberrations into which the popular philosophy of the day (the system, namely, of the Sophists) had run. To correct these inadvertencies and errors, it advocated the claims of thought against those of sensation. It showed how impotent the senses are without the aid of the intellect. It put forward its great theory of ideas and idealism in opposition to the current theory of sensations and sensationalism. Such was the general character, both negative and positive, both combative and constructive, of the Platonic philosophy, as gathered from the general consideration of the system of doctrine to which it stood opposed.
2. This philosophy has exercised a very deep and ​extensive influence on the thoughts and interests of mankind, more so, probably, than any other, either in ancient or in modern times. Aristotle is the only other name that can be put in comparison with that of Plato. The ascendancy of Aristotle may for some centuries have been more despotic, but I am inclined to think that the genius of Plato has from first to last ruled the minds of thinking men with a more living and penetrating sway. Not to speak of his immediate followers, the rise of Neo-platonism, principally in Alexandria, in the centuries immediately subsequent to the Christian era, attests the depth and extent of Plato's influence. His writings, moreover, were much admired, and closely studied by many of the early Christian fathers. Justin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Eusebius, and St Augustin, these founders of the Church regarded Plato as actually inspired, so profoundly were they impressed by the divine character of his instructions; while others were of opinion that he had derived his wisdom from an acquaintance with the Hebrew Scriptures, an opinion, I need scarcely say, which rests on very insufficient evidence. Throughout the dark ages, that is to say, from the sixth to the tenth or eleventh century, an eclipse passed over the light of Plato, as it did over every other light in the firmament of philosophy and literature. From the tenth until the fourteenth century, Aristotle, and not Plato, was in the ascendant. This is the period usually called the middle ages. During its continuance, the only ​philosophy in vogue consisted of portions of Aristotle (chiefly his logical treatises), served up in crude Latin translations. At this time the knowledge of the Greek language had died out, or very nearly so, in Europe, and was not recovered until the downfall of Constantinople, which was captured by the Turks in 1453. This event had a most auspicious effect on the interests of learning in the West. The downfall of Constantinople dispersed over Europe a multitude of learned men who possessed Greek MSS., and who were skilled in the Greek tongue. The study of Greek literature began to be vigorously prosecuted in Europe. Plato attracted a large share of attention. This happened in the fifteenth century of our era; and Italy was the country over which the light of the renovated learning first broke. Here Plato was enthusiastically studied. Marsilius Ficinus translated and commented on his works. Under the auspices of this learned Florentine, Platonism enjoyed a second revival. The enthusiasm spread to other countries, and from that day down to the present the authority of the Platonic writings has never ceased to influence the course of speculation, and to tell even on the general literature of all civilised communities, although it has operated more powerfully and been felt more vividly at one time than it has at another. During the eighteenth century, for example, the influence of Plato had declined. But in the present age the close study of his writings has again revived in our own country, in France, and in Germany.
​3. The philosophy of Plato is so multifarious and unsystematic; that it would be difficult, or rather impossible, to reduce its contents to any very exact classification. It may be sufficient at present to mention the ordinary scheme which divides it into the three branches, ethics, physics, and dialectics. These are the three sciences which are treated of in the writings of Plato. His ethics are a carrying out and enforcement of the ethical opinions of his great master Socrates. His physics are for the most part crude and fanciful, although marked here and there by very profound and luminous observations. The science of dialectic is supposed to belong more peculiarly to Plato, and his philosophy centres in it more essentially than in either of the other two departments; it therefore behoves us to inquire more particularly into the meaning or purport of the Platonic dialectic.
4. We ask, then, what is dialectic the science of? The answer is, that it is the science of ideas. Ideas, as all the world knows, play a most important part in the philosophy of Plato. He was indeed the first philosopher who treated expressly of these mysterious entities, endeavouring to explain their nature, to establish them as the true constituents of the universe, and to displace by their means the sensible phenomena from the hold which they have on the opinions of mankind generally as the only realities which exist. Ideas are the Alpha and Omega in the ​philosophy of Plato. It is not surprising, therefore, that a special name should have been awarded by their expositor to the science which treats of them. That special name is called by him dialectic, a word which, looking to its derivation, has no connection with ideas, but which is derived from διαλέγεσθαι, to discourse or discuss in the way of dialogue; so that the name of the science seems to have been suggested by the conversational way in which the ideas were discussed, rather than by anything connected with the nature of the ideas themselves; or the word dialectic may signify that silent dialogue which the mind carries on within itself whenever it is engaged in meditation. We shall have occasion hereafter to go more deeply into this science of ideas. Meanwhile I am dealing with little more than the nomenclature of the Platonic speculations.
5. I may here mention some of the principal Dialogues which deal respectively with the three sciences, dialectic, ethics, and physics. Dialectic shows itself in the Meno, the Theætetus, the Sophista, the Parmenides, the Philebus, the Phædrus, the Phædo, and the Republic. Ethics are treated of principally in the Philebus and the Republic, to which may be added the Euthyphro. The physics are contained for the most part in the Timæus. From this enumeration you will perceive that ethics and dialectic are sometimes treated of in the same Dialogue. The classification, however, is, I think, sufficiently ​accurate to let you know generally which of Plato's Dialogues are dialectical, which ethical, and which physical. I have mentioned only the principal Dialogues on the three branches of science.
6. Much controversy has prevailed in regard to the genuineness of the Platonic writings. Some inquirers, actuated by a spirit of extreme scepticism, have admitted as genuine a very meagre proportion of his Dialogues, while others, influenced by a contrary spirit of extreme credulity, have accepted as his everything which has come down to us in his name. The truth seems to be, that while several of the compositions which are incorporated with all the editions of Plato's works must be pronounced spurious, all the more important Dialogues are genuine. The following is a list of the writings which have been generally regarded as spurious by those who are most competent to judge on this question. The Platonic Epistles (although these, I believe, are defended as genuine by so high an authority as Mr Grote.). The Epinomis, the second Alcibiades, the Theages, Anterasæ, or the rivals in love, Hipparchus, Minos, and Clitophon. With the exception of these few and comparatively insignificant pieces, the entire body of the Platonic writings may be relied on as genuine, as the authentic utterances of the great disciple of Socrates. They are compositions which, whether we look to their style or their substance, far ​the great disciple of Socrates. They are compositions which, whether we look to their style or their substance, far surpassed in beauty and in depth everything which had preceded them in philosophy, and they have been followed by very few works which will bear any comparison with their excellence. In the Platonic writings the form of dialogue was used probably for the first time as the vehicle of philosophical thought, and it started at once into perfection. In grace and ease, in poetical beauty and dramatic spirit, these Dialogues have never been equalled. In modern times they have frequently been imitated; and in our own country, the two philosophers who have imitated them most successfully, although they fall far short of their great original, are Berkeley and Shaftesbury.
​8. One point for preliminary consideration is this: By ideas, two things may be meant. Ideas may either be a name for thought or knowledge in its simplest, lowest, easiest, or most elementary form; in that form in which knowledge is possessed by all human beings, even the most uninstructed; or ideas may be a name for that higher and more complex kind of knowledge called science, which is the possession of comparatively few. In which of these acceptations, then, does Plato employ the term? Do his ideas mean knowledge of the simplest character, knowledge which no man can open his eyes without receiving? or do they mean knowledge of a loftier order, and which it requires some exertion to attain to?
9. The true answer, I believe, is, that by ideas Plato intends to designate both kinds of knowledge, the lower and the higher. But as he employs the word more frequently, and with greater emphasis, in reference to our higher than to our lower knowledge, one is apt to think that his theory of ideas is rather a theory of science in its loftiest pretensions, than a theory of thought and knowledge simply, and in their humblest and commonest manifestations. The consequence has been, that his expositors have usually expounded the ideas as more peculiarly the property of the scientific mind, and as acquisitions which it required a large amount of philosophic culture to get possession of.
