Title: Meno
Author: Plato


INTRODUCTION.

This Dialogue begins abruptly with a question of Meno, who asks,
'whether virtue can be taught.' Socrates replies that he does not as yet
know what virtue is, and has never known anyone who did. 'Then he cannot
have met Gorgias when he was at Athens.' Yes, Socrates had met him, but
he has a bad memory, and has forgotten what Gorgias said. Will Meno tell
him his own notion, which is probably not very different from that of
Gorgias? 'O yes--nothing easier: there is the virtue of a man, of a
woman, of an old man, and of a child; there is a virtue of every age and
state of life, all of which may be easily described.'

Socrates reminds Meno that this is only an enumeration of the virtues
and not a definition of the notion which is common to them all. In a
second attempt Meno defines virtue to be 'the power of command.' But to
this, again, exceptions are taken. For there must be a virtue of those
who obey, as well as of those who command; and the power of command must
be justly or not unjustly exercised. Meno is very ready to admit that
justice is virtue: 'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are
other virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round
is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are other
figures and other colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and
colour, and try to define them.' Meno confesses his inability, and after
a process of interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the
nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the
accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know
the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not
a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and
more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is allowed to
intrude: 'Figure is the limit of form.' Meno imperiously insists that
he must still have a definition of colour. Some raillery follows; and
at length Socrates is induced to reply, 'that colour is the effluence of
form, sensible, and in due proportion to the sight.' This definition is
exactly suited to the taste of Meno, who welcomes the familiar language
of Gorgias and Empedocles. Socrates is of opinion that the more abstract
or dialectical definition of figure is far better.

Now that Meno has been made to understand the nature of a general
definition, he answers in the spirit of a Greek gentleman, and in the
words of a poet, 'that virtue is to delight in things honourable, and to
have the power of getting them.' This is a nearer approximation than
he has yet made to a complete definition, and, regarded as a piece
of proverbial or popular morality, is not far from the truth. But the
objection is urged, 'that the honourable is the good,' and as every one
equally desires the good, the point of the definition is contained in
the words, 'the power of getting them.' 'And they must be got justly or
with justice.' The definition will then stand thus: 'Virtue is the power
of getting good with justice.' But justice is a part of virtue, and
therefore virtue is the getting of good with a part of virtue. The
definition repeats the word defined.

Meno complains that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a
torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty
to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert
him. Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others,
because he is himself perplexed. He proposes to continue the enquiry.
But how, asks Meno, can he enquire either into what he knows or into
what he does not know? This is a sophistical puzzle, which, as Socrates
remarks, saves a great deal of trouble to him who accepts it. But the
puzzle has a real difficulty latent under it, to which Socrates will
endeavour to find a reply. The difficulty is the origin of knowledge:--

He has heard from priests and priestesses, and from the poet Pindar, of
an immortal soul which is born again and again in successive periods of
existence, returning into this world when she has paid the penalty of
ancient crime, and, having wandered over all places of the upper and
under world, and seen and known all things at one time or other, is by
association out of one thing capable of recovering all. For nature is
of one kindred; and every soul has a seed or germ which may be developed
into all knowledge. The existence of this latent knowledge is further
proved by the interrogation of one of Meno's slaves, who, in the skilful
hands of Socrates, is made to acknowledge some elementary relations
of geometrical figures. The theorem that the square of the diagonal
is double the square of the side--that famous discovery of primitive
mathematics, in honour of which the legendary Pythagoras is said to
have sacrificed a hecatomb--is elicited from him. The first step in the
process of teaching has made him conscious of his own ignorance. He
has had the 'torpedo's shock' given him, and is the better for the
operation. But whence had the uneducated man this knowledge? He had
never learnt geometry in this world; nor was it born with him; he must
therefore have had it when he was not a man. And as he always either was
or was not a man, he must have always had it. (Compare Phaedo.)

After Socrates has given this specimen of the true nature of teaching,
the original question of the teachableness of virtue is renewed. Again
he professes a desire to know 'what virtue is' first. But he is willing
to argue the question, as mathematicians say, under an hypothesis. He
will assume that if virtue is knowledge, then virtue can be taught.
(This was the stage of the argument at which the Protagoras concluded.)

Socrates has no difficulty in showing that virtue is a good, and
that goods, whether of body or mind, must be under the direction of
knowledge. Upon the assumption just made, then, virtue is teachable. But
where are the teachers? There are none to be found. This is extremely
discouraging. Virtue is no sooner discovered to be teachable, than the
discovery follows that it is not taught. Virtue, therefore, is and is
not teachable.

