{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4095/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4095","id":"gutenberg_4095","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4095","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Philosophy, Ancient","Plato"],"text":"Ver.10/04/01*END*\n\n\n\n\nThis etext was produced by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPLATO AND PLATONISM (1910)\nWALTER HORATIO PATER\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n1. Plato and the Doctrine of Motion: 5-26\n2. Plato and the Doctrine of Rest: 27-50\n3. Plato and the Doctrine of Number: 51-74\n4. Plato and Socrates: 75-98\n5. Plato and the Sophists: 99-123\n6. The Genius of Plato: 124-149\n7. The Doctrine of Plato--\nI. The Theory of Ideas: 150-173\nII. Dialectic: 174-196\n8. Lacedaemon: 197-234\n9. The Republic: 235-266\n10. Plato's Aesthetics: 267-283, end\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 1: PLATO AND THE DOCTRINE OF MOTION\n\n[5] WITH the world of intellectual production, as with that of organic\ngeneration, nature makes no sudden starts.  Natura nihil facit per\nsaltum; and in the history of philosophy there are no absolute\nbeginnings.  Fix where we may the origin of this or that doctrine or\nidea, the doctrine of \"reminiscence,\" for instance, or of \"the\nperpetual flux,\" the theory of \"induction,\" or the philosophic view of\nthings generally, the specialist will still be able to find us some\nearlier anticipation of that doctrine, that mental tendency.  The most\nelementary act of mental analysis takes time to do; the most\nrudimentary sort of speculative knowledge, abstractions so simple that\nwe can hardly conceive the human mind without them, must grow, and with\ndifficulty.  Philosophy itself, mental and moral, has its preparation,\nits forethoughts, in the poetry that preceded it.  A powerful\ngeneralisation thrown into some salient phrase, such as [6] that of\nHeraclitus--\"Panta rhei,\"+ all things fleet away--may startle a\nparticular age by its novelty, but takes possession only because all\nalong its root was somewhere among the natural though but half-\ndeveloped instincts of the human mind itself.\n\nPlato has seemed to many to have been scarcely less than the creator of\nphilosophy; and it is an immense advance he makes, from the crude or\nturbid beginnings of scientific enquiry with the Ionians or the\nEleatics, to that wide range of perfectly finished philosophical\nliterature.  His encyclopaedic view of the whole domain of knowledge is\nmore than a mere step in a progress.  Nothing that went before it, for\ncompass and power and charm, had been really comparable to it.  Plato's\nachievement may well seem an absolutely fresh thing in the morning of\nthe mind's history.  Yet in truth the world Plato had entered into was\nalready almost weary of philosophical debate, bewildered by the\noppositions of sects, the claims of rival schools.  Language and the\nprocesses of thought were already become sophisticated, the very air he\nbreathed sickly with off-cast speculative atoms.\n\nIn the Timaeus, dealing with the origin of the universe he figures less\nas the author of a new theory, than as already an eclectic critic of\nolder ones, himself somewhat perplexed by theory and counter-theory.\nAnd as we find there a [7] sort of storehouse of all physical theories,\nso in reading the Parmenides we might think that all metaphysical\nquestions whatever had already passed through the mind of Plato.  Some\nof the results of patient earlier thinkers, even then dead and gone,\nare of the structure of his philosophy.  They are everywhere in it, not\nas the stray carved corner of some older edifice, to be found here or\nthere amid the new, but rather like minute relics of earlier organic\nlife in the very stone he builds with.  The central and most intimate\nprinciples of his teaching challenge us to go back beyond them, not\nmerely to his own immediate, somewhat enigmatic master--to Socrates,\nwho survives chiefly in his pages--but to various precedent schools of\nspeculative thought, in Greece, in Ionia, in Italy; beyond these into\nthat age of poetry, in which the first efforts of philosophic\napprehension had hardly understood themselves; beyond that unconscious\nphilosophy, again, to certain constitutional tendencies, persuasions,\nforecasts of the intellect itself, such as had given birth, it would\nseem, to thoughts akin to Plato's in the older civilisations of India\nand of Egypt, as they still exercise their authority over ourselves.\n\nThe thoughts of Plato, like the language he has to use (we find it so\nagain, in turn, with those predecessors of his, when we pass from him\nto them) are covered with the traces of previous labour and have had\ntheir earlier [8] proprietors.  If at times we become aware in reading\nhim of certain anticipations of modern knowledge, we are also quite\nobviously among the relics of an older, a poetic or half-visionary\nworld.  It is hardly an exaggeration to say that in Plato, in spite of\nhis wonderful savour of literary freshness, there is nothing absolutely\nnew: or rather, as in many other very original products of human\ngenius, the seemingly new is old also, a palimpsest, a tapestry of\nwhich the actual threads have served before, or like the animal frame\nitself, every particle of which has already lived and died many times\nover.  Nothing but the life-giving principle of cohesion is new; the\nnew perspective, the resultant complexion, the expressiveness which\nfamiliar thoughts attain by novel juxtaposition.  In other words, the\nform is new.  But then, in the creation of philosophical literature, as\nin all other products of art, form, in the full signification of that\nword, is everything, and the mere matter is nothing.\n\nThere are three different ways in which the criticism of philosophic,\nof all speculative opinion whatever, may be conducted.  The doctrines\nof Plato's Republic, for instance, may be regarded as so much truth or\nfalsehood, to be accepted or rejected as such by the student of to-day.\nThat is the dogmatic method of criticism; judging every product of\nhuman thought, however alien [9] or distant from one's self, by its\ncongruity with the assumptions of Bacon or Spinoza, of Mill or Hegel,\naccording to the mental preference of the particular critic.  There is,\nsecondly, the more generous, eclectic or syncretic method, which aims\nat a selection from contending schools of the various grains of truth\ndispersed among them.  It is the method which has prevailed in periods\nof large reading but with little inceptive force of their own, like\nthat of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonism in the third century, or the Neo-\nPlatonism of Florence in the fifteenth.  Its natural defect is in the\ntendency to misrepresent the true character of the doctrine it\nprofesses to explain, that it may harmonise thus the better with the\nother elements of a pre-conceived system.\n\nDogmatic and eclectic criticism alike have in our own century, under\nthe influence of Hegel and his predominant theory of the ever-changing\n\"Time-spirit\" or Zeit-geist, given way to a third method of criticism,\nthe historic method, which bids us replace the doctrine, or the system,\nwe are busy with, or such an ancient monument of philosophic thought as\nThe Republic, as far as possible in the group of conditions,\nintellectual, social, material, amid which it was actually produced, if\nwe would really understand it.  That ages have their genius as well as\nthe individual; that in every age there is a peculiar ensemble of\nconditions which determines [10] a common character in every product of\nthat age, in business and art, in fashion and speculation, in religion\nand manners, in men's very faces; that nothing man has projected from\nhimself is really intelligible except at its own date, and from its\nproper point of view in the never-resting \"secular process\"; the\nsolidarity of philosophy, of the intellectual life, with common or\ngeneral history; that what it behoves the student of philosophic\nsystems to cultivate is the \"historic sense\": by force of these\nconvictions many a normal, or at first sight abnormal, phase of\nspeculation has found a reasonable meaning for us.  As the strangely\ntwisted pine-tree, which would be a freak of nature on an English lawn,\nis seen, if we replace it, in thought, amid the contending forces of\nthe Alpine torrent that actually shaped its growth, to have been the\ncreature of necessity, of the logic of certain facts; so, beliefs the\nmost fantastic, the \"communism\" of Plato, for instance, have their\nnatural propriety when duly correlated with those facts, those\nconditions round about them, of which they are in truth a part.\n\nIn the intellectual as in the organic world the given product, its\nnormal or abnormal characteristics, are determined, as people say, by\nthe \"environment.\"  The business of the young scholar therefore, in\nreading Plato, is not to take his side in a controversy, to adopt or\nrefute Plato's opinions, to modify, or make apology for, [11] what may\nseem erratic or impossible in him; still less, to furnish himself with\narguments on behalf of some theory or conviction of his own.  His duty\nis rather to follow intelligently, but with strict indifference, the\nmental process there, as he might witness a game of skill; better\nstill, as in reading Hamlet or The Divine Comedy, so in reading The\nRepublic, to watch, for its dramatic interest, the spectacle of a\npowerful, of a sovereign intellect, translating itself, amid a complex\ngroup of conditions which can never in the nature of things occur\nagain, at once pliant and resistant to them, into a great literary\nmonument.  To put Plato into his natural place, as a result from\nantecedent and contemporary movements of Greek speculation, of Greek\nlife generally: such is the proper aim of the historic, that is to say,\nof the really critical study of him.\n\nAt the threshold, then, of The Republic of Plato, the historic spirit\nimpresses upon us the fact that some of its leading thoughts are partly\nderivative from earlier thinkers, of whom we happen to possess\nindependent information.  From that brilliant and busy, yet so\nunconcerned press of early Greek life, one here another there stands\naside to make the initial act of conscious philosophic reflexion.  It\nis done with something of the simplicity, the immediate and visible\neffectiveness, of the visible world in action all around.  Among\nPlato's many intellectual [12] predecessors, on whom in recent years\nmuch attention has been bestowed by a host of commentators after the\nmind of Hegel, three, whose ideas, whose words even, we really find in\nthe very texture of Plato's work, emerge distinctly in close connexion\nwith The Republic: Pythagoras, the dim, half-legendary founder of the\nphilosophy of number and music; Parmenides, \"My father Parmenides,\" the\ncentre of the school of Elea; Heraclitus, thirdly, author of the\ndoctrine of \"the Perpetual Flux\": three teachers, it must be admitted\nafter all, of whom what knowledge we have is to the utmost degree\nfragmentary and vague.  But then, one way of giving that knowledge\ngreater definiteness is by noting their direct and actual influence in\nPlato's writings.\n\nHeraclitus, a writer of philosophy in prose, yet of a philosophy which\nwas half poetic figure, half generalised fact, in style crabbed and\nobscure, but stimulant, invasive, not to be forgotten--he too might be\nthought, as a writer of prose, one of the \"fathers\" of Plato.  His\ninfluence, however, on Plato, though himself a Heraclitean in early\nlife, was by way of antagonism or reaction; Plato's stand against any\nphilosophy of motion becoming, as we say, something of a \"fixed idea\"\nwith him.  Heraclitus of Ephesus (what Ephesus must have been just then\nis denoted by the fact that it was one of the twelve cities of the\nIonian League) died about forty years before [13] Plato was born.  Here\nthen at Ephesus, the much frequented centre of the religious life of\nIonia, itself so lately emancipated from its tyrants, Heraclitus, of\nancient hereditary rank, an aristocrat by birth and temper, amid all\nthe bustle of still undiscredited Greek democracy, had reflected, not\nto his peace of mind, on the mutable character of political as well as\nof physical existence; perhaps, early as it was, on the mutability of\nintellectual systems also, that modes of thought and practice had\nalready been in and out of fashion.  Empires certainly had lived and\ndied around; and in Ephesus as elsewhere, the privileged class had gone\nto the wall.  In this era of unrestrained youthfulness, of Greek\nyouthfulness, one of the haughtiest of that class, as being also of\nnature's aristocracy, and a man of powerful intellectual gifts,\nHeraclitus, asserts the native liberty of thought at all events;\nbecomes, we might truly say, sickly with \"the pale cast\" of his\nphilosophical questioning.  Amid the irreflective actors in that\nrapidly moving show, so entirely immersed in it superficial as it is\nthat they have no feeling of themselves, he becomes self-conscious.  He\nreflects; and his reflexion has the characteristic melancholy of youth\nwhen it is forced suddenly to bethink itself, and for a moment feels\nalready old, feels the temperature of the world about it sensibly\ncolder.  Its very ingenuousness, its sincerity, will make the utterance\nof what comes [14] to mind just then somewhat shrill or overemphatic.\n\nYet Heraclitus, thus superbly turning aside from the vulgar to think,\nso early in the impetuous spring-tide of Greek history, does but\nreflect after all the aspect of what actually surrounds him, when he\ncries out--his philosophy was no matter of formal treatise or system,\nbut of harsh, protesting cries--Panta ch\u00f4rei kai ouden menei.+  All\nthings give way: nothing remaineth.  There had been enquirers before\nhim of another sort, purely physical enquirers, whose bold,\ncontradictory, seemingly impious guesses how and of what primary\nelements the world of visible things, the sun, the stars, the brutes,\ntheir own souls and bodies, had been composed, were themselves a part\nof the bold enterprise of that romantic age; a series of intellectual\nadventures, of a piece with its adventures in unknown lands or upon the\nsea.  The resultant intellectual chaos expressed the very spirit of\ngifted and sanguine but insubordinate youth (remember, that the word\nneot\u00eas,+ youth, came to mean rashness, insolence!) questioning,\ndeciding, rejecting, on mere rags and tatters of evidence, unbent to\ndiscipline, unmethodical, irresponsible.  Those opinions too, coming\nand going, those conjectures as to what under-lay the sensible world,\nwere themselves but fluid elements on the changing surface of\nexistence.\n\n[15] Surface, we say; but was there really anything beneath it?  That\nwas what to the majority of his hearers, his readers, Heraclitus, with\nan eye perhaps on practice, seemed to deny.  Perpetual motion, alike in\nthings and in men's thoughts about them,--the sad, self-conscious,\nphilosophy of Heraclitus, like one, knowing beyond his years, in this\nbarely adolescent world which he is so eager to instruct, makes no\npretence to be able to restrain that.  Was not the very essence of\nthought itself also such perpetual motion? a baffling transition from\nthe dead past, alive one moment since, to a present, itself deceased in\nturn ere we can say, It is here?  A keen analyst of the facts of nature\nand mind, a master presumably of all the knowledge that then there was,\na vigorous definer of thoughts, he does but refer the superficial\nmovement of all persons and things around him to deeper and still more\nmasterful currents of universal change, stealthily withdrawing the\napparently solid earth itself from beneath one's feet.  The principle\nof disintegration, the incoherency of fire or flood (for Heraclitus\nthese are but very lively instances of movements, subtler yet more\nwasteful still) are inherent in the primary elements alike of matter\nand of the soul.  Legei pou H\u00earakleitos, says Socrates in the Cratylus,\nhoti panta ch\u00f4rei kai ouden menei.+  But the principle of lapse, of\nwaste, was, in fact, in one's self.  \"No one has ever passed [16] twice\nover the same stream.\"  Nay, the passenger himself is without identity.\nUpon the same stream at the same moment we do, and do not, embark: for\nwe are, and are not: eimen te kai ouk eimen.+  And this rapid change, if\nit did not make all knowledge impossible, made it wholly relative, of a\nkind, that is to say, valueless in the judgment of Plato.  Man, the\nindividual, at this particular vanishing-point of time and place,\nbecomes \"the measure of all things.\"\n\n     To know after what manner (says Socrates, after discussing the\n     question in what proportion names, fleeting names, contribute\n     to our knowledge of things) to know after what manner we must be\n     taught, or discover for ourselves, the things that really are\n     (ta onta)+ is perhaps beyond the measure of your powers and mine.\n     We must even content ourselves with the admission of this, that\n     not from their names, but much rather themselves from themselves,\n     they must be learned and looked for. . . . For consider, Cratylus,\n     a point I oft-times dream on--whether or no we may affirm that\n     what is beautiful and good in itself, and whatever is, respectively,\n     in itself, is something?\n\n     Cratylus.  To me at least, Socrates, it seems to be something.\n\n     Socrates.  Let us consider, then, that 'in-itself'; not whether\n     a face, or anything of that kind, is beautiful, and whether all\n     these things seem to flow like water.  But, what is beautiful in\n     itself--may we say?--has not this the qualities that define it,\n     always?\n\n     Cratylus.  It must be so.\n\n     Socrates.  Can we then, if it is ever passing out below, predicate\n     about it; first, that it is that; next, that it has this or that\n     quality; or must it not be that, even as we speak, it should\n     straightway become some other thing, and go out under on its way,\n     and be no longer as it is?  Now, how could that which is never in\n     the same state be a thing at all? . . .\n\n     [17] Socrates.  Nor, in truth, could it be an object of knowledge\n     to any one; for, even as he who shall know comes upon it, it would\n     become another thing with other qualities; so that it would be no\n     longer matter of knowledge what sort of a thing it is, or in what\n     condition.  Now, no form of knowing, methinks, has knowledge of\n     that which it knows to be no-how.\n\n     Cratylus.  It is as you say.\n\n     Socrates.  But if, Cratylus, all things change sides, and nothing\n     stays, it is not fitting to say that there is any knowing at\n     all. . . . And the consequence of this argument would be, that\n     there is neither any one to know, nor anything to be known.  If,\n     on the other hand, there be always that which knows, and that\n     which is known; and if the Beautiful is, and the Good is, and\n     each one of those things that really are, is, then, to my thinking,\n     those things in no way resemble that moving stream of which we are\n     now speaking.  Whether, then, these matters be thus, or in that\n     other way as the followers of Heraclitus affirm and many besides,\n     I fear may be no easy thing to search out.  But certainly it is\n     not like a sensible man, committing one's self, and one's own soul,\n     to the rule of names, to serve them, and, with faith in names and\n     those who imposed them, as if one knew something thereby, to\n     maintain (damaging thus the character of that which is, and our\n     own) that there is no sound ring in any one of them, but that all,\n     like earthen pots, let water.  Cratylus, 439.+\n\nYet from certain fragments in which the Logos is already named we may\nunderstand that there had been another side to the doctrine of\nHeraclitus; an attempt on his part, after all, to reduce that world of\nchaotic mutation to cosmos, to the unity of a reasonable order, by the\nsearch for and the notation, if there be such, of an antiphonal rhythm,\nor logic, which, proceeding uniformly from movement to movement, as in\nsome intricate musical theme, might link together in one those\ncontending, infinitely diverse [18] impulses.  It was an act of\nrecognition, even on the part of a philosophy of the inconsecutive, the\nincoherent, the insane, of that Wisdom which, \"reacheth from end to\nend, sweetly and strongly ordering all things.\"  But if the \"weeping\nphilosopher,\" the first of the pessimists, finds the ground of his\nmelancholy in the sense of universal change, still more must he weep at\nthe dulness of men's ears to that continuous strain of melody\nthroughout it.  In truth, what was sympathetic with the hour and the\nscene in the Heraclitean doctrine, was the boldly aggressive, the\nparadoxical and negative tendency there, in natural collusion, as it\nwas, with the destructiveness of undisciplined youth; that sense of\nrapid dissolution, which, according to one's temperament and one's luck\nin things, might extinguish, or kindle all the more eagerly, an\ninterest in the mere phenomena of existence, of one's so hasty passage\nthrough the world.\n\nThe theory of the perpetual flux was indeed an apprehension of which\nthe full scope was only to be realised by a later age, in alliance with\na larger knowledge of the natural world, a closer observation of the\nphenomena of mind, than was possible, even for Heraclitus, at that\nearly day.  So, the seeds of almost all scientific ideas might seem to\nhave been dimly enfolded in the mind of antiquity; but fecundated,\nadmitted to their full working prerogative, one by one, in after ages,\nby good favour of the special [19] intellectual conditions belonging to\na particular generation, which, on a sudden, finds itself preoccupied\nby a formula, not so much new, as renovated by new application.\n\nIt is in this way that the most modern metaphysical, and the most\nmodern empirical philosophies alike have illustrated emphatically,\njustified, expanded, the divination (so we may make bold to call it\nunder the new light now thrown upon it) of the ancient theorist of\nEphesus.  The entire modern theory of \"development,\" in all its various\nphases, proved or unprovable,--what is it but old Heracliteanism awake\nonce more in a new world, and grown to full proportions?\n\nPanta ch\u00f4rei, panta rhei+--It is the burden of Hegel on the one hand, to\nwhom nature, and art, and polity, and philosophy, aye, and religion\ntoo, each in its long historic series, are but so many conscious\nmovements in the secular process of the eternal mind; and on the other\nhand of Darwin and Darwinism, for which \"type\" itself properly is not\nbut is only always becoming.  The bold paradox of Heraclitus is, in\neffect, repeated on all sides, as the vital persuasion just now of a\ncautiously reasoned experience, and, in illustration of the very law of\nchange which it asserts, may itself presently be superseded as a\ncommonplace.  Think of all that subtly disguised movement, latens\nprocessus, Bacon calls it (again as if by a kind of anticipation) which\n[20] modern research has detected, measured, hopes to reduce to minuter\nor ally to still larger currents, in what had seemed most substantial\nto the naked eye, the inattentive mind.  To the \"observation and\nexperiment\" of the physical enquirer of to-day, the eye and the sun it\nlives by reveal themselves, after all, as Heraclitus had declared\n(scarcely serious, he seemed to those around him) as literally in\nconstant extinction and renewal; the sun only going out more gradually\nthan the human eye; the system meanwhile, of which it is the centre, in\nceaseless movement nowhither.  