preparations for the new departure are discovered in the Parmenides and in
the Theaetetus; and it is said to be expressed under a different form by
the (Greek) and the (Greek) of the Philebus. The (Greek) of the Philebus
is the principle which gives form and measure to the (Greek); and in the
'Later Theory' is held to be the (Greek) or (Greek) which converts the
Infinite or Indefinite into ideas. They are neither (Greek) nor (Greek),
but belong to the (Greek) which partakes of both.
With great respect for the learning and ability of Dr. Jackson, I find
myself unable to agree in this newly fashioned doctrine of the Ideas, which
he ascribes to Plato. I have not the space to go into the question fully;
but I will briefly state some objections which are, I think, fatal to it.
(1) First, the foundation of his argument is laid in the Metaphysics of
Aristotle. But we cannot argue, either from the Metaphysics, or from any
other of the philosophical treatises of Aristotle, to the dialogues of
Plato until we have ascertained the relation in which his so-called works
stand to the philosopher himself. There is of course no doubt of the great
influence exercised upon Greece and upon the world by Aristotle and his
philosophy. But on the other hand almost every one who is capable of
understanding the subject acknowledges that his writings have not come down
to us in an authentic form like most of the dialogues of Plato. How much
of them is to be ascribed to Aristotle's own hand, how much is due to his
successors in the Peripatetic School, is a question which has never been
determined, and probably never can be, because the solution of it depends
upon internal evidence only. To 'the height of this great argument' I do
not propose to ascend. But one little fact, not irrelevant to the present
discussion, will show how hopeless is the attempt to explain Plato out of
the writings of Aristotle. In the chapter of the Metaphysics quoted by Dr.
Jackson, about two octavo pages in length, there occur no less than seven
or eight references to Plato, although nothing really corresponding to them
can be found in his extant writings:--a small matter truly; but what a
light does it throw on the character of the entire book in which they
occur! We can hardly escape from the conclusion that they are not
statements of Aristotle respecting Plato, but of a later generation of
Aristotelians respecting a later generation of Platonists. (Compare the
striking remark of the great Scaliger respecting the Magna Moralia:--Haec
non sunt Aristotelis, tamen utitur auctor Aristotelis nomine tanquam suo.)
(2) There is no hint in Plato's own writings that he was conscious of
having made any change in the Doctrine of Ideas such as Dr. Jackson
attributes to him, although in the Republic the platonic Socrates speaks of
'a longer and a shorter way', and of a way in which his disciple Glaucon
'will be unable to follow him'; also of a way of Ideas, to which he still
holds fast, although it has often deserted him (Philebus, Phaedo), and
although in the later dialogues and in the Laws the reference to Ideas
disappears, and Mind claims her own (Phil.; Laws). No hint is given of
what Plato meant by the 'longer way' (Rep.), or 'the way in which Glaucon
was unable to follow'; or of the relation of Mind to the Ideas. It might
be said with truth that the conception of the Idea predominates in the
first half of the Dialogues, which, according to the order adopted in this
work, ends with the Republic, the 'conception of Mind' and a way of
speaking more in agreement with modern terminology, in the latter half.