​10. This explanation of the Platonic ideas, though not positively false, is exceedingly misleading. It is not positively false, because ideas are in truth the truth, the light of all science. But it is exceedingly misleading, because it conveys the impression that they are not equally essential to our simplest acts of thought and knowledge, and that there may be a lower species of knowledge into which ideas do not enter. The truth, however, is, that ideas are just as essential to our ordinary and most familiar cognitions, as they are to our most recondite and elaborate sciences, and it is in their relation to common thinking that they ought to be studied much more than in their relation to scientific cognition. We shall perceive their necessity, we shall understand them as part and parcel of ourselves, much more clearly when we view them as conditions without which no thought or knowledge of any kind is possible, than we should do if we viewed them merely as certain requisites which contributed to the construction of science. Plato speaks of them, as I have said, very frequently under the latter relation. But there is sufficient evidence that he regarded them under the former as well, under that relation which I venture to think is much the more important of the two. Leaving his expositors, then, to interpret the ideas as essential to the constitution of science, I shall explain them principally, if not exclusively, as necessary to the existence of our simplest knowledge, and as that without which no thinking of any kind could take place.
​12. Another preliminary point requiring some notice, is the consideration of those sciences which draw away the mind from the contemplation of sensible objects, and turn it to the study of universal truth. Among these are to be reckoned arithmetic and geometry; sciences which, according to Plato, are the best preparation by which the mind can be trained to the higher study of dialectic. Speaking of geometry, he says (the words are put into the mouth of Socrates): "You also know," says Socrates, "that the geometricians summon to their aid visible forms and discourse about them, though their thoughts are busy, not with these forms, but with their originals, and though they discourse not with a view to the particular square and diameter which they draw, but with a view to the absolute square and the absolute diameter, and so on. For while they employ by way of images those figures and diagrams aforesaid (which again have their shadows and images in water), they are really endeavouring to behold those things which a person can only see with the eye of thought," that is to say, not this or that circle, or this or that square, but square and circle viewed universally, which they cannot be by sense or imagination, but only by the intellect (διάνοια). Again, speaking of geometry, the Platonic Socrates says: "It is indeed no easy matter to believe that, in the midst of these mathematical studies, an organ ​of our soul is being purged from the blindness, and quickened from the deadness, occasioned by other pursuits—an organ whose preservation is of more importance than a thousand eyes, because only by it can truth be seen. Consequently, those who think with us will bestow unqualified approbation on these studies." These extracts may be sufficient to show the importance which Plato attached to mathematical science as a training of the mind for the study and reception of the purer and loftier truth revealed to it by dialectic. The words, however, which Plato is said to have inscribed over the gate of the academy where his discussions were held, "Let no one who is not a geometrician enter these walls"—μηδεὶς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω, are erroneously attributed to the philosopher, although they are quite in accordance with the tone and spirit of his instructions.
13. The following passage from the 7th Book of the Republic, contains the celebrated similitude in which Plato allegorises the conversion of the mind from the world of sense to the world of ideas. I read it to you as preparatory to our discussion of his theory of ideas.
“Suppose," says Socrates, "a set of men in a subterraneous cavern, which opens to the day by a long straight wide passage, and that they have been kept in this cavern from childhood, fettered so that they ​cannot turn even their necks, but with their heads fixed so that they can look only towards the lower end of the cave. Suppose, further, that there is a great fire lit opposite to the mouth of the cavern (so as to throw the shadows of objects on the lower end of the cave), and that there is a road which runs past the cavern between the fire and the captives. Suppose, too, that along this road runs a low wall, like the partition over which puppet-showmen exhibit their figures. And now suppose that along this wall, and so as to be shown above it, pass men and other figures, some silent, some speaking. You think this is a strange imagination. Yet these captives exactly represent the condition of us men who see nothing but the shadows of realities. And these captives, in talking with one, would give names to the shadows as if they were realities. And if, further, this prison-house had an echo opposite to it, so that when the passers-by spoke the sound was reflected (from the same wall on which the shadows were seen), they would, of course, think that the shadows spoke. And, in short, in every way they would be led to think there were no realities except these shadows.
"Now consider how these captives might be freed from these illusions. If one of them were loosed from his bonds, and made to turn round and to walk towards the light and look at it; at first he would be pained and dazzled by the glare, and unable to see clearly. He would be perplexed if he ​were told that what he saw before were nonentities, and that now, being brought nearer to the reality and turned towards it, he saw better than before; and even if any of the passers-by were pointed out to him and made to answer questions, and to say what he is, he would still think that what he saw before was more true than what was shown to him now. He would shun the excessive light, and turn away to that which he could see, and think it more visible than the objects which had been shown him.
"But if he were dragged to the light, up the steep and rough passage which opens to the cave, and fairly brought out into the light of the sun, he would be still more pained and more angry, and be at first so blinded that he would not be able to see real objects. It would require time and use to enable him to see things in daylight. At first he would be able to see shadows, then the reflected images of objects, and then objects themselves; and afterwards he might be able to look at the heavens by night, and see the heavenly bodies, the stars and the moon; and finally be able to look at the sun; not merely at a reflection of him in water, but at the sun himself in his own place. And then he might be led to reason about the sun, and see that he regulates seasons and years, and governs everything in this visible world, and is in a certain sense the cause of all the things which they in their captivity saw.
​"And then when he recollected his first abode, and the illusions of that place, and of his fellow-captives, he would naturally congratulate himself upon the change, and pity those he had left there. And if there were among them any honours and rewards given to him who was most sharp-sighted in scanning the passing shadows, and readiest in recollecting which of them habitually went before, and which after, and which together, and who hence was most skilful in predicting what could happen in future, he would not be likely to covet these honours and rewards. He would rather say with the shade of Achilles in Homer, that it is better to be a day-labourer in the region of life and day, than the greatest monarch in the realm of shadows. He would rather suffer anything than live as he did before.
"And consider this further. If such a one should redescend into the cavern, and resume his former seat, his eyes would be purblind, coming out of sunshine into darkness. And while his eyes are still dark, and before they have recovered their power, if he had to discuss those shadows with those who had always remained there captive (a state of things which might last a considerable time), he Would be utterly laughed at, and they would say that his eyesight was ruined, and that it was not worth anybody's while to go up out of the cave. And if any one tried to set them at liberty, and to ​lead them to the light, they would, if they could get him into their power, kill him.
"Now this image, my dear Glaucon, is to be applied to the case we were speaking of before. We must liken the visible world to the dark cavern, and the fire which makes objects visible to the sun. The ascent upwards, and the vision of the objects there, is the advance of the mind into the intelligible world; at least such is my faith and hope, and of these you wished me to give an account. God knows if my faith is well founded. And, according to my view, the idea of the Supreme Good is seen last of all, and with the greatest difficulty; and when seen, is apprehended as the cause of all that is right and excellent. This idea produces in the visible world light, and the sun the cause of light; in the intellectual world it is the cause (source) of truth, and of the intuition of truth. And this idea he who is to act wisely either in private or in public matters must get possession of.
And now, as you agree with me in this view, you will agree with me further, that it is not to be wondered at that those who have advanced into that higher region are not willing to be involved in the affairs of men; their souls wish to dwell for ever in that upper region. Nor is it wonderful if any one coming down from divine contemplations to the wretched concerns of men blunders and is laughed at; while he is still purblind, and before his eyes ​are accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled, it may be, to fight in courts of justice, or elsewhere, the battle, not about justice, but about the shadows of justice, or the images which make the shadows; he is compelled to wrangle about the way in which these shadows are apprehended by" those who never had a view of justice herself. If any one has any sense, he will recollect that there are two kinds of confused vision arising from two opposite sources; that which happens when men go out of light into darkness, and that which happens when they go out of darkness into light; and the case is exactly the same with the mind. And when such a one sees a mind confused and unable to discern anything clearly, he will not laugh without consideration; he will consider whether in that case the mind is darkened by coming out of a clearer light into unaccustomed darkness, or, going from ignorance to clearer knowledge, is struck with confusion by the brightened splendour. And in the latter case he would think that mind happy in its constitution and condition, and pity the other; and if he were disposed to laugh at it, his laughter would be far less in a temper of ridicule than his laughter at him who comes from above below, from the light into the dark."
