Title: Philebus
Author: Plato


INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The Philebus appears to be one of the later writings of Plato, in which
the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element
has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the
development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the
Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a
corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the
persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and
incompleteness in the general design. As in the speeches of Thucydides,
the multiplication of ideas seems to interfere with the power of
expression. Instead of the equally diffused grace and ease of the
earlier dialogues there occur two or three highly-wrought passages;
instead of the ever-flowing play of humour, now appearing, now
concealed, but always present, are inserted a good many bad jests, as
we may venture to term them. We may observe an attempt at artificial
ornament, and far-fetched modes of expression; also clamorous demands
on the part of his companions, that Socrates shall answer his own
questions, as well as other defects of style, which remind us of the
Laws. The connection is often abrupt and inharmonious, and far from
clear. Many points require further explanation; e.g. the reference of
pleasure to the indefinite class, compared with the assertion which
almost immediately follows, that pleasure and pain naturally have their
seat in the third or mixed class: these two statements are unreconciled.
In like manner, the table of goods does not distinguish between the
two heads of measure and symmetry; and though a hint is given that the
divine mind has the first place, nothing is said of this in the final
summing up. The relation of the goods to the sciences does not appear;
though dialectic may be thought to correspond to the highest good, the
sciences and arts and true opinions are enumerated in the fourth class.
We seem to have an intimation of a further discussion, in which some
topics lightly passed over were to receive a fuller consideration. The
various uses of the word 'mixed,' for the mixed life, the mixed class
of elements, the mixture of pleasures, or of pleasure and pain, are a
further source of perplexity. Our ignorance of the opinions which
Plato is attacking is also an element of obscurity. Many things in a
controversy might seem relevant, if we knew to what they were intended
to refer. But no conjecture will enable us to supply what Plato has
not told us; or to explain, from our fragmentary knowledge of them,
the relation in which his doctrine stood to the Eleatic Being or
the Megarian good, or to the theories of Aristippus or Antisthenes
respecting pleasure. Nor are we able to say how far Plato in the
Philebus conceives the finite and infinite (which occur both in the
fragments of Philolaus and in the Pythagorean table of opposites) in the
same manner as contemporary Pythagoreans.

There is little in the characters which is worthy of remark. The
Socrates of the Philebus is devoid of any touch of Socratic irony,
though here, as in the Phaedrus, he twice attributes the flow of his
ideas to a sudden inspiration. The interlocutor Protarchus, the son of
Callias, who has been a hearer of Gorgias, is supposed to begin as a
disciple of the partisans of pleasure, but is drawn over to the opposite
side by the arguments of Socrates. The instincts of ingenuous youth are
easily induced to take the better part. Philebus, who has withdrawn from
the argument, is several times brought back again, that he may support
pleasure, of which he remains to the end the uncompromising advocate.
On the other hand, the youthful group of listeners by whom he is
surrounded, 'Philebus' boys' as they are termed, whose presence is
several times intimated, are described as all of them at last convinced
by the arguments of Socrates. They bear a very faded resemblance to the
interested audiences of the Charmides, Lysis, or Protagoras. Other
signs of relation to external life in the dialogue, or references
to contemporary things and persons, with the single exception of the
allusions to the anonymous enemies of pleasure, and the teachers of the
flux, there are none.

The omission of the doctrine of recollection, derived from a previous
state of existence, is a note of progress in the philosophy of Plato.
The transcendental theory of pre-existent ideas, which is chiefly
discussed by him in the Meno, the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus, has given
way to a psychological one. The omission is rendered more significant
by his having occasion to speak of memory as the basis of desire. Of
the ideas he treats in the same sceptical spirit which appears in his
criticism of them in the Parmenides. He touches on the same difficulties
and he gives no answer to them. His mode of speaking of the analytical
and synthetical processes may be compared with his discussion of the
same subject in the Phaedrus; here he dwells on the importance of
dividing the genera into all the species, while in the Phaedrus he
conveys the same truth in a figure, when he speaks of carving the whole,
which is described under the image of a victim, into parts or members,
'according to their natural articulation, without breaking any of
them.' There is also a difference, which may be noted, between the two
dialogues. For whereas in the Phaedrus, and also in the Symposium,
the dialectician is described as a sort of enthusiast or lover, in the
Philebus, as in all the later writings of Plato, the element of love
is wanting; the topic is only introduced, as in the Republic, by way of
illustration. On other subjects of which they treat in common, such as
the nature and kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of
the good, the order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less
advanced than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical
truth more obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here,
as Plato expressly tells us, he is 'forging weapons of another make,'
i.e. new categories and modes of conception, though 'some of the old
ones might do again.'

But if superior in thought and dialectical power, the Philebus falls
very far short of the Republic in fancy and feeling. The development of
the reason undisturbed by the emotions seems to be the ideal at which
Plato aims in his later dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or
rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to
the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel
between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some
degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in
abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety
of indications, derived from style as well as subject, that the Philebus
belongs to the later period of his life and authorship. But in this, as
in all the later writings of Plato, there are not wanting thoughts and
expressions in which he rises to his highest level.

The plan is complicated, or rather, perhaps, the want of plan renders
the progress of the dialogue difficult to follow. A few leading ideas
seem to emerge: the relation of the one and many, the four original
elements, the kinds of pleasure, the kinds of knowledge, the scale of
goods. These are only partially connected with one another. The dialogue
is not rightly entitled 'Concerning pleasure' or 'Concerning good,' but
should rather be described as treating of the relations of pleasure
and knowledge, after they have been duly analyzed, to the good. (1) The
question is asked, whether pleasure or wisdom is the chief good, or some
nature higher than either; and if the latter, how pleasure and wisdom
are related to this higher good. (2) Before we can reply with exactness,
we must know the kinds of pleasure and the kinds of knowledge. (3) But
still we may affirm generally, that the combined life of pleasure and
wisdom or knowledge has more of the character of the good than either of
them when isolated. (4) to determine which of them partakes most of the
higher nature, we must know under which of the four unities or elements
they respectively fall. These are, first, the infinite; secondly, the
finite; thirdly, the union of the two; fourthly, the cause of the union.
Pleasure is of the first, wisdom or knowledge of the third class, while
reason or mind is akin to the fourth or highest.

(5) Pleasures are of two kinds, the mixed and unmixed. Of mixed
pleasures there are three classes--(a) those in which both the pleasures
and pains are corporeal, as in eating and hunger; (b) those in which
there is a pain of the body and pleasure of the mind, as when you
are hungry and are looking forward to a feast; (c) those in which the
pleasure and pain are both mental. Of unmixed pleasures there are four
kinds: those of sight, hearing, smell, knowledge.

(6) The sciences are likewise divided into two classes, theoretical and
productive: of the latter, one part is pure, the other impure. The
pure part consists of arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing. Arts like
carpentering, which have an exact measure, are to be regarded as higher
than music, which for the most part is mere guess-work. But there is
also a higher arithmetic, and a higher mensuration, which is exclusively
theoretical; and a dialectical science, which is higher still and the
truest and purest knowledge.

(7) We are now able to determine the composition of the perfect life.
First, we admit the pure pleasures and the pure sciences; secondly, the
impure sciences, but not the impure pleasures. We have next to discover
what element of goodness is contained in this mixture. There are three
criteria of goodness--beauty, symmetry, truth. These are clearly more
akin to reason than to pleasure, and will enable us to fix the places
of both of them in the scale of good. First in the scale is measure; the
second place is assigned to symmetry; the third, to reason and wisdom;
the fourth, to knowledge and true opinion; the fifth, to pure pleasures;
and here the Muse says 'Enough.'

'Bidding farewell to Philebus and Socrates,' we may now consider the
metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I)
the paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or
elements; (III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge;
(V) the conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the
relation of the Philebus to the Republic, and to other dialogues.

I. The paradox of the one and many originated in the restless dialectic
of Zeno, who sought to prove the absolute existence of the one by
showing the contradictions that are involved in admitting the existence
of the many (compare Parm.). Zeno illustrated the contradiction by
well-known examples taken from outward objects. But Socrates seems
to intimate that the time had arrived for discarding these hackneyed
illustrations; such difficulties had long been solved by common sense
('solvitur ambulando'); the fact of the co-existence of opposites was
a sufficient answer to them. He will leave them to Cynics and Eristics;
the youth of Athens may discourse of them to their parents. To no
rational man could the circumstance that the body is one, but has many
members, be any longer a stumbling-block.

Plato's difficulty seems to begin in the region of ideas. He cannot
understand how an absolute unity, such as the Eleatic Being, can be
broken up into a number of individuals, or be in and out of them at
once. Philosophy had so deepened or intensified the nature of one or
Being, by the thoughts of successive generations, that the mind could no
longer imagine 'Being' as in a state of change or division. To say that
the verb of existence is the copula, or that unity is a mere unit, is
to us easy; but to the Greek in a particular stage of thought such an
analysis involved the same kind of difficulty as the conception of God
existing both in and out of the world would to ourselves. Nor was he
assisted by the analogy of sensible objects. The sphere of mind was dark
and mysterious to him; but instead of being illustrated by sense, the
greatest light appeared to be thrown on the nature of ideas when they
were contrasted with sense.

Both here and in the Parmenides, where similar difficulties are raised,
Plato seems prepared to desert his ancient ground. He cannot tell the
relation in which abstract ideas stand to one another, and therefore he
transfers the one and many out of his transcendental world, and proceeds
to lay down practical rules for their application to different branches
of knowledge. As in the Republic he supposes the philosopher to proceed
by regular steps, until he arrives at the idea of good; as in the
Sophist and Politicus he insists that in dividing the whole into its
parts we should bisect in the middle in the hope of finding species;
as in the Phaedrus (see above) he would have 'no limb broken' of the
organism of knowledge;--so in the Philebus he urges the necessity of
filling up all the intermediate links which occur (compare Bacon's
'media axiomata') in the passage from unity to infinity. With him the
idea of science may be said to anticipate science; at a time when
the sciences were not yet divided, he wants to impress upon us the
importance of classification; neither neglecting the many individuals,
nor attempting to count them all, but finding the genera and species
under which they naturally fall. Here, then, and in the parallel
passages of the Phaedrus and of the Sophist, is found the germ of the
most fruitful notion of modern science.

Plato describes with ludicrous exaggeration the influence exerted by
the one and many on the minds of young men in their first fervour of
metaphysical enthusiasm (compare Republic). But they are none the less
an everlasting quality of reason or reasoning which never grows old in
us. At first we have but a confused conception of them, analogous to the
eyes blinking at the light in the Republic. To this Plato opposes
the revelation from Heaven of the real relations of them, which some
Prometheus, who gave the true fire from heaven, is supposed to have
imparted to us. Plato is speaking of two things--(1) the crude notion of
the one and many, which powerfully affects the ordinary mind when first
beginning to think; (2) the same notion when cleared up by the help of
dialectic.

To us the problem of the one and many has lost its chief interest and
perplexity. We readily acknowledge that a whole has many parts, that the
continuous is also the divisible, that in all objects of sense there is
a one and many, and that a like principle may be applied to analogy
to purely intellectual conceptions. If we attend to the meaning of the
words, we are compelled to admit that two contradictory statements are
true. But the antinomy is so familiar as to be scarcely observed by us.
Our sense of the contradiction, like Plato's, only begins in a higher
sphere, when we speak of necessity and free-will, of mind and body, of
Three Persons and One Substance, and the like. The world of knowledge
is always dividing more and more; every truth is at first the enemy of
every other truth. Yet without this division there can be no truth; nor
any complete truth without the reunion of the parts into a whole. And
hence the coexistence of opposites in the unity of the idea is regarded
by Hegel as the supreme principle of philosophy; and the law of
contradiction, which is affirmed by logicians to be an ultimate
principle of the human mind, is displaced by another law, which asserts
the coexistence of contradictories as imperfect and divided elements of
the truth. Without entering further into the depths of Hegelianism, we
may remark that this and all similar attempts to reconcile antinomies
have their origin in the old Platonic problem of the 'One and Many.'