But there is no reason to suppose that Plato's theory, or, rather, his
various theories, of the Ideas underwent any definite change during his
period of authorship. They are substantially the same in the twelfth Book
of the Laws as in the Meno and Phaedo; and since the Laws were written in
the last decade of his life, there is no time to which this change of
opinions can be ascribed. It is true that the theory of Ideas takes
several different forms, not merely an earlier and a later one, in the
various Dialogues. They are personal and impersonal, ideals and ideas,
existing by participation or by imitation, one and many, in different parts
of his writings or even in the same passage. They are the universal
definitions of Socrates, and at the same time 'of more than mortal
knowledge' (Rep.). But they are always the negations of sense, of matter,
of generation, of the particular: they are always the subjects of
knowledge and not of opinion; and they tend, not to diversity, but to
unity. Other entities or intelligences are akin to them, but not the same
with them, such as mind, measure, limit, eternity, essence (Philebus;
Timaeus): these and similar terms appear to express the same truths from a
different point of view, and to belong to the same sphere with them. But
we are not justified, therefore, in attempting to identify them, any more
than in wholly opposing them. The great oppositions of the sensible and
intellectual, the unchangeable and the transient, in whatever form of words
expressed, are always maintained in Plato. But the lesser logical
distinctions, as we should call them, whether of ontology or predication,
which troubled the pre-Socratic philosophy and came to the front in
Aristotle, are variously discussed and explained. Thus far we admit
inconsistency in Plato, but no further. He lived in an age before logic
and system had wholly permeated language, and therefore we must not always
expect to find in him systematic arrangement or logical precision:--'poema
magis putandum.' But he is always true to his own context, the careful
study of which is of more value to the interpreter than all the
commentators and scholiasts put together.
(3) The conclusions at which Dr. Jackson has arrived are such as might be
expected to follow from his method of procedure. For he takes words
without regard to their connection, and pieces together different parts of
dialogues in a purely arbitrary manner, although there is no indication
that the author intended the two passages to be so combined, or that when
he appears to be experimenting on the different points of view from which a
subject of philosophy may be regarded, he is secretly elaborating a system.
By such a use of language any premises may be made to lead to any
conclusion. I am not one of those who believe Plato to have been a mystic
or to have had hidden meanings; nor do I agree with Dr. Jackson in thinking
that 'when he is precise and dogmatic, he generally contrives to introduce
an element of obscurity into the expostion' (J. of Philol.). The great
master of language wrote as clearly as he could in an age when the minds of
men were clouded by controversy, and philosophical terms had not yet
acquired a fixed meaning. I have just said that Plato is to be interpreted
by his context; and I do not deny that in some passages, especially in the
Republic and Laws, the context is at a greater distance than would be
allowable in a modern writer. But we are not therefore justified in
connecting passages from different parts of his writings, or even from the
same work, which he has not himself joined. We cannot argue from the
Parmenides to the Philebus, or from either to the Sophist, or assume that
the Parmenides, the Philebus, and the Timaeus were 'written
simultaneously,' or 'were intended to be studied in the order in which they
are here named (J. of Philol.) We have no right to connect statements
which are only accidentally similar. Nor is it safe for the author of a
theory about ancient philosophy to argue from what will happen if his
statements are rejected. For those consequences may never have entered
into the mind of the ancient writer himself; and they are very likely to be
modern consequences which would not have been understood by him. 'I cannot
think,' says Dr. Jackson, 'that Plato would have changed his opinions, but
have nowhere explained the nature of the change.' But is it not much more
improbable that he should have changed his opinions, and not stated in an
unmistakable manner that the most essential principle of his philosophy had
been reversed? It is true that a few of the dialogues, such as the
Republic and the Timaeus, or the Theaetetus and the Sophist, or the Meno
and the Apology, contain allusions to one another. But these allusions are
superficial and, except in the case of the Republic and the Laws, have no
philosophical importance. They do not affect the substance of the work.
It may be remarked further that several of the dialogues, such as the
Phaedrus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides, have more than one subject. But
it does not therefore follow that Plato intended one dialogue to succeed
another, or that he begins anew in one dialogue a subject which he has left
unfinished in another, or that even in the same dialogue he always intended
the two parts to be connected with each other. We cannot argue from a
casual statement found in the Parmenides to other statements which occur in
the Philebus. Much more truly is his own manner described by himself when
he says that 'words are more plastic than wax' (Rep.), and 'whither the
wind blows, the argument follows'. The dialogues of Plato are like poems,
isolated and separate works, except where they are indicated by the author
himself to have an intentional sequence.