14. In the following quotation from the 10th Book of the Republic, the ideas are explained and illustrated by Plato himself. Here he represents ​them as the models or archetypes according to which the Deity fabricates all things. The speakers are discoursing on the subject of imitation.
"What is imitation? We are accustomed to say that all the things which have the same name belong to one kind. Take anything for an example. There are many chairs and many tables; but there is only one idea of a chair and one idea of a table. And the artificer who makes each of these pieces of furniture looks to his idea of a chair or a table, and so makes the chairs and the tables which we use. The man does not make the idea, he only copies it.
"But now, what do you call an artificer who makes all the things which any of the (kinds of) handicraftsmen make, and not only all articles of furniture, but all the plants which grow out of the earth, all animals, and himself; and moreover the earth, the heavens, the gods, and all that is in heaven, and all that is in Hades under the earth? You think this must be a wonderful artist? There may be a workman who can make all these things in a certain sense, and in a certain sense cannot. You yourself might make all these things in a certain sense; for instance, if you take a looking-glass, and turn it on all sides, you may forthwith make the sun and the sky, and the earth, and yourself, and animals, and plants, and articles of furniture, such as we have been speaking of. You say that you make their ​appearances only, not the things themselves That is just the point I wish to come to.
"And so the painter can make things in the same way; he does not make the real thing. He makes an apparent table, not a real table.
"But the carpenter—does he make a real table? We have just agreed that he does not make that which is essentially a table, but only a kind of table. He does not make the thing that is, but only something that is like it. If any one says that the thing produced by any handicraftsman really is, he makes a mistake. The things which are thus produced are dim shadows of the truth.
"Now, let us see what is meant by imitation. There are, for instance, three kinds of tables. The first the essential ideal one, which God himself makes; then the one which the carpenter makes; and then the one which the painter makes. The painter, the carpenter, God; these are the three makers of the three kinds of tables. The one made by God is single, unique; there are not and will not be more than one. There cannot be two or more. If He had made two or more ideas of kinds of tables there would be a third—the idea of table in general, and this would be the real idea of table. And thus God is the real author of the real table, but not of any particular table, so as to be a table-maker.
"But the carpenter also makes a table; what is he? He is a table-maker.
"And the painter; does he make a table? No; ​he imitates a table. And so the man who makes the third copy of the original is an imitator."
15. I shall conclude the preliminaries and preparations for the closer study of the Platonic dialectic by reading you an extract from the lectures of the late Professor Butler of Dublin, in which he explains his conception of the Platonic theory of ideas. He explains ideas as the laws according to which God regulates the universe; a view not erroneous, but only rather vague, and conveying the impression that ideas do not enter into all our knowledge, but are the animating principle of our higher cognitions only.
"You can now enter easily into the aim of the theory of Ideas. That man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme of its own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal laws beyond it, is not too absurd to be maintained. That these real and eternal laws are things intelligible, and not things sensible, is not very extravagant either. That these laws, impressed upon creation by its Creator, and apprehended by man, are something different equally from the Creator and from man, and that the whole mass of them may be fairly termed the world of things purely intelligible, is surely allowable. Nay, further, that there are qualities in the supreme and ultimate Cause of all, which are manifested in His creation, and not merely manifested, but, in a manner—after being brought out of His ​super-essential nature into the stage of being below Him, but next to Him—are then, by the causative act of creation, deposited in things, differencing them one from the other, so that the things participate of them (μετέχουσι), communicate with them (κοινωνοῦσι); this likewise seems to present no incredible account of the relation of the world to its Author. That the intelligence of man, excited to reflection by the impressions of these objects, thus (though themselves transitory) participant of a divine quality, should rise to higher conceptions of the perfections thus faintly exhibited; and inasmuch as these perfections are unquestionably real existences, and known to be such in the very act of contemplation—that this should be regarded as a direct intellectual apperception of them, a union of the reason with the ideas in that sphere of being which is common to both—this is certainly no preposterous notion in substance, and by those who deeply study it, will perhaps be deemed no unwarrantable form of phrase. Finally, that the reason, in proportion as it learns to contemplate the perfect and eternal, desires the enjoyment of such contemplations in a more consummate degree, and cannot be fully satisfied except in the perfect fruition of the perfect itself, this seems not to contradict any received principle of psychology, or any known law of human nature. Yet these suppositions, taken together, constitute the famous 'Theory of Ideas;' and thus stated, may surely be pronounced to form no very appropriate object for ​the contempt of even the most accomplished of our modern 'physiologists of mind.' "—(Butler's 'Lectures on Philosophy,' vol. ii. pp. 117-18-19.)
16. Before entering on the exposition of Plato's dialectic or theory of ideas, I thought it right to call your attention to certain preliminary considerations. These were the settlement of the question, Are the Platonic ideas the necessary constituents of all knowledge, or only of scientific knowledge? My conclusion is that they are, according to Plato, the necessary constituents of all knowledge, although it must be confessed that he has left this point somewhat ambiguous, and has thereby misled his expositors, who frequently regard the ideas as belonging more properly to scientific than to ordinary cognition. The true interpretation is, that while all minds have ideas, the instructed mind both has and knows that it has them. I then mentioned the sciences which, in the opinion of Plato, were the best preparation for dialectic; these were arithmetic and the mathematical sciences, particularly geometry. These, when rightly cultivated, lead the mind to look at truth, not in the particular, but in the universal, and thus furnish a proper training for the higher study of ideas. As a further introduction to dialectic, and in order to familiarise you with the main object of Plato's philosophy, which is to turn the mind from the comparative unrealities of sense to the realities of reason, which ideas are, I read to you his ​celebrated similitude of the Cave, in which this conversion is allegorised. I then read to you an extract from Plato, the purport of which was to show that, just as an existing sensible object has a higher degree of reality than a mere painting of it, so the divine and eternal idea of that object has a higher degree of reality than the object itself, and that, just as we may very well consider the painting unreal when compared with the object, so we may very properly regard the object as unreal when compared with its eternal idea. And, finally, my object in reading to you a few extracts from Professor Butler was to make you acquainted with the, somewhat vague and unsatisfactory interpretation of the Platonic ideas which is generally current.
17. Having disposed of these introductory matters, I now enter on the dialectic of Plato. And as this science is the science of ideas, we have first of all to consider what ideas are in themselves. We must try to fathom their nature as much by our own reflections as by means of the light which Plato has contributed to the research. It is not so much by reading Plato as by studying our own minds that we can find out what ideas are, and perceive the significance of the theory which expounds them. It is, as I formerly said, only by verifying in our own consciousness the discoveries of antecedent philosophers that we can hope rightly to understand their doctrines or appreciate the value and importance of their ​speculations. We must endeavour to apply this rule to the present case.
18. In dealing with the philosophy of Socrates, I touched on several truths which carry us a considerable way, I think, towards a right understanding of the Platonic ideas; these were the universality of ideas as contrasted with the particularity of sensations, the activity and freedom of the mind, its emancipation from the bondage of sensation, evinced in its rising into the region of ideas even in its lowest and most ordinary cognitions. I am not sure that I have very much to add to the explanation of ideas there given, but I shall endeavour to present it in a somewhat new light, and under a somewhat different point of view.