II. 1. The first of Plato's categories or elements is the infinite. This
is the negative of measure or limit; the unthinkable, the unknowable;
of which nothing can be affirmed; the mixture or chaos which preceded
distinct kinds in the creation of the world; the first vague impression
of sense; the more or less which refuses to be reduced to rule, having
certain affinities with evil, with pleasure, with ignorance, and which
in the scale of being is farthest removed from the beautiful and good.
To a Greek of the age of Plato, the idea of an infinite mind would
have been an absurdity. He would have insisted that 'the good is of the
nature of the finite,' and that the infinite is a mere negative, which
is on the level of sensation, and not of thought. He was aware that
there was a distinction between the infinitely great and the infinitely
small, but he would have equally denied the claim of either to true
existence. Of that positive infinity, or infinite reality, which we
attribute to God, he had no conception.

The Greek conception of the infinite would be more truly described, in
our way of speaking, as the indefinite. To us, the notion of infinity
is subsequent rather than prior to the finite, expressing not absolute
vacancy or negation, but only the removal of limit or restraint, which
we suppose to exist not before but after we have already set bounds to
thought and matter, and divided them after their kinds. From different
points of view, either the finite or infinite may be looked upon
respectively both as positive and negative (compare 'Omnis determinatio
est negatio')' and the conception of the one determines that of the
other. The Greeks and the moderns seem to be nearly at the opposite
poles in their manner of regarding them. And both are surprised when
they make the discovery, as Plato has done in the Sophist, how large an
element negation forms in the framework of their thoughts.

2, 3. The finite element which mingles with and regulates the infinite
is best expressed to us by the word 'law.' It is that which measures all
things and assigns to them their limit; which preserves them in their
natural state, and brings them within the sphere of human cognition.
This is described by the terms harmony, health, order, perfection, and
the like. All things, in as far as they are good, even pleasures, which
are for the most part indefinite, partake of this element. We should be
wrong in attributing to Plato the conception of laws of nature derived
from observation and experiment. And yet he has as intense a conviction
as any modern philosopher that nature does not proceed by chance. But
observing that the wonderful construction of number and figure, which he
had within himself, and which seemed to be prior to himself, explained
a part of the phenomena of the external world, he extended their
principles to the whole, finding in them the true type both of human
life and of the order of nature.

Two other points may be noticed respecting the third class. First, that
Plato seems to be unconscious of any interval or chasm which separates
the finite from the infinite. The one is in various ways and degrees
working in the other. Hence he has implicitly answered the difficulty
with which he started, of how the one could remain one and yet be
divided among many individuals, or 'how ideas could be in and out of
themselves,' and the like. Secondly, that in this mixed class we find
the idea of beauty. Good, when exhibited under the aspect of measure
or symmetry, becomes beauty. And if we translate his language into
corresponding modern terms, we shall not be far wrong in saying that
here, as well as in the Republic, Plato conceives beauty under the idea
of proportion.

4. Last and highest in the list of principles or elements is the cause
of the union of the finite and infinite, to which Plato ascribes the
order of the world. Reasoning from man to the universe, he argues that
as there is a mind in the one, there must be a mind in the other, which
he identifies with the royal mind of Zeus. This is the first cause of
which 'our ancestors spoke,' as he says, appealing to tradition, in the
Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The 'one and many' is also supposed
to have been revealed by tradition. For the mythical element has not
altogether disappeared.

Some characteristic differences may here be noted, which distinguish the
ancient from the modern mode of conceiving God.

a. To Plato, the idea of God or mind is both personal and impersonal.
Nor in ascribing, as appears to us, both these attributes to him, and in
speaking of God both in the masculine and neuter gender, did he seem
to himself inconsistent. For the difference between the personal and
impersonal was not marked to him as to ourselves. We make a fundamental
distinction between a thing and a person, while to Plato, by the help of
various intermediate abstractions, such as end, good, cause, they appear
almost to meet in one, or to be two aspects of the same. Hence, without
any reconciliation or even remark, in the Republic he speaks at one time
of God or Gods, and at another time of the Good. So in the Phaedrus he
seems to pass unconsciously from the concrete to the abstract conception
of the Ideas in the same dialogue. Nor in the Philebus is he careful to
show in what relation the idea of the divine mind stands to the supreme
principle of measure.

b. Again, to us there is a strongly-marked distinction between a first
cause and a final cause. And we should commonly identify a first cause
with God, and the final cause with the world, which is His work. But
Plato, though not a Pantheist, and very far from confounding God with
the world, tends to identify the first with the final cause. The cause
of the union of the finite and infinite might be described as a higher
law; the final measure which is the highest expression of the good
may also be described as the supreme law. Both these conceptions are
realized chiefly by the help of the material world; and therefore when
we pass into the sphere of ideas can hardly be distinguished.

The four principles are required for the determination of the relative
places of pleasure and wisdom. Plato has been saying that we should
proceed by regular steps from the one to the many. Accordingly, before
assigning the precedence either to good or pleasure, he must first
find out and arrange in order the general principles of things. Mind
is ascertained to be akin to the nature of the cause, while pleasure is
found in the infinite or indefinite class. We may now proceed to divide
pleasure and knowledge after their kinds.

III. 1. Plato speaks of pleasure as indefinite, as relative, as a
generation, and in all these points of view as in a category distinct
from good. For again we must repeat, that to the Greek 'the good is of
the nature of the finite,' and, like virtue, either is, or is nearly
allied to, knowledge. The modern philosopher would remark that the
indefinite is equally real with the definite. Health and mental
qualities are in the concrete undefined; they are nevertheless real
goods, and Plato rightly regards them as falling under the finite class.
Again, we are able to define objects or ideas, not in so far as they are
in the mind, but in so far as they are manifested externally, and can
therefore be reduced to rule and measure. And if we adopt the test
of definiteness, the pleasures of the body are more capable of being
defined than any other pleasures. As in art and knowledge generally, we
proceed from without inwards, beginning with facts of sense, and passing
to the more ideal conceptions of mental pleasure, happiness, and the
like.

2. Pleasure is depreciated as relative, while good is exalted as
absolute. But this distinction seems to arise from an unfair mode
of regarding them; the abstract idea of the one is compared with the
concrete experience of the other. For all pleasure and all knowledge may
be viewed either abstracted from the mind, or in relation to the mind
(compare Aristot. Nic. Ethics). The first is an idea only, which may be
conceived as absolute and unchangeable, and then the abstract idea of
pleasure will be equally unchangeable with that of knowledge. But when
we come to view either as phenomena of consciousness, the same defects
are for the most part incident to both of them. Our hold upon them is
equally transient and uncertain; the mind cannot be always in a state of
intellectual tension, any more than capable of feeling pleasure always.
The knowledge which is at one time clear and distinct, at another seems
to fade away, just as the pleasure of health after sickness, or of
eating after hunger, soon passes into a neutral state of unconsciousness
and indifference. Change and alternation are necessary for the mind as
well as for the body; and in this is to be acknowledged, not an element
of evil, but rather a law of nature. The chief difference between
subjective pleasure and subjective knowledge in respect of permanence is
that the latter, when our feeble faculties are able to grasp it, still
conveys to us an idea of unchangeableness which cannot be got rid of.

3. In the language of ancient philosophy, the relative character of
pleasure is described as becoming or generation. This is relative to
Being or Essence, and from one point of view may be regarded as the
Heraclitean flux in contrast with the Eleatic Being; from another,
as the transient enjoyment of eating and drinking compared with the
supposed permanence of intellectual pleasures. But to us the distinction
is unmeaning, and belongs to a stage of philosophy which has passed
away. Plato himself seems to have suspected that the continuance or life
of things is quite as much to be attributed to a principle of rest as
of motion (compare Charm. Cratyl.). A later view of pleasure is found
in Aristotle, who agrees with Plato in many points, e.g. in his view of
pleasure as a restoration to nature, in his distinction between bodily
and mental, between necessary and non-necessary pleasures. But he is
also in advance of Plato; for he affirms that pleasure is not in the
body at all; and hence not even the bodily pleasures are to be spoken of
as generations, but only as accompanied by generation (Nic. Eth.).

4. Plato attempts to identify vicious pleasures with some form of error,
and insists that the term false may be applied to them: in this he
appears to be carrying out in a confused manner the Socratic doctrine,
that virtue is knowledge, vice ignorance. He will allow of no
distinction between the pleasures and the erroneous opinions on which
they are founded, whether arising out of the illusion of distance or
not. But to this we naturally reply with Protarchus, that the
pleasure is what it is, although the calculation may be false, or the
after-effects painful. It is difficult to acquit Plato, to use his own
language, of being a 'tyro in dialectics,' when he overlooks such
a distinction. Yet, on the other hand, we are hardly fair judges
of confusions of thought in those who view things differently from
ourselves.

5. There appears also to be an incorrectness in the notion which occurs
both here and in the Gorgias, of the simultaneousness of merely bodily
pleasures and pains. We may, perhaps, admit, though even this is not
free from doubt, that the feeling of pleasureable hope or recollection
is, or rather may be, simultaneous with acute bodily suffering. But
there is no such coexistence of the pain of thirst with the pleasures
of drinking; they are not really simultaneous, for the one expels the
other. Nor does Plato seem to have considered that the bodily pleasures,
except in certain extreme cases, are unattended with pain. Few
philosophers will deny that a degree of pleasure attends eating
and drinking; and yet surely we might as well speak of the pains of
digestion which follow, as of the pains of hunger and thirst which
precede them. Plato's conception is derived partly from the extreme case
of a man suffering pain from hunger or thirst, partly from the image
of a full and empty vessel. But the truth is rather, that while the
gratification of our bodily desires constantly affords some degree
of pleasure, the antecedent pains are scarcely perceived by us, being
almost done away with by use and regularity.

6. The desire to classify pleasures as accompanied or not accompanied by
antecedent pains, has led Plato to place under one head the pleasures of
smell and sight, as well as those derived from sounds of music and from
knowledge. He would have done better to make a separate class of the
pleasures of smell, having no association of mind, or perhaps to have
divided them into natural and artificial. The pleasures of sight and
sound might then have been regarded as being the expression of ideas.
But this higher and truer point of view never appears to have occurred
to Plato. Nor has he any distinction between the fine arts and the
mechanical; and, neither here nor anywhere, an adequate conception of
the beautiful in external things.

7. Plato agrees partially with certain 'surly or fastidious'
philosophers, as he terms them, who defined pleasure to be the absence
of pain. They are also described as eminent in physics. There is
unfortunately no school of Greek philosophy known to us which combined
these two characteristics. Antisthenes, who was an enemy of pleasure,
was not a physical philosopher; the atomists, who were physical
philosophers, were not enemies of pleasure. Yet such a combination of
opinions is far from being impossible. Plato's omission to mention them
by name has created the same uncertainty respecting them which also
occurs respecting the 'friends of the ideas' and the 'materialists' in
the Sophist.