Our terrestrial planet is in constant\nincrease by meteoric dust, moving to it through endless time out of\ninfinite space.  The Alps drift down the rivers into the plains, as\nstill loftier mountains found their level there ages ago.  The granite\nkernel of the earth, it is said, is ever changing in its very\nsubstance, its molecular constitution, by the passage through it of\nelectric currents.  And the Darwinian theory--that \"species,\" the\nidentifying forms of animal and vegetable life, immutable though they\nseem now, as of old in the Garden of Eden, are fashioned by slow\ndevelopment, while perhaps millions of years go by: well! every month\nis adding to its evidence.  Nay, the idea of development (that, too, a\nthing of growth, developed in the progress of reflexion) is at last\ninvading one by one, as the secret of their explanation, all the\nproducts of mind, the very [21] mind itself, the abstract reason; our\ncertainty, for instance, that two and two make four.  Gradually we have\ncome to think, or to feel, that primary certitude.  Political\nconstitutions, again, as we now see so clearly, are \"not made,\" cannot\nbe made, but \"grow.\"  Races, laws, arts, have their origins and end,\nare themselves ripples only on the great river of organic life; and\nlanguage is changing on our very lips.\n\nIn Plato's day, the Heraclitean flux, so deep down in nature itself--\nthe flood, the fire--seemed to have laid hold on man, on the social and\nmoral world, dissolving or disintegrating opinion, first principles,\nfaith, establishing amorphism, so to call it, there also.  All along\nindeed the genius, the good gifts of Greece to the world had had much\nto do with the mobility of its temperament.  Only, when Plato came into\npotent contact with his countrymen (Pericles, Phidias, Socrates being\nnow gone) in politics, in literature and art, in men's characters, the\ndefect naturally incident to that fine quality had come to have\nunchecked sway.  From the lifeless background of an unprogressive\nworld--Egypt, Syria, frozen Scythia--a world in which the unconscious\nsocial aggregate had been everything, the conscious individual, his\ncapacity and rights, almost nothing, the Greek had stepped forth, like\nthe young prince in the fable, to set things going.  To the philosophic\neye however, [22] about the time when the history of Thucydides leaves\noff, they might seem to need a regulator, ere the very wheels wore\nthemselves out.\n\nMobility!  We do not think that a necessarily undesirable condition of\nlife, of mind, of the physical world about us.  'Tis the dead things,\nwe may remind ourselves, that after all are most entirely at rest, and\nmight reasonably hold that motion (vicious, fallacious, infectious\nmotion, as Plato inclines to think) covers all that is best worth\nbeing.  And as for philosophy--mobility, versatility, the habit of\nthought that can most adequately follow the subtle movement of things,\nthat, surely, were the secret of wisdom, of the true knowledge of them.\nIt means susceptibility, sympathetic intelligence, capacity, in short.\nIt was the spirit of God that moved, moves still, in every form of real\npower, everywhere.  Yet to Plato motion becomes the token of unreality\nin things, of falsity in our thoughts about them.  It is just this\nprinciple of mobility, in itself so welcome to all of us, that, with\nall his contriving care for the future, he desires to withstand.\nEverywhere he displays himself as an advocate of the immutable.  The\nRepublic is a proposal to establish it indefectibly in a very precisely\nregulated, a very exclusive community, which shall be a refuge for\nelect souls from an ill-made world.\n\nThat four powerful influences made for the political unity of Greece\nwas pointed out by [23] Grote: common blood, common language, a common\nreligious centre, the great games in which all alike communicated.  He\nadds that they failed to make the Greeks one people.  Panhellenism was\nrealised for the first time, and then but imperfectly, by Alexander the\nGreat.  The centrifugal tendency had ever been too much for the\ncentripetal tendency in them, the progressive elements for the element\nof order.  Their boundless impatience, that passion for novelty noted\nin them by Saint Paul, had been a matter of radical character.  Their\nvaried natural gifts did but concentrate themselves now and then to an\neffective centre, that they might be dissipated again, towards every\nside, in daring adventure alike of action and of thought.  Variety and\nnovelty of experience, further quickened by a consciousness trained to\nan equally nimble power of movement, individualism, the capacities, the\nclaim, of the individual, forced into their utmost play by a ready\nsense and dexterous appliance of opportunity,--herein, certainly, lay\nat least one half of their vocation in history.  The material\nconformation of Greece, a land of islands and peninsulas, with a range\nof sea-coast immense as compared with its area, and broken up by\nrepellent lines of mountain this way and that, nursing jealously a\nlittle township of three or four thousand souls into an independent\ntype of its own, conspired to the same effect.  Independence, local and\npersonal,--it was the Greek ideal!\n\n[24] Yet of one side only of that ideal, as we may see, of the still\nhalf-Asiatic rather than the full Hellenic ideal, of the Ionian ideal\nas conceived by the Athenian people in particular, people of the coast\nwho have the roaming thoughts of sailors, ever ready to float away\nanywhither amid their walls of wood.  And for many of its admirers\ncertainly the whole Greek people has been a people of the sea-coast.\nIn Lacedaemon, however, as Plato and others thought, hostile,\ninaccessible in its mountain hollow where it had no need of any walls\nat all, there were resources for that discipline and order which\nconstitute the other ingredient in a true Hellenism, the saving Dorian\nsoul in it.  Right away thither, to that solemn old mountain village,\nnow mistress of Greece, he looks often, in depicting the Perfect City,\nthe ideal state.  Perfection, in every case, as we may conceive, is\nattainable only through a certain combination of opposites, Attic\naleipha with the Doric oxos;+ and in the Athens of Plato's day, as he\nsaw with acute prevision, those centrifugal forces had come to be\nruinously in excess of the centripetal.  Its rapid, empiric,\nconstitutional changes, its restless development of political\nexperiment, the subdivisions of party there, the dominance of faction,\nas we see it, steadily increasing, breeding on itself, in the pages of\nThucydides, justify Plato's long-drawn paradox that it is easier to\nwrestle against many than against one.  The soul, [25] moreover, the\ninward polity of the individual, was the theatre of a similar\ndissolution; and truly stability of character had never been a\nprominent feature in Greek life.  Think of the end of Pausanias failing\nin his patriotism, of Themistocles, of Miltiades, the saviours of\nGreece, actually selling the country they had so dearly bought to its\nold enemies.\n\nIt is something in this way that, for Plato, motion and the philosophy\nof motion identify themselves with the vicious tendency in things and\nthought.  Change is the irresistible law of our being, says the\nPhilosophy of Motion.  Change, he protests, through the power of a true\nphilosophy, shall not be the law of our being; and it is curious to\nnote the way in which, consciously or unconsciously, that philosophic\npurpose shapes his treatment, even in minute detail, of education, of\nart, of daily life, his very vocabulary, in which such pleasant or\ninnocent words, as \"manifold,\" \"embroidered,\" \"changeful,\" become the\nsynonyms of what is evil.  He, first, notes something like a fixed\ncycle of political change; but conceives it (being change) as, from the\nvery first, backward towards decadence.  The ideal city, again, will\nnot be an art-less place: it is by irresistible influence of art, that\nhe means to shape men anew; by a severely monotonous art however, such\nart as shall speak to youth, all day long, from year to year, almost\nexclusively, of the loins girded about.\n\n[26] Stimulus, or correction,--one hardly knows which to ask for first,\nas more salutary for our own slumbersome, yet so self-willed, northern\ntemperaments.  Perhaps all genuine fire, even the Heraclitean fire, has\na power for both.  \"Athens,\" says Dante,\n\n     --Athens, aye and Sparta's state\n     That were in policy so great,\n        And framed the laws of old,\n        How small a place they hold,\n     How poor their art of noble living\n     Shews by thy delicate contriving,\n        Where what October spun\n        November sees outrun!\n     Think in the time thou canst recall,\n     Laws, coinage, customs, places all,\n        How thou hast rearranged,\n        How oft thy members changed!\n     Couldst thou but see thyself aright,\n     And turn thy vision to the light,\n        Thy likeness thou would'st find\n        In some sick man reclined;\n     On couch of down though he be pressed,\n     He seeks and finds not any rest,\n        But turns and turns again,\n        To ease him of his pain.\n     Purgatory: Canto VI: Shadwell's Translation.\n\nNow what Dante says to Florence, contrasting it with Athens and Sparta\nas he conceives them, Plato might have said to Athens, in contrast with\nSparta, with Lacedaemon, at least as he conceived it.\n\nNOTES\n\n6. +Transliteration: Panta rhei.  Translation: \"All things give way [or\nflow].\"  Plato, Cratylus 402 A, cites Heraclitus' fragment more fully--\nLegei pou H\u00earakleitos hoti panta ch\u00f4rei kai ouden menei, or\n\"Heracleitus says somewhere that all things give way, and nothing\nremains.\"  Pater cites the same fragment in The Renaissance,\nConclusion.  The verb rhe\u00f4 means \"flow,\" while the verb chore\u00f4 means\n\"give way.\"\n\n14. +Transliteration: Panta ch\u00f4rei kai ouden menei.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"All things give way: nothing remaineth.\"  Plato, Cratylus\n402A.\n\n14. +Transliteration: neot\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"youth:\nalso ... youthful spirit, rashness.\"\n\n15. +Transliteration: Legei pou H\u00earakleitos hoti panta ch\u00f4rei kai ouden\nmenei.  Pater's translation in The Renaissance, Conclusion:\n\"[Herakleitos says somewhere that] All things give way; nothing\nremains.\"  Plato, Cratylus 402a.\n\n16. +Transliteration: eimen te kai ouk eimen.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"We are and are not.\"  Heraclitus, Fragments.  Fragmenta\nPhilosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 326.  Ed. F.W.A. Mullach.  Darmstadt:\nScientia Verlag Aalen, 1967 (reprint of the Paris, 1860 edition).  In\nthe same fragment, Heraclitus is described as having said, Potamois\ntois autois embainomen te kai ouk embainomen, which translates as \"we\ngo into the same river, and [yet] we do not go into the same river.\"\nPlato cites that thought in the passage alluded to above, Cratylus\n402a.\n\n16. +Transliteration: ta onta.  Definition: \"the things that are.\"\n\n17. +Rather than retain the original's very small print for such\nquotations, I have indented them throughout Plato and Platonism.  As\nPater indicates, the source of his quotation is the Cratylus, 439.\n\n19.  +Transliteration: Panta ch\u00f4rei, panta rhei.  See above, notes for\npages 6, 14, 15, and 16.  The verb rhe\u00f4 means \"flow,\" while the verb\nchore\u00f4 means  \"give way.\"\n\n24. +Transliteration: aleipha . . . oxos.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"unguent, oil . . . sour wine, vinegar.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 2: PLATO AND THE DOCTRINE OF REST\n\n[27] OVER against that world of flux,\n\n     Where nothing is, but all things seem,\n\nit is the vocation of Plato to set up a standard of unchangeable\nreality, which in its highest theoretic development becomes the world\nof \"eternal and immutable ideas,\" indefectible outlines of thought, yet\nalso the veritable things of experience: the perfect Justice, for\ninstance, which if even the gods mistake it for perfect Injustice is\nnot moved out of its place; the Beauty which is the same, yesterday,\nto-day and for ever.  In such ideas or ideals, \"eternal\" as\nparticipating in the essential character of the facts they represent to\nus, we come in contact, as he supposes, with the insoluble, immovable\ngranite beneath and amid the wasting torrent of mere phenomena.  And in\nthus ruling the deliberate aim of his philosophy to be a survey of\nthings sub specie eternitatis, the reception of a kind of absolute and\nindependent knowledge [28] (independent, that is, of time and position,\nthe accidents and peculiar point of view of the receiver) Plato is\nconsciously under the influence of another great master of the Pre-\nSocratic thought, Parmenides, the centre of the School of Elea.\n\nAbout half a century before the birth of Plato, Socrates being then in\nall the impressibility of early manhood, Parmenides, according to the\nwitness of Plato himself--Parmenides at the age of sixty-five--had\nvisited Athens at the great festival of the Panathenaea, in company\nwith Zeno the Eleatic, a characteristic specimen of Greek cleverness,\nof the acute understanding, personally very attractive.  Though forty\nyears old, the reputation this Zeno now enjoyed seems to have been very\nmuch the achievement of his youth, and came of a mastery of the sort of\nparadox youth always delights in.  It may be said that no one has ever\nreally answered him; the difficulties with which he played so nicely\nbeing really connected with those \"antinomies,\" or contradictions, or\ninconsistencies, of our thoughts, which more than two thousand years\nafterwards Kant noted as actually inherent in the mind itself--a\ncertain constitutional weakness or limitation there, in dealing by way\nof cold-blooded reflexion with the direct presentations of its\nexperience.  The  \"Eleatic Palamedes,\" Plato calls him, \"whose\ndialectic art causes one and the same thing to appear both like and\n[29] unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion.\"  Ah! you hear\nalready the sort of words that seem sometimes so barren and\nunprofitable even in Plato.\n\nIt is from extant fragments of a work of his, not a poem, but,\nappropriately, To Syngramma,+ The Prose, of Zeno, that such knowledge as\nwe have of his doctrine, independently of the Parmenides of Plato, is\nderived.  The active principle of that doctrine then lies in the\nacuteness with which he unfolds the contradictions which make against\nthe very conceivability of the fundamental phenomena of sense, in so\nfar as those phenomena are supposed to be really existent independently\nof ourselves.  The truth of experience, of a sensible experience, he\nseems to protest:--Why! sensible experience as such is logically\ninconceivable.  He proved it, or thought, or professed to think, he\nproved it, in the phenomenon which covers all the most vivid, the\nseemingly irresistible facts, of such experience.  Motion was indeed,\nas the Heracliteans said, everywhere: was the most incisive of all\nfacts in the realm of supposed sensible fact.  Think of the prow of the\ntrireme cleaving the water.  For a moment Zeno himself might have\nseemed but a follower of Heraclitus.  He goes beyond him.  All is\nmotion: he admits.--Yes: only, motion is (I can show it!) a nonsensical\nterm.  Follow it, or rather stay by it, and it transforms itself,\nagreeably enough for the [30] curious observer, into rest.  Motion must\nbe motion in space, of course; from point to point in it,--and again,\nmore closely, from point to point within such interval; and so on,\ninfinitely; 'tis rest there: perpetual motion is perpetual rest:--the\nhurricane, the falling tower, the deadly arrow from the bow at whose\ncoming you shake there so wretchedly, Zeno's own rapid word-fence--all\nalike at rest, to the restful eye of the pure reason!  The tortoise,\nthe creature that moves most slowly, cannot be overtaken by Achilles,\nthe swiftest of us all; or at least you can give no rational\nexplanation how it comes to be overtaken.  Zeno had an armoury of such\nenigmas.  Can a bushel of corn falling make a noise if a single grain\nmakes none?  Again, that motion should cease, we find inconceivable:\nbut can you conceive how it should so much as begin? at what point\nprecisely, in the moving body?  Ubiquitous, tyrannous, irresistible, as\nit may seem, motion, with the whole so dazzling world it covers, is--\nnothing!\n\nHimself so striking an instance of mobile humour in his exposure of the\nunreality of all movement, Zeno might be taken so far only for a\nmaster, or a slave, of paradox; such paradox indeed as is from the very\nfirst inherent in every philosophy which (like that of Plato himself,\naccepting even Zeno as one of its institutors) opposes the seen to the\nunseen as [31] falsehood to truth.  It was the beginning of\nscholasticism; and the philosophic mind will perhaps never be quite in\nhealth, quite sane or natural, again.  The objective, unconscious,\npleasantly sensuous mind of the Greek, becoming a man, as he thinks,\nand putting away childish thoughts, is come with Zeno one step towards\nAristotle, towards Aquinas, or shall we say into the rude scholasticism\nof the pedantic Middle Age?  And we must have our regrets.  There is\nalways something lost in growing up.\n\nThe wholesome scepticism of Hume or Mill for instance, the scepticism\nof the modern world, beset now with insane speculative figments, has\nbeen an appeal from the preconceptions of the understanding to the\nauthority of the senses.  With the Greeks, whose metaphysic business\nwas then still all to do, the sceptical action of the mind lay rather\nin the direction of an appeal from the affirmations of sense to the\nauthority of newly-awakened reason.  Just then all those real and\nverbal difficulties which haunt perversely the human mind always, all\nthose unprofitable queries which hang about the notions of matter and\ntime and space, their divisibility and the like, seemed to be stirring\ntogether, under the utterance of this brilliant, phenomenally clever,\nperhaps insolent, young man, his master's favourite.  To the work of\nthat grave master, nevertheless--of Parmenides--a very different person\ncertainly from his rattling disciple, Zeno's [32] seemingly so\nfantastic doctrine was sincerely in service.  By its destructive\ncriticism, its dissipation of the very conceivability of the central\nand most incisive of sensible phenomena, it was a real support to\nParmenides in his assertion of the nullity of all that is but\nphenomenal, leaving open and unoccupied space (emptiness, we might say)\nto that which really is.  That which is, so purely, or absolutely, that\nit is nothing at all to our mixed powers of apprehension:--Parmenides\nand the Eleatic School were much occupied with the determination of the\nthoughts, or of the mere phrases and words, that belong to that.\n\nMotion discredited, motion gone, all was gone that belonged to an\noutward and concrete experience, thus securing exclusive validity to\nthe sort of knowledge, if knowledge it is to be called, which\ncorresponds to the  \"Pure Being,\" that after all is only definable as\n\"Pure Nothing,\" that colourless, formless, impalpable existence (ousia\nachr\u00f4matos, asch\u00eamatistos, anaph\u00eas)+ to use the words of Plato, for whom\nParmenides became a sort of inspired voice.  Note at times, in reading\nhim, in the closing pages of the fifth book of The Republic for\ninstance, the strange accumulation of terms derivative from the\nabstract verb \"To be.\"  As some more modern metaphysicians have done,\neven Plato seems to pack such terms together almost by rote.  Certainly\nsomething of paradox may always be felt even in his [33] exposition of\n\"Being,\" or perhaps a kind of paralysis of speech--aphasia.+\n\nParmenides himself had borrowed the thought from another, though he\nmade it his own.  Plato, in The Republic, as a critic of Homer, by way\nof fitting Homer the better for the use of the schoolboys of the ideal\ncity, is ready to sacrifice much of that graceful polytheism in which\nthe Greeks anticipated the dulia of saints and angels in the catholic\nchurch.  He does this to the advantage of a very abstract, and as it\nmay seem disinterested, certainly an uninteresting, notion of deity,\nwhich is in truth:--well! one of the dry sticks of mere \"natural\ntheology,\" as it is called.  In this he was but following the first,\nthe original, founder of the Eleatic School, Xenophanes, who in a\nsomewhat scornful spirit had urged on men's attention that, in their\nprayers and sacrifices to the gods, in all their various thoughts and\nstatements, graceful or hideous, about them, they had only all along\nwith much fallacy been making gods after their own likeness, as horse\nor dog too, if perchance it cast a glance towards heaven, would after\nthe same manner project thither the likeness of horse or dog: that to\nthink of deity you must think of it as neither here nor there, then nor\nnow; you must away with all limitations of time and space and matter,\nnay, with the very conditions, the limitation, of thought itself;\napparently not [34] observing that to think of it in this way was in\nreality not to think of it at all:--That in short Being so pure as this\nis pure Nothing.\n\nIn opposition then to the anthropomorphic religious poetry of Homer,\nXenophanes elaborates the notion, or rather the abstract or purely\nverbal definition, of that which really is (to on)+ as inconclusive of\nall time, and space, and mode; yet so that all which can be identified\nconcretely with mode and space and time is but antithetic to it, as\nfinite to infinite, seeming to being, contingent to necessary, the\ntemporal, in a word, to the eternal.  Once for all, in harshest\ndualism, the only true yet so barren existence is opposed to the world\nof phenomena--of colour and form and sound and imagination and love, of\nempirical knowledge.  Objects, real objects, as we know, grow in\nreality towards us in proportion as we define their various qualities.\nAnd yet, from another point of view, definition, qualification, is a\nnegative process: it is as if each added quality took from the object\nwe are defining one or more potential qualities.  The more definite\nthings become as objects of sensible or other empirical apprehension,\nthe more, it might be said from the logician's point of view, have we\ndenied about them.  It might seem that their increasing reality as\nobjects of sense was in direct proportion to the increase of their\ndistance from that perfect Being which is everywhere and at all times\nin every possible mode of being.  A [35] thing visibly white is found\nas one approaches it to be also smooth to the touch; and this added\nquality, says the formal logician, does but deprive it of all other\npossible modes of texture; Omnis determinatio est negatio.+  Vain\npuerilities! you may exclaim:--with justice.  Yet such are the\nconsiderations which await the mind that suffers itself to dwell awhile\non the abstract formula to which the \"rational theology\" of Xenophanes\nleads him.  It involved the assertion of an absolute difference between\nthe original and all that is or can be derived from it; that the former\nannuls, or is exclusive of, the latter, which has in truth no real or\nlegitimate standing-ground as matter of knowledge; that, in opposite\nyet equally unanswerable senses, at both ends of experience there is--\nnothing!  Of the most concrete object, as of the most abstract, it\nmight be said, that it more properly is not than is.