Jowett's Commentary on the MENO

by Plato


Translated by Benjamin Jowett

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INTRODUCTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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