On the whole, this discussion is one of the least satisfactory in the
dialogues of Plato. While the ethical nature of pleasure is scarcely
considered, and the merely physical phenomenon imperfectly analysed,
too much weight is given to ideas of measure and number, as the sole
principle of good. The comparison of pleasure and knowledge is really
a comparison of two elements, which have no common measure, and which
cannot be excluded from each other. Feeling is not opposed to knowledge,
and in all consciousness there is an element of both. The most abstract
kinds of knowledge are inseparable from some pleasure or pain, which
accompanies the acquisition or possession of them: the student is liable
to grow weary of them, and soon discovers that continuous mental energy
is not granted to men. The most sensual pleasure, on the other hand, is
inseparable from the consciousness of pleasure; no man can be happy who,
to borrow Plato's illustration, is leading the life of an oyster. Hence
(by his own confession) the main thesis is not worth determining; the
real interest lies in the incidental discussion. We can no more separate
pleasure from knowledge in the Philebus than we can separate justice
from happiness in the Republic.

IV. An interesting account is given in the Philebus of the rank and
order of the sciences or arts, which agrees generally with the scheme
of knowledge in the Sixth Book of the Republic. The chief difference is,
that the position of the arts is more exactly defined. They are divided
into an empirical part and a scientific part, of which the first is mere
guess-work, the second is determined by rule and measure. Of the more
empirical arts, music is given as an example; this, although affirmed
to be necessary to human life, is depreciated. Music is regarded from
a point of view entirely opposite to that of the Republic, not as a
sublime science, coordinate with astronomy, but as full of doubt and
conjecture. According to the standard of accuracy which is here adopted,
it is rightly placed lower in the scale than carpentering, because the
latter is more capable of being reduced to measure.

The theoretical element of the arts may also become a purely abstract
science, when separated from matter, and is then said to be pure and
unmixed. The distinction which Plato here makes seems to be the same as
that between pure and applied mathematics, and may be expressed in the
modern formula--science is art theoretical, art is science practical.
In the reason which he gives for the superiority of the pure science of
number over the mixed or applied, we can only agree with him in part. He
says that the numbers which the philosopher employs are always the same,
whereas the numbers which are used in practice represent different sizes
or quantities. He does not see that this power of expressing different
quantities by the same symbol is the characteristic and not the defect
of numbers, and is due to their abstract nature;--although we admit of
course what Plato seems to feel in his distinctions between pure and
impure knowledge, that the imperfection of matter enters into the
applications of them.

Above the other sciences, as in the Republic, towers dialectic, which is
the science of eternal Being, apprehended by the purest mind and reason.
The lower sciences, including the mathematical, are akin to opinion
rather than to reason, and are placed together in the fourth class of
goods. The relation in which they stand to dialectic is obscure in the
Republic, and is not cleared up in the Philebus.

V. Thus far we have only attained to the vestibule or ante-chamber of
the good; for there is a good exceeding knowledge, exceeding
essence, which, like Glaucon in the Republic, we find a difficulty
in apprehending. This good is now to be exhibited to us under various
aspects and gradations. The relative dignity of pleasure and knowledge
has been determined; but they have not yet received their exact position
in the scale of goods. Some difficulties occur to us in the enumeration:
First, how are we to distinguish the first from the second class of
goods, or the second from the third? Secondly, why is there no mention
of the supreme mind? Thirdly, the nature of the fourth class. Fourthly,
the meaning of the allusion to a sixth class, which is not further
investigated.

(I) Plato seems to proceed in his table of goods, from the more abstract
to the less abstract; from the subjective to the objective; until at the
lower end of the scale we fairly descend into the region of human action
and feeling. To him, the greater the abstraction the greater the truth,
and he is always tending to see abstractions within abstractions;
which, like the ideas in the Parmenides, are always appearing one behind
another. Hence we find a difficulty in following him into the sphere of
thought which he is seeking to attain. First in his scale of goods he
places measure, in which he finds the eternal nature: this would be more
naturally expressed in modern language as eternal law, and seems to be
akin both to the finite and to the mind or cause, which were two of the
elements in the former table. Like the supreme nature in the Timaeus,
like the ideal beauty in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, or like the
ideal good in the Republic, this is the absolute and unapproachable
being. But this being is manifested in symmetry and beauty everywhere,
in the order of nature and of mind, in the relations of men to one
another. For the word 'measure' he now substitutes the word 'symmetry,'
as if intending to express measure conceived as relation. He then
proceeds to regard the good no longer in an objective form, but as the
human reason seeking to attain truth by the aid of dialectic; such at
least we naturally infer to be his meaning, when we consider that both
here and in the Republic the sphere of nous or mind is assigned
to dialectic. (2) It is remarkable (see above) that this personal
conception of mind is confined to the human mind, and not extended to
the divine. (3) If we may be allowed to interpret one dialogue of Plato
by another, the sciences of figure and number are probably classed
with the arts and true opinions, because they proceed from hypotheses
(compare Republic). (4) The sixth class, if a sixth class is to be
added, is playfully set aside by a quotation from Orpheus: Plato means
to say that a sixth class, if there be such a class, is not worth
considering, because pleasure, having only gained the fifth place in the
scale of goods, is already out of the running.

VI. We may now endeavour to ascertain the relation of the Philebus to
the other dialogues. Here Plato shows the same indifference to his own
doctrine of Ideas which he has already manifested in the Parmenides and
the Sophist. The principle of the one and many of which he here speaks,
is illustrated by examples in the Sophist and Statesman. Notwithstanding
the differences of style, many resemblances may be noticed between the
Philebus and Gorgias. The theory of the simultaneousness of pleasure
and pain is common to both of them (Phil. Gorg.); there is also a common
tendency in them to take up arms against pleasure, although the view of
the Philebus, which is probably the later of the two dialogues, is
the more moderate. There seems to be an allusion to the passage in
the Gorgias, in which Socrates dilates on the pleasures of itching and
scratching. Nor is there any real discrepancy in the manner in which
Gorgias and his art are spoken of in the two dialogues. For Socrates
is far from implying that the art of rhetoric has a real sphere of
practical usefulness: he only means that the refutation of the claims
of Gorgias is not necessary for his present purpose. He is saying
in effect: 'Admit, if you please, that rhetoric is the greatest and
usefullest of sciences:--this does not prove that dialectic is not the
purest and most exact.' From the Sophist and Statesman we know that his
hostility towards the sophists and rhetoricians was not mitigated in
later life; although both in the Statesman and Laws he admits of a
higher use of rhetoric.

Reasons have been already given for assigning a late date to the
Philebus. That the date is probably later than that of the Republic, may
be further argued on the following grounds:--1. The general resemblance
to the later dialogues and to the Laws: 2. The more complete account of
the nature of good and pleasure: 3. The distinction between perception,
memory, recollection, and opinion which indicates a great progress
in psychology; also between understanding and imagination, which is
described under the figure of the scribe and the painter. A superficial
notion may arise that Plato probably wrote shorter dialogues, such as
the Philebus, the Sophist, and the Statesman, as studies or preparations
for longer ones. This view may be natural; but on further reflection is
seen to be fallacious, because these three dialogues are found to make
an advance upon the metaphysical conceptions of the Republic. And we can
more easily suppose that Plato composed shorter writings after longer
ones, than suppose that he lost hold of further points of view which he
had once attained.

It is more easy to find traces of the Pythagoreans, Eleatics, Megarians,
Cynics, Cyrenaics and of the ideas of Anaxagoras, in the Philebus, than
to say how much is due to each of them. Had we fuller records of those
old philosophers, we should probably find Plato in the midst of the fray
attempting to combine Eleatic and Pythagorean doctrines, and seeking to
find a truth beyond either Being or number; setting up his own concrete
conception of good against the abstract practical good of the Cynics,
or the abstract intellectual good of the Megarians, and his own idea of
classification against the denial of plurality in unity which is also
attributed to them; warring against the Eristics as destructive of
truth, as he had formerly fought against the Sophists; taking up a
middle position between the Cynics and Cyrenaics in his doctrine of
pleasure; asserting with more consistency than Anaxagoras the existence
of an intelligent mind and cause. Of the Heracliteans, whom he is said
by Aristotle to have cultivated in his youth, he speaks in the Philebus,
as in the Theaetetus and Cratylus, with irony and contempt. But we have
not the knowledge which would enable us to pursue further the line of
reflection here indicated; nor can we expect to find perfect clearness
or order in the first efforts of mankind to understand the working of
their own minds. The ideas which they are attempting to analyse, they
are also in process of creating; the abstract universals of which they
are seeking to adjust the relations have been already excluded by them
from the category of relation.

...

The Philebus, like the Cratylus, is supposed to be the continuation of
a previous discussion. An argument respecting the comparative claims of
pleasure and wisdom to rank as the chief good has been already carried
on between Philebus and Socrates. The argument is now transferred to
Protarchus, the son of Callias, a noble Athenian youth, sprung from
a family which had spent 'a world of money' on the Sophists (compare
Apol.; Crat.; Protag.). Philebus, who appears to be the teacher, or
elder friend, and perhaps the lover, of Protarchus, takes no further
part in the discussion beyond asserting in the strongest manner his
adherence, under all circumstances, to the cause of pleasure.

Socrates suggests that they shall have a first and second palm of
victory. For there may be a good higher than either pleasure or wisdom,
and then neither of them will gain the first prize, but whichever of the
two is more akin to this higher good will have a right to the second.
They agree, and Socrates opens the game by enlarging on the diversity
and opposition which exists among pleasures. For there are pleasures of
all kinds, good and bad, wise and foolish--pleasures of the temperate as
well as of the intemperate. Protarchus replies that although pleasures
may be opposed in so far as they spring from opposite sources,
nevertheless as pleasures they are alike. Yes, retorts Socrates,
pleasure is like pleasure, as figure is like figure and colour like
colour; yet we all know that there is great variety among figures and
colours. Protarchus does not see the drift of this remark; and Socrates
proceeds to ask how he can have a right to attribute a new predicate
(i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are
different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate
by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial
sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that
knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and
trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the
discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two disputants. In
order to avoid this danger, he proposes that they shall beat a retreat,
and, before they proceed, come to an understanding about the 'high
argument' of the one and the many.

Protarchus agrees to the proposal, but he is under the impression that
Socrates means to discuss the common question--how a sensible object can
be one, and yet have opposite attributes, such as 'great' and 'small,'
'light' and 'heavy,' or how there can be many members in one body, and
the like wonders. Socrates has long ceased to see any wonder in these
phenomena; his difficulties begin with the application of number to
abstract unities (e.g.'man,' 'good') and with the attempt to divide
them. For have these unities of idea any real existence? How, if
imperishable, can they enter into the world of generation? How, as
units, can they be divided and dispersed among different objects? Or do
they exist in their entirety in each object? These difficulties are but
imperfectly answered by Socrates in what follows.

We speak of a one and many, which is ever flowing in and out of all
things, concerning which a young man often runs wild in his first
metaphysical enthusiasm, talking about analysis and synthesis to his
father and mother and the neighbours, hardly sparing even his dog. This
'one in many' is a revelation of the order of the world, which some
Prometheus first made known to our ancestors; and they, who were better
men and nearer the gods than we are, have handed it down to us. To know
how to proceed by regular steps from one to many, and from many to one,
is just what makes the difference between eristic and dialectic. And the
right way of proceeding is to look for one idea or class in all things,
and when you have found one to look for more than one, and for all that
there are, and when you have found them all and regularly divided a
particular field of knowledge into classes, you may leave the further
consideration of individuals. But you must not pass at once either from
unity to infinity, or from infinity to unity. In music, for example, you
may begin with the most general notion, but this alone will not make you
a musician: you must know also the number and nature of the intervals,
and the systems which are framed out of them, and the rhythms of the
dance which correspond to them. And when you have a similar knowledge of
any other subject, you may be said to know that subject. In speech again
there are infinite varieties of sound, and some one who was a wise man,
or more than man, comprehended them all in the classes of mutes, vowels,
and semivowels, and gave to each of them a name, and assigned them to
the art of grammar.