\n\nFrom Xenophanes, as a critic of the polytheism of the Greek religious\npoets, that most abstract and arid of formulae, Pure Being, closed in\nindifferently on every side upon itself, and suspended in the midst of\nnothing, like a hard transparent crystal ball, as he says; \"The\nAbsolute\"; \"The One\"; passed to his fellow-citizen Parmenides, seeking,\ndoubtless in the true spirit of philosophy, for the centre of the\nuniverse, of his own experience of it, for some common measure of the\nexperience of all men.  To enforce a reasonable unity and order, to\nimpress some larger likeness of reason, [36] as one knows it in one's\nself, upon the chaotic infinitude of the impressions that reach us from\nevery side, is what all philosophy as such proposes.  Kosmos;+ order;\nreasonable, delightful, order; is a word that became very dear, as we\nknow, to the Greek soul, to what was perhaps most essentially Greek in\nit, to the Dorian element there.  Apollo, the Dorian god, was but its\nvisible consecration.  It was what, under his blessing, art\nsuperinduced upon the rough stone, the yielding clay, the jarring\nmetallic strings, the common speech of every day.  Philosophy, in its\nturn, with enlarging purpose, would project a similar light of\nintelligence upon the at first sight somewhat unmeaning world we find\nactually around us:--project it; or rather discover it, as being really\npre-existent there, if one were happy enough to get one's self into the\nright point of view.  To certain fortunate minds the efficacious moment\nof insight would come, when, with delightful adaptation of means to\nends, of the parts to the whole, the entire scene about one,\nbewildering, unsympathetic, unreasonable, on a superficial view, would\nput on, for them at least, kosmiot\u00eas,+ that so welcome expression of\nfitness, which it is the business of the fine arts to convey into\nmaterial things, of the art of discipline to enforce upon the lives of\nmen.  The primitive Ionian philosophers had found, or thought they\nfound, such a principle (arch\u00ea)+ in the force of some omnipresent\nphysical element, [37] air, water, fire; or in some common law, motion,\nattraction, repulsion; as Plato would find it in an eternally appointed\nhierarchy of genus and species; as the science of our day embraces it\n(perhaps after all only in fancy) in the expansion of a large body of\nobserved facts into some all-comprehensive hypothesis, such as\n\"evolution.\"\n\nFor Parmenides, at his early day, himself, as some remnants of his work\nin that direction bear witness, an acute and curious observer of the\nconcrete and sensible phenomena of nature, that principle of reasonable\nunity seemed attainable only by a virtual negation, by the\nobliteration, of all such phenomena.  When we have learned as exactly\nas we can all the curious processes at work in our own bodies or souls,\nin the stars, in or under the earth, their very definiteness, their\nlimitation, will but make them the more antagonistic to that which\nalone really is, because it is always and everywhere itself, identical\nexclusively with itself.  Phenomena!--by the force of such arguments as\nZeno's, the instructed would make a clean sweep of them, for the\nestablishment, in the resultant void, of the \"One,\" with which it is\nimpossible (para panta legomena)+ in spite of common language, and of\nwhat seems common sense, for the \"Many\"--the hills and cities of\nGreece, you and me, Parmenides himself, really to co-exist at all.\n\"Parmenides,\" says one, \"had stumbled upon [38] the modern thesis that\nthought and being are the same.\"\n\nSomething like this--this impossibly abstract doctrine--is what Plato's\n\"father in philosophy\" had had to proclaim, in the midst of the busy,\nbrilliant, already complicated life of the recently founded colonial\ntown of Elea.  It was like the revelation to Israel in the midst of\npicturesque idolatries, \"The Lord thy God is one Lord\";+ only that here\nit made no claim to touch the affections, or even to warm the\nimagination.  Israel's Greek cousin was to undergo a harder, a more\ndistant and repressive discipline in those matters, to which a\npeculiarly austere moral beauty, at once self-reliant and submissive,\nthe aesthetic expression of which has a peculiar, an irresistible\ncharm, would in due time correspond.\n\nIt was in difficult hexameter verse, in a poem which from himself or\nfrom others had received the title--Peri physe\u00f4s+ (De Natur\u00e2 Rerum) that\nParmenides set forth his ideas.  From the writings of Clement of\nAlexandria, and other later writers large in quotation, diligent modern\nscholarship has collected fragments of it, which afford sufficient\nindependent evidence of his manner of thought, and supplement\nconveniently Plato's, of course highly subjective, presentment in his\nParmenides of what had so deeply influenced him.-- [39] \"Now come!\"\n(this fragment of Parmenides is in Proclus, who happened to quote it in\ncommenting on the Timaeus of Plato)  \"Come! do you listen, and take\nhome what I shall tell you: what are the two paths of search after\nright understanding.  The one,\n\n     h\u00ea men hop\u00f4s estin te kai h\u00f4s ouk esti m\u00ea einai?+\n\n\"that what is, is; and that what is not, is not\"; or, in the Latin of\nscholasticism, here inaugurated by Parmenides, esse ens: non esse non\nens--\n\n     peithous esti keleuthos; al\u00eathei\u00ea gar op\u00eadei?+\n\n\"this is the path to persuasion, for truth goes along with it.  The\nother--that what is, is not; and by consequence that what is not, is:--\nI tell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion:\n\n     t\u00ean d\u00ea toi phraz\u00f4 panapeithea emmen atarpon? oute gar an gnoi\u00eas\n     to ge m\u00ea eon ou gar ephikton?+\n\nThat which is not, never could you know: there is no way of getting at\nthat; nor could you explain it to another; for Thought and Being are\nidentical.\"--Famous utterance, yet of so dubious omen!--To gar auto\nvoein estin te kai einai +---idem est enim cogitare et esse.  \"It is one\nto me,\" he proceeds, \"at what point I begin; for thither I shall come\nback over again: tothi gar palin hixomai authis.\"+\n\nYes, truly! again and again, in an empty circle, we may say; and\ncertainly, with those [40] dry and difficult words in our ears, may\nthink for a moment that philosophic reflexion has already done that\ndelightfully superficial Greek world an ill turn, troubling so early\nits ingenuous soul; that the European mind, as was said, will never be\nquite sane again.  It has been put on a quest (vain quest it may prove\nto be) after a kind of knowledge perhaps not properly attainable.\nHereafter, in every age, some will be found to start afresh\nquixotically, through what wastes of words! in search of that true\nSubstance, the One, the Absolute, which to the majority of acute people\nis after all but zero, and a mere algebraic symbol for nothingness.  In\nthemselves, by the way, such search may bring out fine intellectual\nqualities; and thus, in turn, be of service to those who can profit by\nthe spectacle of an enthusiasm not meant for them; must nevertheless be\nadmitted to have had all along something of disease about it; as indeed\nto Plato himself the philosophic instinct as such is a form of \"mania.\"\n\nAn infectious mania, it might seem,--that strange passion for\nnonentity, to which the Greek was so oddly liable, to which the human\nmind generally might be thought to have been constitutionally\npredisposed; for the doctrine of  \"The One\" had come to the surface\nbefore in old Indian dreams of self-annihilation, which had been\nrevived, in the second century after Christ, in the ecstasies\n(ecstasies of the pure [41] spirit, leaving the body behind it)\nrecommended by the Neo-Platonists; and again, in the Middle Age, as a\nfiner shade of Christian experience, in the mystic doctrines of Eckhart\nand Tauler concerning that union with God which can only be attained by\nthe literal negation of self, by a kind of moral suicide; of which\nsomething also may be found, under the cowl of the monk, in the clear,\ncold, inaccessible, impossible heights of the book of the Imitation.\nIt presents itself once more, now altogether beyond Christian\ninfluence, in the hard and ambitious intellectualism of Spinoza; a\ndoctrine of pure repellent substance--substance \"in vacuo,\" to be lost\nin which, however, would be the proper consummation of the transitory\nindividual life.  Spinoza's own absolutely colourless existence was a\npractical comment upon it.  Descartes; Malebranche, under the monk's\ncowl again; Leibnitz; Berkeley with his theory of the \"Vision of all\nthings in God\"; do but present variations on the same theme through the\nseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  By one and all it is assumed, in\nthe words of Plato, that to be colourless, formless, impalpable is the\nnote of the superior grade of knowledge and existence, evanescing\nsteadily, as one ascends towards that perfect (perhaps not quite\nattainable) condition of either, which in truth can only be attained by\nthe suppression of all the rule and outline of one's own actual\nexperience and thought.\n\n[42] Something like that certainly there had been already in the\ndoctrine of Parmenides, to whom Plato was so willing to go to school.\nAnd in the nineteenth century, as on the one hand the philosophy of\nmotion, of the \"perpetual flux,\" receives its share of verification\nfrom that theory of development with which in various forms all modern\nscience is prepossessed; so, on the other hand, the philosophy of rest\nalso, of the perpetual lethargy, the Parmenidean assertion of the\nexclusive reign of \"The One,\" receives an unlooked-for testimony from\nthe modern physical philosopher, hinting that the phenomena he deals\nwith--matter, organism, consciousness--began in a state of\nindeterminate, abstract indifference, with a single uneasy start in a\nsort of eternal sleep, a ripple on the dead, level surface.  Increasing\nindeed for a while in radius and depth, under the force of mechanic\nlaw, the world of motion and life is however destined, by force of its\nown friction, to be restored sooner or later to equilibrium; nay, is\nalready gone back some noticeable degrees (how desirably!) to the\nprimeval indifference, as may be understood by those who can reckon the\ntime it will take for our worn-out planet, surviving all the fret of\nthe humanity it housed for a while, to be drawn into the sun.\n\nBut it is of Plato after all we should be thinking; of the\ncomparatively temperate thoughts, the axiomata media, he was able to\nderive, by a [43] sort of compromise, from the impossible paradox of\nhis ancient master.  What was it, among things inevitably manifest on\nhis pages as we read him, that Plato borrowed and kept from the Eleatic\nSchool!\n\nTwo essential judgments of his philosophy: The opposition of what is,\nto what appears; and the parallel opposition of knowledge to opinion;\n(heteron epist\u00eam\u00eas doxa; eph' heter\u00f4 ara heteron ti dynamen\u00ea hekatera\naut\u00f4n pephyke? ouk ench\u00f4rei gn\u00f4ston kai doxaston tauton einai?)+ and\nthirdly, to illustrate that opposition, the figurative use, so\nimpressed on thought and speech by Plato that it has come to seem\nhardly a figure of speech at all but appropriate philosophic language,\nof the opposition of light to darkness.--\n\n     Well, then (Socrates is made to say in the fifth book of The\n     Republic) if what is, is the object of knowledge, would not\n     something other than what is, be the object of opinion?\n\n     Yes! something else.\n\n     Does opinion then opine what is not; or is it impossible to have\n     even opinion concerning what is not?  Consider! does not he who\n     has opinion direct his opinion upon something? or is it\n     impossible, again, to have an opinion, yet an opinion about\n     nothing?\n\n     Impossible!\n\n     But he who has an opinion has opinion at least about something;\n     hasn't he?  Yet after all what is not, is not a thing; but would\n     most properly be denominated nothing.\n\n     Certainly.\n\n     Now to what is not, we assigned of necessity ignorance: to what\n     is, knowledge.\n\n     Rightly: he said.\n\n     [44] Neither what is, then, nor what is not, is the object of\n     opinion.\n\n     No!\n\n     Opinion therefore would be neither ignorance nor knowledge.\n\n     It seems not.\n\n     Is it, then, beyond these; going beyond knowledge in clearness,\n     beyond ignorance in obscurity?\n\n     Neither the one, nor the other.\n\n     But, I asked, opinion seems to you (doesn't it?) to be a darker\n     thing than knowledge, yet lighter than ignorance.\n\n     Very much so; he answered.\n\n     Does it lie within those two?\n\n     Yes.\n\n     Opinion, then, would be midway, between these two conditions?\n\n     Undoubtedly so.\n\n     Now didn't we say in what went before that if anything became\n     apparent such that it is, and is not, at the same time, a thing\n     of that kind would lie between that which is in unmixed clearness,\n     and that which wholly is not; and that there would be, in regard\n     to that, neither knowledge nor ignorance; but, again, a condition\n     revealing itself between ignorance and knowledge?\n\n     Rightly.\n\n     And now, between these two, what we call 'opinion' has in fact\n     revealed itself.\n\n     Clearly so.\n\n     It would remain for us therefore, as it seems, to find that which\n     partakes of both--both of Being and Not-being, and which could\n     rightly be called by neither term distinctly; in order that, if it\n     appear, we may in justice determine it to be the object of opinion;\n     assigning the extremes to the extremes, the intermediate to what\n     comes between them.\n\n     Or is it not thus?\n\n     Thus it is.\n\n     These points then being assumed, let him tell me! let him speak\n     and give his answer--that excellent person, who on the one hand\n     thinks there is no Beauty itself, nor any idea of Beauty itself,\n     ever in the same condition in regard to the same things (aei kata\n     tauta h\u00f4saut\u00f4s echousan)+ yet, on the other hand, holds [45] that\n     there are the many beautiful objects:--that lover of sight (ho\n     philotheam\u00f4n)+ who can by no means bear it if any one says that\n     the beautiful is one; the just also; and the rest, after the same\n     way.  For good Sir! we shall say, pray tell us, is there any one\n     of these many beautiful things which will not appear ugly (under\n     certain conditions) of the many just or pious actions which will\n     not seem unjust or impious?\n\n     No! he answered.  Rather it must be that they shall seem, in a\n     manner, both beautiful and ugly; and all the rest you ask of.\n\n     Well!  The many double things:--Do they seem to be at all less\n     half than double?\n\n     Not at all.\n\n     And great, in truth, and little, and light, and heavy--will they\n     at all more truly be called by these names which we may give them,\n     than by the opposite names?\n\n     No! he said; but each of them will always hold of both.\n\n     Every several instance of 'The Many,' then--is it, more truly\n     than it is not, that which one may affirm it to be?\n\n     It is like people at supper-parties he said (very Attic supper-\n     parties!) playing on words, and the children's riddle about the\n     eunuch and his fling round the bat--with what, and on what, the\n     riddle says he hit it; for these things also seem to set both\n     ways, and it is not possible, fixedly, to conceive any one of\n     them either to be, or not to be; neither both, nor the one, nor\n     the other.\n\n     Have you anything then you can do with them; or anywhere you can\n     place them with fairer effect than in that position between being\n     and the being not?  For presumably they will not appear more\n     obscure than what is not, so as not to be, still more; nor more\n     luminous than what is, so as to be, even more than that.  We have\n     found then that the many customary notions of the many, about\n     Beauty and the rest are revolved somewhere between not-being and\n     being unmixedly.\n\n     So we have.\n\n     And agreed, at least, at the outset, that if anything of this sort\n     presented itself, it must be declared matter not of knowledge, but\n     of opinion; to be apprehended by the intermediate faculty; as it\n     wanders unfixed, there, between.  Republic, 478.\n\n[46] Many a train of thought, many a turn of expression, only too\nfamiliar, some may think, to the reader of Plato, are summarised in\nthat troublesome yet perhaps attractive passage.  The influence then of\nParmenides on Plato had made him, incurably (shall we say?) a dualist.\nOnly, practically, Plato's richly coloured genius will find a\ncompromise between the One which alone really is, is yet so empty a\nthought for finite minds; and the Many, which most properly is not, yet\npresses so closely on eye and ear and heart and fancy and will, at\nevery moment.  That which really is (to on)+ the One, if he is really to\nthink about it at all, must admit within it a certain variety of\nmembers; and, in effect, for Plato the true Being, the Absolute, the\nOne, does become delightfully multiple, as the world of ideas--\nappreciable, through years of loving study, more and more clearly, one\nby one, as the perfectly concrete, mutually adjusted, permanent forms\nof our veritable experience: the Bravery, for instance, that cannot be\nconfused, not merely with Cowardice, but with Wisdom, or Humility.  One\nafter another they emerge again from the dead level, the Parmenidean\ntabula rasa, with nothing less than the reality of persons face to face\nwith us, of a personal identity.  It was as if the firm plastic\noutlines of the delightful old Greek polytheism had found their way\nback after all into a repellent monotheism.  Prefer as he may in theory\nthat [47] blank white light of the One--its sterile, \"formless,\ncolourless, impalpable,\" eternal identity with itself--the world, and\nthis chiefly is why the world has not forgotten him, will be for him,\nas he is by no means colour-blind, by no means a colourless place.  He\nwill suffer it to come to him, as his pages convey it in turn to us,\nwith the liveliest variety of hue, as in that conspicuously visual\nemblem of it, the outline of which (essentially characteristic of\nhimself as it seems) he had really borrowed from the old Eleatic\nteacher who had tried so hard to close the bodily eye that he might the\nbetter apprehend the world unseen.--\n\n     And now (he writes in the seventh book of The Republic) take\n     for a figure of human nature, as regards education and the lack\n     thereof, some such condition as this.  Think you see people as\n     it were in some abode below-ground, like a cave, having its\n     entrance spread out upwards towards the light, broad, across the\n     whole cavern.  Suppose them here from childhood; their legs and\n     necks chained; so that there they stay, and can see only what is\n     in front of them, being unable by reason of the chain to move\n     their heads round about: and the light of a fire upon them,\n     blazing from far above, behind their backs: between the fire and\n     the prisoners away up aloft: and see beside it a low wall built\n     along, as with the showmen, in front of the people lie the screens\n     above which they exhibit their wonders.\n\n     I see: he said.\n\n     See, then, along this low wall, men, bearing vessels of all sorts\n     wrought in stone and wood; and, naturally, some of the bearers\n     talking, other silent.\n\n     It is a strange figure you describe: said he: and strange\n     prisoners.--\n\n     They are like ourselves: I answered!  Republic, 514.\n\n[48] Metaphysical formulae have always their practical equivalents.\nThe ethical alliance of Heraclitus is with the Sophists, and the\nCyrenaics or the Epicureans; that of Parmenides, with Socrates, and the\nCynics or the Stoics.  The Cynic or Stoic ideal of a static calm is as\ntruly the moral or practical equivalent of the Parmenidean doctrine of\nthe One, as the Cyrenaic monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea+--the pleasure of the ideal\nnow--is the practical equivalent of the doctrine of motion; and, as\nsometimes happens, what seems hopelessly perverse as a metaphysic for\nthe understanding is found to be realisable enough as one of many\nphases of our so flexible human feeling.  The abstract philosophy of\nthe One might seem indeed to have been translated into the terms of a\nhuman will in the rigid, disinterested, renunciant career of the\nemperor Marcus Aurelius, its mortal coldness.  Let me however conclude\nwith a document of the Eleatic temper, nearer in its origin to the age\nof Plato: an ancient fragment of Cleanthes the Stoic, which has justly\nstirred the admiration of Stoical minds; though truly, so hard is it\nnot to lapse from those austere heights, the One, the Absolute, has\nbecome in it after all, with much varied colour and detail in his\nrelations to concrete things and persons, our father Zeus.\n\nAn illustrious athlete; then a mendicant dealer in water-melons; chief\npontiff lastly of the sect of the Stoics; Cleanthes, as we see him in\nanecdote [49] at least, is always a loyal, sometimes a very quaintly\nloyal, follower of the Parmenidean or Stoic doctrine of detachment from\nall material things.  It was at the most critical points perhaps of\nsuch detachment, that somewhere about the year three hundred before\nChrist, he put together the verses of his famous \"Hymn.\"  By its\npractical indifference, its resignation, its passive submission to the\nOne, the undivided Intelligence, which dia pant\u00f4n phoita+--goes to and\nfro through all things, the Stoic pontiff is true to the Parmenidean\nschooling of his flock; yet departs from it also in a measure by a\ncertain expansion of phrase, inevitable, it may be, if one has to speak\nat all about that chilly abstraction, still more make a hymn to it.  He\nis far from the cold precept of Spinoza, that great re-assertor of the\nParmenidean tradition: That whoso loves God truly must not expect to be\nloved by Him in return.  In truth, there are echoes here from many\nvarious sources.  Ek sou gar genos esmen+:--that is quoted, as you\nremember, by Saint Paul, so just after all to the pagan world, as its\ntestimony to some deeper Gn\u00f4sis than its own.  Certainly Cleanthes has\nconceived his abstract monotheism a little more winningly, somewhat\nbetter, than dry, pedantic Xenophanes; perhaps because Socrates and\nPlato have lived meanwhile.  You might even fancy what he says an echo\nfrom Israel's devout response to the announcement: \"The Lord thy God is\none Lord.\"  The Greek [50] certainly is come very near to his unknown\ncousin at Sion in what follows:--\n\n     kydist', athanat\u00f4n, poly\u00f4nyme, pankrates aiei\n     Zeu, physeos arch\u00eage, nomou meta panta kybern\u00f4n,\n     chaire\u00b7 se gar pantessi themis thn\u00eatoisi prosaudan, k.t.l.\n\n          Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, I. p. 151.\n\n     Thou O Zeus art praised above all gods: many are Thy names and\n     Thine is all power for ever.\n\n     The beginning of the world was from Thee: and with law Thou\n     rulest over all things.\n\n     Unto Thee may all flesh speak: for we are Thy offspring.\n\n     Therefore will I raise a hymn unto Thee: and will ever sing of\n     Thy power.\n\n     The whole order of the heavens obeyeth Thy word: as it moveth\n     around the earth:\n\n     With little and great lights mixed together: how great art Thou,\n     King above all for ever!\n\n     Nor is anything done upon earth apart from Thee: nor in the\n     firmament, nor in the seas:\n\n     Save that which the wicked do: by their own folly.\n\n     But Thine is the skill to set even the crooked straight: what is\n     without fashion is fashioned and the alien akin before Thee.