In this dilemma an appeal is made to Anytus, a respectable and
well-to-do citizen of the old school, and a family friend of Meno,
who happens to be present. He is asked 'whether Meno shall go to the
Sophists and be taught.' The suggestion throws him into a rage. 'To
whom, then, shall Meno go?' asks Socrates. To any Athenian gentleman--to
the great Athenian statesmen of past times. Socrates replies here, as
elsewhere (Laches, Prot.), that Themistocles, Pericles, and other great
men, had sons to whom they would surely, if they could have done so,
have imparted their own political wisdom; but no one ever heard that
these sons of theirs were remarkable for anything except riding and
wrestling and similar accomplishments. Anytus is angry at the imputation
which is cast on his favourite statesmen, and on a class to which he
supposes himself to belong; he breaks off with a significant hint. The
mention of another opportunity of talking with him, and the suggestion
that Meno may do the Athenian people a service by pacifying him, are
evident allusions to the trial of Socrates.

Socrates returns to the consideration of the question 'whether virtue is
teachable,' which was denied on the ground that there are no teachers of
it: (for the Sophists are bad teachers, and the rest of the world do
not profess to teach). But there is another point which we failed to
observe, and in which Gorgias has never instructed Meno, nor Prodicus
Socrates. This is the nature of right opinion. For virtue may be under
the guidance of right opinion as well as of knowledge; and right opinion
is for practical purposes as good as knowledge, but is incapable of
being taught, and is also liable, like the images of Daedalus, to 'walk
off,' because not bound by the tie of the cause. This is the sort of
instinct which is possessed by statesmen, who are not wise or knowing
persons, but only inspired or divine. The higher virtue, which is
identical with knowledge, is an ideal only. If the statesman had this
knowledge, and could teach what he knew, he would be like Tiresias in
the world below,--'he alone has wisdom, but the rest flit like shadows.'

This Dialogue is an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be
taught? No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern
times. But in the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind
could rise to a general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular
virtues of courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception
of this ideal was attained, it was only by a further effort that the
question of the teachableness of virtue could be resolved.

The answer which is given by Plato is paradoxical enough, and seems
rather intended to stimulate than to satisfy enquiry. Virtue is
knowledge, and therefore virtue can be taught. But virtue is not taught,
and therefore in this higher and ideal sense there is no virtue and no
knowledge. The teaching of the Sophists is confessedly inadequate, and
Meno, who is their pupil, is ignorant of the very nature of general
terms. He can only produce out of their armoury the sophism, 'that you
can neither enquire into what you know nor into what you do not know;'
to which Socrates replies by his theory of reminiscence.

To the doctrine that virtue is knowledge, Plato has been constantly
tending in the previous Dialogues. But the new truth is no sooner found
than it vanishes away. 'If there is knowledge, there must be teachers;
and where are the teachers?' There is no knowledge in the higher sense
of systematic, connected, reasoned knowledge, such as may one day be
attained, and such as Plato himself seems to see in some far off vision
of a single science. And there are no teachers in the higher sense of
the word; that is to say, no real teachers who will arouse the spirit
of enquiry in their pupils, and not merely instruct them in rhetoric or
impart to them ready-made information for a fee of 'one' or of 'fifty
drachms.' Plato is desirous of deepening the notion of education, and
therefore he asserts the paradox that there are no educators. This
paradox, though different in form, is not really different from the
remark which is often made in modern times by those who would depreciate
either the methods of education commonly employed, or the standard
attained--that 'there is no true education among us.'

There remains still a possibility which must not be overlooked. Even
if there be no true knowledge, as is proved by 'the wretched state of
education,' there may be right opinion, which is a sort of guessing
or divination resting on no knowledge of causes, and incommunicable to
others. This is the gift which our statesmen have, as is proved by the
circumstance that they are unable to impart their knowledge to their
sons. Those who are possessed of it cannot be said to be men of science
or philosophers, but they are inspired and divine.

There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms
the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not
mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of
human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of
all things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing
to admit that 'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);'
and he is at the same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which
governs the world with a higher wisdom. There are many instincts,
judgments, and anticipations of the human mind which cannot be reduced
to rule, and of which the grounds cannot always be given in words. A
person may have some skill or latent experience which he is able to use
himself and is yet unable to teach others, because he has no principles,
and is incapable of collecting or arranging his ideas. He has practice,
but not theory; art, but not science. This is a true fact of psychology,
which is recognized by Plato in this passage. But he is far from
saying, as some have imagined, that inspiration or divine grace is to be
regarded as higher than knowledge. He would not have preferred the poet
or man of action to the philosopher, or the virtue of custom to the
virtue based upon ideas.

Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an
unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. The philosopher only
has knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There
may be a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But
there is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he
is deriding the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or
of oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking
of the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right
opinion, as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who
desires to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just
as he recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the
Sophists as the expression of it.