'But whither, Socrates, are you going? And what has this to do with the
comparative eligibility of pleasure and wisdom:' Socrates replies, that
before we can adjust their respective claims, we want to know the number
and kinds of both of them. What are they? He is requested to answer the
question himself. That he will, if he may be allowed to make one or two
preliminary remarks. In the first place he has a dreamy recollection of
hearing that neither pleasure nor knowledge is the highest good, for
the good should be perfect and sufficient. But is the life of pleasure
perfect and sufficient, when deprived of memory, consciousness,
anticipation? Is not this the life of an oyster? Or is the life of mind
sufficient, if devoid of any particle of pleasure? Must not the union of
the two be higher and more eligible than either separately? And is not
the element which makes this mixed life eligible more akin to mind than
to pleasure? Thus pleasure is rejected and mind is rejected. And yet
there may be a life of mind, not human but divine, which conquers still.

But, if we are to pursue this argument further, we shall require some
new weapons; and by this, I mean a new classification of existence. (1)
There is a finite element of existence, and (2) an infinite, and (3) the
union of the two, and (4) the cause of the union. More may be added if
they are wanted, but at present we can do without them. And first of the
infinite or indefinite:--That is the class which is denoted by the terms
more or less, and is always in a state of comparison. All words or
ideas to which the words 'gently,' 'extremely,' and other comparative
expressions are applied, fall under this class. The infinite would be
no longer infinite, if limited or reduced to measure by number and
quantity. The opposite class is the limited or finite, and includes all
things which have number and quantity. And there is a third class of
generation into essence by the union of the finite and infinite, in
which the finite gives law to the infinite;--under this are comprehended
health, strength, temperate seasons, harmony, beauty, and the like. The
goddess of beauty saw the universal wantonness of all things, and gave
law and order to be the salvation of the soul. But no effect can be
generated without a cause, and therefore there must be a fourth class,
which is the cause of generation; for the cause or agent is not the same
as the patient or effect.

And now, having obtained our classes, we may determine in which our
conqueror life is to be placed: Clearly in the third or mixed class, in
which the finite gives law to the infinite. And in which is pleasure to
find a place? As clearly in the infinite or indefinite, which alone,
as Protarchus thinks (who seems to confuse the infinite with the
superlative), gives to pleasure the character of the absolute good. Yes,
retorts Socrates, and also to pain the character of absolute evil. And
therefore the infinite cannot be that which imparts to pleasure the
nature of the good. But where shall we place mind? That is a very
serious and awful question, which may be prefaced by another. Is mind
or chance the lord of the universe? All philosophers will say the first,
and yet, perhaps, they may be only magnifying themselves. And for this
reason I should like to consider the matter a little more deeply, even
though some lovers of disorder in the world should ridicule my attempt.

Now the elements earth, air, fire, water, exist in us, and they exist in
the cosmos; but they are purer and fairer in the cosmos than they are in
us, and they come to us from thence. And as we have a soul as well as a
body, in like manner the elements of the finite, the infinite, the union
of the two, and the cause, are found to exist in us. And if they, like
the elements, exist in us, and the three first exist in the world,
must not the fourth or cause which is the noblest of them, exist in the
world? And this cause is wisdom or mind, the royal mind of Zeus, who
is the king of all, as there are other gods who have other noble
attributes. Observe how well this agrees with the testimony of men of
old, who affirmed mind to be the ruler of the universe. And remember
that mind belongs to the class which we term the cause, and pleasure to
the infinite or indefinite class. We will examine the place and origin
of both.

What is the origin of pleasure? Her natural seat is the mixed class,
in which health and harmony were placed. Pain is the violation, and
pleasure the restoration of limit. There is a natural union of finite
and infinite, which in hunger, thirst, heat, cold, is impaired--this is
painful, but the return to nature, in which the elements are restored
to their normal proportions, is pleasant. Here is our first class of
pleasures. And another class of pleasures and pains are hopes and fears;
these are in the mind only. And inasmuch as the pleasures are unalloyed
by pains and the pains by pleasures, the examination of them may show
us whether all pleasure is to be desired, or whether this entire
desirableness is not rather the attribute of another class. But if
pleasures and pains consist in the violation and restoration of limit,
may there not be a neutral state, in which there is neither dissolution
nor restoration? That is a further question, and admitting, as we must,
the possibility of such a state, there seems to be no reason why
the life of wisdom should not exist in this neutral state, which is,
moreover, the state of the gods, who cannot, without indecency, be
supposed to feel either joy or sorrow.

The second class of pleasures involves memory. There are affections
which are extinguished before they reach the soul, and of these there
is no consciousness, and therefore no memory. And there are affections
which the body and soul feel together, and this feeling is termed
consciousness. And memory is the preservation of consciousness, and
reminiscence is the recovery of consciousness. Now the memory of
pleasure, when a man is in pain, is the memory of the opposite of his
actual bodily state, and is therefore not in the body, but in the mind.
And there may be an intermediate state, in which a person is balanced
between pleasure and pain; in his body there is want which is a cause of
pain, but in his mind a sure hope of replenishment, which is pleasant.
(But if the hope be converted into despair, he has two pains and not
a balance of pain and pleasure.) Another question is raised: May not
pleasures, like opinions, be true and false? In the sense of being real,
both must be admitted to be true: nor can we deny that to both of them
qualities may be attributed; for pleasures as well as opinions may be
described as good or bad. And though we do not all of us allow that
there are true and false pleasures, we all acknowledge that there are
some pleasures associated with right opinion, and others with
falsehood and ignorance. Let us endeavour to analyze the nature of this
association.

Opinion is based on perception, which may be correct or mistaken. You
may see a figure at a distance, and say first of all, 'This is a man,'
and then say, 'No, this is an image made by the shepherds.' And you
may affirm this in a proposition to your companion, or make the remark
mentally to yourself. Whether the words are actually spoken or not,
on such occasions there is a scribe within who registers them, and a
painter who paints the images of the things which the scribe has written
down in the soul,--at least that is my own notion of the process; and
the words and images which are inscribed by them may be either true
or false; and they may represent either past, present, or future. And,
representing the future, they must also represent the pleasures and
pains of anticipation--the visions of gold and other fancies which are
never wanting in the mind of man. Now these hopes, as they are termed,
are propositions, which are sometimes true, and sometimes false; for the
good, who are the friends of the gods, see true pictures of the future,
and the bad false ones. And as there may be opinion about things which
are not, were not, and will not be, which is opinion still, so there may
be pleasure about things which are not, were not, and will not be, which
is pleasure still,--that is to say, false pleasure; and only when
false, can pleasure, like opinion, be vicious. Against this conclusion
Protarchus reclaims.

Leaving his denial for the present, Socrates proceeds to show that
some pleasures are false from another point of view. In desire, as we
admitted, the body is divided from the soul, and hence pleasures and
pains are often simultaneous. And we further admitted that both of them
belonged to the infinite class. How, then, can we compare them? Are we
not liable, or rather certain, as in the case of sight, to be deceived
by distance and relation? In this case the pleasures and pains are not
false because based upon false opinion, but are themselves false. And
there is another illusion: pain has often been said by us to arise out
of the derangement--pleasure out of the restoration--of our nature. But
in passing from one to the other, do we not experience neutral states,
which although they appear pleasureable or painful are really neither?
For even if we admit, with the wise man whom Protarchus loves (and only
a wise man could have ever entertained such a notion), that all things
are in a perpetual flux, still these changes are often unconscious, and
devoid either of pleasure or pain. We assume, then, that there are three
states--pleasureable, painful, neutral; we may embellish a little by
calling them gold, silver, and that which is neither.

But there are certain natural philosophers who will not admit a third
state. Their instinctive dislike to pleasure leads them to affirm that
pleasure is only the absence of pain. They are noble fellows, and,
although we do not agree with them, we may use them as diviners who
will indicate to us the right track. They will say, that the nature of
anything is best known from the examination of extreme cases, e.g. the
nature of hardness from the examination of the hardest things; and that
the nature of pleasure will be best understood from an examination of
the most intense pleasures. Now these are the pleasures of the body, not
of the mind; the pleasures of disease and not of health, the pleasures
of the intemperate and not of the temperate. I am speaking, not of the
frequency or continuance, but only of the intensity of such pleasures,
and this is given them by contrast with the pain or sickness of body
which precedes them. Their morbid nature is illustrated by the lesser
instances of itching and scratching, respecting which I swear that I
cannot tell whether they are a pleasure or a pain. (1) Some of these
arise out of a transition from one state of the body to another, as from
cold to hot; (2) others are caused by the contrast of an internal pain
and an external pleasure in the body: sometimes the feeling of pain
predominates, as in itching and tingling, when they are relieved by
scratching; sometimes the feeling of pleasure: or the pleasure which
they give may be quite overpowering, and is then accompanied by all
sorts of unutterable feelings which have a death of delights in them.
But there are also mixed pleasures which are in the mind only. For are
not love and sorrow as well as anger 'sweeter than honey,' and also full
of pain? Is there not a mixture of feelings in the spectator of tragedy?
and of comedy also? 'I do not understand that last.' Well, then, with
the view of lighting up the obscurity of these mixed feelings, let
me ask whether envy is painful. 'Yes.' And yet the envious man finds
something pleasing in the misfortunes of others? 'True.' And
ignorance is a misfortune? 'Certainly.' And one form of ignorance is
self-conceit--a man may fancy himself richer, fairer, better, wiser than
he is? 'Yes.' And he who thus deceives himself may be strong or weak?
'He may.' And if he is strong we fear him, and if he is weak we laugh
at him, which is a pleasure, and yet we envy him, which is a pain? These
mixed feelings are the rationale of tragedy and comedy, and equally the
rationale of the greater drama of human life. (There appears to be some
confusion in this passage. There is no difficulty in seeing that in
comedy, as in tragedy, the spectator may view the performance with mixed
feelings of pain as well as of pleasure; nor is there any difficulty in
understanding that envy is a mixed feeling, which rejoices not without
pain at the misfortunes of others, and laughs at their ignorance of
themselves. But Plato seems to think further that he has explained the
feeling of the spectator in comedy sufficiently by a theory which only
applies to comedy in so far as in comedy we laugh at the conceit or
weakness of others. He has certainly given a very partial explanation of
the ridiculous.) Having shown how sorrow, anger, envy are feelings of
a mixed nature, I will reserve the consideration of the remainder for
another occasion.

Next follow the unmixed pleasures; which, unlike the philosophers of
whom I was speaking, I believe to be real. These unmixed pleasures are:
(1) The pleasures derived from beauty of form, colour, sound, smell,
which are absolutely pure; and in general those which are unalloyed with
pain: (2) The pleasures derived from the acquisition of knowledge, which
in themselves are pure, but may be attended by an accidental pain of
forgetting; this, however, arises from a subsequent act of reflection,
of which we need take no account. At the same time, we admit that the
latter pleasures are the property of a very few. To these pure and
unmixed pleasures we ascribe measure, whereas all others belong to the
class of the infinite, and are liable to every species of excess. And
here several questions arise for consideration:--What is the meaning of
pure and impure, of moderate and immoderate? We may answer the question
by an illustration: Purity of white paint consists in the clearness or
quality of the white, and this is distinct from the quantity or amount
of white paint; a little pure white is fairer than a great deal which
is impure. But there is another question:--Pleasure is affirmed by
ingenious philosophers to be a generation; they say that there are
two natures--one self-existent, the other dependent; the one noble
and majestic, the other failing in both these qualities. 'I do not
understand.' There are lovers and there are loves. 'Yes, I know, but
what is the application?' The argument is in play, and desires to
intimate that there are relatives and there are absolutes, and that the
relative is for the sake of the absolute; and generation is for the
sake of essence. Under relatives I class all things done with a view to
generation; and essence is of the class of good. But if essence is
of the class of good, generation must be of some other class; and our
friends, who affirm that pleasure is a generation, would laugh at the
notion that pleasure is a good; and at that other notion, that pleasure
is produced by generation, which is only the alternative of destruction.
Who would prefer such an alternation to the equable life of pure
thought? Here is one absurdity, and not the only one, to which the
friends of pleasure are reduced. For is there not also an absurdity in
affirming that good is of the soul only; or in declaring that the best
of men, if he be in pain, is bad?