\n\n     Thus hast Thou fitted together all things in one: the good with\n     the evil:\n\n     That Thy word should be one in all things: abiding for ever.\n\n     Let folly be dispersed from our souls: that we may repay Thee\n     the honour, wherewith Thou hast honoured us:\n\n     Singing praise of Thy works for ever: as becometh the sons of\n     men.+\n\nNOTES\n\n29. +Transliteration: To Syngramma.  Translation: \"The Prose.\"\n\n32. +Transliteration: ousia achr\u00f4matos, asch\u00eamatistos, anaph\u00eas.  E-text\neditor's translation:  \"the colorless, utterly formless, intangible\nessence.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 247c.  See also Appreciations, \"Coleridge,\"\nwhere Pater uses the same quotation.\n\n33. +Transliteration: aphasia.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"speechlessness.\"\n\n34. +Transliteration: to on.  Translation: \"that which is.\"\n\n35. +The principle is that of Baruch Spinoza.\n\n36. +Transliteration: Kosmos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"I. 1.\norder; 2. good order, good behaviour, decency; 3. a set form or order:\nof states, government; 4. the mode or fashion of a thing; II. an\nornament...; III. the world or universe, from its perfect arrangement.\"\n\n36. +Transliteration: kosmiot\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"propriety, decorum, orderly behaviour.\"\n\n36. +Transliteration: arch\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"I.\nbeginning, first cause, origin.  II. 1. supreme power, sovereignty,\ndominion; 2. office.\"\n\n37. +Transliteration: para panta legomena.  Pater's translation: \"in\nspite of common language.\"\n\n38.  \"The Lord thy God. . . .\"  Deuteronomy 6:4.  \"Hear, O Israel: The\nLORD our God is one LORD: . . .\"  See also Mark 12:29: \"And Jesus\nanswered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The\nLord our God is one Lord: . . .\"\n\n38. +Transliteration: Peri physe\u00f4s.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"Regarding Nature--i.e. the title De Natur\u00e2 Rerum.\"\n\n39. +Transliteration: h\u00ea men hop\u00f4s estin te kai h\u00f4s ouk esti m\u00ea einai.\nPater's translation: \"that what is, is; and that what is not, is not.\"\nParmenides, Epe\u00f4n Leipsana [Fragmentary Song or Poem], line 35.\nFragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 117.  Ed. F.W.A. Mullach.\nDarmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1967 (reprint of the Paris, 1860\nedition).\n\n39. +Transliteration: peithous esti keleuthos; al\u00eathei\u00ea gar op\u00eadei.\nPater's translation: \"this is the path to persuasion, for truth goes\nalong with it.\"  Parmenides, Epe\u00f4n Leipsana [Fragmentary Song or Poem],\nline 36.  Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 118.  Although I\nhave left the quotation as Pater renders it, the semicolon should be a\ncomma, as in the Mullach collection Pater used--otherwise the first\nhalf of the sentence would be a question, and that is not how Pater\nhimself translates the verse.\n\n39. +Transliteration: t\u00ean d\u00ea toi phraz\u00f4 panapeithea emmen atarpon; oute\ngar an gnoi\u00eas to ge m\u00ea eon ou gar ephikton.  Pater's translation: \"I\ntell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion: That which\nis not, never could you know: there is no way of getting at that.\"\nParmenides, Epe\u00f4n Leipsana, lines 38-9.  Fragmenta Philosophorum\nGraecorum, Vol. 1, 118.\n\n39. +Transliteration: To gar auto voein estin te kai einai.  Pater's\ntranslation in Latin: \"idem est enim cogitare et esse\"; in English,\nthat may be translated, \"Thinking and being are identical.\"\nParmenides, Epe\u00f4n Leipsana, line 40.  Fragmenta Philosophorum\nGraecorum, Vol. 1, 118.\n\n39. +Transliteration: tothi gar palin hixomai authis.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"at what point I begin; for thither I shall come back over\nagain.\"  Parmenides, Epe\u00f4n Leipsana, line 42.  Fragmenta Philosophorum\nGraecorum, Vol. 1, 118.\n\n43. +Transliteration: heteron epist\u00eam\u00eas doxa; eph' heter\u00f4 ara heteron ti\ndynamen\u00ea hekatera aut\u00f4n pephyke; ouk ench\u00f4rei gn\u00f4ston kai doxaston\ntauton einai.  E-text editor's translation: \"opinion differs from\nscientific knowledge...To each of them belongs a different power, so to\neach falls a different sphere...it is not possible for knowledge and\nopinion to be one and the same.\"  Plato, Republic, 478a-b.\n\n44. +Transliteration: aei kata tauta h\u00f4saut\u00f4s echousan.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"ever in the same condition in regard to the same things.\"\nPlato, Republic 478.\n\n45. +Transliteration: ho philotheam\u00f4n.  Liddell and Scott definition\n\"fond of seeing, fond of spectacles or shows.\"  This word is from the\nsame passage just cited, note for page 44.\n\n46. +Transliteration: to on.  Translation: \"that which is.\"\n\n48. Transliteration: monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea.  Pater's definition \"the\npleasure of the ideal now.\"  The adjective monochronos means,\nliterally, \"single or unitary time.\"  See also Marius the Epicurean,\nVol. 1, Cyrenaicism, and Vol. 2, Second Thoughts, where Pater quotes\nthe same key Cyrenaic language.\n\n49. +Transliteration: dia pant\u00f4n phoita.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"which courses through all things.\"  Cleanthes (300-220 B.C.), Hymn to\nZeus, lines 12-13.  Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 151.\nEd. F.W.A. Mullach.  Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1967 (reprint of\nthe Paris, 1860 edition).  Pater has translated Cleanthes' phrase\nkoinos logos as \"undivided Intelligence.\"  The relevant verse reads,\n\"su kateuthyn\u00eas koinon logon, hos dia pant\u00f4n phoita,\"  which may be\ntranslated, \"You guide the Universal Thought that courses through all\nthings.\"  But the word logos is multivalent and subject to\nphilosophical nuance, so any translation of it is bound to be limited.\n\n49. +Transliteration: Ek sou gar genos esmen.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"For we are born of you.\"  Cleanthes (300-220 B.C.), Hymn\nto Zeus, line 4.  Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 151.\nPater alludes also to Saint Paul's words in Acts 17:28: \"For in him we\nlive, and move, and have our being.\"\n\n50. +Here Pater provides a somewhat abbreviated translation of the Hymn\nto Zeus.  As above, the Greek is from Fragmenta Philosophorum\nGraecorum, Vol. 1, 151.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 3: PLATO AND THE DOCTRINE OF NUMBER\n\n[51] His devotion to the austere and abstract philosophy of Parmenides,\nits passivity or indifference, could not repress the opulent genius of\nPlato, or transform him into a cynic.  Another ancient philosopher,\nPythagoras, set the frozen waves in motion again, brought back to\nPlato's recognition all that multiplicity in men's experience to which\nHeraclitus had borne such emphatic witness; but as rhythm or melody\nnow--in movement truly, but moving as disciplined sound and with the\nreasonable soul of music in it.\n\nPythagoras, or the founder of the Pythagorean philosophy, is the third\nof those earlier masters, who explain the intellectual confirmation of\nPlato by way of antecedent.  What he said, or was believed to have\nsaid, is almost everywhere in the very texture of Platonic philosophy,\nas vera vox, an authority with prescript claim on sympathetic or at\nleast reverent consideration, to be developed generously in the natural\ngrowth of Plato's own thoughts.\n\n[52] Nothing remains of his writings: dark statements only, as occasion\nserved, in later authors.  Plato himself attributes those doctrines of\nhis not to Pythagoras but to the Pythagoreans.  But if no such name had\ncome down to us we might have understood how, in the search for the\nphilosophic unity of experience, a common measure of things, for a\ncosmical hypothesis, number and the truths of number would come to fill\nthe place occupied by some omnipresent physical element, air, fire,\nwater, in the philosophies of Ionia; by the abstract and exclusive idea\nof the unity of Being itself in the system of Parmenides.  To realise\nunity in variety, to discover cosmos--an order that shall satisfy one's\nreasonable soul--below and within apparent chaos: is from first to last\nthe continuous purpose of what we call philosophy.  Well!  Pythagoras\nseems to have found that unity of principle (arch\u00ea)+ in the dominion of\nnumber everywhere, the proportion, the harmony, the music, into which\nnumber as such expands.  Truths of number: the essential laws of\nmeasure in time and space:--Yes, these are indeed everywhere in our\nexperience: must, as Kant can explain to us, be an element in anything\nwe are able so much as to conceive at all.  And music, covering all it\ndoes, for Pythagoras, for Plato and Platonism--music, which though it\nis of course much besides, is certainly a formal development of purely\nnumerical laws: that too surely is something, [53] independently of\nourselves, in the real world without us, like a personal intelligible\nsoul durably resident there for those who bring intelligence of it, of\nmusic, with them; to be known on the favourite Platonic principle of\nlike by like (homoion homoi\u00f4)+ though the incapable or uninstructed ear,\nin various degrees of dulness, may fail to apprehend it.\n\nThe Golden Verses of Pythagoras parted early into dust (that seems\nstrange, if they were ever really written in a book) and antiquity\nitself knows little directly about his doctrine.  Yet Pythagoras is\nmuch more than a mere name, a term, for locating as well as may be a\nphilosophical abstraction.  Pythagoras, his person, his memory,\nattracted from the first a kind of fairy-tale of mystic science.  The\nphilosophy of number, of music and proportion, came, and has remained,\nin a cloud of legendary glory; the gradual accumulation of which\nPorphyry and Iamblichus, the fantastic masters of Neo-Platonism, or\nNeo-Pythagoreanism, have embodied in their so-called Lives of him, like\nsome antique fable richly embossed with starry wonders.  In this spirit\nthere had been much writing about him: that he was a son of Apollo,\nnay, Apollo himself--the twilight, attempered, Hyperborean Apollo, like\nthe sun in Lapland: that his person gleamed at times with a\nsupernatural brightness: that he had exposed to those who loved him a\ngolden thigh: how Abaris, the minister of that god, [54] had come\nflying to him on a golden arrow: of his almost impossible journeys: how\nhe was seen, had lectured indeed, in different places at the same time.\nAs he walked on the banks of the Nessus the river had whispered his\nname: he had been, in the secondary sense, various persons in the\ncourse of ages; a courtesan once, for some ancient sin in him; and then\na hero, Euphorbus, son of Panthus; could remember very distinctly so\nrecent a matter as the Trojan war, and had recognised in a moment his\nown old armour, hanging on the wall, above one of his old dead bodies,\nin the temple of Athene at Argos; showing out all along only by hints\nand flashes the abysses of divine knowledge within him, sometimes by\nmiracle.  For if the philosopher really is all that Pythagoras or the\nPythagoreans suppose; if the material world is so perfect a musical\ninstrument, and he knows its theory so well, he might surely give\npractical and sensible proof of that on occasion, by himself\nimprovising music upon it in direct miracle.  And so there, in Porphyry\nand Iamblichus, the appropriate miracles are.\n\nIf the mistaken affection of the disciples of dreamy Neo-Platonic\nGn\u00f4sis at Alexandria, in the third or fourth century of our era, has\nthus made it impossible to separate later legend from original evidence\nas to what he was, and said, and how he said it, yet that there was a\nbrilliant, perhaps a showy, personality there, infusing the [55] most\nabstract truths with what would tell on the fancy, seems more than\nprobable, and, though he would appear really to have had from the first\nmuch of mystery or mysticism about him, the thaumaturge of Samos, \"whom\neven the vulgar might follow as a conjuror,\" must have been very unlike\nthe lonely \"weeping\" philosopher of Ephesus, or the almost disembodied\nphilosopher of Elea.  In the very person and doings of this earliest\nmaster of the doctrine of harmony, people saw that philosophy is\n\n     Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,\n     But musical as is Apollo's lute.\n\nAnd in turn he abounded in influence on the deeds, the persons, of\nothers, as if he had really carried a magic lute in his hands to charm\nthem.\n\nAs his fellow-citizens had all but identified Pythagoras with him, so\nApollo remained the peculiar patron of the Pythagoreans; and we may\nnote, in connexion with their influence on Plato, that as Apollo was\nthe chosen ancestral deity, so Pythagoreanism became especially the\nphilosophy, of the severely musical Dorian Greeks.  If, as Plato was\naware, or fancied, true Spartans knew more of philosophy than they let\nstrangers suppose--turned them all out from time to time and feasted on\nit in secret, for the strengthening of their souls--it was [56]\nprecisely the Pythagorean philosophy of music, of austere music,\nmastering, remoulding, men's very bodies, they would then have\ndiscussed with one another.\n\nA native of Ionia, it is in one of the Dorian cities of Magna Graecia,\nat Crotona, that Pythagoras finds the fitting scene of his mysterious\ninfluence.  He founds there something like an ideal republic, or rather\na religious brotherhood, under a rule outwardly expressive of that\ninward idea of order or harmony, so dear to the Dorian soul, and, for\nit, as for him, ever the peculiar pledge of the presence of philosophic\ntruth.  Al\u00eatheian de ametria h\u00eagei syngen\u00ea einai, \u00ea emmetria;+ asks one\nin The Republic; and Emmetria?+ of course, is the answer.\n\nRecalling the student of Plato to penetrate as far as he can into that\nmysterious community, there, long before, in the imagination of\nPythagoras is the first dream of the Perfect City, with all those\npeculiar ethical sympathies which the Platonic Republic enforces\nalready well defined--the perfect mystic body of the Dorian soul,\nbuilt, as Plato requires, to the strains of music.  As a whole, and in\nits members severally, it would reproduce and visibly reflect to others\nthat inward order and harmony of which each one was a part.  As such,\nthe Pythagorean order (it was itself an \"order\") expanded and was long\nmaintained in those cities of Magna Graecia which had been the scene of\nthe practical [57] no less than of the speculative activity of its\nfounder; and in one of which, Metapontum, so late as the days of Cicero\nwhat was believed to be the tomb of Pythagoras was still shown.  Order,\nharmony, the temperance, which, as Plato will explain to us, will\nconvince us by the visible presentment of it in the faultless person of\nthe youthful Charmides, is like a musical harmony,--that was the chief\nthing Pythagoras exacted from his followers, at least at first, though\nthey were mainly of the noble and wealthy class who could have done\nwhat they liked--temperance in a religious intention, with many\nsingular scruples concerning bodily purification, diet, and the like.\nFor if, according to his philosophy, the soul had come from heaven, to\nuse the phrase of Wordsworth reproducing the central Pythagorean\ndoctrine, \"from heaven,\" as he says, \"trailing clouds of glory,\" so the\narguments of Pythagoras were always more or less explicitly involving\none in consideration of the means by which one might get back thither,\nof which means, surely, abstinence, the repression of one's carnal\nelements, must be one; in consideration also, in curious questions, as\nto the relationship of those carnal elements in us to the pilgrim soul,\nbefore and after, for which he was so anxious to secure full use of all\nthe opportunities of further perfecting which might yet await it, in\nthe many revolutions of its existence.  In the midst of that\naesthetically [58] so brilliant world of Greater Greece, as if\nanticipating Plato, he has, like the philosophic kings of the Platonic\nRepublic, already something of the monk, of monastic asc\u00easis, about\nhim.  Its purpose is to fit him for, duly to refine his nature towards,\nthat closer vision of truth to which perchance he may be even now upon\nhis way.  The secrecy again, that characteristic silence of which the\nphilosopher of music was,  perhaps not inconsistently, a lover, which\nenveloped the entire action of the Pythagoreans, and had indeed kept\nPythagoras himself, as some have thought, from committing his thoughts\nto writing at all, was congruous with such monkish discipline.\nMysticism--the condition of the initiated--is a word derived, as we\nknow, from a Greek verb which may perhaps mean to close the eye that\none may better perceive the invisible, but more probably means to close\nthe lips while the soul is brooding over what cannot be uttered.  Later\nChristian admirers said of him, that he had hidden the words of God in\nhis heart.\n\nThe dust of his golden verses perhaps, but certainly the gold-dust of\nhis thoughts, lies scattered all along Greek literature from Plato to\nthe latest of the Greek Fathers of the Church.  You may find it\nserviceably worked out in the notes of Zeller's excellent work on Greek\nphilosophy, and, with more sparing comment, in Mullach's Fragmenta\nPhilosophorum Graecorum.  No one of those Pre-Socratic philosophers has\n[59] been the subject of a more enthusiastic erudition.  For his mind's\nhealth however, if in doing so he is not making a disproportionate use\nof his time, inconsistent certainly with the essential temper of the\ndoctrine he seeks for, and such as a true Pythagorean would instantly\ncondemn, the young scholar might be recommended to go straight to the\npages of Aristotle--those discreet, unromantic pages, salutary\ntherefore to listen to, concerning doctrines in themselves so\nfantastic.*  In the Ethics, as you may know, in the Metaphysics, and\nelsewhere, Aristotle gives many not unsympathetic notices at least of\nthe disciples, which, by way of sober contrast on a matter from the\nfirst profusely, perhaps cheaply, embroidered, is like quiet\ninformation from Pythagoras himself.  Only, remember always in reading\nPlato--Plato, as a sincere learner in the school of Pythagoras--that\nthe essence, the active principle of the Pythagorean doctrine, resides,\nnot as with the ancient Eleatics, nor as with our modern selves too\noften, in the \"infinite,\" those eternities, infinitudes, abysses,\nCarlyle invokes for us so often--in no cultus of the infinite (to\napeiron) but in the finite (to peras).+  It is so indeed, with that\nexception of the Parmenidean sect, through all Greek philosophy,\ncongruously with the proper vocation of the [60] people of art, of art\nas being itself the finite, ever controlling the infinite, the\nformless.  Those famous systoichiai t\u00f4n enanti\u00f4n,+ or parallel columns\nof contraries: the One and the Many: Odd and Even, and the like: Good\nand Evil: are indeed all reducible ultimately to terms of art, as the\nexpressive and the inexpressive.  Now observe that Plato's \"theory of\nideas\" is but an effort to enforce the Pythagorean peras,+ with all the\nunity-in-variety of concerted music,--eternal definition of the finite,\nupon to apeiron,+ the infinite, the indefinite, formless, brute matter,\nof our experience of the world.\n\nFor it is of Plato again we should be thinking, and of Pythagoras or\nthe Pythagoreans, only so far as they explain the actual conformation\nof Plato's thoughts as we find them, especially in The Republic.  Let\nus see, as much as possible in his own words, what Plato received from\nthat older philosophy, of which the two leading persuasions were;\nfirst, the universality, the ultimate truth, of numerical, of musical\nlaw; and secondly, the pre-existence, the double eternity, of the soul.\n\nIn spirit, then, we are certainly of the Pythagorean company in that\nmost characteristic dialogue, the Meno, in which Plato discusses the\nnature, the true idea, of Virtue, or rather how one may attain thereto;\ncompelled to this subordinate and accessory question by the\nintellectual [61] cowardice of his disciple, though after his manner he\nflashes irrepressible light on that other primary and really\nindispensable question by the way.  Pythagoras, who had founded his\nfamous brotherhood by way of turning theory into practice, must have\nhad, of course, definite views on that most practical question, how\nvirtue is to be attained by us; and Plato is certainly faithful to him\nin assigning the causation of virtue partly to discipline, forming\nhabit (ask\u00easis)+ as enforced on the monk, the soldier, the schoolboy, as\nhe is true to his own experience in assigning it partly also to a good\nnatural disposition (physei)+ and he suggests afterwards, as I suppose\nsome of us would be ready to do, that virtue is due also in part (theia\nmoira)+ to the good pleasure of heaven, to un-merited grace.  Whatever\nelse, however, may be held about it, it is certain (he admits) that\nvirtue comes in great measure through learning.  But is there in very\ndeed such a thing as learning? asks the eristic Meno, who is so\nyouthfully fond of argument for its own sake, and must exercise by\ndisplay his already well-trained intellectual muscle.  Is not that\nfavourite, that characteristic, Greek paradox, that it is impossible to\nbe taught, and therefore useless to seek, what one does not know\nalready, after all the expression of an empirical truth?--\n\n     Meno.  After what manner Socrates will you seek for that which\n     you do not know at all--what it is?  For what sort of thing,\n     among the things you know not, will you propose as your [62]\n     object of search?  Or even if you should have lighted full upon\n     it, how will you know that it is this thing which you knew not?\n\n     Socrates.  Ah!  I understand the kind of thing you mean to say,\n     Meno.  Do you see what a contentious argument this is you are\n     bringing down on our heads?--that forsooth it is not possible\n     for a man to seek either for what he knows, or for what he knows\n     not; inasmuch as he would not seek what he knows, at least;\n     because he knows it, and to one in such case there is no need\n     of seeking.  Nor would he seek after what he knows not; for he\n     knows not what he shall seek for.  Meno, 80.\n\nWell! that is true in a sense, as Socrates admits; not however in any\nsense which encourages idle acquiescence in what according to common\nlanguage is our ignorance.  There is a sense (it is exemplified in\nregard to sound and colour, perhaps in some far more important things)\nin which it is matter of experience that it is impossible to seek for,\nor be taught, what one does not know already.  He who is in total\nignorance of musical notes, who has no ear, will certainly be unaware\nof them when they light on him, or he lights upon them.  Where could\none begin? we ask, in certain cases where not to know at all means\nincapacity for receiving knowledge.  Yes, certainly; the Pythagoreans\nare right in saying that what we call learning is in fact reminiscence-\n-: anamn\u00easis + famous word! and Socrates proceeds to show in what precise\nway it is impossible or possible to find out what you don't know: how\nthat happens.  In full use of the dialogue, as itself the instrument\nmost [63] fit for him of whatever what we call teaching and learning\nmay really be, Plato, dramatic always, brings in one of Meno's slaves,\na boy who speaks Greek nicely, but knows nothing of geometry:\nintroduces him, we may fancy, into a mathematical lecture-room where\ndiagrams are to be seen on the walls, cubes and the like lying on the\ntable--particular objects, the mere sight of which will rouse him when\nsubjected to the dialectical treatment, to universal truths concerning\nthem.  