This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of
reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very
slight, even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had
abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and
their souls therefore must have always existed. For they must always
have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is
transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their
weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things
of which I am not altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be
observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined
with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge,
and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular
knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but
of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated
by strenuous exertion.

The idealism of Plato is here presented in a less developed form than in
the Phaedo and Phaedrus. Nothing is said of the pre-existence of ideas
of justice, temperance, and the like. Nor is Socrates positive of
anything but the duty of enquiry. The doctrine of reminiscence too is
explained more in accordance with fact and experience as arising out of
the affinities of nature (ate tes thuseos oles suggenous ouses). Modern
philosophy says that all things in nature are dependent on one another;
the ancient philosopher had the same truth latent in his mind when
he affirmed that out of one thing all the rest may be recovered. The
subjective was converted by him into an objective; the mental phenomenon
of the association of ideas (compare Phaedo) became a real chain of
existences. The germs of two valuable principles of education may also
be gathered from the 'words of priests and priestesses:' (1) that
true knowledge is a knowledge of causes (compare Aristotle's theory of
episteme); and (2) that the process of learning consists not in what is
brought to the learner, but in what is drawn out of him.

Some lesser points of the dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the
acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is
embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2)
the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to modern
as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large
fortunes; this must surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching,
for that no man could get a living by shoemaking who was not a good
shoemaker; or (3) the remark conveyed, almost in a word, that the verbal
sceptic is saved the labour of thought and enquiry (ouden dei to toiouto
zeteseos). Characteristic also of the temper of the Socratic enquiry
is, (4) the proposal to discuss the teachableness of virtue under
an hypothesis, after the manner of the mathematicians; and (5) the
repetition of the favourite doctrine which occurs so frequently in
the earlier and more Socratic Dialogues, and gives a colour to all
of them--that mankind only desire evil through ignorance; (6) the
experiment of eliciting from the slave-boy the mathematical truth which
is latent in him, and (7) the remark that he is all the better for
knowing his ignorance.

The character of Meno, like that of Critias, has no relation to the
actual circumstances of his life. Plato is silent about his treachery
to the ten thousand Greeks, which Xenophon has recorded, as he is also
silent about the crimes of Critias. He is a Thessalian Alcibiades,
rich and luxurious--a spoilt child of fortune, and is described as the
hereditary friend of the great king. Like Alcibiades he is inspired
with an ardent desire of knowledge, and is equally willing to learn of
Socrates and of the Sophists. He may be regarded as standing in the same
relation to Gorgias as Hippocrates in the Protagoras to the other
great Sophist. He is the sophisticated youth on whom Socrates tries his
cross-examining powers, just as in the Charmides, the Lysis, and
the Euthydemus, ingenuous boyhood is made the subject of a similar
experiment. He is treated by Socrates in a half-playful manner suited to
his character; at the same time he appears not quite to understand the
process to which he is being subjected. For he is exhibited as ignorant
of the very elements of dialectics, in which the Sophists have failed
to instruct their disciple. His definition of virtue as 'the power and
desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first definition
of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet. His answers have a
sophistical ring, and at the same time show the sophistical incapacity
to grasp a general notion.

Anytus is the type of the narrow-minded man of the world, who is
indignant at innovation, and equally detests the popular teacher and
the true philosopher. He seems, like Aristophanes, to regard the new
opinions, whether of Socrates or the Sophists, as fatal to Athenian
greatness. He is of the same class as Callicles in the Gorgias, but of
a different variety; the immoral and sophistical doctrines of Callicles
are not attributed to him. The moderation with which he is described is
remarkable, if he be the accuser of Socrates, as is apparently indicated
by his parting words. Perhaps Plato may have been desirous of showing
that the accusation of Socrates was not to be attributed to badness or
malevolence, but rather to a tendency in men's minds. Or he may have
been regardless of the historical truth of the characters of his
dialogue, as in the case of Meno and Critias. Like Chaerephon (Apol.)
the real Anytus was a democrat, and had joined Thrasybulus in the
conflict with the thirty.

The Protagoras arrived at a sort of hypothetical conclusion, that if
'virtue is knowledge, it can be taught.' In the Euthydemus, Socrates
himself offered an example of the manner in which the true teacher
may draw out the mind of youth; this was in contrast to the quibbling
follies of the Sophists. In the Meno the subject is more developed; the
foundations of the enquiry are laid deeper, and the nature of knowledge
is more distinctly explained. There is a progression by antagonism of
two opposite aspects of philosophy. But at the moment when we approach
nearest, the truth doubles upon us and passes out of our reach. We seem
to find that the ideal of knowledge is irreconcilable with experience.
In human life there is indeed the profession of knowledge, but right
opinion is our actual guide. There is another sort of progress from the
general notions of Socrates, who asked simply, 'what is friendship?'
'what is temperance?' 'what is courage?' as in the Lysis, Charmides,
Laches, to the transcendentalism of Plato, who, in the second stage of
his philosophy, sought to find the nature of knowledge in a prior and
future state of existence.