And now, from the consideration of pleasure, we pass to that of
knowledge. Let us reflect that there are two kinds of knowledge--the one
creative or productive, and the other educational and philosophical.
Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge
than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element
of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in
flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering
there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts,
then, we may make two classes--the less exact and the more exact. And
the exacter part of all of them is really arithmetic and mensuration.
But arithmetic and mensuration again may be subdivided with reference
either to their use in the concrete, or to their nature in the
abstract--as they are regarded popularly in building and binding, or
theoretically by philosophers. And, borrowing the analogy of pleasure,
we may say that the philosophical use of them is purer than the other.
Thus we have two arts of arithmetic, and two of mensuration. And truest
of all in the estimation of every rational man is dialectic, or the
science of being, which will forget and disown us, if we forget and
disown her.

'But, Socrates, I have heard Gorgias say that rhetoric is the greatest
and usefullest of arts; and I should not like to quarrel either with
him or you.' Neither is there any inconsistency, Protarchus, with
his statement in what I am now saying; for I am not maintaining that
dialectic is the greatest or usefullest, but only that she is the truest
of arts; my remark is not quantitative but qualitative, and refers not
to the advantage or repetition of either, but to the degree of truth
which they attain--here Gorgias will not care to compete; this is what
we affirm to be possessed in the highest degree by dialectic. And do not
let us appeal to Gorgias or Philebus or Socrates, but ask, on behalf of
the argument, what are the highest truths which the soul has the power
of attaining. And is not this the science which has a firmer grasp
of them than any other? For the arts generally are only occupied with
matters of opinion, and with the production and action and passion of
this sensible world. But the highest truth is that which is eternal and
unchangeable. And reason and wisdom are concerned with the eternal; and
these are the very claimants, if not for the first, at least for the
second place, whom I propose as rivals to pleasure.

And now, having the materials, we may proceed to mix them--first
recapitulating the question at issue.

Philebus affirmed pleasure to be the good, and assumed them to be
one nature; I affirmed that they were two natures, and declared that
knowledge was more akin to the good than pleasure. I said that the two
together were more eligible than either taken singly; and to this we
adhere. Reason intimates, as at first, that we should seek the good not
in the unmixed life, but in the mixed.

The cup is ready, waiting to be mingled, and here are two fountains,
one of honey, the other of pure water, out of which to make the fairest
possible mixture. There are pure and impure pleasures--pure and impure
sciences. Let us consider the sections of each which have the most of
purity and truth; to admit them all indiscriminately would be
dangerous. First we will take the pure sciences; but shall we mingle the
impure--the art which uses the false rule and the false measure? That
we must, if we are any of us to find our way home; man cannot live upon
pure mathematics alone. And must I include music, which is admitted to
be guess-work? 'Yes, you must, if human life is to have any humanity.'
Well, then, I will open the door and let them all in; they shall mingle
in an Homeric 'meeting of the waters.' And now we turn to the pleasures;
shall I admit them? 'Admit first of all the pure pleasures; secondly,
the necessary.' And what shall we say about the rest? First, ask the
pleasures--they will be too happy to dwell with wisdom. Secondly, ask
the arts and sciences--they reply that the excesses of intemperance are
the ruin of them; and that they would rather only have the pleasures of
health and temperance, which are the handmaidens of virtue. But still we
want truth? That is now added; and so the argument is complete, and may
be compared to an incorporeal law, which is to hold fair rule over a
living body. And now we are at the vestibule of the good, in which there
are three chief elements--truth, symmetry, and beauty. These will be the
criterion of the comparative claims of pleasure and wisdom.

Which has the greater share of truth? Surely wisdom; for pleasure is the
veriest impostor in the world, and the perjuries of lovers have passed
into a proverb.

Which of symmetry? Wisdom again; for nothing is more immoderate than
pleasure.

Which of beauty? Once more, wisdom; for pleasure is often unseemly, and
the greatest pleasures are put out of sight.

Not pleasure, then, ranks first in the scale of good, but measure, and
eternal harmony.

Second comes the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect.

Third, mind and wisdom.

Fourth, sciences and arts and true opinions.

Fifth, painless pleasures.

Of a sixth class, I have no more to say. Thus, pleasure and mind may
both renounce the claim to the first place. But mind is ten thousand
times nearer to the chief good than pleasure. Pleasure ranks fifth and
not first, even though all the animals in the world assert the contrary.

...

From the days of Aristippus and Epicurus to our own times the nature
of pleasure has occupied the attention of philosophers. 'Is pleasure
an evil? a good? the only good?' are the simple forms which the enquiry
assumed among the Socratic schools. But at an early stage of the
controversy another question was asked: 'Do pleasures differ in kind?
and are some bad, some good, and some neither bad nor good?' There are
bodily and there are mental pleasures, which were at first confused but
afterwards distinguished. A distinction was also made between necessary
and unnecessary pleasures; and again between pleasures which had or had
not corresponding pains. The ancient philosophers were fond of asking,
in the language of their age, 'Is pleasure a "becoming" only, and
therefore transient and relative, or do some pleasures partake of truth
and Being?' To these ancient speculations the moderns have added a
further question:--'Whose pleasure? The pleasure of yourself, or of your
neighbour,--of the individual, or of the world?' This little addition
has changed the whole aspect of the discussion: the same word is now
supposed to include two principles as widely different as benevolence
and self-love. Some modern writers have also distinguished between
pleasure the test, and pleasure the motive of actions. For the universal
test of right actions (how I know them) may not always be the highest or
best motive of them (why I do them).

Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew
attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to
act rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of
the Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who
maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for
generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics
(Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action
which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the
calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the
chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not
intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the
Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues
the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the
so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and
motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends
upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or less when seen near and
at a distance. The testimony of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of
Plato, and we are therefore justified in calling Socrates the first
utilitarian; as indeed there is no side or aspect of philosophy which
may not with reason be ascribed to him--he is Cynic and Cyrenaic,
Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the Phaedo the Socratic has
already passed into a more ideal point of view; and he, or rather
Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion that the
exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of virtue.
Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of
appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures
of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the
philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near
or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise
the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will
hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge
are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher
so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds.
(Compare a similar argument urged by one of the latest defenders of
Utilitarianism, Mill's Utilitarianism). In the Philebus, Plato, although
he regards the enemies of pleasure with complacency, still further
modifies the transcendentalism of the Phaedo. For he is compelled to
confess, rather reluctantly, perhaps, that some pleasures, i.e. those
which have no antecedent pains, claim a place in the scale of goods.

There have been many reasons why not only Plato but mankind in general
have been unwilling to acknowledge that 'pleasure is the chief good.'
Either they have heard a voice calling to them out of another world; or
the life and example of some great teacher has cast their thoughts
of right and wrong in another mould; or the word 'pleasure' has been
associated in their mind with merely animal enjoyment. They could not
believe that what they were always striving to overcome, and the power
or principle in them which overcame, were of the same nature. The
pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence,
the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so
different:--Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the
equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like
the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and
then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should
we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the
higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at
variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics
and of morals. It has not satisfied their imagination; it has offended
their taste. To elevate pleasure, 'the most fleeting of all things,'
into a general idea seems to such men a contradiction. They do not
desire to bring down their theory to the level of their practice. The
simplicity of the 'greatest happiness' principle has been acceptable to
philosophers, but the better part of the world has been slow to receive
it.

Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the
field of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices,
which intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed
to discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that
no action can be right which does not tend to the happiness of mankind;
we acknowledge that a large class of actions are made right or wrong
by their consequences only; we say further that mankind are not too
mindful, but that they are far too regardless of consequences, and that
they need to have the doctrine of utility habitually inculcated on them.
We recognize the value of a principle which can supply a connecting link
between Ethics and Politics, and under which all human actions are or
may be included. The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference
of expediency to right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by
which human nature can be animated. Neither in referring actions to the
test of utility have we to make a laborious calculation, any more than
in trying them by other standards of morals. For long ago they have been
classified sufficiently for all practical purposes by the thinker,
by the legislator, by the opinion of the world. Whatever may be the
hypothesis on which they are explained, or which in doubtful cases
may be applied to the regulation of them, we are very rarely, if ever,
called upon at the moment of performing them to determine their effect
upon the happiness of mankind.

There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and
others--the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong
innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those
speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has
been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent
with a transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with
a greatest happiness principle or with Kant's law of duty. Yet to avoid
misconception, what appears to be the truth about the origin of
our moral ideas may be shortly summed up as follows:--To each of us
individually our moral ideas come first of all in childhood through
the medium of education, from parents and teachers, assisted by the
unconscious influence of language; they are impressed upon a mind which
at first is like a waxen tablet, adapted to receive them; but they soon
become fixed or set, and in after life are strengthened, or perhaps
weakened by the force of public opinion. They may be corrected and
enlarged by experience, they may be reasoned about, they may be brought
home to us by the circumstances of our lives, they may be intensified
by imagination, by reflection, by a course of action likely to confirm
them. Under the influence of religious feeling or by an effort of
thought, any one beginning with the ordinary rules of morality may
create out of them for himself ideals of holiness and virtue. They
slumber in the minds of most men, yet in all of us there remains some
tincture of affection, some desire of good, some sense of truth, some
fear of the law. Of some such state or process each individual is
conscious in himself, and if he compares his own experience with that
of others he will find the witness of their consciences to coincide with
that of his own. All of us have entered into an inheritance which we
have the power of appropriating and making use of. No great effort of
mind is required on our part; we learn morals, as we learn to talk,
instinctively, from conversing with others, in an enlightened age, in
a civilized country, in a good home. A well-educated child of ten years
old already knows the essentials of morals: 'Thou shalt not steal,'
'thou shalt speak the truth,' 'thou shalt love thy parents,' 'thou shalt
fear God.' What more does he want?

But whence comes this common inheritance or stock of moral ideas? Their
beginning, like all other beginnings of human things, is obscure, and
is the least important part of them. Imagine, if you will, that Society
originated in the herding of brutes, in their parental instincts, in
their rude attempts at self-preservation:--Man is not man in that he
resembles, but in that he differs from them. We must pass into another
cycle of existence, before we can discover in him by any evidence
accessible to us even the germs of our moral ideas. In the history of
the world, which viewed from within is the history of the human mind,
they have been slowly created by religion, by poetry, by law, having
their foundation in the natural affections and in the necessity of some
degree of truth and justice in a social state; they have been deepened
and enlarged by the efforts of great thinkers who have idealized and
connected them--by the lives of saints and prophets who have taught and
exemplified them. The schools of ancient philosophy which seem so far
from us--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and
a few modern teachers, such as Kant and Bentham, have each of them
supplied 'moments' of thought to the world. The life of Christ has
embodied a divine love, wisdom, patience, reasonableness. For his image,
however imperfectly handed down to us, the modern world has received a
standard more perfect in idea than the societies of ancient times, but
also further removed from practice. For there is certainly a greater
interval between the theory and practice of Christians than between the
theory and practice of the Greeks and Romans; the ideal is more above
us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to
evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when
the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted
by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower
have risen up and re-asserted the natural sense of religion and right.