It is this method of taking passages out of their context and placing them
in a new connexion when they seem to confirm a preconceived theory, which
is the defect of Dr. Jackson's procedure. It may be compared, though not
wholly the same with it, to that method which the Fathers practised,
sometimes called 'the mystical interpretation of Scripture,' in which
isolated words are separated from their context, and receive any sense
which the fancy of the interpreter may suggest. It is akin to the method
employed by Schleiermacher of arranging the dialogues of Plato in
chronological order according to what he deems the true arrangement of the
ideas contained in them. (Dr. Jackson is also inclined, having constructed
a theory, to make the chronology of Plato's writings dependent upon it
(See J. of Philol.and elsewhere.).) It may likewise be illustrated by the
ingenuity of those who employ symbols to find in Shakespeare a hidden
meaning. In the three cases the error is nearly the same:--words are taken
out of their natural context, and thus become destitute of any real
meaning.
(4) According to Dr. Jackson's 'Later Theory,' Plato's Ideas, which were
once regarded as the summa genera of all things, are now to be explained as
Forms or Types of some things only,--that is to say, of natural objects:
these we conceive imperfectly, but are always seeking in vain to have a
more perfect notion of them. He says (J. of Philol.) that 'Plato hoped by
the study of a series of hypothetical or provisional classifications to
arrive at one in which nature's distribution of kinds is approximately
represented, and so to attain approximately to the knowledge of the ideas.
But whereas in the Republic, and even in the Phaedo, though less hopefully,
he had sought to convert his provisional definitions into final ones by
tracing their connexion with the summum genus, the (Greek), in the
Parmenides his aspirations are less ambitious,' and so on. But where does
Dr. Jackson find any such notion as this in Plato or anywhere in ancient
philosophy? Is it not an anachronism, gracious to the modern physical
philosopher, and the more acceptable because it seems to form a link
between ancient and modern philosophy, and between physical and
metaphysical science; but really unmeaning?
(5) To this 'Later Theory' of Plato's Ideas I oppose the authority of
Professor Zeller, who affirms that none of the passages to which Dr.
Jackson appeals (Theaet.; Phil.; Tim.; Parm.) 'in the smallest degree prove
his point'; and that in the second class of dialogues, in which the 'Later
Theory of Ideas' is supposed to be found, quite as clearly as in the first,
are admitted Ideas, not only of natural objects, but of properties,
relations, works of art, negative notions (Theaet.; Parm.; Soph.); and that
what Dr. Jackson distinguishes as the first class of dialogues from the
second equally assert or imply that the relation of things to the Ideas, is
one of participation in them as well as of imitation of them (Prof.
Zeller's summary of his own review of Dr. Jackson, Archiv fur Geschichte
der Philosophie.)
In conclusion I may remark that in Plato's writings there is both unity,
and also growth and development; but that we must not intrude upon him
either a system or a technical language.
Balliol College,
October, 1891.
NOTE
The chief additions to the Introductions in the Third Edition consist of
Essays on the following subjects:--
1. Language.
2. The decline of Greek Literature.
3. The 'Ideas' of Plato and Modern Philosophy.
4. The myths of Plato.
5. The relation of the Republic, Statesman and Laws.
6. The legend of Atlantis.
7. Psychology.
8. Comparison of the Laws of Plato with Spartan and Athenian Laws and
Institutions.
CHARMIDES.
INTRODUCTION.
The subject of the Charmides is Temperance or (Greek), a peculiarly Greek
notion, which may also be rendered Moderation (Compare Cic. Tusc. '(Greek),
quam soleo equidem tum temperantiam, tum moderationem appellare, nonnunquam
etiam modestiam.'), Modesty, Discretion, Wisdom, without completely
exhausting by all these terms the various associations of the word. It may
be described as 'mens sana in corpore sano,' the harmony or due proportion
of the higher and lower elements of human nature which 'makes a man his own
master,' according to the definition of the Republic. In the accompanying
translation the word has been rendered in different places either