The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and
in all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as
well as in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but
in stronger opposition to the philosopher. They are no longer allowed to
have a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men
and good speakers, are denounced as 'blind leaders of the blind.' The
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being
made the foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine
of rewards and punishments. In the Republic the relation of knowledge
to virtue is described in a manner more consistent with modern
distinctions. The existence of the virtues without the possession
of knowledge in the higher or philosophical sense is admitted to be
possible. Right opinion is again introduced in the Theaetetus as
an account of knowledge, but is rejected on the ground that it is
irrational (as here, because it is not bound by the tie of the cause),
and also because the conception of false opinion is given up as
hopeless. The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at different
times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new stages of
thought attained by him. We are not therefore justified, in order to
take away the appearance of inconsistency, in attributing to him hidden
meanings or remote allusions.

There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the
Meno. There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato
were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be
one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by
the allusion of Anytus.

We cannot argue that Plato was more likely to have written, as he has
done, of Meno before than after his miserable death; for we have already
seen, in the examples of Charmides and Critias, that the characters in
Plato are very far from resembling the same characters in history. The
repulsive picture which is given of him in the Anabasis of Xenophon,
where he also appears as the friend of Aristippus 'and a fair youth
having lovers,' has no other trait of likeness to the Meno of Plato.

The place of the Meno in the series is doubtfully indicated by internal
evidence. The main character of the Dialogue is Socrates; but to the
'general definitions' of Socrates is added the Platonic doctrine of
reminiscence. The problems of virtue and knowledge have been discussed
in the Lysis, Laches, Charmides, and Protagoras; the puzzle about
knowing and learning has already appeared in the Euthydemus. The
doctrines of immortality and pre-existence are carried further in the
Phaedrus and Phaedo; the distinction between opinion and knowledge is
more fully developed in the Theaetetus. The lessons of Prodicus, whom he
facetiously calls his master, are still running in the mind of Socrates.
Unlike the later Platonic Dialogues, the Meno arrives at no conclusion.
Hence we are led to place the Dialogue at some point of time later than
the Protagoras, and earlier than the Phaedrus and Gorgias. The place
which is assigned to it in this work is due mainly to the desire to
bring together in a single volume all the Dialogues which contain
allusions to the trial and death of Socrates.


*****




ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.

Plato's doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and
definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular
account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his
Dialogues interpreted without regard to their poetical environment. It
is due also to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school;
and the erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed
by the realism of the schoolmen. This popular view of the Platonic ideas
may be summed up in some such formula as the following: 'Truth consists
not in particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of
God, or in some far-off heaven. These were revealed to men in a former
state of existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (anamnesis) or
association from sensible things. The sensible things are not
realities, but shadows only, in relation to the truth.' These unmeaning
propositions are hardly suspected to be a caricature of a great theory
of knowledge, which Plato in various ways and under many figures of
speech is seeking to unfold. Poetry has been converted into dogma; and
it is not remarked that the Platonic ideas are to be found only in about
a third of Plato's writings and are not confined to him. The forms which
they assume are numerous, and if taken literally, inconsistent with one
another. At one time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among
the abstractions of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly
from one to the other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same
passage. The ideas are sometimes described as many, coextensive with
the universals of sense and also with the first principles of ethics; or
again they are absorbed into the single idea of good, and subordinated
to it. They are not more certain than facts, but they are equally
certain (Phaedo). They are both personal and impersonal. They are
abstract terms: they are also the causes of things; and they are even
transformed into the demons or spirits by whose help God made the world.
And the idea of good (Republic) may without violence be converted into
the Supreme Being, who 'because He was good' created all things (Tim.).

It would be a mistake to try and reconcile these differing modes of
thought. They are not to be regarded seriously as having a distinct
meaning. They are parables, prophecies, myths, symbols, revelations,
aspirations after an unknown world. They derive their origin from a deep
religious and contemplative feeling, and also from an observation of
curious mental phenomena. They gather up the elements of the previous
philosophies, which they put together in a new form. Their great
diversity shows the tentative character of early endeavours to think.
They have not yet settled down into a single system. Plato uses them,
though he also criticises them; he acknowledges that both he and others
are always talking about them, especially about the Idea of Good; and
that they are not peculiar to himself (Phaedo; Republic; Soph.). But in
his later writings he seems to have laid aside the old forms of them.
As he proceeds he makes for himself new modes of expression more akin to
the Aristotelian logic.