The problem required of him is to describe a square of a\nparticular size: to find the line which must be the side of such a\nsquare; and he is to find it for himself.  Meno, carefully on his\nguard, is to watch whether the boy is taught by Socrates in any of his\nanswers; whether he answers anything at any point otherwise than by way\nof reminiscence and really out of his own mind, as the reasonable\nquestions of Socrates fall like water on the seed-ground, or like\nsunlight on the photographer's negative.\n\n\"See him now!\" he cries triumphantly, \"How he remembers; in the logical\norder; as he ought to remember!\"  The reader, in truth, following\nclosely, scrupulously, this pretty process, cannot help seeing that\nafter all the boy does not discover the essential point of the problem\nfor himself, that he is more than just guided on his way by the\nquestioning of Socrates, that Plato has chosen an instance in itself\nillusively clear as being concerned with elementary space.  It is [64]\nonce for all, however, that he recognises, under such questioning, the\nimmovable, indefectible certainty of this or that truth of space.  So\nmuch, the candid reader must concede, is clearly to the advantage of\nthe Pythagorean theory: that even his false guesses have a\nplausibility, a kinship to, a kind of claim upon, truth, about them:\nthat as he remembers, in logical order (h\u00f4s dei)+ so he makes the\nmistakes also which he ought to make--the right sort of mistakes, such\nas are natural and ought to occur in order to the awakening mind, a\nkind of properly innate errors.  Nyn aut\u00f4 h\u00f4sper onar arti anakekin\u00eatai\nhai doxai autai.+--\"Just now, as in a dream, these opinions have been\nstirred up within him\"; and he will perform, Socrates assures us,\nsimilar acts of reminiscence on demand, with other geometrical\nproblems, with any and every problem whatever.\n\n\"If then,\" observes Socrates in the Phaedo, wistfully pondering, for\nsuch consolation as there may be in it, in his last hours, the larger\noutlook suggested by this hopeful doctrine:--\n\n     If, having apprehended it (having apprehended a certain mathe-\n     matical principle, that is) before birth, we were born already\n     possessed of this principle, had we not knowledge, both before\n     and immediately upon our begetting here, not merely about the\n     equal and the greater and the less, but about all other things\n     of the kind?  For our theory (of an innate knowledge, that is\n     to say, independent of our experience here) our theory holds\n     not a bit more about two equal lines, than about the absolute\n     Beauty (was he going now to see its very face again, after the\n     dim intermediate life here?) and about what is absolutely just\n     and good, and about all things whatever, upon [65] which, in\n     all our past questioning and answering, we set this seal--hois\n     episphragizometha touto + --That, which really is.  Phaedo, 75.\n\nBut to return to the cheerful pages of the Meno--from the prison-cell\nto the old mathematical lecture-room and that psychological experiment\nupon the young boy with the square:-- Oukoun oudenos didaxantos, all'\ner\u00f4t\u00easantos, epist\u00easetai, analab\u00f4n, autos ex hautou, epist\u00eam\u00ean;+\n\"Through no one's teaching, then, but by a process of mere questioning,\nwill he attain a true science, knowledge in the fullest sense\n(epist\u00eam\u00ea)+ by the recovery of such science out of himself?\"--Yes! and\nthat recovery is an act of reminiscence.\n\nThese opinions therefore, the boy's discoverable right notions about\nside and square and diagonal, were innate in him (en\u00easan de ge aut\u00f4\nautai hai doxai)+ and surely, as Socrates was observing later, right\nopinions also concerning other things more important, which too, when\nstirred up by a process of questioning, will be established in him as\nconsciously reasoned knowledge (er\u00f4t\u00easei epegertheisai, epist\u00eamai\ngignontai).+  That at least is what Plato is quite certain about: not\nquite so confident, however, regarding another doctrine, fascinating as\nhe finds it, which seemed to afford an explanation of this leading\npsychological fact of an antecedent knowledge within us--the doctrine\nnamely of metempsych\u00f4sis, of the transmigration of souls through\nvarious forms of the bodily life, [66] under a law of moral\nretribution, somewhat oracularly suggested in the ancient poets, by\nHesiod and Pindar, but a matter of formal consciousness with the\nPythagoreans, and at last inseparably connected with the authority of\nSocrates, who in the Phaedo discourses at great length on that so\ncomfortable theory, venturing to draw from it, as we saw just now, a\npersonal hope in the immediate prospect of death.  The soul, then,\nwould be immortal (athanatos an h\u00ea psych\u00ea ei\u00ea)+ prospectively as well as\nin retrospect, and is not unlikely to attain to clearer levels of truth\n\"over the way, there,\" as, in the Meno, Socrates drew from it an\nencouragement to the search for truth, here.  Retrospectively, at all\nevents, it seemed plain that \"the soul is eternal.  It is right\ntherefore to make an effort to find out things one may not know, that\nis to say, one does not remember, just now.\"  Those notions were in the\nboy, they and the like of them, in all boys and men; and he did not\ncome by them in this life, a young slave in Athens.  Ancient, half-\nobliterated inscriptions on the mental walls, the mental tablet, seeds\nof knowledge to come, shed by some flower of it long ago, it was in an\nearlier period of time they had been laid up in him, to blossom again\nnow, so kindly, so firmly!\n\nUpon a soul thus provided, puzzled as that seed swells within it under\nthe spring-tide influences of this untried atmosphere, it would be the\nproper vocation of the philosophic teacher [67] to supervene with his\nencouraging questions.  And there was another doctrine--a persuasion\nstill more poetical or visionary, it might seem, yet with a strong\npresumption of literal truth about it, when seen in connexion with that\ngreat fact of our consciousness which it so conveniently explains--\n\"reminiscence.\"  Socrates had heard it, he tells us in the Meno, in the\nlocus classicus on this matter, from the venerable lips of certain\nreligious persons, priests and priestesses,\n\n     --who had made it their business to be able to give an account\n     concerning their sacred functions.  Pindar too asserts this,\n     and many other of the poets, so many as were divinely inspired.\n     And what they say is as follows.  But do you observe, whether\n     they seem to you to speak the truth.  For they say that the soul\n     of man is immortal; and that at one time it comes to a pause,\n     which indeed they call dying, and then is born again; but that\n     it is never destroyed.  That on this account indeed it is our\n     duty to pass through life as religiously as possible (because\n     there's 'another world,' namely).  'For those,' says Pindar,\n     'from whom Persephone shall have received a recompense of ancient\n     wrong--she gives back their soul again to the sun above in the\n     ninth year, of whom are begotten kings, illustrious and swift in\n     strength, and men greatest in wisdom; and for remaining time they\n     are called holy heroes among us.'  Inasmuch then as the soul is\n     immortal, and has been born many times, and has seen both things\n     here and things in Hades, and all things, there is nothing that\n     it has not learned; so that it is by no means surprising that\n     it should be able to remember both about virtue and about other\n     matters what it knew at least even aforetime.  For inasmuch as\n     the whole of nature is akin to itself (homogeneous) and the soul\n     has learned all things, nothing hinders one, by remembering one\n     thing only, which indeed people call 'learning' (though it is\n     something else in fact, you see!) from finding out all other\n     things for himself, if he be brave and fail not through weariness\n     in his search.  For in truth to [68] seek and to learn is wholly\n     Recollection.  Therefore one must not be persuaded by that eristic\n     doctrine (namely that if ignorant in ignorance you must remain)\n     for that on the one hand would make us idle and is a pleasant\n     doctrine for the weak among mankind to hear; while this other\n     doctrine makes us industrious and apt to seek.  Trusting in\n     which that it is true, I am willing along with you to seek out\n     virtue:--what it is.  Meno, 81.\n\nThese strange theories then are much with Socrates on his last sad day-\n-sad to his friends--as justifying more or less, on ancient religious\nauthority, the instinctive confidence, checking sadness in himself,\nthat he will survive--survive the effects of the poison, of the funeral\nfire; that somewhere, with some others, with Minos perhaps and other\n\"righteous souls\" of the national religion, he will be holding\ndiscourses, dialogues, quite similar to these, only a little better as\nmust naturally happen with so diligent a scholar, this time to-morrow.\n\nAnd that wild thought of metempsych\u00f4sis was connected with a theory,\nyet more fantastic, of the visible heaven above us.  For Pythagoras,\nthe Pythagoreans, had had their views also, as became the possessors of\n\"a first principle\"--of a philosophy therefore which need leave no\nproblem untouched--on purely material things, above all on the\nstructure of the planets, the mechanical contrivances by which their\nmotion was effected (it came to just that!) on the relation of the\nearth to its atmosphere and the like.  The doctrine of the\ntransmigration, [69] the pilgrimage or mental journeys, of the soul\nlinked itself readily with a fanciful, guess-work astronomy, which\nprovided starry places, wide areas, hostelries, for that wanderer to\nmove or rest in.  A matter of very lively and presentable form and\ncolour, as if making the invisible show through, this too pleased the\nextremely visual fancy of Plato; as we may see, in many places of the\nPhaedo, the Phaedrus, the Timaeus, and most conspicuously in the tenth\nbook of The Republic, where he relates the vision of Er--what he saw of\nthe other world during a kind of temporary death.  Hell, Purgatory,\nParadise, are briefly depicted in it; Paradise especially with a quite\nDantesque sensibility to coloured light--physical light or spiritual,\nyou can hardly tell which, so perfectly is the inward sense blent with\nits visible counter-part, reminding one forcibly of the Divine Comedy,\nof which those closing pages of The Republic suggest an early outline.\n\nThat then is the third element in Plato derivative from his Pythagorean\nmasters: an astronomy of infant minds, we might call it, in which the\ncelestial world is the scene, not as yet of those abstract reasonable\nlaws of number and motion and space, upon which, as Plato himself\nprotests in the seventh book of The Republic, it is the business of a\nveritable science of the stars to exercise our minds, but rather of a\nmachinery, which the mere star-gazer may peep into as best he can, with\nits levers, its spindles and revolving [70] wheels, its spheres, he\nsays,--\"like those boxes which fit into one another,\" and the literal\ndoors \"opened in heaven,\" through which, at the due point of ascension,\nthe revolving pilgrim soul will glide forth and have a chance of gazing\ninto the wide spaces beyond,  \"as he stands outside on the back of the\nsky\"--that hollow partly transparent sphere which surrounds and closes\nin our terrestrial atmosphere.  Most difficult to follow in detailed\ndescription, perhaps not to be taken quite seriously, one thing at\nleast is clear about the planetary movements as Plato and his\nPythagorean teachers conceive them.  They produce, naturally enough,\nsounds, that famous \"music of the spheres,\" which the undisciplined ear\nfails to recognise, to delight in, only because it is never silent.\n\nThat it really is impossible after all to learn, to be taught what you\nare entirely ignorant of, was and still is a fact of experience,\nmanifest especially in regard to music.  Now that \"music of the\nspheres\" in its largest sense, its completest orchestration, the\nharmonious order of the whole universe (kosmos)+ was what souls had\nheard of old; found echoes of here; might recover in its entirety, amid\nthe influences of the melodious colour, sounds, manners, the enforced\nmodulating discipline, which would make the whole life of a citizen of\nthe Perfect City an education in music.  We are now with Plato, you\nsee! in his reproduction, so fully detailed for us in The [71]\nRepublic, of the earlier and vaguer Pythagorean brotherhood.  Musical\nimagery, the notions of proportion and the like, have ever since Plato\nwrote played a large part in the theory of morals; have come to seem\nalmost a natural part of language concerning them.  Only, wherever in\nPlato himself you find such imagery, you may note Pythagorean\ninfluence.\n\nThe student of The Republic hardly needs to be reminded how all-\npervasive in it that imagery is; how emphatic, in all its speculative\ntheory, in all its practical provisions, is the desire for harmony; how\nthe whole business of education (of gymnastic even, the seeming rival\nof music) is brought under it; how large a part of the claims of duty,\nof right conduct, for the perfectly initiated, comes with him to be\nthis, that it sounds so well.  Pl\u00eammeleia,+ discordancy,--all faultiness\nresolves itself into that.  \"Canst play on this flute?\" asks Hamlet:--\non human nature, with all its stops, of whose capricious tuneableness,\nor want of tune, he is himself the representative.  Well! the perfect\nstate, thinks Plato, can.  For him, music is still everywhere in the\nworld, and the whole business of philosophy only as it were the correct\nediting of it: as it will be the whole business of the state to\nrepress, in the great concert, the jarring self-assertion (pleonexia)+\nof those whose voices have large natural power in them.  How, in\ndetail, rhythm, the limit (peras)+ is enforced in Plato's Republic there\nis no time to [72] show.  Call to mind only that the perfect visible\nequivalent of such rhythm is in those portrait-statues of the actual\nyouth of Greece--legacy of Greek sculpture more precious by far than\nits fancied forms of deity--the quoit-player, the diadumenus, the\napoxyomenus; and how the most beautiful type of such youth, by the\nuniversal admission of the Greeks themselves, had issued from the\nsevere schools of Sparta, that highest civic embodiment of the Dorian\ntemper, like some perfect musical instrument, perfectly responsive to\nthe intention, to the lightest touch, of the finger of law.--Yet with a\nfresh setting of the old music in each succeeding generation.  For in\ntruth we come into the world, each one of us, \"not in nakedness,\" but\nby the natural course of organic development clothed far more\ncompletely than even Pythagoras supposed in a vesture of the past, nay,\nfatally shrouded, it might seem, in those laws or tricks of heredity\nwhich we mistake for our volitions; in the language which is more than\none half of our thoughts; in the moral and mental habits, the customs,\nthe literature, the very houses, which we did not make for ourselves;\nin the vesture of a past, which is (so science would assure us) not\nours, but of the race, the species: that Zeit-geist, or abstract\nsecular process, in which, as we could have had no direct consciousness\nof it, so we can pretend to no future personal interest.  It is\nhumanity itself now--abstract humanity--that [73] figures as the\ntransmigrating soul, accumulating into its \"colossal manhood\" the\nexperience of ages; making use of, and casting aside in its march, the\nsouls of countless individuals, as Pythagoras supposed the individual\nsoul to cast aside again and again its outworn body.\n\nSo it may be.  There was nothing of all that, however, in the mind of\nthe great English poet at the beginning of this century whose famous\nOde on The Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Childhood,\nin which he made metempsych\u00f4sis his own, must still express for some\nminds something more than merely poetic truth.  For Pythagoreanism too,\nlike all the graver utterances of primitive Greek philosophy, is an\ninstinct of the human mind itself, and therefore also a constant\ntradition in its history, which will recur; fortifying this or that\nsoul here or there in a part at least of that old sanguine assurance\nabout itself, which possessed Socrates so immovably, his masters, his\ndisciples.  Those who do not already know Wordsworth's Ode ought soon\nto read it for themselves.  Listen instead to the lines which perhaps\nsuggested Wordsworth's: The Retreat, by Henry Vaughan, one of the so-\ncalled Platonist poets of about two centuries ago, who was able to\nblend those Pythagorean doctrines with the Christian belief, amid which\nindeed, from the unsanctioned dreams of Origen onwards, those doctrines\nhave shown themselves not otherwise than at home.\n\n[74] Happy, those days, he declares,\n\n     Before I understood this place,\n     Appointed for my second race;\n     Or taught my soul to fancy ought\n     But a white celestial thought;\n     When yet I had not walked above\n     A mile or two from my first love;\n     But felt through all this fleshly dress\n     Bright shoots of everlastingness.\n     O! how I long to travel back\n     And tread again that ancient track!\n     That I might once more reach that plain,\n     Where first I left my glorious train.--\n     But Ah! my soul with too much stay\n     Is drunk; and staggers in the way.\n     Some men a forward motion love,\n     But I backward steps would move;\n     And when this dust falls to the urn\n     In that state I came return.\n\nSumming up those three philosophies antecedent to Plato, we might say,\nthat if Heraclitus taught the doctrine of progress, and the Eleatics\nthat of rest, so, in such quaint phrase as Vaughan's, Pythagoreanism is\nthe philosophy of re-action.\n\nNOTES\n\n52. +Transliteration: arch\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"I.\nbeginning, first cause, origin.  II. 1. supreme power, sovereignty,\ndominion; 2. office.\"\n\n53. +Transliteration: homoion homoi\u00f4.  Translation: \"like by like.\"\n\n56. +Transliteration: Al\u00eatheian de ametria h\u00eagei syngen\u00ea einai, \u00ea\nemmetria.  E-text editor's translation: \"And do you suppose that truth\nis close kin to measure and proportion, or to disproportion?\"  Plato,\nThe Republic, Book VI, 486d.\n\n56. +Transliteration: Emmetria.  E-text editor's translation: \"To\nmeasure and proportion.\"  Plato, The Republic, Book VI, 486d.\n\n59. *Or to Mr. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy; which I have read since\nthese pages went to press, with much admiration for its learning and\nlucidity, and its unconventionality of view.\n\n59. +Transliteration: to apeiron . . . to peras.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinition: \"I. without trial or experience of a thing . . . II.\nboundless, endless, countless / an end, extremity.\"  As Pater\nindicates, in Plato the terms mean something like \"infinite\" and\n\"finite,\" or \"bounded\" and \"unbounded.\"\n\n60. +Transliteration: systoichiai t\u00f4n enanti\u00f4n.  \"Co-ordinates\nconsisting of opposites.\"\n\n60. +Transliteration: peras.  See above, second note for page 59.\n\n60. +Transliteration: to apeiron.  See above, second note for page 59.\n\n61. +Transliteration: ask\u00easis.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"excercise, training.\"\n\n61. +Transliteration: physei.  Liddell and Scott definition of physis:\n\"the nature, inborn quality, property or constitution of a person or\nthing.\"  Thus, the dative form cited by Pater means, \"with regard to\nnature.\"\n\n61. +Transliteration: theia moira.  Translation: \"one's lot by divine\nappointment.\"\n\n62. +Transliteration: anamn\u00easis.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\ncalling to mind, recollection.\"\n\n64. +Transliteration: h\u00f4s dei.  E-text editor's translation: \"as is\nnecessary.\"\n\n64. +Transliteration: Nyn aut\u00f4 h\u00f4sper onar arti anakekin\u00eatai hai doxai\nautai.  Pater's translation: \"Just now, as in a dream, these opinions\nhave been stirred up within him.\"  Plato, Meno, 85c.\n\n65. +Transliteration: hois episphragizometha touto.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"these things upon which we set this seal.\"  Plato,\nPhaedo, 75d.\n\n65. +Transliteration: Oukoun oudenos didaxantos, all' er\u00f4t\u00easantos,\nepist\u00easetai, analab\u00f4n, autos ex hautou, epist\u00eam\u00ean.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"No-one having taught him a thing, but rather through\nquestioning alone, he will understand for certain, retrieving the\nknowledge out of himself?\"  Plato, Meno, 85d.\n\n65. +Transliteration: epist\u00eam\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition \"1.\nknowledge, understanding, skill, experience, wisdom; 2. scientific\nknowledge.\"\n\n65. +Transliteration: en\u00easan de ge aut\u00f4 autai hai doxai.  E-text\neditor's translation: \"Yet these notions were [already] implanted in\nhim, weren't they?\"  Plato, Meno 85c.  Source, if any.\n\n65. +Transliteration: [enesontai aut\u00f4i al\u00eatheis doxai,] er\u00f4t\u00easei\nepegertheisai, epist\u00eamai gignontai.  E-text editor's translation: \"[He\nholds within himself true opinions,] which a questioning process may\nawaken into certain knowledge.\"  Plato, Meno 86a.\n\n66. +Transliteration: athanatos an h\u00ea psych\u00ea ei\u00ea.  Pater's translation:\n\"The soul, then, would be immortal.\"  Plato, Meno 86b.\n\n70. +Transliteration: kosmos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"I. 1.\norder; 2. good order, good behaviour, decency; 3. a set form or order:\nof states, government; 4. the mode or fashion of a thing; II. an\nornament...; III. the world or universe, from its perfect arrangement.\"\n\n71. +Transliteration: Pl\u00eammeleia.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nfalse note . . . error, offense.\"\n\n71. +Transliteration: pleonexia.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\ndisposition to take more than one's share.\"\n\n71. +Transliteration: peras.  See above, note two, page 59.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 4: PLATO AND SOCRATES\n\n[75] \"PLATO,\" we say habitually when we talk of our teacher in The\nRepublic, the Phaedrus, cutting a knot; for Plato speaks to us\nindirectly only, in his Dialogues, by the voice of the Platonic\nSocrates, a figure most ambiguously compacted of the real Socrates and\nPlato himself; a purely dramatic invention, it might perhaps have been\nfancied, or, so to speak, an idolon theatri--Plato's self, but\npresented, with the reserve appropriate to his fastidious genius, in a\nkind of stage disguise.  So we might fancy but for certain independent\ninformation we possess about Socrates, in Aristotle, and in the\nMemorabilia of Xenophon.\n\nThe Socrates of Xenophon is one of the simplest figures in the world.\nFrom the personal memories of that singularly limpid writer the outline\nof the great teacher detaches itself, as an embodiment of all that was\nclearest in the now adult Greek understanding, the adult Greek\nconscience.  All that Socrates is seen to be in [76] those unaffected\npages may be explained by the single desire to be useful to ordinary\nyoung men, whose business in life would be mainly with practical\nthings; and at first sight, as delineators of their common master,\nPlato and Xenophon might seem scarcely reconcilable.  