19. Let me dwell, first of all, on the necessity of ideas, the necessary truth which is their main characteristic. You have all heard of necessary truth, and understand, I daresay, something of its nature. Necessary truth is truth which the mind cannot help acquiescing in; it is truth for all minds, and not truth merely for this or that particular kind or order of minds. Such truths are the axioms of geometry, and indeed all mathematical truth. Necessary truths are those of which the opposites are absurd, inconceivable, contradictory. In explaining, then, the necessity of ideas, what I wish to show you is, That ideas are essential, are absolutely indispensable to ​the operations of thoughts and to the very existence of intelligence. No thinking can possibly go on without them; to suppose that it can is to suppose an absurdity and a contradiction. The necessity that characterises ideas is of the highest and most stringent order. And, accordingly, the theory which expounds them must be accepted, not as a doctrine which may possibly be erroneous, but as a system of truth which cannot possibly be mistaken. In its expression, this theory may probably be defective; indeed it may be impossible to express it in terms which are not more or less imperfect, but in itself, and substantially, it cannot be fallacious.
20. The necessity, the necessary truth, which is the main characteristic of ideas, and which marks this theory, will become conspicuous if we make the attempt to carry on thinking without the instrumentality of ideas, that is, of universals. This attempt will show how essential ideas are to the operations of thought, and how impossible it is for thought to be performed without them. Let us, then, make the attempt; let us try whether we can think without anything more than sensation coming into play. I have a sensation of light, and a bright object, say a gas lamp, is before my eyes. Now, so long as I am merely in a state of feeling, I am tied down to this particular sensation; my sensation does not overstep one hair's-breadth the sensation which I experience. The sensation is exactly that sensation, and nothing ​else, nothing either more or less. The problem is to make me not only feel but think this sensation, and to think it without getting out of sensation, i.e., without getting into the region of ideas; for I wish to show that it is impossible for me to do this, and thus by a reductio ad absurdum to prove the necessity of ideas. I think the sensation then, the sensation of light and the bright object before me. Now what has taken place here different from mere feeling? This has taken place: in thinking the sensation, I think that it is, and that the bright object is. Perhaps I think of more than this, but this, at least, is what I think. I repeat it: I think that the sensation is, and that the object is. In thinking them at all, I must think that they are. But you will very likely say, What is there here more than mere feeling? When a man feels a pain, does he not feel that it is? I answer that it may do very well in ordinary language, to say of a man in pain that he feels that it is, but such a statement (viewed philosophically) is exceedingly incorrect The precise statement is this, that the man merely feels the pain; he thinks or knows that it is (you will understand this more clearly immediately). I again affirm that in thinking the sensation (as an act distinct from merely feeling it), I think that it is. That is my first step in thinking it; that is the least which I do. We have now to ask what is involved in thinking that the sensation is. There is this involved in it, that I transcend or go beyond the sensation, and ​bring down a category or universal upon it, the category or universal called Being. But Being is an idea. Being is not identical or commensurate with my sensation, it embraces infinitely more. Being is not my sensation, but something different from it; and being something different from sensation, it properly obtains a different name; it is called an idea. We thus see that in the simplest and earliest operation of thinking, we are forced, whether we will or no, into the region of ideas, and that thinking is impossible without them. Thinking is, in fact, nothing else than the application of ideas or universals to the sensible phenomena of the universe. And the theory which declares this to be the case (as Plato's theory does) is not so much a theory as a fact; a fact which it is impossible to dispute or deny, without falling into the grossest absurdities and contradictions.
21. To this argument proving the necessity of ideas, the objection may perhaps be raised that it is a mere truism, equivalent to the assertion that it is impossible to think without having thoughts, a proposition which no one would ever dream of denying, but which does not advance us far in our pursuit of truth. I answer that the argument does amount to that proposition, but it also amounts to a great deal more. It not only shows that we cannot think without having thoughts or ideas, but it moreover explains what ideas are; it sets them forth as universals, and thus essentially distinguishes them from ​sensations, which are of necessity particular. A man certainly learns nothing from being told that he cannot think without ideas, but he may learn something, or rather (to take the Socratic view of education) he may teach himself something from being told that he cannot think without passing from the particular to the universal. What was proved in the preceding paragraph was not merely that a man cannot think without having ideas, but that he cannot think without going beyond the particular and passing into the universal, a profound truth. The one of these statements is a mere truism, but the other, I venture to maintain, is one of the profoundest truths that ever addressed itself to the capacities of thinking men, and summoned them to put forth their utmost capacities to unravel it. Let us endeavour to get somewhat deeper into the purport of this truth-this truth which is expressed in the proposition, that to think is to pass from the singular or particular to the idea or the universal.
22. It is an accredited maxim in the Lockian or sensational schools of philosophy, that we can think only of that of which we have had experience. And this dogma seems to recommend itself at once to the common sense of mankind, for where, it may be asked, can we get the materials of our thinking except from experience, either external or internal? Now, irresistible as this dogma appears, I venture to set up in opposition to it this counter-proposition, ​that it is impossible for us to think only of that of which we have had experience. This is merely another form of the assertion just made, that all thinking is necessarily a passing from the singular to the universal. I shall endeavour, by means of a very simple illustration, to explicate what this proposition involves. I wish to show you more particularly what is meant by the universality of ideas. A man sees an object for the first time, let us say a chair. Now so long as he merely sees it, his state is purely sensational, he is limited to the particular, he is shut up in the region of the singular. Let us now suppose that he thinks it. What is the exact nature of the mental operation here performed? I conceive it to be this: In thinking the chair, the man views it as an instance of which there may be, or axe, other instances. Suppose that the man had never seen anything except this chair, in thinking it, he would still think it as something; that is (even although he had no language to express his thoughts), he would nevertheless place it under the category of thing; in other words, he would think other possible chairs (and other possible things) as well. If he thinks the chair, I affirm that he cannot think merely it, but must think something more. Here then is a marvellous consideration: The man has had experience only of one chair, of one thing; but in thinking it, he has thought other chairs, other things; in short, he has thought something of which he has had no experience. This is an astonishing ​position, and looks very paradoxical; but it is nevertheless the fact, and we must accept it as we find it. It utterly overthrows the Lockian school of philosophy, for it proves that there is something in the mind which neither entered by the way of outward experience, nor was generated by internal experience, or by what Locke calls reflection on our own mental operations. That on the presentation of one object I should be able, indeed, that I should be necessitated, to think of another object as well, this is a fact which discredits altogether the philosophy of sensational experience. If this philosophy would make good its ground, it must prove that we cannot think of more than we have actually experienced, and that it in the course of our experience, we had only seen twelve men, it would be impossible for us to think of a thirteenth; but such a proof is manifestly impossible, and such a conclusion would be absurd. My position is, that supposing we had never seen more than one man, we must, in thinking him, view him as an instance, and viewing him thus, we must virtually think an indefinite number of men. This is so far an explanation of what is meant by all thought being a passing from the singular to the universal.
23. In attempting to expound the nature of ideas, with the special view of throwing light on what Plato understood by them, I touched, in the concluding paragraphs of my last lecture, on two of their chief characteristics; these were, their necessity and ​their universality. Ideas are necessary, because no thinking can take place without them. They are universal, inasmuch as they are completely divested of the particularity which characterises all the phenomena of mere sensation. To grasp the nature of this universality is not easy. Perhaps the best means by which this end may be compassed is by contrasting it with the particular. It is not difficult to understand that a sensation, a phenomenon of sense, is never more than the particular phenomenon which it is. As such, that is, in its strict particularity, it is absolutely unthinkable. In the very act of being thought something more than it emerges, and this something more cannot be again the particular, for in that case something more would again emerge, and so on for ever. For example, suppose that in thinking a particular object, the additional something which I thought of were one other particular object or ten other particular objects; in that case I maintain that no thinking would have taken place, for I would still be confined to the particular; ten particulars, per se, cannot be thought of any more than one particular can be thought of. When ten particulars, or ten hundred particulars, are thought of, there always emerges in thought an additional something, which is the possibility of other particulars to an indefinite extent. In the operation of thinking, any given number of particulars are always reduced to so many instances, and the indefinite outstanding something which they are instances of is a universal. ​There is thus a contrast in thought between two elements, the universal and the particular, and both of these are essential, I conceive, to the process of thinking. The particular element is usually a sensation, or sensible thing. The universal element is called by Plato an idea.