Yet amid all these varieties and incongruities, there is a common
meaning or spirit which pervades his writings, both those in which he
treats of the ideas and those in which he is silent about them. This is
the spirit of idealism, which in the history of philosophy has had many
names and taken many forms, and has in a measure influenced those
who seemed to be most averse to it. It has often been charged with
inconsistency and fancifulness, and yet has had an elevating effect on
human nature, and has exercised a wonderful charm and interest over
a few spirits who have been lost in the thought of it. It has been
banished again and again, but has always returned. It has attempted to
leave the earth and soar heavenwards, but soon has found that only
in experience could any solid foundation of knowledge be laid. It has
degenerated into pantheism, but has again emerged. No other knowledge
has given an equal stimulus to the mind. It is the science of sciences,
which are also ideas, and under either aspect require to be defined.
They can only be thought of in due proportion when conceived in relation
to one another. They are the glasses through which the kingdoms of
science are seen, but at a distance. All the greatest minds, except when
living in an age of reaction against them, have unconsciously fallen
under their power.

The account of the Platonic ideas in the Meno is the simplest and
clearest, and we shall best illustrate their nature by giving this first
and then comparing the manner in which they are described elsewhere,
e.g. in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic; to which may be added the
criticism of them in the Parmenides, the personal form which is
attributed to them in the Timaeus, the logical character which they
assume in the Sophist and Philebus, and the allusion to them in the
Laws. In the Cratylus they dawn upon him with the freshness of a
newly-discovered thought.

The Meno goes back to a former state of existence, in which men did and
suffered good and evil, and received the reward or punishment of them
until their sin was purged away and they were allowed to return to
earth. This is a tradition of the olden time, to which priests and poets
bear witness. The souls of men returning to earth bring back a latent
memory of ideas, which were known to them in a former state. The
recollection is awakened into life and consciousness by the sight of the
things which resemble them on earth. The soul evidently possesses such
innate ideas before she has had time to acquire them. This is proved by
an experiment tried on one of Meno's slaves, from whom Socrates elicits
truths of arithmetic and geometry, which he had never learned in this
world. He must therefore have brought them with him from another.

The notion of a previous state of existence is found in the verses
of Empedocles and in the fragments of Heracleitus. It was the natural
answer to two questions, 'Whence came the soul? What is the origin of
evil?' and prevailed far and wide in the east. It found its way into
Hellas probably through the medium of Orphic and Pythagorean rites and
mysteries. It was easier to think of a former than of a future life,
because such a life has really existed for the race though not for the
individual, and all men come into the world, if not 'trailing clouds of
glory,' at any rate able to enter into the inheritance of the past. In
the Phaedrus, as well as in the Meno, it is this former rather than a
future life on which Plato is disposed to dwell. There the Gods, and men
following in their train, go forth to contemplate the heavens, and are
borne round in the revolutions of them. There they see the divine forms
of justice, temperance, and the like, in their unchangeable beauty, but
not without an effort more than human. The soul of man is likened to
a charioteer and two steeds, one mortal, the other immortal. The
charioteer and the mortal steed are in fierce conflict; at length the
animal principle is finally overpowered, though not extinguished, by the
combined energies of the passionate and rational elements. This is one
of those passages in Plato which, partaking both of a philosophical
and poetical character, is necessarily indistinct and inconsistent. The
magnificent figure under which the nature of the soul is described has
not much to do with the popular doctrine of the ideas. Yet there is one
little trait in the description which shows that they are present to
Plato's mind, namely, the remark that the soul, which had seen truths
in the form of the universal, cannot again return to the nature of an
animal.

In the Phaedo, as in the Meno, the origin of ideas is sought for in a
previous state of existence. There was no time when they could have been
acquired in this life, and therefore they must have been recovered from
another. The process of recovery is no other than the ordinary law of
association, by which in daily life the sight of one thing or person
recalls another to our minds, and by which in scientific enquiry from
any part of knowledge we may be led on to infer the whole. It is also
argued that ideas, or rather ideals, must be derived from a previous
state of existence because they are more perfect than the sensible forms
of them which are given by experience. But in the Phaedo the doctrine
of ideas is subordinate to the proof of the immortality of the soul.
'If the soul existed in a previous state, then it will exist in a future
state, for a law of alternation pervades all things.' And, 'If the ideas
exist, then the soul exists; if not, not.' It is to be observed, both
in the Meno and the Phaedo, that Socrates expresses himself with
diffidence. He speaks in the Phaedo of the words with which he has
comforted himself and his friends, and will not be too confident that
the description which he has given of the soul and her mansions is
exactly true, but he 'ventures to think that something of the kind is
true.' And in the Meno, after dwelling upon the immortality of the
soul, he adds, 'Of some things which I have said I am not altogether
confident' (compare Apology; Gorgias). From this class of uncertainties
he exempts the difference between truth and appearance, of which he is
absolutely convinced.