But then, as\nAlcibiades alleges of him in the Symposium, Socrates had been ever in\nall respects a two-sided being; like some rude figure of Silenus, he\nsuggests, by way of an outer case for the image of a god within.  By a\nmind, of the compass Plato himself supposes, two quite different\nimpressions may well have been made on two typically different\nobservers.  The speaker, to Xenophon so simple, almost homely, earthy,\nvernacular, becomes with Plato the mouth-piece of high and difficult\nand extraordinary thoughts.  In the absence, then, of a single written\nword from Socrates himself, the question is forced upon us: had the\ntrue Socrates been really Socrates according to Xenophon, and all\nbesides only a generous loan from the rich treasury of Plato's quite\noriginal and independent genius: or, had the master been indeed\nsomething larger and more many-sided than Xenophon could have\nthoroughly understood, presenting to his simpler disciple only what was\nof simpler stamp in himself, to the mystic and susceptible Plato all\nthat far-reaching and fervid intellectuality, with which the Platonic\nDialogues credit him.  It is a problem about which probably no reader\nof [77] Plato ever quite satisfies himself:--how much precisely he must\ndeduct from Socrates, as we find him in those Dialogues, by way of\ndefining to himself the Socrates of fact.\n\nIn Plato's own writing about Socrates there is, however, a difference.\nThe Apology, marked as being the single writing from Plato's hand not\nin dialogue form, we may naturally take for a sincere version of the\nactual words of Socrates; closer to them, we may think, than the Greek\nrecord of spoken words however important, the speeches in Thucydides,\nfor instance, by the admission of Thucydides himself, was wont to be.\nAnd this assumption is supported by internal evidence.  In that\nunadorned language, in those harsh grammatic (or rather quite\nungrammatic) constructions we have surely the natural accent of one\nspeaking under strong excitement.  We might think, again, that the\nPhaedo, purporting to record his subsequent discourse, is really no\nmore than such a record, but for a lurking suspicion, which hangs by\nthe fact that Plato, noted as an assistant at the trial, is expressly\nstated by one of the speakers in the Dialogue to have been absent from\nthe dying scene of Socrates.  That speaker however was himself perhaps\nthe veracious reporter of those last words and acts; for there are\ndetails in the Phaedo too pedestrian and common-place to be taken for\nthings of mere literary invention: the rubbing of the legs, for\ninstance, now released from the chain; the rather [78] uneasy\ndetermination to be indifferent; the somewhat harsh committal of the\ncrudely lamenting wife and his child \"to any one who will take the\ntrouble\"--details, as one cannot but observe in passing, which leave\nthose famous hours, even for purely human, or say! pagan dignity and\ntenderness, wholly incomparable to one sacred scene to which they have\nsometimes been compared.\n\nWe shall be justified then, in the effort to give reality or truth to\nour mental picture of Socrates, if we follow the lead of his own\nsupposed retrospect of his career in the Apology, as completed, and\nexplained to wholly sympathetic spirits, by the more intimate\ndiscourses of the Phaedo.\n\nHe pleads to be excused if in making his defence he speaks after his\naccustomed manner: not merely in home-spun phrase, that is to say, very\ndifferent from what is usually heard at least in those sophisticated\nlaw-courts of Athens, nor merely with certain lapsing into his familiar\nhabit of dialogue, but with a tacit assumption, throughout his\narguments, of that logical realism which suggested the first outline of\nPlato's doctrine of the \"ideas.\"  Everywhere, with what is like a\nphysical passion for what is, what is true--as one engaged in a sort of\nreligious or priestly concentration of soul on what God really made and\nmeant us to know--he is driving earnestly, yet with method, at those\nuniversal conceptions or definitions which serve to establish [79]\nfirmly the distinction, attained by so much intellectual labour,\nbetween what is absolute and abiding, of veritable import therefore to\nour reason, to the divine reason really resident in each one of us,\nresident in, yet separable from, these our houses of clay--between\nthat, and what is only phenomenal and transitory, as being essentially\nimplicate with them.  He achieved this end, as we learn from Aristotle,\nthis power, literally, of \"a criticism of life,\" by induction (epag\u00f4g\u00ea)+\nby that careful process of enquiry into the facts of the matter\nconcerned, one by one (facts most often of conscience, of moral action\nas conditioned by motive, and result, and the varying degrees of inward\nlight upon it) for which the fitting method is informal though not\nunmethodical question and answer, face to face with average mankind, as\nin those famous Socratic conversations, which again are the first rough\nnatural growth of Plato's so artistic written Dialogues.  The exclusive\npreoccupation of Socrates with practical matter therein, his anxious\nfixing of the sense of such familiar terms as just and good, for\ninstance, was part of that humble bearing of himself by which he was to\nauthenticate a claim to superior wisdom, forced upon him by nothing\nless than divine authority, while there was something also in it of a\nnatural reaction against the intellectual ambition of his youth.  He\nhad gone to school eagerly, as he tells his friends in the [80] Phaedo,\nin his last discourse, to a physical philosopher, then of great repute,\nbut to his own great disappointment.--\n\n     In my youth he says I had a wonderful desire for the wisdom\n     which people call natural science--peri physe\u00f4s historian.+\n     It seemed to me a proud thing to know the causes of every matter:\n     how it comes to be; ceases to be; why it is.  I lost my sight in\n     this enquiry to the degree of un-learning what I had hitherto\n     seemed to myself and others to know clearly enough.  But having\n     heard one reading from a book written, as he said, by Anaxagoras,\n     which said that it is Reason that arranges and is the cause of\n     all things, I was delighted with this cause; and thought to\n     myself, if this be so, then it does with each what may be best\n     for it.  Thus considering, it was with joy I fancied I had found\n     me a teacher about the cause--Anaxagoras: that he would show me\n     for instance, first, whether the earth was round or flat; and\n     then that it was best for it to be so: and if he made these\n     points clear I was prepared to ask for no other sort of causes.\n     Phaedo, 96.\n\nWell!  Socrates proceeds to the great natural philosopher, and is\nimmensely discouraged to find him after all making very little use of\nReason in his explanation why natural things are thus and not\notherwise; explaining everything, rather, by secondary and mechanical\ncauses.  \"It was as if,\" he concludes, \"some one had undertaken to\nprove that Socrates does everything through Reason; and had gone on to\nshow that it was because my body is constructed in a certain way, of\ncertain bones and muscles, that Socrates is now sitting here in the\nprison, voluntarily awaiting death.\"\n\nThe disappointment of Socrates with the [81] spirit in which Anaxagoras\nactually handled and applied that so welcome sapiential proposition\nthat Reason panta diakosmei, kai pant\u00f4n aitios estin +--arranges and is\nthe cause of all things--is but an example of what often happens when\nmen seek an a posteriori justification of their instinctive\nprepossessions.  Once for all he turns from useless, perhaps impious,\nenquiries, into the material structure of the stars above him, or the\nearth beneath his feet, from all physical enquiry into material things,\nto the direct knowledge of man the cosmical order in man, as it may be\nfound by any one who, in good faith with himself, and with devout\nattention, looks within.  In this precise sense it was that, according\nto the old saying, Socrates brought philosophy down from heaven to\nearth.  Montaigne, the great humanist, expands it.--\"'Twas he who\nbrought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to\nrestore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.\nHe has done human nature a great service,\" he adds, \"in showing it how\nmuch it can do of itself.\"  And a singular incident gave that piercing\nstudy, that relentless exposure, of himself, and of others, for the\nmost part so unwelcome to them, a religious or mystic character.  He\nhas a \"vocation\" thus to proceed, has been literally \"called,\" as he\nunderstands, by the central religious authority of Greece.  His\nseemingly invidious testing of men's pretensions [82] to know, is a\nsacred service to the God of Delphi, which he dares not neglect.  And\nhis fidelity herein had in turn the effect of reinforcing for him, and\nbringing to a focus, all the other rays of religious light cast at\nrandom in the world about him, or in himself.\n\n\"You know Chaerephon,\" he says, \"his eagerness about any matter he\ntakes up.  Well! once upon a time he went to Delphi, and ventured to\nask of the oracle whether any man living was wiser than I; and, amazing\nas it seems, the Pythia answered that there was no one wiser than I.\"\nSocrates must go in order, then, to every class of persons pre-eminent\nfor knowledge; to every one who seems to know more than he.  He found\nthem--the Athenian poets, for instance, the potters who made the vases\nwe admire, undeniably in possession of much delightful knowledge\nunattained by him.  But one and all they were ignorant of the\nlimitations of their knowledge; and at last he concludes that the\noracle had but meant to say: \"He indeed is the wisest of all men who\nlike Socrates is aware that he is really worth little or nothing in\nrespect of knowledge.\"  Such consciousness of ignorance was the proper\nwisdom of man.\n\nThat can scarcely be a fiction.  His wholesome appeal then, everywhere,\nfrom what seems, to what really is, is a service to the Delphic god,\nthe god of sanity.  To prove that the oracle had [83] been right after\nall, improbable as it seemed, in the signal honour it had put upon him,\nwould be henceforward his proper business.  Committing him to a sort of\nironical humility towards others, at times seemingly petty and prosaic,\ncertainly very irritating, in regard to himself, in its source and\nmotive, his business in life as he conceived it was nothing less than a\ndivine possession.  He becomes therefore literally an enthusiast for\nknowledge, for the knowledge of man; such knowledge as by a right\nmethod of questioning, of self-questioning (the master's questioning\nbeing after all only a kind of mid-wife's assistance, according to his\nown homely figure) may be brought to birth in every human soul,\nconcerning itself and its experience; what is real, and stable, in its\napprehensions of Piety, Beauty, Justice, and the like, what is of\ndynamic quality in them, as conveying force into what one does or\ncreates, building character, generating virtue.  Auto kath' hauto\nz\u00eatein ti pot' estin aret\u00ea+--to seek out what virtue is, itself, in and\nby itself--there's the task.  And when we have found that, we shall\nknow already, or easily get to know, everything else about and about\nit: \"how we are to come by virtue,\" for instance.\n\nWell! largely by knowing, says naturally the enthusiast for knowledge.\nThere is no good thing which knowledge does not comprehend--M\u00eaden estin\nagathon ho ouk epist\u00eam\u00ea periechei +--a strenuously [84] ascertained\nknowledge however, painfully adjusted to other forms of knowledge which\nmay seem inconsistent with it, and impenetrably distinct from any kind\nof complaisant or only half-attentive conjecture.  \"One and the same\nspecies in every place: whole and sound: one, in regard to, and\nthrough, and upon, all particular instances of it: catholic\"*: it will\nbe all this--the Virtue, for instance, which we must seek, as a hunter\nhis sustenance, seek and find and never lose again, through a survey of\nall the many variable and merely relative virtues, which are but\nrelative, that is to say, \"to every several act, and to each period of\nlife, in regard to each thing we have to do, in each one of us\"--kath'\nhekast\u00ean t\u00f4n praxe\u00f4n, kai t\u00f4n h\u00ealiki\u00f4n pros hekaston ergon, hekast\u00f4\nh\u00eam\u00f4n --+ \"That, about which I don't know what it is, how should I know\nwhat sort of a thing it is\"--ho m\u00ea oida ti esti, p\u00f4s an hopoion ge ti\neidei\u00ean;+ what its poiot\u00eates,+ its qualities, are?  \"Do you suppose that\none who does not know Meno, for example, at all, who he is, can know\nwhether he is fair and rich and well-born, or the reverse of all that?\"\nYes! already for Socrates, we might say, to know what justice or Piety\nor Beauty really is, will be like the knowledge of a person; only that,\nas Aristotle carefully notes, his scrupulous habit of search for\nuniversal, or catholic, definitions (kath' holou)+ was after all but\n[85] an instrument for the plain knowledge of facts.  Strange! out of\nthe practical cautions of Socrates for the securing of clear and\ncorrect and sufficient conceptions about one's actual experience, for\nthe attainment of a sort of thoroughly educated common-sense, came the\nmystic intellectualism of Plato--Platonism, with all its hazardous\nflights of soul.\n\nA rich contributor to the philosophic consciousness of Plato, Socrates\nwas perhaps of larger influence still on the religious soul in him.  As\nPlato accepted from the masters of Elea the theoretic principles of all\nnatural religion--the principles of a reasonable monotheism, so from\nSocrates he derived its indispensable morality.  It was Socrates who\nfirst of pagans comprised in one clear consciousness the authentic\nrudiments of such natural religion, and gave them clear utterance.\nThrough him, Parmenides had conveyed to Plato the notion of a  \"Perfect\nBeing,\" to brace and satisfy the abstracting intellect; but it was from\nSocrates himself Plato had learned those correspondent practical\npieties, which tranquillise and re-assure the soul, together with the\ngenial hopes which cheer the great teacher on the day of his death.\n\nLoyal to the ancient beliefs, the ancient usages, of the religion of\nmany gods which he had found all around him, Socrates pierces through\nit to one unmistakable person, of perfect intelligence, power and\ngoodness, who takes note [86] of him.  In the course of his seventy\nyears he has adjusted that thought of the invisible to the general\nfacts and to many of the subtler complexities of man's experience in\nthe world of sight.  Sitivit anima mea, the Athenian philosopher might\nsay, in Deum, in Deum vivum, as he was known at Sion.  He has at least\nmeasured devoutly the place, this way and that, which a religion of\ninfallible authority must fill; has already by implication concurred in\nit; and in fact has his reward at this depressing hour, as the action\nof the poison mounts slowly to the centre of his material existence.\nHe is more than ready to depart to what before one has really crossed\ntheir threshold must necessarily seem the cold and empty spaces of the\nworld no bodily eye can ever look on.\n\nBut, he is asked, if the prospect be indeed so cheerful, at all events\nfor the just, why is it forbidden to seize such an advantage as death\nmust be by self-destruction?--Tois anthr\u00f4pois, m\u00ea hosion einai, autous\nheatous eupoiein, all' allon dei menein euerget\u00ean.+  His consistent\npiety straightway suggests the solution of that paradox: we are the\nproperty, slaves, of the gods.  Now no slave has any sort of right to\ndestroy himself; to take a life that does not really belong to him.\nComfort himself and his friends, however, as he may, it does tax all\nhis resources of moral and physical courage to do what is at last\nrequired of him: and it was something quite new, unseen [87] before in\nGreece, inspiring a new note in literature--this attitude of Socrates\nin the condemned cell, where, fulfilling his own prediction,\nmultitudes, of a wisdom and piety, after all, so different from his,\nhave ever since assisted so admiringly, this anticipation of the\nChristian way of dying for an opinion, when, as Plato says simply, he\nconsumed the poison in the prison--to pharmakon epien en t\u00f4 desm\u00f4t\u00eari\u00f4.+\nIt was amid larger consolations, we must admit, that Christian heroes\ndid that kind of thing.  But bravery, you need hardly be reminded, was\never one of the specially characteristic virtues of the pagan world--\nloyalty even unto death.  It had been loyalty however hitherto to one's\ncountry, one's home in the world, one's visible companions; not to a\nwholly invisible claimant, in this way, upon one, upon one's self.\n\nSocrates, with all his singleness of purpose, had been, as Alcibiades\nsuggested, by natural constitution a twofold power, an embodied\nparadox.  The infinitely significant Socrates of Plato, and the quite\nsimple Socrates of Xenophon, may have been indeed the not incompatible\noppositions of a nature, from the influence of which, as a matter of\nfact, there emerged on one hand the Cynic, on the other the Cyrenaic\nSchool, embodying respectively those opposed austerities and amenities\nof character, which, according to the temper of this or that disciple,\nhad seemed to predominate in their common master.  And so the courage\nwhich declined to act as almost [88] any one else would have acted in\nthat matter of the legal appeal which might have mitigated the penalty\nof death, bringing to its appropriate end a life whose main power had\nbeen an unrivalled independence, was contrasted in Socrates,\nparadoxically, with a genuine diffidence about his own convictions\nwhich explains some peculiarities in his manner of teaching.  The\nirony, the humour, for which he was famous--the unfailing humour which\nsome have found in his very last words--were not merely spontaneous\npersonal traits, or tricks of manner; but an essential part of the\ndialectical apparatus, as affording a means of escape from\nresponsibility, convenient for one who has scruples about the fitness\nof his own thoughts for the reception of another, doubts as to the\npower of words to convey thoughts, such as he thinks cannot after all\nbe properly conveyed to another, but only awakened, or brought to birth\nin him, out of himself,--who can tell with what distortions in that\nsecret place?  For we judge truth not by the intellect exclusively, and\non reasons that can be adequately embodied in propositions; but with\nthe whole complex man.  Observant therefore of the capricious results\nof mere teaching, to the last he protests, dissemblingly, and with that\nirony which is really one phase of the Socratic humour, that in his\npeculiar function there have been in very deed neither teacher nor\nlearners.\n\n[89] The voice, the sign from heaven, that \"new deity\" he was accused\nof fabricating (his singularly profound sense of a mental phenomenon\nwhich is probably not uncommon) held perhaps of the same characteristic\nhabit of mind.  It was neither the playful pretence which some have\nsupposed; nor yet an insoluble mystery; but only what happens naturally\nto a really diffident spirit in great and still more in small matters\nwhich at this or that taxing moment seem to usurp the determination of\ngreat issues.  Such a spirit may find itself beset by an inexplicable\nreluctance to do what would be most natural in the given circumstances.\nAnd for a religious nature, apt to trace the divine assistance\neverywhere, it was as if, in those perilous moments--well! as if one's\nguardian angel held one back.  A quite natural experience took the\nsupernatural hue of religion; which, however, as being concerned now\nand then with some circumstance in itself trifling, might seem to lapse\nat times into superstition.\n\nAnd as he was thus essentially twofold in character, so Socrates had to\ncontend against two classes of enemies.  \"An offence\" to the whole\ntribe of Sophists, he was hated also by those who hated them, by the\ngood old men of Athens, whose conservatism finds its representative in\nAristophanes, and who saw in the Socratic challenge of first\nprinciples, in that ceaseless testing of the origin and claims of what\nall [90] honest people might seem to take for granted, only a further\ndevelopment of the pernicious function of the Sophists themselves, by\nthe most subtly influential of them all.  If in the Apology he proves\nthat the fathers of sons had no proper locus standi against him, still,\nin the actual conduct of his defence, as often in Plato's Dialogues,\nthere is (the candid reader cannot but admit it) something of\nsophistry, of the casuist.  Claiming to be but a simple argument, the\nApology of Socrates moves sometimes circuitously, after the manner of\none who really has to make the worse appear the better reason (ton\nh\u00eatt\u00f4 logon kreitt\u00f4 poiein)+ and must needs use a certain kind of\nartificial, or ingenious, or ad captandum arguments, such as would best\nhave been learned in the sophistic school.  Those young Athenians whom\nhe was thought to have corrupted of set purpose, he had not only\nadmired but really loved and understood; and as a consequence had\nlonged to do them real good, chiefly by giving them that interest in\nthemselves which is the first condition of any real power over others.\nTo make Meno, Polus, Charmides, really interested in himself, to help\nhim to the discovery of that wonderful new world here at home--in this\neffort, even more than in making them interested in other people and\nthings, lay and still lies (it is no sophistical paradox!) the central\nbusiness of education.  Only, the very thoroughness of the sort of\nself-knowledge he [91] promoted had in it something sacramental, so to\nspeak; if it did not do them good, must do them considerable harm;\ncould not leave them just as they were.  He had not been able in all\ncases to expand  \"the better self,\" as people say, in those he\ninfluenced.  Some of them had really become very insolent questioners\nof others, as also of a wholly legitimate authority within themselves;\nand had but passed from bad to worse.  That fatal necessity had been\ninvolved of coming to years of discretion.  His claim to have been no\nteacher at all, to be irresponsible in regard to those who had in truth\nbeen his very willing disciples, was but humorous or ironical; and as a\nconsequence there was after all a sort of historic justice in his\ndeath.\n\n     The fate of Socrates (says Hegel, in his peculiar manner) is\n     tragic in the essential sense, and not merely in that super-\n     ficial sense of the word according to which every misfortune\n     is called 'tragic.'  In the latter sense, one might say of\n     Socrates that because he was condemned to death unjustly his\n     fate was tragic.  But in truth innocent suffering of that sort\n     is merely pathetic, not tragic; inasmuch as it is not within\n     the sphere of reason.  Now suffering--misfortune--comes within\n     the sphere of reason, only if it is brought about by the free-\n     will of the subject, who must be entirely moral and justifiable;\n     as must be also the power against which that subject proceeds.\n     This power must be no merely natural one, nor the mere will of\n     a tyrant; because it is only in such case that the man is himself,\n     so to speak, guilty of his misfortune.  In genuine tragedy, then,\n     they must be powers both alike moral and justifiable, which, from\n     this side and from that, come into collision; and such was the\n     fate of Socrates.  