24. We may perhaps get still further light on the nature of ideas if we view the matter in this way. Every object that we behold is an instance, that is, it is looked upon as not the only case of the kind; other instances are either actual or possible. But all instances must be instances of something. What is that something? That something is an idea. We require a different term from the word instance to mark that of which the instance is, and for this purpose we employ the term idea. The particular thing before us (suppose it is a tree) is an instance; an instance of what? It is an instance of a tree; but is the tree before us of which this is an instance? Certainly it is not. The particular tree is before us; but that of which it is an instance is not before us, not before us as a particular, is not visible to our sense of sight, although present to the mind as an idea or universal. We thus make a distinction between an instance and that of which it is an instance. In fact, here again we find the two elements which are essential to all thought, the particular and the universal. The terms by which we have just designated them are, the instance, and that of which the ​nstance is. A thing cannot be an instance without being an instance of something; in so far as it is an instance, it is particular. The something of which it is an instance is a universal, an idea. Plato calls it also παράδειγμα.
25. I must put you on your guard against supposing that it is possible for you to form any sort of representation of the idea or universal, or paradeigma. This cannot be done. The idea or universal cannot by any possibility be pictured in the imagination, for this would at once reduce it to the particular; this would destroy it as an idea, and convert it into an instance, which instance being of course an instance of something, would again require to be supplemented in thought by that of which it was an instance, namely, by an idea or universal. Much confusion is caused when we attempt to construe the idea to our mind as any sort of imaginary object. We must be satisfied, therefore, with thinking the idea or universal as a fact of intellect which is necessary as a foil or offset or complement to the other element of our cognition, the particular instance, namely; but which cannot be apprehended either by the senses or by the imagination, which derives all its data from the senses, and copies their impressions. This inability to form any sort of picture or representation of an idea does not proceed from any imperfection or limitation of our faculties, but is a quality inherent in the very nature of intelligence. ​A contradiction is involved in the supposition that an idea or universal can become the object either of sense or of the imagination. An idea is thus diametrically opposed to an image, although in ordinary, and even in philosophical language, the two terms are frequently confounded, and regarded as synonymous with each other.
26. I have hitherto spoken of necessity and universality as two main characteristics of our ideas. I have now to remark that ideas are essential to the unity of our cognitions. They are not merely indefinite possibilities which no given number of instances can exhaust, but they are principles by which the variety and multifariousness of our sensible impressions are reduced to unity and order. Resemblance, for example, is the great principle of arrangement and classification. We class things together under genera and species according to their resemblance. But resemblance does not come to us through the senses, or by the way of sensation; it is no sensible impression, it is a pure idea. When two trees are before us, we see the trees, but we do not see their resemblance. This is a thought, not an object of sense. Resemblance is a relation, and, as such, it cannot be seen, or touched, or apprehended by any of the senses. These apprehend only the things. Their relations of resemblance and difference are apprehended only by the intellect. If the mind had no idea of resemblance, and no idea of difference, if we ​had not these principles to guide us in the arrangement and classification of our knowledge, it is manifest that our cognitions would have no unity, order, or coherence; our mental state would be no better than a chaotic dream. So essential are ideas to the existence of knowledge, so impotent are sensations, without ideas, to instruct us even in the most elementary truths.
27. This may further serve to illustrate a subject on which Plato has bestowed a good deal of elaborate treatment, the conversion, namely, of the human soul from ignorance to true knowledge. The ignorant and unconverted soul supposes that its knowledge of sensible objects is due to the impressions which it receives; the converted soul is aware that this knowledge is due, not to these impressions, but to the ideas of resemblance and difference (and some other ideas) by which these impressions are accompanied, but with which they are not by any means identical; in fact, that our whole knowledge of outward things is based entirely upon ideas, and is effected solely by their mediation.
28. From what has been already said in regard to the distinction and opposition between the particularity of sensation, and the universality of intellect, it is obvious that ideas cannot be the products of our sensible experience. Hence they must be referred to some other origin; they must be pronounced ​innate; innate inasmuch as we do not derive them from without, but from some source which is either the mind itself, or intimately allied to the mind. We find, accordingly, that Plato held ideas to be innate; that they were not imparted to the mind from without, although they were elicited into consciousness on the occasion of some outward impression. Plato thus stands forth in the history of philosophy as the first and principal philosopher by whom the doctrine of innate ideas was expressly advocated. He followed Socrates in the opinion that the seeds of all rational knowledge pre-existed in the mind, that they might be drawn forth into full growth and development from within, but could not be imparted to us from without. He held, moreover, with Socrates, that the true art of education consisted in educing from the pupil's own mind its own native treasures, by stimulating his reflective capacities. The Sophists, on the contrary, regarded the mind as a tabula rasa, on which no original characters were inscribed; and their boast was, that they could communicate to the minds of their pupils any amount or any kind of knowledge that was required.
29. That the doctrine of innate ideas is true in some sense, and to some extent, is undeniable; and therefore Locke's repudiation of the doctrine, as one which could not be accepted on any terms, must be set aside as short-sighted and injudicious. It is still, ​however, a question in what sense and to what extent is this doctrine to be accepted. It may be asked, for example, in what sense are the conceptions expressed by the word animal, man, tree, to be regarded as innate? I answer, that these conceptions are not innate, if we suppose them to denote, as most people do, some faint or vague representation of animal, man, or tree; nothing which is representable as an object is in any degree innate, and therefore these conceptions, if they are innate, must not express anything which can be represented as an object. What, then, do these terms denote? They denote the fact that, on the occasion of an animal, a man, or a tree being presented to the mind, the mind thinks not merely of the one man, the one animal, or the one tree, but of something wider; in short, of a class, which class is to be construed to the mind not as an object, but as a fact or law; a fact or law by means of which unity is given to a number of our resembling' impressions. Viewed in this way, the conception man may be said, with perfect truth, to be innate. When a man is placed before me, and when I think him (as distinguished from merely seeing him), I place him under a class, that is, under an idea wider than himself. And this idea or class I do not construe to my mind as made up of a number of individuals, for these again, however numerous, I should be again compelled by the necessity of thought to place under a class, and so on for ever. When I think a man, I think him as an instance of ​something of which there are or may be other instances to an indefinite extent This something is innate; it is the principle, the presiding fact or law of the arrangement by which men, and other things, are placed under classes. But it cannot, as I said, be represented or placed before the mind as an object. When viewed as an object, its innate character is destroyed.
30. From what has been said in regard to the Platonic ideas being innate, it might be inferred that they were also subjective, or the proper and peculiar endowments of the human mind. This, however, is not the doctrine which Plato maintains. Ideas are not subjective in the sense of belonging peculiarly to the mind of man; they are rather objective, inasmuch as they are the light of all intellect, the principles of universal reason. No intelligence can operate without ideas, that is, without a capacity of apprehending resemblances and differences, and without obeying those laws of unity and arrangement which declare themselves in genera and species. All intellect must think under the conditions of resemblance and difference, genus and species.
These laws, therefore, are objective and not subjective; they are the laws of things as well as the laws of thoughts. For the universe and all that it contains are constructed in conformity with these ideas, they are constructed under the laws of resemblance and difference, genus and species, and could not ​have been fabricated on any other principles. You must not suppose that when we say that ideas are objective, we mean to assign to them any sort of outward existence. Objective in the sense of outward, is certainly not to be applied to them.