We may further remark that our moral ideas, as the world grows older,
perhaps as we grow older ourselves, unless they have been undermined in
us by false philosophy or the practice of mental analysis, or
infected by the corruption of society or by some moral disorder in
the individual, are constantly assuming a more natural and necessary
character. The habit of the mind, the opinion of the world, familiarizes
them to us; and they take more and more the form of immediate intuition.
The moral sense comes last and not first in the order of their
development, and is the instinct which we have inherited or acquired,
not the nobler effort of reflection which created them and which keeps
them alive. We do not stop to reason about common honesty. Whenever we
are not blinded by self-deceit, as for example in judging the actions
of others, we have no hesitation in determining what is right and wrong.
The principles of morality, when not at variance with some desire or
worldly interest of our own, or with the opinion of the public, are
hardly perceived by us; but in the conflict of reason and passion they
assert their authority and are not overcome without remorse.

Such is a brief outline of the history of our moral ideas. We have to
distinguish, first of all, the manner in which they have grown up in the
world from the manner in which they have been communicated to each of
us. We may represent them to ourselves as flowing out of the boundless
ocean of language and thought in little rills, which convey them to the
heart and brain of each individual. But neither must we confound the
theories or aspects of morality with the origin of our moral ideas.
These are not the roots or 'origines' of morals, but the latest efforts
of reflection, the lights in which the whole moral world has been
regarded by different thinkers and successive generations of men. If we
ask: Which of these many theories is the true one? we may answer: All
of them--moral sense, innate ideas, a priori, a posteriori notions, the
philosophy of experience, the philosophy of intuition--all of them have
added something to our conception of Ethics; no one of them is the whole
truth. But to decide how far our ideas of morality are derived from
one source or another; to determine what history, what philosophy has
contributed to them; to distinguish the original, simple elements from
the manifold and complex applications of them, would be a long enquiry
too far removed from the question which we are now pursuing.

Bearing in mind the distinction which we have been seeking to establish
between our earliest and our most mature ideas of morality, we may now
proceed to state the theory of Utility, not exactly in the words, but
in the spirit of one of its ablest and most moderate supporters (Mill's
Utilitarianism):--'That which alone makes actions either right or
desirable is their utility, or tendency to promote the happiness of
mankind, or, in other words, to increase the sum of pleasure in the
world. But all pleasures are not the same: they differ in quality as
well as in quantity, and the pleasure which is superior in quality is
incommensurable with the inferior. Neither is the pleasure or happiness,
which we seek, our own pleasure, but that of others,--of our family, of
our country, of mankind. The desire of this, and even the sacrifice of
our own interest to that of other men, may become a passion to a rightly
educated nature. The Utilitarian finds a place in his system for this
virtue and for every other.'

Good or happiness or pleasure is thus regarded as the true and only end
of human life. To this all our desires will be found to tend, and
in accordance with this all the virtues, including justice, may be
explained. Admitting that men rest for a time in inferior ends, and do
not cast their eyes beyond them, these ends are really dependent on the
greater end of happiness, and would not be pursued, unless in general
they had been found to lead to it. The existence of such an end is
proved, as in Aristotle's time, so in our own, by the universal fact
that men desire it. The obligation to promote it is based upon the
social nature of man; this sense of duty is shared by all of us in some
degree, and is capable of being greatly fostered and strengthened.
So far from being inconsistent with religion, the greatest happiness
principle is in the highest degree agreeable to it. For what can be more
reasonable than that God should will the happiness of all his creatures?
and in working out their happiness we may be said to be 'working
together with him.' Nor is it inconceivable that a new enthusiasm of
the future, far stronger than any old religion, may be based upon such a
conception.

But then for the familiar phrase of the 'greatest happiness principle,'
it seems as if we ought now to read 'the noblest happiness principle,'
'the happiness of others principle'--the principle not of the greatest,
but of the highest pleasure, pursued with no more regard to our own
immediate interest than is required by the law of self-preservation.
Transfer the thought of happiness to another life, dropping the external
circumstances which form so large a part of our idea of happiness
in this, and the meaning of the word becomes indistinguishable from
holiness, harmony, wisdom, love. By the slight addition 'of others,' all
the associations of the word are altered; we seem to have passed
over from one theory of morals to the opposite. For allowing that the
happiness of others is reflected on ourselves, and also that every man
must live before he can do good to others, still the last limitation is
a very trifling exception, and the happiness of another is very far from
compensating for the loss of our own. According to Mr. Mill, he would
best carry out the principle of utility who sacrificed his own
pleasure most to that of his fellow-men. But if so, Hobbes and Butler,
Shaftesbury and Hume, are not so far apart as they and their followers
imagine. The thought of self and the thought of others are alike
superseded in the more general notion of the happiness of mankind at
large. But in this composite good, until society becomes perfected, the
friend of man himself has generally the least share, and may be a great
sufferer.

And now what objection have we to urge against a system of moral
philosophy so beneficent, so enlightened, so ideal, and at the same time
so practical,--so Christian, as we may say without exaggeration,--and
which has the further advantage of resting morality on a principle
intelligible to all capacities? Have we not found that which Socrates
and Plato 'grew old in seeking'? Are we not desirous of happiness, at
any rate for ourselves and our friends, if not for all mankind? If, as
is natural, we begin by thinking of ourselves first, we are easily led
on to think of others; for we cannot help acknowledging that what
is right for us is the right and inheritance of others. We feel the
advantage of an abstract principle wide enough and strong enough
to override all the particularisms of mankind; which acknowledges a
universal good, truth, right; which is capable of inspiring men like
a passion, and is the symbol of a cause for which they are ready to
contend to their life's end.

And if we test this principle by the lives of its professors, it would
certainly appear inferior to none as a rule of action. From the days
of Eudoxus (Arist. Ethics) and Epicurus to our own, the votaries of
pleasure have gained belief for their principles by their practice.
Two of the noblest and most disinterested men who have lived in this
century, Bentham and J. S. Mill, whose lives were a long devotion to
the service of their fellows, have been among the most enthusiastic
supporters of utility; while among their contemporaries, some who were
of a more mystical turn of mind, have ended rather in aspiration than in
action, and have been found unequal to the duties of life. Looking back
on them now that they are removed from the scene, we feel that mankind
has been the better for them. The world was against them while they
lived; but this is rather a reason for admiring than for depreciating
them. Nor can any one doubt that the influence of their philosophy on
politics--especially on foreign politics, on law, on social life, has
been upon the whole beneficial. Nevertheless, they will never have
justice done to them, for they do not agree either with the better
feeling of the multitude or with the idealism of more refined thinkers.
Without Bentham, a great word in the history of philosophy would have
remained unspoken. Yet to this day it is rare to hear his name received
with any mark of respect such as would be freely granted to the
ambiguous memory of some father of the Church. The odium which attached
to him when alive has not been removed by his death. For he shocked his
contemporaries by egotism and want of taste; and this generation which
has reaped the benefit of his labours has inherited the feeling of the
last. He was before his own age, and is hardly remembered in this.

While acknowledging the benefits which the greatest happiness principle
has conferred upon mankind, the time appears to have arrived, not for
denying its claims, but for criticizing them and comparing them with
other principles which equally claim to lie at the foundation of ethics.
Any one who adds a general principle to knowledge has been a benefactor
to the world. But there is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he
may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is
subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or
how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world;
or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the
whole which is only a part,--to be the necessary foundation which
is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all
philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of
imagination which forged them has cooled, and they are seen in the
temperate light of day. All of them have contributed to enrich the mind
of the civilized world; none of them occupy that supreme or exclusive
place which their authors would have assigned to them.

We may preface the criticism with a few preliminary remarks:--

Mr. Mill, Mr. Austin, and others, in their eagerness to maintain the
doctrine of utility, are fond of repeating that we are in a lamentable
state of uncertainty about morals. While other branches of knowledge
have made extraordinary progress, in moral philosophy we are supposed by
them to be no better than children, and with few exceptions--that is to
say, Bentham and his followers--to be no further advanced than men were
in the age of Socrates and Plato, who, in their turn, are deemed to be
as backward in ethics as they necessarily were in physics. But this,
though often asserted, is recanted almost in a breath by the same
writers who speak thus depreciatingly of our modern ethical philosophy.
For they are the first to acknowledge that we have not now to begin
classifying actions under the head of utility; they would not deny that
about the general conceptions of morals there is a practical agreement.
There is no more doubt that falsehood is wrong than that a stone falls
to the ground, although the first does not admit of the same ocular
proof as the second. There is no greater uncertainty about the duty
of obedience to parents and to the law of the land than about the
properties of triangles. Unless we are looking for a new moral world
which has no marrying and giving in marriage, there is no greater
disagreement in theory about the right relations of the sexes than about
the composition of water. These and a few other simple principles, as
they have endless applications in practice, so also may be developed in
theory into counsels of perfection.

To what then is to be attributed this opinion which has been often
entertained about the uncertainty of morals? Chiefly to this,--that
philosophers have not always distinguished the theoretical and the
casuistical uncertainty of morals from the practical certainty. There
is an uncertainty about details,--whether, for example, under given
circumstances such and such a moral principle is to be enforced, or
whether in some cases there may not be a conflict of duties: these are
the exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality, important, indeed, but
not extending to the one thousandth or one ten-thousandth part of human
actions. This is the domain of casuistry. Secondly, the aspects under
which the most general principles of morals may be presented to us are
many and various. The mind of man has been more than usually active
in thinking about man. The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right,
freedom, benevolence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some
philosopher or other the truest and most comprehensive expression of
morality. There is no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of
opinion about the right and wrong of actions, but only about the
general notion which furnishes the best explanation or gives the most
comprehensive view of them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere
of the metaphysic of ethics. But these two uncertainties at either end,
en tois malista katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space enough for
an intermediate principle which is practically certain.

The rule of human life is not dependent on the theories of philosophers:
we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about
them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already
know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general,
to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm
one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they
are not many, but one. There is the same kind of pleasure and use in
reducing morals, as in reducing physics, to a few very simple truths.
And not unfrequently the more general principle may correct prejudices
and misconceptions, and enable us to regard our fellow-men in a larger
and more generous spirit.

The two qualities which seem to be most required in first principles of
ethics are, (1) that they should afford a real explanation of the facts,
(2) that they should inspire the mind,--should harmonize, strengthen,
settle us. We can hardly estimate the influence which a simple principle
such as 'Act so as to promote the happiness of mankind,' or 'Act so that
the rule on which thou actest may be adopted as a law by all rational
beings,' may exercise on the mind of an individual. They will often seem
to open a new world to him, like the religious conceptions of faith or
the spirit of God. The difficulties of ethics disappear when we do not
suffer ourselves to be distracted between different points of view.
But to maintain their hold on us, the general principles must also be
psychologically true--they must agree with our experience, they must
accord with the habits of our minds.

When we are told that actions are right or wrong only in so far as they
tend towards happiness, we naturally ask what is meant by 'happiness.'
For the term in the common use of language is only to a certain extent
commensurate with moral good and evil. We should hardly say that a good
man could be utterly miserable (Arist. Ethics), or place a bad man in
the first rank of happiness. But yet, from various circumstances, the
measure of a man's happiness may be out of all proportion to his desert.
And if we insist on calling the good man alone happy, we shall be
using the term in some new and transcendental sense, as synonymous with
well-being. We have already seen that happiness includes the happiness
of others as well as our own; we must now comprehend unconscious as well
as conscious happiness under the same word. There is no harm in this
extension of the meaning, but a word which admits of such an extension
can hardly be made the basis of a philosophical system. The exactness
which is required in philosophy will not allow us to comprehend under
the same term two ideas so different as the subjective feeling of
pleasure or happiness and the objective reality of a state which
receives our moral approval.