In the Republic the ideas are spoken of in two ways, which though not
contradictory are different. In the tenth book they are represented as
the genera or general ideas under which individuals having a common name
are contained. For example, there is the bed which the carpenter makes,
the picture of the bed which is drawn by the painter, the bed existing
in nature of which God is the author. Of the latter all visible beds
are only the shadows or reflections. This and similar illustrations or
explanations are put forth, not for their own sake, or as an exposition
of Plato's theory of ideas, but with a view of showing that poetry and
the mimetic arts are concerned with an inferior part of the soul and a
lower kind of knowledge. On the other hand, in the 6th and 7th books
of the Republic we reach the highest and most perfect conception, which
Plato is able to attain, of the nature of knowledge. The ideas are now
finally seen to be one as well as many, causes as well as ideas, and to
have a unity which is the idea of good and the cause of all the rest.
They seem, however, to have lost their first aspect of universals under
which individuals are contained, and to have been converted into forms
of another kind, which are inconsistently regarded from the one side as
images or ideals of justice, temperance, holiness and the like; from the
other as hypotheses, or mathematical truths or principles.

In the Timaeus, which in the series of Plato's works immediately follows
the Republic, though probably written some time afterwards, no mention
occurs of the doctrine of ideas. Geometrical forms and arithmetical
ratios furnish the laws according to which the world is created. But
though the conception of the ideas as genera or species is forgotten or
laid aside, the distinction of the visible and intellectual is as
firmly maintained as ever. The IDEA of good likewise disappears and is
superseded by the conception of a personal God, who works according to
a final cause or principle of goodness which he himself is. No doubt is
expressed by Plato, either in the Timaeus or in any other dialogue, of
the truths which he conceives to be the first and highest. It is not the
existence of God or the idea of good which he approaches in a tentative
or hesitating manner, but the investigations of physiology. These he
regards, not seriously, as a part of philosophy, but as an innocent
recreation (Tim.).

Passing on to the Parmenides, we find in that dialogue not an exposition
or defence of the doctrine of ideas, but an assault upon them, which is
put into the mouth of the veteran Parmenides, and might be ascribed to
Aristotle himself, or to one of his disciples. The doctrine which is
assailed takes two or three forms, but fails in any of them to escape
the dialectical difficulties which are urged against it. It is admitted
that there are ideas of all things, but the manner in which individuals
partake of them, whether of the whole or of the part, and in which
they become like them, or how ideas can be either within or without
the sphere of human knowledge, or how the human and divine can have any
relation to each other, is held to be incapable of explanation. And
yet, if there are no universal ideas, what becomes of philosophy?
(Parmenides.) In the Sophist the theory of ideas is spoken of as a
doctrine held not by Plato, but by another sect of philosophers, called
'the Friends of Ideas,' probably the Megarians, who were very distinct
from him, if not opposed to him (Sophist). Nor in what may be termed
Plato's abridgement of the history of philosophy (Soph.), is any mention
made such as we find in the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics,
of the derivation of such a theory or of any part of it from the
Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Heracleiteans, or even from Socrates. In
the Philebus, probably one of the latest of the Platonic Dialogues,
the conception of a personal or semi-personal deity expressed under the
figure of mind, the king of all, who is also the cause, is retained. The
one and many of the Phaedrus and Theaetetus is still working in the mind
of Plato, and the correlation of ideas, not of 'all with all,' but of
'some with some,' is asserted and explained. But they are spoken of in
a different manner, and are not supposed to be recovered from a former
state of existence. The metaphysical conception of truth passes into a
psychological one, which is continued in the Laws, and is the final
form of the Platonic philosophy, so far as can be gathered from his own
writings (see especially Laws). In the Laws he harps once more on the
old string, and returns to general notions:--these he acknowledges to
be many, and yet he insists that they are also one. The guardian must be
made to recognize the truth, for which he has contended long ago in the
Protagoras, that the virtues are four, but they are also in some sense
one (Laws; compare Protagoras).

So various, and if regarded on the surface only, inconsistent, are the
statements of Plato respecting the doctrine of ideas. If we attempted to
harmonize or to combine them, we should make out of them, not a system,
but the caricature of a system. They are the ever-varying expression
of Plato's Idealism. The terms used in them are in their substance and
general meaning the same, although they seem to be different. They
pass from the subject to the object, from earth (diesseits) to
heaven (jenseits) without regard to the gulf which later theology and
philosophy have made between them. They are also intended to supplement
or explain each other. They relate to a subject of which Plato himself
would have said that 'he was not confident of the precise form of his
own statements, but was strong in the belief that something of the kind
was true.' It is the spirit, not the letter, in which they agree--the
spirit which places the divine above the human, the spiritual above the
material, the one above the many, the mind before the body.