31. That these laws and ideas have a reality, a binding and irresistible authority, need scarcely be insisted on as part of the Platonic theory. This follows necessarily from all that has been said in regard to their nature. They are, in fact, the most real existences in the universe, for without them there would either be no universe at all, or that universe would be without form and void, an absolute chaos. To repeat, then, in a very few words, the chief characteristics of the Platonic ideas, they are these: first, their necessity; secondly, their universality; thirdly, their power of giving unity to our multifarious cognitions; fourthly, their innateness; fifthly, their objectivity; and, sixthly, their reality.
32. It has been a disputed point among philosophers, whether, according to Plato, ideas were dependent on the will of the Deity, whether they were, in fact, portions of the Divine reason, or whether they were antecedent to and independent of the will and existence of the Deity. Some have held that Plato regarded them as constituents of the Divine reason, others that he viewed them as independent ​entities. The latter seems, on the whole, when rightly explained, to be the truer interpretation, and it may be explained by saying that the ideas are laws to which even the will and reason of the Deity conforms; for example, there is a law, i.e., idea, of good and right according to which the will even of the Deity shapes itself, and this doctrine would make the law or idea of right to be in some sense antecedent to and independent of the Deity. In the dialogue called Euthyphro, the principal question discussed is this: Is an action good and holy because the gods approve of it, or do the gods approve of it because it is good and holy? If we say an action is good and holy because the gods approve of it, that would be equivalent to saying that good and evil depend on the arbitrary will of the gods: in this case their will would determine what was right and what was wrong. But if we say that an action is approved of by the gods because it is good and holy, this makes the idea of good and holy to be prior to the will of the gods; to be independent of their arbitration; to be rather that which determines their will, than that which their will determines. This, rather than the other, is the doctrine to which Plato and Socrates incline. Ideas may, in the Platonic theory, be perhaps coeval with the Divine will and reason; but if there be in either case a priority, the ideas are to be regarded as existing antecedent even to the mind of the Deity. But all that is really meant by this assertion is, that God approves of what is right ​because it is right in itself, and not because He by His arbitrary decree has made it right.
33. I shall conclude this sketch of the Platonic dialectic with the remark, that in answer to the question, What is the absolute and universal truth, the truth for all intellect?—for this, you will remember, is the question which philosophy raises and endeavours to resolve—in reply to this question, Plato's answer would be: Ideas are the absolute and universal truth, the groundwork of all things; they are apprehended by all intellect, and, therefore, if that which addresses itself to all intellect, if that which all intellect apprehends, be the truest and most real, ideas must be the truest and most real of all things, for no intelligence can be intelligent except by participating in their light; they are the grounds of all conceivability, and of all intelligible or cognisable existence; the necessary laws or principles on which all Being and all Knowing are dependent. Such is the realism of Plato, a doctrine much truer and more profound than either the nominalism or conceptualism by which it has been succeeded.
​35. In answer to this Sophistical deduction, Plato argues that justice is not (as this doctrine assumes) an unessential attribute, but is itself the health and organisation of the soul. The semblance of justice, he says, without the reality, is no more a good thing for its possessor than the semblance of order is a good thing in a nation, when all its ranks are in a condition of anarchy and rebellion, or than the appearance of health is a good thing in the human body, when all its organs are really in a state of disease. It is principally for the purpose of showing that virtue must be a reality, and not a sham, that Plato, in his Republic, has drawn a parallel between the soul of man and the political constitution of a state. Just as a state cannot exist unless it is sustained by political justice—that is to say, unless the rightful rulers rule, and are aided by the military, and unless the inferior orders obey—so the individual soul does not truly and healthfully exist unless it is the embodiment of private or personal justice, that is to say, unless reason rules the lower appetites, and is aided in its government by the more heroic passions of our nature. In short, just as a state without justice, that is, without the due subjection of the governed to the governing powers, is a state disorganised, so a soul without justice, that is, without the proper subordination of the inferior to the superior principles of our constitution, is a soul undone. A character which wears the mask without having the substance of virtue is no better, indeed is worse, off ​than a sick body which presents the mere appearance of health.
36. Such is the scope (in so far as a few sentences can give it) of the moral philosophy of Plato, in its more popular aspect, as presented to us in the Republic. He treats the subject more metaphysically in the Philebus. But the result reached is in both cases the same. The maintenance of that organisation of the soul in which reason rules and passion obeys, this is the end to be aimed at by man, rather than happiness or pleasure.
37. But more important than any results, either moral or metaphysical, which have been brought to maturity by Plato, are the inexhaustible germs of latent wealth which his writings contain. Every time his pages are turned they throw forth new seeds of wisdom, new scintillations of thought, so teeming is the fertility, so irrepressible the fulness of his genius. All philosophy, speculative and practical, has been foreshadowed by his prophetic intelligence; often dimly, but always so attractively as to whet the curiosity and stimulate the ardour of those who have chosen him for their guide.
38. Plato's ethical doctrines are presented in their clearest and most detailed form in his great work, entitled the 'Republic.' In this treatise his main ​object is to show what justice is, and the result of his inquiry is, that justice is in fact the true nature, the true constitution of the soul. It is not something which appertains to the soul as an accidental quality, or as a property which can be assumed or laid aside at pleasure without affecting the innermost life of our intelligent nature. It is, on the contrary, the very essence of the soul. It denotes the equipoise which must be preserved among the different principles of our nature, if that nature is to remain true to itself, and fulfil the functions for which it was designed. And hence, inasmuch as justice is merely another word for the true nature of the soul, and inasmuch as the true nature of a thing is merely another word for the virtue of that thing, justice is to be regarded as emphatically the virtue of the soul.
39. Plato says that this doctrine of justice will be best understood, and that its truth will become more apparent, when we consider it upon a great scale. He says, that by knowing what justice is when we see it as the virtue of a state, we shall more clearly understand what it is when represented as the virtue of an individual. We can readily understand how a state or society of men must go to ruin ​which is not governed according to the principles of justice; and we ought just as readily to understand how the soul of an individual man must go equally to ruin when his disposition is not regulated and his conduct guided by the principles of justice. At the outset of the inquiry, Plato had found himself beset with difficulties when he attempted to explain justice as it appears in the individual man; but by looking at it as manifested on a great scale in the organisation of the state, and then by holding that man is but a miniature of society, he is enabled to clear away the obstacles which had obstructed his course, and to carry through his argument in a very masterly and convincing fashion.
40. To explain, then, the nature of individual virtue, individual justice, Plato asks what is political virtue, political justice. Find out this, and then you will know what justice is, considered as the virtue of the soul. Understand the virtue of the state as shown in the true constitution of the state, and then you will understand the virtue of the soul as shown in the true constitution of the soul. Now, political justice, the virtue of the state, distributes to every member of the community his proper province of action, and seeks to prevent one citizen from encroaching upon another. That is the business of the state, and when it is rightly executed a true system or organisation of society is the result. There are three orders in the state. First, the working order, ​the artisans, or, as they are nowadays termed, the Operatives; secondly, the military or auxiliary order; and, thirdly, the legislative order. In regard to the first of these classes, their object is gain; they minister to wants and enjoyments of themselves and the community generally; this, the working order, may also be termed the quæstuary class, from quæstus, the Latin for gain, or the chrematistic class, from χρήματα, the Greek for money or wealth, this being the end which they aim at. In regard to the second of these classes, the military order, this is superior to the artisans. It exists for the purpose of preserving internal tranquillity and of repelling foreign aggression. It is called the auxiliary class, because its principal function is to aid the legislative order in repressing all such insubordination on the part of the working class as would imperil the existence, or compromise the safety, of the state. Then in regard to the legislative order, its business is to govern the other classes; and it consists of those members of the community who, by their wisdom and probity, are the best qualified to discharge that office. When each of these orders fulfils its proper function, and when none of them attempts to usurp or encroach on the province of the others—when neither the artisans nor the military strive to displace the governing or legislative power, and when the legislative power does not succumb to either of these—the state is duly organised, its true constitution is preserved. It is, in fact, a state; and it possesses and presents the ​virtue of a state. Political justice is embodied and shown forth.