His fate therefore is not merely personal, and\n     as it were part of the romance of an individual: [92] it is the\n     general fate, in all its tragedy--the tragedy of Athens, of\n     Greece, which is therein carried out.  Two opposed Rights come\n     forth: the one breaks itself to pieces against the other: in this\n     way, both alike suffer loss; while both alike are justified the\n     one towards the other: not as if this were right; that other\n     wrong.  On the one side is the religious claim, the unconscious\n     moral habit: the other principle, over against it, is the equally\n     religious claim--the claim of the consciousness, of the reason,\n     creating a world out of itself, the claim to eat of the tree of\n     the knowledge of good and evil.  The latter remains the common\n     principle of philosophy for all time to come.  And these are the\n     two principles which come forth over against each other, in the\n     life and in the philosophy of Socrates.  Geschichte der\n     Philosophie, vol. ii. p. 102.\n\n\"I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander,\" says\nMontaigne, again, \"but Alexander in the place of Socrates I cannot\";\nand we may take that as typical of the immense credit of Socrates, even\nwith a vast number of people who have not really known much about him.\n\"For the sake of no long period of years,\" says Socrates himself, now\ncondemned to death--the few years for which a man of seventy is likely\nto remain here--\n\n     You will have a name, Men of Athens! and liability to reproach\n     from those who desire to malign the city of Athens--that ye put\n     Socrates to death, a wise man.  For in very truth they will\n     declare me to have been wise--those who wish to discredit you--\n     even though I be not.  Now had you waited a little while this\n     thing would have happened for you in the course of nature.  For\n     ye see my estate: that it is now far onward on the road of life,\n     hard by death.  Apology, 38.\n\nPlato, though present at the trial, was absent when Socrates \"consumed\nthe poison in the [93] prison.\"  Prevented by sickness, as Cebes tells\nus in the Phaedo, Plato would however almost certainly have heard from\nhim, or from some other of that band of disciples who assisted at the\nlast utterances of their master, the sincerest possible account of all\nthat was then said and done.  Socrates had used the brief space which\nelapsed before the officers removed him to the place, \"whither he must\ngo, to die\" (hoi elthonta me dei tethnanai)+ to discourse with those who\nstill lingered in the court precisely on what are called \"The four last\nthings.\"  Arrived at the prison a further delay awaited him, in\nconsequence (it was so characteristic of the Athenian people!) of a\nreligious scruple.  The ship of sacred annual embassy to Apollo at\nDelos was not yet returned to Athens; and the consequent interval of\ntime might not be profaned by the death of a criminal.  Socrates\nhimself certainly occupies it religiously enough by a continuation of\nhis accustomed discourses, touched now with the deepening solemnity of\nthe moment.\n\nThe Phaedo of Plato has impressed most readers as a veritable record of\nthose last discourses of Socrates; while in the details of what then\nhappened, the somewhat prosaic account there given of the way in which\nthe work of death was done, we find what there would have been no\nliterary satisfaction in inventing; his indifferent treatment, for\ninstance, of the wife, who had not been very dutiful but was now in\nviolent [94] distress--treatment in marked contrast, it must be\nobserved again, with the dignified tenderness of a later scene, as\nrecorded in the Gospels.\n\nAn inventor, with mere literary effect in view, at this and other\npoints would have invented differently.  \"The prison,\" says Cebes, the\nchief disciple in the Phaedo, \"was not far from the court-house; and\nthere we were used to wait every day till we might be admitted to our\nmaster.  One morning we were assembled earlier than usual; for on the\nevening before we heard that the ship was returned from Delos.  The\nporter coming out bade us tarry till he should call us.  For, he said,\nthe Eleven are now freeing Socrates from his bonds, announcing to him\nthat he must die to-day.\"\n\nThey were very young men, we are told, who were with Socrates, and how\nsweetly, kindly, approvingly, he listened to their so youthfully\nsanguine discussion on the immortality of the soul.  For their sakes\nrather than his own he is ready to treat further, by way of a\nposteriori arguments, a belief which in himself is matter of invincible\nnatural prepossession.  In the court he had pleaded at the most for\nsuspended judgment on that question:--\"If I claimed on any point to be\nwiser than any one else it would be in this, that having no adequate\nknowledge  of things in Hades so I do not fancy I know.\"  But, in the\nprivacy of these last hours, he is confident in his utterance on the\n[95] subject which is so much in the minds of the youths around him;\nhis arguments like theirs being in fact very much of the nature of the\nthings poets write (poi\u00eamata)+ or almost like those medicinable fictions\n(pseud\u00ea en pharmakou eidei)+ such as are of legitimate use by the\nexpert.  That the soul (beautiful Pythagorean thought!) is a harmony;\nthat there are reasons why this particular harmony should not cease,\nlike that of the lyre or the harp, with the destruction of the\ninstrument which produced it; why this sort of flame should not go out\nwith the upsetting of the lamp:--such are the arguments, sometimes\nlittle better than verbal ones, which pass this way and that around the\ndeath-bed of Socrates, as they still occur to men's minds.  For\nhimself, whichever way they tend, they come and go harmlessly, about an\nimmovable personal conviction, which, as he says, \"came to me apart\nfrom demonstration, with a sort of natural likelihood and fitness\":\n(Moi gegonen aneu apodeixe\u00f4s, meta eikotos tinos, kai euprepeias).+  The\nformula of probability could not have been more aptly put.  It is one\nof those convictions which await, it may be, stronger, better,\narguments than are forthcoming; but will wait for them with unfailing\npatience.--\"The soul therefore Cebes,\" since such provisional arguments\nmust be allowed to pass, \"is something sturdy and strong (ischuron ti\nestin)+ imperishable by accident or wear; and we shall really exist in\nHades.\"  Indulging a little [96] further the \"poetry turned logic\" of\nthose youthful assistants, Socrates too, even Socrates, who had always\nturned away so persistently from what he thought the vanity of the eye,\njust before the bodily eye finally closes, and his last moment being\nnow at hand, ascends to, or declines upon, the fancy of a quite visible\nparadise awaiting him.--\n\n     It is said that the world, if one gaze down on it from above,\n     is to look on like those leathern balls of twelve pieces,\n     variegated in divers colours, of which the colours here--those\n     our painters use--are as it were samples.  There, the whole\n     world is formed of such, and far brighter and purer than they;\n     part sea-purple of a wonderful beauty; a part like gold; a part\n     whiter than alabaster or snow; aye, composed thus of other\n     colours also of like quality, of greater loveliness than ours--\n     colours we have never seen.  For even those hollows in it, being\n     filled with air and water, present a certain species of colour\n     gleaming amid the diversity of the others; so that it presents\n     one continuous aspect of varied hues.  Thus it is: and conform-\n     ably tree and flower and fruit are put forth and grow.  The\n     mountains again and the rocks, after the same manner, have a\n     smoothness and transparency and colours lovelier than here.  The\n     tiny precious stones we prize so greatly are but morsels of\n     them--sards and jasper and emerald and the rest.  No baser kind\n     of thing is to be found in that world, but finer rather.  The\n     cause of which is that the rocks there are pure, not gnawed away\n     and corrupted like ours by rot and brine, through the moistures\n     which drain together here, bringing disease and deformity to\n     rocks and earth as well as to living things.  There are many\n     living creatures in the land besides men and women, some abiding\n     inland, and some on the coasts of the air, as we by the sea,\n     others in the islands amidst its waves; for, in a word, what the\n     water of the sea is to us for our uses, that the air is to them.\n     The blending of the seasons there is such that they have no\n     sickness and come to years more numerous far than ours: while\n     [97] for sight and scent and hearing and the like they stand as\n     far from us, as air from water, in respect of purity, and the\n     aether from air.  There are thrones moreover and temples of the\n     gods among them, wherein in very deed the gods abide; voices\n     and oracles and sensible apprehensions of them; and occasions\n     of intercourse with their very selves.  The sun, the moon and\n     the stars they see as they really are; and are blessed in all\n     other matters agreeably thereto.  Phaedo, 110.\n\nThe great assertor of the abstract, the impalpable, the unseen, at any\ncost, shows there a mastery of visual expression equal to that of his\ngreatest disciple.--Ah, good master! was the eye so contemptible an\norgan of knowledge after all?\n\nPlato was then about twenty-eight years old; a rich young man, rich\nalso in intellectual gifts; and what he saw and heard from and about\nSocrates afforded the correction his opulent genius needed, and made\nhim the most serious of writers.  In many things he was as unlike as\npossible to the teacher--rude and rough as some failure of his own old\nsculptor's workshop--who might seem in his own person to have broken up\nthe harmonious grace of the Greek type, and carried people one step\ninto a world already in reaction against the easy Attic temper, a world\nin which it might be necessary to go far below the surface for the\nbeauty of which those homely lips had discoursed so much.  Perhaps he\nacted all the more surely as a corrective force on Plato, henceforward\nan opponent of the [98] obviously successful mental habits of the day,\nwith an unworldliness which, a personal trait in Plato himself there\nacquired, will ever be of the very essence of Platonism.--\"Many are\ncalled, but few chosen\": Narth\u00eakophoroi men polloi, bakchoi de te\npauroi.+  He will have, as readers of The Republic know, a hundred\nprecepts of self-repression for others--the self-repression of every\nreally tuneable member of a chorus; and he begins by almost effacing\nhimself.  All that is best and largest in his own matured genius he\nidentifies with his master; and when we speak of Plato generally what\nwe are really thinking of is the Platonic Socrates.\n\nNOTES\n\n79. +Transliteration: epag\u00f4g\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nbringing on, to, or in . . . argument from induction.\"\n\n80. +Transliteration: peri physe\u00f4s historian.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"inquiry into nature.\"  Plato, Phaedo 96a.\n\n81. +Transliteration: panta diakosmei, kai pant\u00f4n aitios estin.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"arranges and is the cause of all things.\"  Plato, Phaedo\n97c, offers a close paraphrase of Anaxagoras' saying.\n\n83. +Transliteration: Auto kath' hauto z\u00eatein ti pot' estin aret\u00ea.\nPater's translation: \"to seek out what virtue is, itself, in and by\nitself.\"  Plato, Meno 100b.\n\n83. +Transliteration: M\u00eaden estin agathon ho ouk epist\u00eam\u00ea periechei.\nPater's translation: \"There is no good thing which knowledge does not\ncomprehend.\"  Plato, Meno 87d.\n\n84. *Tauton pantachou eidos--holon kai hygies--hen kata pant\u00f4n, dia\npant\u00f4n, epi pasi-kath' holou. Pater's translation: \"One and the same\nspecies in every place: whole and sound: one, in regard to, and\nthrough, and upon, all particular instances of it: catholic.\"  Perhaps\nPater is combining phrases here; only the first phrase was locatable.\nPlato, Meno 72d.\n\n84. +Transliteration: kath' hekast\u00ean t\u00f4n praxe\u00f4n, kai t\u00f4n h\u00ealiki\u00f4n pros\nhekaston ergon, hekast\u00f4 h\u00eam\u00f4n.  Pater's translation: \"to every several\nact, and to each period of life, in regard to each thing we have to do,\nin each one of us.\"  Plato, Meno 72a.\n\n84. +Transliteration: ho m\u00ea oida ti esti, p\u00f4s an hopoion ge ti eidei\u00ean.\nPater's translation: \"That, about which I don't know what it is, how\nshould I know what sort of a thing it is.\"  Plato, Meno 71b.\n\n84. +Transliteration: poiot\u00eates.  Pater's translation: \"qualities.\"\n\n84. +Transliteration: kath' holou.  Pater's translation: \"universal, or\ncatholic, definitions;\" the phrase might be translated, \"in accordance\nwith the whole.\"\n\n86. +Transliteration: Tois anthr\u00f4pois, m\u00ea hosion einai, autous heatous\neupoiein, all' allon dei menein euerget\u00ean.  Pater's translation: \"why\nis it forbidden to seize such an advantage as death must be by self-\ndestruction.\"  Plato, Phaedo 62a.\n\n87. +Transliteration: to pharmakon epien en t\u00f4 desm\u00f4t\u00eari\u00f4.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"he consumed the poison in the prison.\"  Plato, Phaedo\n57a.\n\n90. +Transliteration: ton h\u00eatt\u00f4 logon kreitt\u00f4 poiein.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"to make the worse appear the better reason.\"  Plato,\nApology 23d.\n\n93. +Transliteration: hoi elthonta me dei tethnanai.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"whither he must go, to die.\"  The pronoun should be first\nperson--\"whither I must go.\"  Plato, Apology 39e.\n\n95. +Transliteration: poi\u00eamata.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"anything\nmade or done . . . a poetical work.\"\n\n95. +Transliteration: pseud\u00ea en pharmakou eidei.  Pater's translation:\n\"medicinable fictions.\"  Plato, Republic 389b contains a similar\nphrase.\n\n95. +Transliteration: Moi gegonen aneu apodeixe\u00f4s, meta eikotos tinos,\nkai euprepeias.  Pater's translation: \"came to me apart from\ndemonstration, with a sort of natural likelihood and fitness.\"  Plato,\nPhaedo 92c.\n\n95. +Transliteration: ischuron ti estin.  Pater's translation: \"is\nsomething sturdy and strong.\"  Plato, Phaedo 95c.\n\n98. +Transliteration: Narth\u00eakophoroi men polloi, bakchoi de te pauroi.\nPater's translation: \"Many are called, but few chosen.\"  Plato, Phaedo,\n69c.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 5: PLATO AND THE SOPHISTS\n\n[99] \"SOPHIST,\" professional enemy of Socrates:--it became, chiefly\nthrough the influence of Plato, inheriting, expanding, the preferences\nand antipathies of his master, a bad name.  Yet it had but indicated,\nby a quite natural verbal formation, the class of persons through whom,\nin the most effectual manner, supply met demand, the demand for\neducation, asserted by that marvellously ready Greek people, when the\nyouthful mind in them became suddenly aware of the coming of virile\ncapacity, and they desired to be made by rules of art better speakers,\nbetter writers and accountants, than any merely natural, unassisted\ngifts, however fortunate, could make them.  While the peculiar\nreligiousness of Socrates had induced in him the conviction that he was\nsomething less than a wise man, a philosopher only, a mere seeker after\nsuch wisdom as he might after all never attain, here were the\nsophistai,+ the experts--wise men, who proposed to make other people as\nwise as themselves, wise in that sort of wisdom [100] regarding which\nwe can really test others, and let them test us, not with the merely\napproximate results of the Socratic method, but with the exactness we\nmay apply to processes understood to be mechanical, or to the\nproficiency of quite young students (such as in fact the Sophists were\ndealing with) by those examinations which are so sufficient in their\nproper place.  It had been as delightful as learning a new game, that\ninstruction, in which you could measure your daily progress by\nbrilliant feats of skill.  Not only did the parents of those young\nstudents pay readily large sums for their instruction in what it was\nfound so useful to know, above all in the art of public speaking, of\nself-defence, that is to say, in democratic Athens where one's personal\nstatus was become so insecure; but the young students themselves felt\ngrateful for their institution in what told so immediately on their\nfellows; for help in the comprehension of the difficult sentences of\nanother, or the improvement of one's own; for the accomplishments which\nenabled them in that busy competitive world to push their fortunes each\none for himself a little further, and quite innocently.  Of course they\nlistened.\n\n\"Love not the world!\"--that, on the other hand, was what Socrates had\nsaid, or seemed to say; though in truth he too meant only to teach them\nhow by a more circuitous but surer way to [101] possess themselves of\nit.  And youth, naturally curious and for the most part generous,\nwilling to undergo much for the mere promise of some good thing it can\nscarcely even imagine, had been ready to listen to him too; the sons of\nrich men most often, by no means to the dissatisfaction of Socrates\nhimself, though he never touched their money; young men who had amplest\nleisure for the task of perfecting their souls, in a condition of\nreligious luxury, as we should perhaps say.  As was evident in the\ncourt-house at the trial of the great teacher, to the eyes of older\ncitizens who had not come under his personal influence, there had been\nlittle to distinguish between Socrates and his professional rivals.\nSocrates in truth was a Sophist; but more than a Sophist.  Both alike\nhandled freely matters that to the fathers had seemed beyond question;\nencouraged what seemed impious questioning in the sons; had set \"the\nhearts of the sons against the fathers\"; and some instances there were\nin which the teaching of Socrates had been more conspicuously ruinous\nthan theirs.  \"If you ask people at Athens,\" says Socrates in the Meno,\n\"how virtue is to be attained, they will laugh in your face and say\nthey don't so much as know what virtue is.\"  And who was responsible\nfor that?  Certainly that Dialogue, proposing to discover the essential\nnature of virtue, by no means re-establishes one's old prepossessions\nabout it in the vein of [102] Simonides, or Pindar, or one's elders.\nSophist, and philosopher; Protagoras, and Socrates; so far, their\neffect was the same:--to the horror of fathers, to put the minds of the\nsons in motion regarding matters it were surely best to take as settled\nonce and for ever.  What then after all was the insuperable difference\nbetween Socrates and those rival teachers, with whom he had\nnevertheless so much in common, bent like him so effectively, so\nzealously, on that new study of man, of human nature and the moral\nworld, to the exclusion of all useless \"meteoric or subterranean\nenquiries\" into things.  As attractive as himself to ingenuous youth,\nuncorrupt surely in its early intentions, why did the Sophists seem to\nSocrates to be so manifestly an instrument of its corruption?\n\n\"The citizen of Athens,\" observed that great Athenian statesman of the\npreceding age, in whom, as a German philosopher might say, the mobile\nsoul of Athens became conscious,--\"The citizen of Athens seems to me to\npresent himself in his single person to the greatest possible variety\n(pleista eid\u00ea)+ of thought and action, with the utmost degree of\nversatility.\"  As we saw, the example of that mobility, that daring\nmobility, of character has seemed to many the special contribution of\nthe Greek people to advancing humanity.  It was not however of the\nGreek people in general that Pericles was speaking at the beginning of\nthe Peloponnesian [103] war, but of Athens in particular; of Athens,\nthat perfect flower of Ionian genius, in direct contrast to, and now in\nbitter rivalry with, Sparta, the perfect flower of the Dorian genius.\nAll through Greek history, as we also saw, in connexion with Plato's\nopposition to the philosophy of motion, there may be traced, in every\nsphere of the activity of the Greek mind, the influence of those two\nopposing tendencies:--the centrifugal and the centripetal tendencies,\nas we may perhaps not too fancifully call them.\n\nThere is the centrifugal, the irresponsible, the Ionian or Asiatic,\ntendency; flying from the centre, working with little forethought\nstraight before it in the development of every thought and fancy;\nthrowing itself forth in endless play of undirected imagination;\ndelighting in colour and brightness, moral or physical; in beautiful\nmaterial, in changeful form everywhere, in poetry, in music, in\narchitecture and its subordinate crafts, in philosophy itself.  In the\nsocial and political order it rejoices in the freest action of local\nand personal influences: its restless versatility drives it towards the\nassertion of the principles of individualism, of separatism--the\nseparation of state from state, the maintenance of local religions, the\ndevelopment of the individual in that which is most peculiar and\nindividual in him.  Shut off land-wards from the primitive sources of\nthose many elements it was to compose anew, shut off from all the rest\nof the world, to [104] which it presented but one narrow entrance\npierced through that rock of Tempe, so narrow that \"in the opinion of\nthe ancients it might be defended by a dozen men against all comers,\"\nit did recompose or fuse those many diverse elements into one\nabsolutely original type.  But what variety within!  Its very claim was\nin its grace of movement, its freedom and easy happiness, its lively\ninterests, the variety of its gifts to civilisation; but its weakness\nis self-evident, and was what had made the political unity of Greece\nimpossible.  The Greek spirit!--it might have become a hydra, to use\nPlato's own figure, a monster; the hand developing hideously into a\nhundred hands, or heads.\n\nThis inorganic, this centrifugal, tendency, Plato was desirous to cure\nby maintaining over against it the Dorian influence of a severe\nsimplification everywhere, in society, in culture, in the very physical\nnature of man.  An enemy everywhere, though through acquired principle\nindeed rather than by instinct, to variegation, to what is cunning, or\n\"myriad-minded\" (as we say of Shakespeare, as Plato thinks of Homer) he\nsets himself in mythology, in literature, in every kind of art, in the\nart of life, as if with conscious metaphysical opposition to the\nmetaphysic of Heraclitus, to enforce the ideal of a sort of Parmenidean\nabstractness, and monotony or calm.\n\nThis, perhaps exaggerated, ideal of Plato is [105] however only the\nexaggeration of that salutary, strictly European tendency, which,\nfinding human mind, the human reason cool and sane, to be the most\nabsolutely real and precious thing in the world, enforces everywhere\nthe impress of its reasonable sanity; its candid reflexions upon things\nas they really are; its sense of logical proportion.  It is that\ncentripetal tendency, again, which links the individual units together,\nstates to states, one period of organic growth to another, under the\nreign of a strictly composed, self-conscious order, in the universal\nlight of the understanding.\n\nWhether or not this temper, so clearly traceable as a distinct rival\ninfluence in the course of Greek development, was indeed the peculiar\ngift of the Dorian race, certainly that race, as made known to us\nespecially in Lacedaemon, is the best illustration of it, in its love\nof order, of that severe composition everywhere, of which the Dorian\nstyle of architecture is as it were a material symbol, in its constant\naspiration after what is dignified and earnest, as exemplified most\nevidently in the religion of its preference, the religion of Apollo.