Like Protarchus in the Philebus, we can give no answer to the question,
'What is that common quality which in all states of human life we call
happiness? which includes the lower and the higher kind of happiness,
and is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the meanest of mankind?' If
we say 'Not pleasure, not virtue, not wisdom, nor yet any quality which
we can abstract from these'--what then? After seeming to hover for a
time on the verge of a great truth, we have gained only a truism.

Let us ask the question in another form. What is that which constitutes
happiness, over and above the several ingredients of health, wealth,
pleasure, virtue, knowledge, which are included under it? Perhaps we
answer, 'The subjective feeling of them.' But this is very far from
being coextensive with right. Or we may reply that happiness is the
whole of which the above-mentioned are the parts. Still the question
recurs, 'In what does the whole differ from all the parts?' And if we
are unable to distinguish them, happiness will be the mere aggregate of
the goods of life.

Again, while admitting that in all right action there is an element of
happiness, we cannot help seeing that the utilitarian theory supplies
a much easier explanation of some virtues than of others. Of many
patriotic or benevolent actions we can give a straightforward account by
their tendency to promote happiness. For the explanation of justice, on
the other hand, we have to go a long way round. No man is indignant
with a thief because he has not promoted the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, but because he has done him a wrong. There is an
immeasurable interval between a crime against property or life, and the
omission of an act of charity or benevolence. Yet of this interval the
utilitarian theory takes no cognizance. The greatest happiness principle
strengthens our sense of positive duties towards others, but weakens
our recognition of their rights. To promote in every way possible the
happiness of others may be a counsel of perfection, but hardly seems
to offer any ground for a theory of obligation. For admitting that our
ideas of obligation are partly derived from religion and custom, yet
they seem also to contain other essential elements which cannot be
explained by the tendency of actions to promote happiness. Whence comes
the necessity of them? Why are some actions rather than others which
equally tend to the happiness of mankind imposed upon us with the
authority of law? 'You ought' and 'you had better' are fundamental
distinctions in human thought; and having such distinctions, why should
we seek to efface and unsettle them?

Bentham and Mr. Mill are earnest in maintaining that happiness includes
the happiness of others as well as of ourselves. But what two notions
can be more opposed in many cases than these? Granting that in a perfect
state of the world my own happiness and that of all other men would
coincide, in the imperfect state they often diverge, and I cannot truly
bridge over the difficulty by saying that men will always find pleasure
in sacrificing themselves or in suffering for others. Upon the greatest
happiness principle it is admitted that I am to have a share, and in
consistency I should pursue my own happiness as impartially as that of
my neighbour. But who can decide what proportion should be mine and what
his, except on the principle that I am most likely to be deceived in my
own favour, and had therefore better give the larger share, if not all,
to him?

Further, it is admitted that utility and right coincide, not in
particular instances, but in classes of actions. But is it not
distracting to the conscience of a man to be told that in the particular
case they are opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral
obligation, yet he must not do what clearly conduces to his own
happiness if it is at variance with the good of the whole. Nay, further,
he will be taught that when utility and right are in apparent conflict
any amount of utility does not alter by a hair's-breadth the morality
of actions, which cannot be allowed to deviate from established law or
usage; and that the non-detection of an immoral act, say of telling a
lie, which may often make the greatest difference in the consequences,
not only to himself, but to all the world, makes none whatever in the
act itself.

Again, if we are concerned not with particular actions but with classes
of actions, is the tendency of actions to happiness a principle upon
which we can classify them? There is a universal law which imperatively
declares certain acts to be right or wrong:--can there be any
universality in the law which measures actions by their tendencies
towards happiness? For an act which is the cause of happiness to one
person may be the cause of unhappiness to another; or an act which if
performed by one person may increase the happiness of mankind may have
the opposite effect if performed by another. Right can never be wrong,
or wrong right, that there are no actions which tend to the happiness
of mankind which may not under other circumstances tend to their
unhappiness. Unless we say not only that all right actions tend to
happiness, but that they tend to happiness in the same degree in which
they are right (and in that case the word 'right' is plainer), we weaken
the absoluteness of our moral standard; we reduce differences in kind
to differences in degree; we obliterate the stamp which the authority of
ages has set upon vice and crime.

Once more: turning from theory to practice we feel the importance of
retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such as truth,
justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they have become
sacred to us,--'the word of God' written on the human heart: to no other
words can the same associations be attached. We cannot explain them
adequately on principles of utility; in attempting to do so we rob them
of their true character. We give them a meaning often paradoxical and
distorted, and generally weaker than their signification in common
language. And as words influence men's thoughts, we fear that the hold
of morality may also be weakened, and the sense of duty impaired, if
virtue and vice are explained only as the qualities which do or do not
contribute to the pleasure of the world. In that very expression we seem
to detect a false ring, for pleasure is individual not universal; we
speak of eternal and immutable justice, but not of eternal and immutable
pleasure; nor by any refinement can we avoid some taint of bodily sense
adhering to the meaning of the word.

Again: the higher the view which men take of life, the more they lose
sight of their own pleasure or interest. True religion is not working
for a reward only, but is ready to work equally without a reward. It is
not 'doing the will of God for the sake of eternal happiness,' but doing
the will of God because it is best, whether rewarded or unrewarded. And
this applies to others as well as to ourselves. For he who sacrifices
himself for the good of others, does not sacrifice himself that they
may be saved from the persecution which he endures for their sakes,
but rather that they in their turn may be able to undergo similar
sufferings, and like him stand fast in the truth. To promote their
happiness is not his first object, but to elevate their moral nature.
Both in his own case and that of others there may be happiness in the
distance, but if there were no happiness he would equally act as he
does. We are speaking of the highest and noblest natures; and a passing
thought naturally arises in our minds, 'Whether that can be the first
principle of morals which is hardly regarded in their own case by the
greatest benefactors of mankind?'

The admissions that pleasures differ in kind, and that actions are
already classified; the acknowledgment that happiness includes the
happiness of others, as well as of ourselves; the confusion (not made
by Aristotle) between conscious and unconscious happiness, or between
happiness the energy and happiness the result of the energy, introduce
uncertainty and inconsistency into the whole enquiry. We reason readily
and cheerfully from a greatest happiness principle. But we find that
utilitarians do not agree among themselves about the meaning of the
word. Still less can they impart to others a common conception or
conviction of the nature of happiness. The meaning of the word is always
insensibly slipping away from us, into pleasure, out of pleasure, now
appearing as the motive, now as the test of actions, and sometimes
varying in successive sentences. And as in a mathematical demonstration
an error in the original number disturbs the whole calculation which
follows, this fundamental uncertainty about the word vitiates all the
applications of it. Must we not admit that a notion so uncertain in
meaning, so void of content, so at variance with common language and
opinion, does not comply adequately with either of our two requirements?
It can neither strike the imaginative faculty, nor give an explanation
of phenomena which is in accordance with our individual experience. It
is indefinite; it supplies only a partial account of human actions:
it is one among many theories of philosophers. It may be compared
with other notions, such as the chief good of Plato, which may be best
expressed to us under the form of a harmony, or with Kant's obedience to
law, which may be summed up under the word 'duty,' or with the Stoical
'Follow nature,' and seems to have no advantage over them. All of these
present a certain aspect of moral truth. None of them are, or indeed
profess to be, the only principle of morals.

And this brings us to speak of the most serious objection to the
utilitarian system--its exclusiveness. There is no place for Kant or
Hegel, for Plato and Aristotle alongside of it. They do not reject the
greatest happiness principle, but it rejects them. Now the phenomena of
moral action differ, and some are best explained upon one principle and
some upon another: the virtue of justice seems to be naturally connected
with one theory of morals, the virtues of temperance and benevolence
with another. The characters of men also differ; and some are more
attracted by one aspect of the truth, some by another. The firm
stoical nature will conceive virtue under the conception of law, the
philanthropist under that of doing good, the quietist under that of
resignation, the enthusiast under that of faith or love. The upright man
of the world will desire above all things that morality should be plain
and fixed, and should use language in its ordinary sense. Persons of an
imaginative temperament will generally be dissatisfied with the words
'utility' or 'pleasure': their principle of right is of a far higher
character--what or where to be found they cannot always distinctly
tell;--deduced from the laws of human nature, says one; resting on the
will of God, says another; based upon some transcendental idea which
animates more worlds than one, says a third:

     on nomoi prokeintai upsipodes, ouranian
     di aithera teknothentes.

To satisfy an imaginative nature in any degree, the doctrine of utility
must be so transfigured that it becomes altogether different and loses
all simplicity.

But why, since there are different characters among men, should we not
allow them to envisage morality accordingly, and be thankful to the
great men who have provided for all of us modes and instruments of
thought? Would the world have been better if there had been no Stoics or
Kantists, no Platonists or Cartesians? No more than if the other pole
of moral philosophy had been excluded. All men have principles which
are above their practice; they admit premises which, if carried to their
conclusions, are a sufficient basis of morals. In asserting liberty of
speculation we are not encouraging individuals to make right or wrong
for themselves, but only conceding that they may choose the form under
which they prefer to contemplate them. Nor do we say that one of these
aspects is as true and good as another; but that they all of them, if
they are not mere sophisms and illusions, define and bring into relief
some part of the truth which would have been obscure without their
light. Why should we endeavour to bind all men within the limits of a
single metaphysical conception? The necessary imperfection of language
seems to require that we should view the same truth under more than one
aspect.

We are living in the second age of utilitarianism, when the charm of
novelty and the fervour of the first disciples has passed away. The
doctrine is no longer stated in the forcible paradoxical manner of
Bentham, but has to be adapted to meet objections; its corners are
rubbed off, and the meaning of its most characteristic expressions is
softened. The array of the enemy melts away when we approach him. The
greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great original idea when
enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a generation and has left its mark
on thought and civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it
had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he
would have denied that pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness
he meant anything but pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his
thoroughness. The 'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other
hands; and now we seem to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want
of exactness while assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness,
its paradoxical explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has
ever stood this criticism of the next generation, though the founders
of all of them have imagined that they were built upon a rock. And the
utilitarian system, like others, has yielded to the inevitable analysis.
Even in the opinion of 'her admirers she has been terribly damaged'
(Phil.), and is no longer the only moral philosophy, but one among many
which have contributed in various degrees to the intellectual progress
of mankind.

But because the utilitarian philosophy can no longer claim 'the prize,'
we must not refuse to acknowledge the great benefits conferred by it on
the world. All philosophies are refuted in their turn, says the sceptic,
and he looks forward to all future systems sharing the fate of the past.
All philosophies remain, says the thinker; they have done a great work
in their own day, and they supply posterity with aspects of the truth
and with instruments of thought. Though they may be shorn of their
glory, they retain their place in the organism of knowledge.

And still there remain many rules of morals which are better explained
and more forcibly inculcated on the principle of utility than on any
other. The question Will such and such an action promote the happiness
of myself, my family, my country, the world? may check the rising
feeling of pride or honour which would cause a quarrel, an estrangement,
a war. 'How can I contribute to the greatest happiness of others?' is
another form of the question which will be more attractive to the
minds of many than a deduction of the duty of benevolence from a priori
principles. In politics especially hardly any other argument can be
allowed to have weight except the happiness of a people. All parties
alike profess to aim at this, which though often used only as the
disguise of self-interest has a great and real influence on the minds
of statesmen. In religion, again, nothing can more tend to mitigate
superstition than the belief that the good of man is also the will of
God. This is an easy test to which the prejudices and superstitions of
men may be brought:--whatever does not tend to the good of men is not of
God. And the ideal of the greatest happiness of mankind, especially if
believed to be the will of God, when compared with the actual fact, will
be one of the strongest motives to do good to others.