41. Now, answering to these three orders in the state, there are in the soul of man three distinct faculties. 1. Appetite or desire, i.e., the concupiscible faculty; 2. Spirit or indignation, i.e., the irascible faculty; 3. Reason or the rational faculty. The first of these, the concupiscible faculty, in Greek, ἐπιθυμία, corresponds to the operative or quæstuary or chrematistic class in the state. Just as this class aims at the attainment of wealth, so does that faculty pursue pleasure as its end. The second of these, the irascible faculty, in Greek, θυμὸς, a term which, perhaps, might be tolerably well translated by our common word pluck—this faculty comprises the more heroic principles and impulses of our nature; and it corresponds to the military or auxiliary order in the state. Just as the military are called in to aid the legislative authority in putting down mob insurrections, so the irascible faculty, that is, the nobler passions, and the reason, unite in resisting the solicitations of the lower appetites. The third of these is the rational faculty, in Greek, νοῦς. This is the governing principle in the mind, τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, just as the legislative is the governing power in the state.
42. Such is the way in which Plato works out the analogy between the soul of man and the constitution ​of a civil community. By nature the concupiscible is designed to obey the rational, just as in the state the working classes are designed to obey the legislative power; and the irascible is created to assist the rational, just as the military exist to aid and support the legislative. Thus, as there are three orders in the state, so are there three faculties in the soul, each answering to each—the concupiscible to the working order, the irascible to the military, and the rational to the legislative. The virtue of the concupiscible is temperance; in other words, the submission of the concupiscible to the rational is the virtue of temperance. The virtue of the irascible is fortitude; the virtue of the rational is wisdom or prudence. When consent and harmony prevail among the three, then that complete virtue which Plato calls justice arises. And this virtue is higher than either temperance taken by itself, or than fortitude taken by itself, or than wisdom taken by itself, for it is the complement of the whole three, and is the result of the harmonious and properly balanced operation of the three faculties of the soul. Just as justice pervades the state, and the wellbeing of the community is the result when each order keeps its own place, and executes its appointed function, so justice pervades the soul, and health and strength of mind are the result when each of the faculties preserves the relation towards the other faculties in which nature placed it, and in which nature intended it to stand. When this relation is preserved, the outward life and ​conduct of the individual will not fail to correspond with his internal condition. You thus perceive that Plato makes individual justice, or the highest virtue of the soul, to be itself the very constitution of the soul, just as political justice, or the subordination of the mass to certain governing powers, is itself the very constitution of the state. A remarkable passage from the fourth book of the Republic will show you how it is by close observation to the facts of our nature that Plato discriminates these three powers of the mind, and shows that they are really distinct.—(Rep., iv. p. 439; p. 160 in Vaughan and Davies's translation.)
43. We have now to show against whom was Plato's doctrine of justice, and of the constitution of human nature, intended to be directed. It was directed against the sophists, and he argued thus: if the nature of justice be such that it is necessarily inherent in the constitution of the human soul, is, in fact, itself that constitution, then is the sophistry of the sophists, and of all other cavillers, at once overthrown. The sophists argued that injustice might in many cases be preferable to justice: they argued that justice was good, and was esteemed, merely because it brought wealth, security, honour, and praise, so that if a man could with consummate art simulate justice, while he was in his soul unjust, he might reap the full reward of justice among men, and be to that extent happy; and, so far as regarded ​the gods, he need not, the sophists said, give himself much trouble about them, for they could be propitiated with sacrifices, and kept quiet by means of a few grains of frankincense. In this way the sophists endeavoured to make out that injustice might be a real good to its possessor while justice might prove a real evil. Or, at any rate, they argued that men were just merely because they found it to redound to their advantage, in a worldly point of view, to be so, and that if they could procure the same or greater advantages by being unjust, unjust they would undoubtedly be. They argued very much in the spirit of Hobbes, that men were deterred from committing injustice merely by their dislike of suffering injustice, and knowing that if they perpetrated wrong on others they must be prepared to endure wrong from others in return.
44. In Book i. p. 359, the explanation which the sophists gave of law and justice (and which you will see resembles very closely the doctrine of Hobbes) is set forth, and the argument illustrated by the story of the ring which the ancestor of Gyges had possessed. Thus the sophists argued that if every man had the ring of Gyges, by which he could make himself invisible at pleasure, then every man would do wrong whenever he felt inclined, and would do right only in so far as it would promote his own happiness. So that the life of an unjust man who can perfectly conceal his motives (as many men can ​and do, even without this magic ring) may be fairly set up as more desirable than that of a just man; and thus injustice may in many cases be preferable to justice, on account of the greater happiness which it brings, and of this every man must judge for himself. The advantage of probity, therefore, according to the sophists, who sometimes reasoned boldly on these points, although at other times they endeavoured to hide the extreme to which their principles carried them, did not centre in itself, but in what was exterior to itself, namely, in the honours and rewards which probity procured for the man who practised it. Probity might be said to consist not in being, but in seeming to be honest. The appearance was quite as good as the reality. By all means, said the sophists, be just and virtuous, if justice and virtue make you happy; but if vice and injustice make another man happy, why should not he too follow the bent of his inclinations? In doing so, he will obey the dictates of his nature, will fulfil the law of his being, just as much as you who pursue a contrary course are obeying the dictates and fulfilling the law of your being.
45. This is precisely the point where Plato enters his dissent, and it was to meet this point that his doctrine of the soul, as made up of three faculties, arranged in the order of superiority and inferiority, and illustrated by the analogous constitution of a social community, was set forth and enforced with all ​the power of his genius. Insist on these sophistical opinions as you choose, says Plato, I overthrow them all at one swoop, by asserting and by proving a certain construction or organisation of the soul, to which organisation we must look apart altogether from external considerations of honour or advantage. If justice consists in the due harmony of the three faculties of the soul, that is, in the obedience and submission of the inferior to the superior principles, no man can be just by appearing to be so when he is not, any more than a nation or state could delude a neighbouring nation or state, if the soldiers, the legislators, and the people, were in a state of anarchy; i.e., if the people were not working, if the military were in revolt, or the legislature overcome by imbecility. A soul in which the inferior principles reigned supreme, or one which presented the mere semblance, but not the reality, of justice, would be a soul disorganised, a soul untrue to its own constitution—a soul, in fact, which was not a soul; just as a state in which the relation of the governed and the governors was reversed, would be a state which had crumbled into dust. And even suppose the dissimulation to have been carried so far that both the soul and the state appear to be in health and preservation, surely both the man himself and the state itself would know that no balance of power, no true strength, no true life was within them, and that no security was theirs. Injustice, or the want of a proper equipoise among their various elements, would set them at variance ​with themselves, and lay them open to the assaults of all around. Therefore, justice is the strength, the true nature of every soul, just as it is of every political constitution; and, accordingly, when this simpler and more truthful system of morals was given to the world by Plato, the doctrine of the sophists fell to the ground as an edifice which had no solid foundation.