The stream of ancient philosophy in the Alexandrian and Roman times
widens into a lake or sea, and then disappears underground to reappear
after many ages in a distant land. It begins to flow again under new
conditions, at first confined between high and narrow banks, but finally
spreading over the continent of Europe. It is and is not the same with
ancient philosophy. There is a great deal in modern philosophy which is
inspired by ancient. There is much in ancient philosophy which was 'born
out of due time; and before men were capable of understanding it. To the
fathers of modern philosophy, their own thoughts appeared to be new
and original, but they carried with them an echo or shadow of the past,
coming back by recollection from an elder world. Of this the enquirers
of the seventeenth century, who to themselves appeared to be working out
independently the enquiry into all truth, were unconscious. They stood
in a new relation to theology and natural philosophy, and for a time
maintained towards both an attitude of reserve and separation. Yet the
similarities between modern and ancient thought are greater far than the
differences. All philosophy, even that part of it which is said to be
based upon experience, is really ideal; and ideas are not only derived
from facts, but they are also prior to them and extend far beyond them,
just as the mind is prior to the senses.

Early Greek speculation culminates in the ideas of Plato, or rather in
the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having
arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from
philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to
be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin
of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems of
philosophy.

Plato also left behind him a most potent instrument, the forms of
logic--arms ready for use, but not yet taken out of their armoury. They
were the late birth of the early Greek philosophy, and were the only
part of it which has had an uninterrupted hold on the mind of Europe.
Philosophies come and go; but the detection of fallacies, the framing
of definitions, the invention of methods still continue to be the main
elements of the reasoning process.

Modern philosophy, like ancient, begins with very simple conceptions.
It is almost wholly a reflection on self. It might be described as
a quickening into life of old words and notions latent in the
semi-barbarous Latin, and putting a new meaning into them. Unlike
ancient philosophy, it has been unaffected by impressions derived from
outward nature: it arose within the limits of the mind itself. From the
time of Descartes to Hume and Kant it has had little or nothing to do
with facts of science. On the other hand, the ancient and mediaeval
logic retained a continuous influence over it, and a form like that
of mathematics was easily impressed upon it; the principle of ancient
philosophy which is most apparent in it is scepticism; we must doubt
nearly every traditional or received notion, that we may hold fast one
or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal form was a mental
necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from this alone all
other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of
'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion
that being and thought were the same was revived in a new form by
Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection:
it awakened the 'ego' in human nature. The mind naked and abstract has
no other certainty but the conviction of its own existence. 'I think,
therefore I am;' and this thought is God thinking in me, who has also
communicated to the reason of man his own attributes of thought and
extension--these are truly imparted to him because God is true (compare
Republic). It has been often remarked that Descartes, having begun by
dismissing all presuppositions, introduces several: he passes almost
at once from scepticism to dogmatism. It is more important for the
illustration of Plato to observe that he, like Plato, insists that God
is true and incapable of deception (Republic)--that he proceeds from
general ideas, that many elements of mathematics may be found in him. A
certain influence of mathematics both on the form and substance of their
philosophy is discernible in both of them. After making the greatest
opposition between thought and extension, Descartes, like Plato,
supposes them to be reunited for a time, not in their own nature but by
a special divine act (compare Phaedrus), and he also supposes all
the parts of the human body to meet in the pineal gland, that alone
affording a principle of unity in the material frame of man. It is
characteristic of the first period of modern philosophy, that having
begun (like the Presocratics) with a few general notions, Descartes
first falls absolutely under their influence, and then quickly discards
them. At the same time he is less able to observe facts, because they
are too much magnified by the glasses through which they are seen.
The common logic says 'the greater the extension, the less the
comprehension,' and we may put the same thought in another way and say
of abstract or general ideas, that the greater the abstraction of them,
the less are they capable of being applied to particular and concrete
natures.

Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy
is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The
system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that
of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that
between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be
described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction
and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is
overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness
of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which
excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation
of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In
neither of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and
outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two attributes, which alone
are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme
opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be
regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance
is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic
philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est
negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's
Sophist. The grand description of the philosopher in Republic VI, as the
spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with
another famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie
eternitatis.' According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they
are conditioned by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human
beings are included in the number of them. Hence there is no reality
in human action and no place for right and wrong. Individuality is
accident. The boasted freedom of the will is only a consciousness of
necessity. Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason towards the
infinite, in which all things repose; and herein lies the secret of
man's well-being. In the exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the
denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) Spinoza approaches
nearer to Plato than in his conception of an infinite substance. As
Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained
that knowledge alone is good, and what contributes to knowledge useful.
Both are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature.
And the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their
ideas to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite
substance and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is
between the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.

Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the philosopher
Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between
mind and matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (compare
again Phaedrus). To him all the particles of matter are living beings
which reflect on one another, and in the least of them the whole is
contained. Here we catch a reminiscence both of the omoiomere, or
similar particles of Anaxagoras, and of the world-animal of the Timaeus.

In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of
man is supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by
observation and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea
of experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is
filled. It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is
vouchsafed to us. The Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual
facts than the Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many
of the old rags and ribbons which defaced the garment of philosophy have
been stripped off, but some of them still adhere. A crude conception of
the ideas of Plato survives in the 'forms' of Bacon. And on the other
hand, there are many passages of Plato in which the importance of the
investigation of facts is as much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are
almost equally superior to the illusions of language, and are constantly
crying out against them, as against other idols.

Locke cannot be truly regarded as the author of sensationalism any more
than of idealism. His system is based upon experience, but with him
experience includes reflection as well as sense. His analysis and
construction of ideas has no foundation in fact; it is only the
dialectic of the mind 'talking to herself.' The philosophy of Berkeley
is but the transposition of two words. For objects of sense he would
substitute sensations. He imagines himself to have changed the relation
of the human mind towards God and nature; they remain the same as
before, though he has drawn the imaginary line by which they are divided
at a different point. He has annihilated the outward world, but it
instantly reappears governed by the same laws and described under the
same names.

A like remark applies to David Hume, of whose philosophy the central
principle is the denial of the relation of cause and effect. He would
deprive men of a familiar term which they can ill afford to lose; but
he seems not to have observed that this alteration is merely verbal and
does not in any degree affect the nature of things. Still less did he
remark that he was arguing from the necessary imperfection of language
against the most certain facts. And here, again, we may find a parallel
with the ancients. He goes beyond facts in his scepticism, as they did
in their idealism. Like the ancient Sophists, he relegates the more
important principles of ethics to custom and probability. But crude and
unmeaning as this philosophy is, it exercised a great influence on his
successors, not unlike that which Locke exercised upon Berkeley and
Berkeley upon Hume himself. All three were both sceptical and ideal in
almost equal degrees. Neither they nor their predecessors had any true
conception of language or of the history of philosophy. Hume's
paradox has been forgotten by the world, and did not any more than the
scepticism of the ancients require to be seriously refuted. Like some
other philosophical paradoxes, it would have been better left to die
out. It certainly could not be refuted by a philosophy such as Kant's,
in which, no less than in the previously mentioned systems, the history
of the human mind and the nature of language are almost wholly ignored,
and the certainty of objective knowledge is transferred to the subject;
while absolute truth is reduced to a figment, more abstract and narrow
than Plato's ideas, of 'thing in itself,' to which, if we reason
strictly, no predicate can be applied.

The question which Plato has raised respecting the origin and nature of
ideas belongs to the infancy of philosophy; in modern times it would no
longer be asked. Their origin is only their history, so far as we know
it; there can be no other. We may trace them in language, in philosophy,
in mythology, in poetry, but we cannot argue a priori about them. We may
attempt to shake them off, but they are always returning, and in every
sphere of science and human action are tending to go beyond facts. They
are thought to be innate, because they have been familiar to us all our
lives, and we can no longer dismiss them from our mind. Many of them
express relations of terms to which nothing exactly or nothing at all in
rerum natura corresponds. We are not such free agents in the use of
them as we sometimes imagine. Fixed ideas have taken the most complete
possession of some thinkers who have been most determined to renounce
them, and have been vehemently affirmed when they could be least
explained and were incapable of proof. The world has often been led away
by a word to which no distinct meaning could be attached. Abstractions
such as 'authority,' 'equality,' 'utility,' 'liberty,' 'pleasure,'
'experience,' 'consciousness,' 'chance,' 'substance,' 'matter,' 'atom,'
and a heap of other metaphysical and theological terms, are the source
of quite as much error and illusion and have as little relation
to actual facts as the ideas of Plato. Few students of theology or
philosophy have sufficiently reflected how quickly the bloom of a
philosophy passes away; or how hard it is for one age to understand the
writings of another; or how nice a judgment is required of those who are
seeking to express the philosophy of one age in the terms of another.
The 'eternal truths' of which metaphysicians speak have hardly ever
lasted more than a generation. In our own day schools or systems of
philosophy which have once been famous have died before the founders of
them. We are still, as in Plato's age, groping about for a new method
more comprehensive than any of those which now prevail; and also more
permanent. And we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a
method, which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized
experience, having roots which strike far down into the history of
philosophy. It is a method which does not divorce the present from the
past, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete,
or theory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science
from another, but labours to connect them. Along such a road we have
proceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the
want of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the
branches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will
become the knowledge of 'the revelation of a single science' (Symp.),
and all things, like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one
another.