On the other hand, when the temptation is to speak falsely, to be
dishonest or unjust, or in any way to interfere with the rights of
others, the argument that these actions regarded as a class will not
conduce to the happiness of mankind, though true enough, seems to have
less force than the feeling which is already implanted in the mind by
conscience and authority. To resolve this feeling into the greatest
happiness principle takes away from its sacred and authoritative
character. The martyr will not go to the stake in order that he may
promote the happiness of mankind, but for the sake of the truth:
neither will the soldier advance to the cannon's mouth merely because he
believes military discipline to be for the good of mankind. It is better
for him to know that he will be shot, that he will be disgraced, if he
runs away--he has no need to look beyond military honour, patriotism,
'England expects every man to do his duty.' These are stronger motives
than the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which is the thesis
of a philosopher, not the watchword of an army. For in human actions
men do not always require broad principles; duties often come home to
us more when they are limited and defined, and sanctioned by custom and
public opinion.

Lastly, if we turn to the history of ethics, we shall find that our
moral ideas have originated not in utility but in religion, in law, in
conceptions of nature, of an ideal good, and the like. And many may be
inclined to think that this conclusively disproves the claim of utility
to be the basis of morals. But the utilitarian will fairly reply (see
above) that we must distinguish the origin of ethics from the principles
of them--the historical germ from the later growth of reflection. And he
may also truly add that for two thousand years and more, utility, if
not the originating, has been the great corrective principle in law, in
politics, in religion, leading men to ask how evil may be diminished
and good increased--by what course of policy the public interest may be
promoted, and to understand that God wills the happiness, not of some
of his creatures and in this world only, but of all of them and in every
stage of their existence.

'What is the place of happiness or utility in a system of moral
philosophy?' is analogous to the question asked in the Philebus, 'What
rank does pleasure hold in the scale of goods?' Admitting the greatest
happiness principle to be true and valuable, and the necessary
foundation of that part of morals which relates to the consequences of
actions, we still have to consider whether this or some other general
notion is the highest principle of human life. We may try them in this
comparison by three tests--definiteness, comprehensiveness, and motive
power.

There are three subjective principles of morals,--sympathy, benevolence,
self-love. But sympathy seems to rest morality on feelings which differ
widely even in good men; benevolence and self-love torture one half
of our virtuous actions into the likeness of the other. The greatest
happiness principle, which includes both, has the advantage over all
these in comprehensiveness, but the advantage is purchased at the
expense of definiteness.

Again, there are the legal and political principles of morals--freedom,
equality, rights of persons; 'Every man to count for one and no man
for more than one,' 'Every man equal in the eye of the law and of the
legislator.' There is also the other sort of political morality, which
if not beginning with 'Might is right,' at any rate seeks to deduce
our ideas of justice from the necessities of the state and of society.
According to this view the greatest good of men is obedience to law: the
best human government is a rational despotism, and the best idea which
we can form of a divine being is that of a despot acting not wholly
without regard to law and order. To such a view the present mixed
state of the world, not wholly evil or wholly good, is supposed to be a
witness. More we might desire to have, but are not permitted. Though a
human tyrant would be intolerable, a divine tyrant is a very tolerable
governor of the universe. This is the doctrine of Thrasymachus adapted
to the public opinion of modern times.

There is yet a third view which combines the two:--freedom is obedience
to the law, and the greatest order is also the greatest freedom; 'Act so
that thy action may be the law of every intelligent being.' This view
is noble and elevating; but it seems to err, like other transcendental
principles of ethics, in being too abstract. For there is the same
difficulty in connecting the idea of duty with particular duties as
in bridging the gulf between phainomena and onta; and when, as in the
system of Kant, this universal idea or law is held to be independent of
space and time, such a mataion eidos becomes almost unmeaning.

Once more there are the religious principles of morals:--the will of
God revealed in Scripture and in nature. No philosophy has supplied a
sanction equal in authority to this, or a motive equal in strength to
the belief in another life. Yet about these too we must ask What will of
God? how revealed to us, and by what proofs? Religion, like happiness,
is a word which has great influence apart from any consideration of its
content: it may be for great good or for great evil. But true religion
is the synthesis of religion and morality, beginning with divine
perfection in which all human perfection is embodied. It moves among
ideas of holiness, justice, love, wisdom, truth; these are to God, in
whom they are personified, what the Platonic ideas are to the idea of
good. It is the consciousness of the will of God that all men should
be as he is. It lives in this world and is known to us only through
the phenomena of this world, but it extends to worlds beyond. Ordinary
religion which is alloyed with motives of this world may easily be
in excess, may be fanatical, may be interested, may be the mask of
ambition, may be perverted in a thousand ways. But of that religion
which combines the will of God with our highest ideas of truth and right
there can never be too much. This impossibility of excess is the note of
divine moderation.

So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of moral
philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though, like the
reader of the Philebus, we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point at
which the human passes into the divine.

First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another,--justice,
holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ouch e genesis
prosestin), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as
divine perfection.

Secondly, human perfection, or the fulfilment of the will of God in
this world, and co-operation with his laws revealed to us by reason and
experience, in nature, history, and in our own minds.

Thirdly, the elements of human perfection,--virtue, knowledge, and right
opinion.

Fourthly, the external conditions of perfection,--health and the goods
of life.

Fifthly, beauty and happiness,--the inward enjoyment of that which is
best and fairest in this world and in the human soul.

...

The Philebus is probably the latest in time of the writings of Plato
with the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last
development of his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of
the Cynics and Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole; the
relations of pleasure and knowledge to each other and to the good are
authoritatively determined; the Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux
no longer divide the empire of thought; the Mind of Anaxagoras has
become the Mind of God and of the World. The great distinction between
pure and applied science for the first time has a place in philosophy;
the natural claim of dialectic to be the Queen of the Sciences is once
more affirmed. This latter is the bond of union which pervades the whole
or nearly the whole of the Platonic writings. And here as in several
other dialogues (Phaedrus, Republic, etc.) it is presented to us in a
manner playful yet also serious, and sometimes as if the thought of it
were too great for human utterance and came down from heaven direct. It
is the organization of knowledge wonderful to think of at a time when
knowledge itself could hardly be said to exist. It is this more than any
other element which distinguishes Plato, not only from the presocratic
philosophers, but from Socrates himself.

We have not yet reached the confines of Aristotle, but we make a
somewhat nearer approach to him in the Philebus than in the earlier
Platonic writings. The germs of logic are beginning to appear, but they
are not collected into a whole, or made a separate science or system.
Many thinkers of many different schools have to be interposed between
the Parmenides or Philebus of Plato, and the Physics or Metaphysics of
Aristotle. It is this interval upon which we have to fix our minds if we
would rightly understand the character of the transition from one to the
other. Plato and Aristotle do not dovetail into one another; nor does
the one begin where the other ends; there is a gulf between them not to
be measured by time, which in the fragmentary state of our knowledge
it is impossible to bridge over. It follows that the one cannot be
interpreted by the other. At any rate, it is not Plato who is to be
interpreted by Aristotle, but Aristotle by Plato. Of all philosophy
and of all art the true understanding is to be sought not in the
afterthoughts of posterity, but in the elements out of which they have
arisen. For the previous stage is a tendency towards the ideal at which
they are aiming; the later is a declination or deviation from them, or
even a perversion of them. No man's thoughts were ever so well expressed
by his disciples as by himself.

But although Plato in the Philebus does not come into any close
connexion with Aristotle, he is now a long way from himself and from the
beginnings of his own philosophy. At the time of his death he left his
system still incomplete; or he may be more truly said to have had
no system, but to have lived in the successive stages or moments of
metaphysical thought which presented themselves from time to time. The
earlier discussions about universal ideas and definitions seem to have
died away; the correlation of ideas has taken their place. The flowers
of rhetoric and poetry have lost their freshness and charm; and a
technical language has begun to supersede and overgrow them. But the
power of thinking tends to increase with age, and the experience of life
to widen and deepen. The good is summed up under categories which are
not summa genera, but heads or gradations of thought. The question of
pleasure and the relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly
treated of elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The
mean or measure is now made the first principle of good. Some of these
questions reappear in Aristotle, as does also the distinction between
metaphysics and mathematics. But there are many things in Plato which
have been lost in Aristotle; and many things in Aristotle not to be
found in Plato. The most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle is the
disappearance of the Platonic dialectic, which in the Aristotelian
school is only used in a comparatively unimportant and trivial sense.
The most remarkable additions are the invention of the Syllogism, the
conception of happiness as the foundation of morals, the reference of
human actions to the standard of the better mind of the world, or of
the one 'sensible man' or 'superior person.' His conception of ousia,
or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a return to the poor and
meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philosophy. The dry attempt to reduce
the presocratic philosophy by his own rather arbitrary standard of the
four causes, contrasts unfavourably with Plato's general discussion of
the same subject (Sophist). To attempt further to sum up the differences
between the two great philosophers would be out of place here. Any
real discussion of their relation to one another must be preceded by an
examination into the nature and character of the Aristotelian writings
and the form in which they have come down to us. This enquiry is not
really separable from an investigation of Theophrastus as well as
Aristotle and of the remains of other schools of philosophy as well as
of the Peripatetics. But, without entering on this wide field, even a
superficial consideration of the logical and metaphysical works which
pass under the name of Aristotle, whether we suppose them to have
come directly from his hand or to be the tradition of his school, is
sufficient to show how great was the mental activity which prevailed in
the latter half of the fourth century B.C.; what eddies and
whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought, what
transformations of the old philosophies were taking place everywhere,
what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and nominalisms were
affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of philosophy during this
period is no less remarkable than the loss of freedom; and the two
are not unconnected with each other. But of the multitudinous sea of
opinions which were current in the age of Aristotle we have no exact
account. We know of them from allusions only. And we cannot with
advantage fill up the void of our knowledge by conjecture: we can only
make allowance for our ignorance.

There are several passages in the Philebus which are very characteristic
of Plato, and which we shall do well to consider not only in their
connexion, but apart from their connexion as inspired sayings or
oracles which receive their full interpretation only from the history
of philosophy in later ages. The more serious attacks on traditional
beliefs which are often veiled under an unusual simplicity or irony are
of this kind. Such, for example, is the excessive and more than human
awe which Socrates expresses about the names of the gods, which may
be not unaptly compared with the importance attached by mankind to
theological terms in other ages; for this also may be comprehended under
the satire of Socrates. Let us observe the religious and intellectual
enthusiasm which shines forth in the following, 'The power and faculty
of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of the truth':
or, again, the singular acknowledgment which may be regarded as the
anticipation of a new logic, that 'In going to war for mind I must have
weapons of a different make from those which I used before, although
some of the old ones may do again.' Let us pause awhile to reflect on
a sentence which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or to the
original thinker of all ages: 'Shall we then agree with them of
old time, and merely reassert the notions of others without risk to
ourselves; or shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the
reproach which will await us': i.e. if we assert mind to be the author
of nature. Let us note the remarkable words, 'That in the divine nature
of Zeus there is the soul and mind of a King, because there is in him
the power of the cause,' a saying in which theology and philosophy are
blended and reconciled; not omitting to observe the deep insight into
human nature which is shown by the repetition of the same thought 'All
philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven and earth' with
the ironical addition, 'in this way truly they magnify themselves.' Nor
let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth at the
'blasphemy' of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the
world; or the significance of the words 'those who said of old time that
mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant observation that 'we are
not always conscious of what we are doing or of what happens to us,' a
chance expression to which if philosophers had attended they would have
escaped many errors in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which
is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the
seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher
point of view of abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner in which
the question of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is regarded
by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon), and
the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics
of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so
many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of knowledge in
the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks forward into the
distance, the many questions of modern philosophy which are anticipated
in his writings, may we not truly describe him in his own words as a
'spectator of all time and of all existence'?