46. Plato goes on to enforce and illustrate his views by showing that justice is the health, and consequently the happiness, of the soul, and that the mere semblance of justice is no more the health and happiness of the soul, than the mere semblance of bodily vigour is the health and happiness of the body. How, asks Plato, is bodily health produced? It is produced when the ongoings of our physical frame proceed as they have been established by nature; disease inevitably arises when any part of the system is out of joint, or is not governed according to nature. In the same way disease arises in the soul, when any of its parts do not conform to the design of the whole. But justice is itself a conformity with this design, is a working in accordance with it, just as injustice is the reverse. Therefore injustice, although its external accompaniments and consequences may be honours and rewards, is the disease, the deformity, the misery, the bad habit of the soul; while justice, even though it should meet with no corresponding external advantages, is the ​health, the beauty, the happiness, the good habit of the soul. We speak of a bad habit of body when its parts are in disorder and at variance with each other, and of a good habit of body when its different parts are in harmony. So vice, independently of external considerations, is the disease, the deformity, the corruption, the pollution, the slavery of the soul, in-as-much as it indicates that the intellectual system is disordered, and that those principles have usurped the government which were created only to obey: and so virtue, and, in particular, justice, is the health, the perfection, the freedom of the soul, inasmuch as it indicates that the intellectual system is well ordered, is regulated according to its nature, and that those principles are governing which were intended to govern, while those are obeying which were intended to obey. Farther, if the state of the body when diseased be such as to render life a burthen, though it may be surrounded with all the luxuries which wealth can procure, so when the state of the soul is thoroughly corrupted by injustice, it can enjoy no true happiness, no real satisfaction, although crowned with worldly honours and advantages; as Juvenal says:—
" Cur tamen hos tu
Evassise putes quos diri conscia facti
Mens habet attonitos, et surdo verbere cædit,
Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum."
—Juvenal, xiii. 192.
See especially the passage where Plato speaks of the rightly balanced condition of the soul, which ​constitutes justice.—(Plato, Rep., B. iv. pp. 443, 444; pp. 167, 168, 169 in English translation.)
47. You will thus perceive that Plato argues in favour of justice as the true condition of humanity, by looking, not to any external advantages or disadvantages which justice may confer, but by looking to the internal economy of human nature itself, and by showing that justice is nothing more or less than the maintenance of that economy in the order which nature has established, just as bodily health is nothing more or less than the maintenance of the order and arrangement which nature has established among the various organs of our physical framework.
48. The object with which Plato instituted the analogy or comparison between the soul of man and the constitution of a political state was this: it was to show that just as there can be no political state without justice, that is, without a proper balance and subordination being preserved among the different orders of society; so there can be no soul, or true rational life, in man, without justice, i.e., without a proper balance and subordination being preserved among the different parts and principles of the soul. Justice in a man has its analogies on a large scale in justice in a state; and just as the state ceases to be a state and goes to ruin so soon as justice deserts it, i.e., so soon as confusion and insubordination prevail among its ranks; so the soul goes ​to ruin so soon as justice departs from it, i.e., so soon as its inferior principles prevail over its superior ones, so soon as what was meant to obey presumes to take the office of governor.
49. The philosophical school founded by Plato is known in the history of philosophy as the Academy, so called from the groves of Academus where Plato was in the habit of addressing his disciples. The Academy is usually divided into three, the old, the middle, and new. The latter two may occupy our attention for a brief period hereafter: meanwhile I speak merely of the old Academy, which embraced and was presided over by the immediate followers of Plato. None of the writings of these older Platonists have come down to us. All that is known of their opinions is gathered from a few brief and incidental notices which occur in certain ancient authors. We are not, therefore, in a position to speak with any certainty of the manner in which they may have modified or carried forward the philosophy of their master. I shall merely make mention of Plato's three more immediate followers, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Polemon, who succeeded him as the heads of the Academy.
50. Speusippus was the nephew of Plato. He was born probably about 400 B.C.—a calculation which makes him about thirty years younger than his ​uncle. He was a native of Athens. He accompanied Plato on his third journey to Syracuse, and is said to have shown much prudence and address amid the troubled atmosphere of the court of Dionysius. His active and moral powers were by all accounts greater than his intellectual acuteness. On the death of Plato in 347, he became his successor in the Academy, having been so nominated by Plato himself. Aristotle may have looked forward to that elevation as a position to which he was well entitled to aspire. But Aristotle was destined for higher things than to be the follower even of so great a philosopher as Plato. Although he has much in common with his master, he was rather fitted to found a new dynasty in philosophy than to be the continuator of an old one. Aristotle, not long afterwards, became the founder of the peripatetic school of philosophy, which held its meetings in the Lyceum. Speusippus continued president of the Academy for about eight years. He was compelled by a lingering illness to relinquish the office some time before his death, which probably took place about 330 B.C., or it may be somewhat earlier. He is said, in particular, to have lectured against the hedonism of Aristippus.
51. Xenocrates, who succeeded Speusippus as president of the Academy about 340 B.C., was a native of Chalcedon, a city on the shores of the Bosporus. He was born in 396. In early life he came to Athens, and attached himself to Plato. Like ​Speusippus, he accompanied the philosopher on one of his visits to Syracuse. After Plato's death, Xenocrates went, in company with Aristotle, to the court of Hermias, the ruler of Atarneus, in Mysia, a province of Asia Minor. He cannot have remained very long in this retreat; for we are told that he was frequently sent by the Athenians on embassies to Philip of Macedon, with whom they were at this time embroiled, and by whom, in the year 338, they were ultimately subjugated. When the failing health of Speusippus compelled him to resign the presidency of the Academy, Xenocrates was summoned to the vacant post, and this office he occupied from about 340 B.C. until his death in 314, when he was in the eighty-third year of his age. The temperament and the morals of Xenocrates were grave, not to say austere, in the extreme. His name was quoted in antiquity as almost a synonym for unselfishness, modesty, temperance, and continence. None of his works have come down to us, so that we cannot speak very particularly in regard to his opinions. Only their titles are extant, and these are sufficiently tantalising. From them we learn that he prosecuted diligently the researches in which his great master had led the way. He wrote on dialectic, on knowledge, on ideas, on the existent and the one, on the opposite, on the indefinite, on the soul, on the passions, on happiness and virtue, on the state, and several other topics. These writings are extremely multifarious in their subject; and that the ​subjects were treated of by Xenocrates in an able and interesting manner, we may infer from the fact that Aristotle thought it worth his while to write commentaries on some of these treatises. Xenocrates is said to have insisted particularly on the distinction laid down by Plato between αἴσθησις, δόξα, and ἐπιστήμη. By αἴσθησις he probably understood the relative and contingent truths of the senses; by δόξα the relative and contingent truths of the understanding; and by ἐπιστήμη the absolute and necessary truths of the reason—the truths, i.e., for all, and not merely for some, intelligence.
52. The name of Polemon must be ever associated with that of Xenocrates in the history of philosophy. Polemon was notorious for his profligacy and dissipation; but happening one day to enter the Academy with a crowd of gay companions with whom he had been revelling, he was so much struck by the discourse of Xenocrates, who was lecturing on the advantages of temperance, that he tore from his head the chaplet of flowers with which he was crowned, and determined then and for ever to renounce his former way of life. He continued true to his resolution: he became the most temperate of the temperate, and studied philosophy so assiduously that he became the successor of Xenocrates in the presidency of the Academy in the year 314 B.C. He died in 273, having been born about 345.
* ↑ Thompson on Butler’s 'Ancient Phil.' ii. 18.
* ↑ Ib. 48.
* ↑ Not "abstractions," as wrongly rendered by the Cambridge translation.—Rep. vi. 610.
* ↑ Rep. vii. 527.
* ↑ Rep. vii. 514; Whewell's Translation, iii. 297.
* ↑ Rep. x. 598; Whewell, iii. 327.
* ↑ The 'Republic' has been translated with remarkable fidelity and spirit by Messrs Vaughan and Davies of Cambridge. And Dr Whewell has done good service to the cause of Platonic literature by abridging (with explanations) the more important dialogues, and clothing them in a garb of masculine and idiomatic English, which cannot fall to introduce them to many readers to whom they might otherwise have been uninteresting or inaccessible.