\n\nNow the key to Plato's view of the Sophists, Gorgias, Protagoras,\nHippias, Prodicus, with their less brilliant followers--chosen\neducators of the public--is that they do but fan and add fuel to the\nfire in which Greece, as they wander [106] like ardent missionaries\nabout it, is flaming itself away.  Teaching in their large,\nfashionable, expensive schools, so triumphantly well, the arts one\nneeded most in so busy an age, they were really developing further and\nreinforcing the ruinous fluidity of the Greek, and especially of the\nAthenian people, by turning it very adroitly into a conscious method, a\npractical philosophy, an art of life itself, in which all those\nspecific arts would be but subsidiary--an all-supplementing ars artium,\na master-art, or, in depreciatory Platonic mood one might say, an\nartifice, or, cynically, a trick.  The great sophist was indeed the\nAthenian public itself, Athens, as the willing victim of its own gifts,\nits own flamboyancy, well-nigh worn out now by the mutual friction of\nits own parts, given over completely to hazardous political experiment\nwith the irresponsibility which is ever the great vice of democracy,\never ready to float away anywhither, to misunderstand, or forget, or\ndiscredit, its own past.--\n\n     Or do you too hold like the many (asks Socrates in the sixth\n     book of The Republic) that a certain number are corrupted\n     by sophists in their youth; and that certain sophists,\n     irresponsible persons, corrupt them to any extent worth noting;\n     and not rather that those who say these things are the greatest\n     sophists; that they train to perfection, and turn out both old\n     and young, men and women, just as they choose them to be?--When,\n     pray?  He asked.--When seated together in their thousands at the\n     great assemblies, or in the law-courts, or the theatres, or the\n     camp, or any other common gathering of the public, with much\n     noise the majority praise this and blame [107] that in what is\n     said and done, both alike in excess, shouting and clapping; and\n     the very rocks too and the place in which they are, echoing\n     around, send back redoubled that clamour of praise and blame.\n     In such case, what heart as they say, what heart, think you,\n     can the young man keep? or what private education he may have\n     had hold out for him that it be not over-flooded by praise or\n     blame like that, and depart away, borne down the stream,\n     whithersoever that may carry it, and that he pronounce not\n     the same thing as they fair or foul; and follow the same ways\n     as they; and become like them?  Republic, 492.+\n\nThe veritable sophist then, the dynamic sophist, was the Athenian\npublic of the day; those ostensible or professional Sophists being not\nso much its intellectual directors as the pupils or followers of it.\nThey did but make it, as the French say, abound the more in its own\nsense, like the keeper (it is Plato's own image) of some wild beast,\nwhich he knows how to command by a well-considered obedience to all its\nvarying humours.  If the Sophists are partly the cause they are still\nmore the effect of the social environment.  They had discovered, had\nascertained with much acuteness, the actual momentum of the society\nwhich maintained them, and they meant only, by regulating, to maintain\nit.  Protagoras, the chief of Sophists, had avowedly applied to ethics\nthe physics or metaphysics of Heraclitus.  And now it was as if the\ndisintegrating Heraclitean fire had taken hold on actual life, on men's\nvery thoughts, on the emotions and the will.\n\nThat so faulty natural tendency, as Plato holds [108] it to be, in the\nworld around them, they formulate carefully as its proper conscious\ntheory: a theory how things must, nay, ought, to be.  \"Just that,\" they\nseem to say--\"Just that versatility, that mutable spirit, shall become\nby adoption the child of knowledge, shall be carefully nurtured,\nbrought to great fortune.  We'll make you, and your thoughts, as fluid,\nas shifty, as things themselves: will bring you, like some perfectly\naccomplished implement, to this carri\u00e8re ouverte, this open quarry, for\nthe furtherance of your personal interests in the world.\"  And if old-\nfashioned principle or prejudice be found in the way, who better than\nthey could instruct one, not how to minimise, or violate it--that was\nnot needed, nor perhaps desirable, regarding what was so useful for the\ncontrol of others--not that; but, to apply the intellectual solvent to\nit, in regard to one's self?  \"It will break up,--this or that ethical\ndeposit in your mind, Ah! very neatly, very prettily, and disappear,\nwhen exposed to the action of our perfected method.  Of credit with the\nvulgar as such, in the solitary chamber of the aristocratic mind such\npresuppositions, prejudices or principles, may be made very soon to\nknow their place.\"\n\nYes! says Plato (for a moment we may anticipate what is at least the\nspirit of his answer) but there are some presuppositions after all,\nwhich it will make us very vulgar to have dismissed from us.  \"There\nare moreover,\" [109] those others proceed to say, \"teachers of\npersuasion (peithous didaskaloi)+ who impart skill in popular and\nforensic oratory; and so by fair means or by unfair we shall gain our\nends.\"  It is with the d\u00eamos,+ with the vulgar, insubordinate, tag-rag\nof one's own nature--how to rule that, by obeying it--that these\nprofessors of rhetoric begin.  They are still notwithstanding the only\nteachers of morals ingenuous Greece is aware of; and wisdom, as seems\nlikely, \"must die with them!\"--\n\n     Some very small number then (says the Platonic Socrates) is\n     left, of those who in worthy fashion hold converse with\n     philosophy: either, it may be, some soul of in-born worth and\n     well brought up, to which it has happened to be exiled in a\n     foreign land, holding to philosophy by a tie of nature, and\n     through lack of those who will corrupt it; or when it may\n     chance that a great soul comes to birth in an insignificant\n     state, to the politics of which it gives no heed, because it\n     thinks them despicable: perhaps a certain fraction also, of\n     good parts, may come to philosophy from some other craft,\n     through a just contempt of that.  The bridle too of our\n     companion Theages has a restraining power.  For in the case\n     of Theages also, all the other conditions were in readiness\n     to his falling away from philosophy; but the nursing of his\n     sickly body, excluding him from politics, keeps him back.  Our\n     own peculiarity is not worth speaking of--the sign from heaven!\n     for I suppose it has occurred to scarce anyone before.  And so,\n     those who have been of this number, and have tasted how sweet\n     and blessed the possession is; and again, having a full view\n     of the folly of the many, and that no one, I might say, effects\n     any sound result in what concerns the state, or is an ally in\n     whose company one might proceed safe and sound to the help of\n     the just, but that, like a man falling among wild beasts,\n     neither willing to share their evil deeds, nor sufficient by\n     himself to resist the whole fierce band, flung away before he\n     shall have done any service [110] to the city or to his own\n     friends, he would become useless both to himself and to others:\n     taking all this into consideration, keeping silence and doing\n     his own business, as one standing aside under a hedge in some\n     storm of dust and spray beneath a driven wind, seeing those\n     about him replete with lawlessness, he is content if by any\n     means, pure from injustice and unholy deeds, himself shall\n     live through his life here, and in turn make his escape with\n     good hope, in cheerful and kindly mood.  (What long sentences\n     Plato writes!)  Yet in truth, he said, he would make his escape\n     after not the least of achievements.--Nor yet the greatest, I\n     observed, because he did not light upon the polity fitted for\n     him: for, in that fitting polity, himself will grow to\n     completer stature, and, together with what belongs to him, he\n     will be the saviour also of the commonwealth.  Republic, 496.+\n\nOver against the Sophists, and the age which has sophisticated them, of\nwhich they are the natural product, Plato, being himself of a genius\nnaturally rich, florid, complex, excitable, but adding to the utmost\ndegree of Ionian sensibility an effectual desire towards the Dorian\norder and ask\u00easis, asserts everywhere the principle of outline, in\npolitical and moral life; in the education which is to fit men for it;\nin the music which is one half of that education, in the philosophy\nwhich is its other half--the \"philosophy of the ideas,\" of those\neternally fixed outlines of our thought, which correspond to, nay, are\nactually identical with, the eternally fixed outlines of things\nthemselves.  What the difference (difference in regard to continuity\nand clearness) really is between the conditions of mind, in which\nrespectively the sophistic process, and the genuinely philosophical or\ndialectic process, as [111] conceived by Plato, leave us, is well\nillustrated by the peculiar treatment of Justice, its proper definition\nor idea, in The Republic.  Justice (or Righteousness, as we say, more\nlargely) under the light of a comprehensive experience of it,\ncarefully, diligently, adjusted to the nature of man on the one hand,\nof society on the other, becomes in the fourth book of The Republic, to\nta hautou prattein+--to ta hautou prattein.+  There, then, is the eternal\noutline of Righteousness or Justice as it really is, equally clear and\nindefectible at every point; a definition of it which can by no\nsupposition become a definition of anything else; impenetrable, not to\nbe traversed, by any possible definition of Injustice; securing an\nessential value to its possessor, independently of all falsities of\nappearance; and leaving justice, as it really is in itself, unaffected\neven by phenomena so misrepresentative of it as to deceive the very\ngods, or many good men, as happened pre-eminently in the case of\nSocrates.\n\n[112] Here then is the reply of the Platonic Socrates to the challenge\nthat he should prove himself master of a more certain philosophy than\nthat of the people, as represented by the old gnomic poet Simonides,\n\"whom it is hard to disbelieve,\" (sophos gar kai theios an\u00ear)+ on the\none hand; than that of the Sophists on the other, as represented by\nThrasymachus.  \"Show us not only that justice is a better thing than\nInjustice; but, by doing what (alla ti poiousa)+ to the soul of its\npossessor, each of them respectively, in and by itself (haut\u00ea di'\nhaut\u00ean)+ even if men and gods alike mistake it for its contrary, is\nstill the one a good thing, the other a bad one.\"\n\nBut note for a few moments the precise treatment of the idea of Justice\nin the first book of The Republic.  Sophistry and common sense are\ntrying their best to apprehend, to cover or occupy, a certain space, as\nthe exact area of Justice.  And what happens with each proposed\ndefinition in turn is, that it becomes, under conceivable\ncircumstances, a definition of Injustice: not that, in practice, a\nconfusion between the two is therefore likely; but that the intellect\nremains unsatisfied of the theoretic validity of the distinction.\n\nNow that intellectual situation illustrates the sense in which\nsophistry is a reproduction of the Heraclitean flux.  The old\nHeraclitean physical theory presents itself as a natural basis for the\nmoral, the social, dissolution, which the sophistical [113] movement\npromotes.  But what a contrast to it, in the treatment of Justice, of\nthe question, What Justice is? in that introductory book of The\nRepublic.  The first book forms in truth an eristic, a destructive or\nnegative, Dialogue (such as we have other examples of) in which the\nwhole business might have concluded, prematurely, with an exposure of\nthe inadequacy, alike of common-sense as represented by Simonides, and\nof a sophisticated philosophy as represented by Thrasymachus, to define\nJustice.  Note, however, in what way, precisely.  That it is Just, for\ninstance, to restore what one owes (to ta opheilomena apodidonai)+ might\npass well enough for a general guide to right conduct; and the\nsophistical judgment that Justice is \"The interest of the stronger\" is\nnot more untrue than the contrary paradox that \"Justice is a plot of\nthe weak against the strong.\"\n\nIt is, then, in regard to the claims of Justice, not so much on\npractice, as on the intellect, in its demand for a clear theory of\npractice, that those definitions fail.  They are failures because they\nfail to distinguish absolutely, ideally, as towards the intellect, what\nis, from what is not.  To Plato, for whom, constitutionally, and ex\nhypothesi, what can be clearly thought is the precise measure of what\nreally is, if such a thought about Justice--absolutely inclusive and\nexclusive--is, after all our efforts, not to be ascertained, this can\nonly be, because Justice is not [114] a real thing, but only an empty\nor confused name.\n\nNow the Sophist and the popular moralist, in that preliminary attempt\nto define the nature of Justice--what is right, are both alike trying,\nfirst in this formula, then in that, to occupy, by a thought, and by a\ndefinition which may convey that thought into the mind of another--to\noccupy, or cover, a certain area of the phenomena of experience, as the\nJust.  And what happens thereupon is this, that by means of a certain\nkind of casuistry, by the allegation of certain possible cases of\nconduct, the whole of that supposed area of the Just is occupied by\ndefinitions of Injustice, from this centre or that.  Justice therefore-\n-its area, the space of experience which it covers, dissolves away,\nliterally, as the eye is fixed upon it, like Heraclitean water: it is\nand is not.  And if this, and the like of this, is to the last all that\ncan be known or said of it, Justice will be no current coin, at least\nto the acute philosophic mind.  But has some larger philosophy perhaps\nsomething more to say of it? and the power of defining an area, upon\nwhich no definition of Injustice, in any conceivable case of act or\nfeeling, can infringe?  That is the question upon which the essential\nargument of The Republic starts--upon a voyage of discovery.  It is\nPlato's own figure.\n\nThere, clearly enough, may be seen what the difference, the difference\nof aim, between Socrates [115] and the Sophists really was, amid much\nthat they had in common, as being both alike distinguished from that\nolder world of opinion of which Simonides is the mouthpiece.\n\nThe quarrel of Socrates with the Sophists was in part one of those\nantagonisms which are involved necessarily in the very conditions of an\nage that has not yet made up its mind; was in part also a mere rivalry\nof individuals; and it might have remained in memory only as a matter\nof historical interest.  It has been otherwise.  That innocent word\n\"Sophist\" has survived in common language, to indicate some constantly\nrecurring viciousness, in the treatment of one's own and of other\nminds, which is always at variance with such habits of thought as are\nreally worth while.  There is an every-day \"sophistry,\" of course,\nagainst which we have all of us to be on our guard--that insincerity of\nreasoning on behalf of sincere convictions, true or false in themselves\nas the case may be, to which, if we are unwise enough to argue at all\nwith each other, we must all be tempted at times.  Such insincerity\nhowever is for the most part apt to expose itself.  But there is a more\ninsidious sophistry of which Plato is aware; and against which he\ncontends in the Protagoras, and again still more effectively in the\nPhaedrus; the closing pages of which discover the essential point of\nthat famous quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates or Plato, in\nregard to a matter which is [116] of permanent interest in itself, and\nas being not directly connected with practical morals is unaffected by\nthe peculiar prejudices of that age.  Art, the art of oratory, in\nparticular, and of literary composition,--in this case, how one should\nwrite or speak really inflammatory discourses about love, write love-\nletters, so to speak, that shall really get at the heart they're meant\nfor--that was a matter on which the Sophists had thought much\nprofessionally.  And the debate introduced in the Phaedrus regarding\nthe secret of success in proposals of love or friendship turns properly\non this: whether it is necessary, or even advantageous, for one who\nwould be a good orator, or writer, a poet, a good artist generally, to\nknow, and consciously to keep himself in contact with, the truth of his\nsubject as he knows or feels it; or only with what other people,\nperhaps quite indolently, think, or suppose others to think, about it.\nAnd here the charge of Socrates against those professional teachers of\nthe art of rhetoric comes to be, that, with much superficial aptitude\nin the conduct of the matter, they neither reach, nor put others in the\nway of reaching, that intellectual ground of things (of the\nconsciousness of love for instance, when they are to open their lips,\nand presumably their souls, about that) in true contact with which\nalone can there be a real mastery in dealing with them.  That you\nyourself must have an inward, carefully ascertained, measured,\ninstituted hold [117] over anything you are to convey with any real\npower to others, is the truth which the Platonic Socrates, in strongly\nconvinced words, always reasonable about it, formulates, in opposition\nto the Sophists' impudently avowed theory and practice of the\nsuperficial, as such.  Well! we all always need to be set on our guard\nagainst theories which flatter the natural indolence of our minds.\n\n\"We proposed then just now,\" says Socrates in the Phaedrus, \"to\nconsider the theory of the way in which one would or would not write or\nspeak well.\"--\"Certainly!\"--\"Well then, must there not be in those who\nare to speak meritoriously, an understanding well acquainted with the\ntruth of the things they are to speak about?\"--\"Nay!\" answers Phaedrus,\nin that age of sophistry, \"It is in this way I have heard about it:--\nthat it is not necessary for one who would be a master of rhetoric to\nlearn what really is just, for instance; but rather what seems just to\nthe multitude who are to give judgment: nor again what is good or\nbeautiful; but only what seems so to them.  For persuasion comes of the\nlatter; by no means of a hold upon the truth of things.\"\n\nWhether or not the Sophists were quite fairly chargeable with that sort\nof \"inward lie,\" just this, at all events, was in the judgment of Plato\nthe essence of sophistic vice.  With them [118] art began too\nprecipitately, as mere form without matter; a thing of disconnected\nempiric rules, caught from the mere surface of other people's\nproductions, in congruity with a general method which everywhere\nruthlessly severed branch and flower from its natural root--art from\none's own vivid sensation or belief.  The Lacedaemonian (ho Lak\u00f4n)+\nPlato's favourite scholar always, as having that infinite patience\nwhich is the note of a sincere, a really impassioned lover of anything,\nsays, in his convinced Lacedaemonian way, that a genuine art of speech\n(tou legein etumos techn\u00ea)+ unless one be in contact with truth, there\nneither is nor can be.  We are reminded of that difference between\ngenuine memory, and mere haphazard recollection, noted by Plato in the\nstory he tells so well of the invention of writing in ancient Egypt.--\nIt might be doubted, he thinks, whether genuine memory was encouraged\nby that invention.  The note on the margin by the inattentive reader to\n\"remind himself,\" is, as we know, often his final good-bye to what it\nshould remind him of.  Now this is true of all art: Log\u00f4n ara techn\u00ean,\nho t\u00ean al\u00eatheian m\u00ea eid\u00f4s, doxas te teth\u00eareuk\u00f4s, geloion tina kai\natexnon parexetai.+ --It is but a kind of bastard art of mere words\n(texn\u00ea atexnos)+ that he will have who does not know the truth of\nthings, but has tried to hunt out what other people think about it.\n\"Conception,\" observed an intensely personal, deeply stirred, poet and\nartist of our own generation: [119] \"Conception, fundamental brainwork,-\n-that is what makes the difference, in all art.\"\n\nAgainst all pretended, mechanically communicable rules of art then,\nagainst any rule of literary composition, for instance, unsanctioned by\nthe facts, by a clear apprehension of the facts, of that experience,\nwhich to each one of us severally is the beginning, if it be not also\nthe end, of all knowledge, against every merely formal dictate (their\nname is legion with practising Sophists of all ages) Peri brachylogias,\nkai eleeinologias, kai dein\u00f4se\u00f4s,+ concerning freedom or precision,\nfigure, emphasis, proportion of parts and the like, exordium and\nconclusion:--against all such the Platonic Socrates still protests,\n\"You know what must be known before harmony can be attained, but not\nyet the laws of harmony itself,\"--ta pro trag\u00f4dias,+ Sophocles would\nobject in like case, ta pro trag\u00f4dias, all' ou tragika.+  Given the\ndynamic Sophoclean intention or conviction, and the irresistible law of\nright utterance, (anank\u00ea logographik\u00ea)+ how one must write or speak,\nwill make itself felt; will assuredly also renew many an old precept,\nas to how one shall write or speak, learned at school.  To speak pros\ndoxan+ only, as towards mere unreasoned opinion, might do well enough in\nthe law-courts with people, who (as is understood in that case) do not\nreally care very much about justice itself, desire only that a friend\nshould be acquitted, or an enemy convicted, irrespectively of it; but\n[120]\n\nFor the essence of all artistic beauty is expression, which cannot be\nwhere there's really nothing to be expressed; the line, the colour, the\nword, following obediently, and with minute scruple, the conscious\nmotions of a convinced intelligible soul.  To make men interested in\nthemselves, as being the very ground of all reality for them, la vraie\nv\u00e9rit\u00e9, as the French say:--that was the essential function of the\nSocratic method: to flash light into the house within, its many\nchambers, its memories and associations, upon its inscribed and\npictured walls.  Fully occupied there, as with his own essential\nbusiness in his own home, the young man would become, of course,\nproportionately less interested, less meanly interested, in what was\nsuperficial, in the mere outsides, of other people and their\noccupations.  With the true artist indeed, with almost every expert,\nall knowledge, of almost every kind, tells, is attracted into, and duly\ncharged with, the force of what [121] may be his leading apprehension.\nAnd as the special function of all speech as a fine art is the control\nof minds (psychag\u00f4gia)+ it is in general with knowledge of the soul of\nman--with a veritable psychology, with as much as possible as we can\nget of that--that the writer, the speaker, must be chiefly concerned,\nif he is to handle minds not by mere empiric routine, trib\u00ea monon, kai\nempeiria alla techn\u00ea,+ but by the power of veritable fine art.  Now such\nart, such theory, is not \"to be caught with the left hand,\" as the\nGreek phrase went; and again, chalepa ta kala.+  We have no time to hear\nin English Plato's clever specimens of the way in which people would\nwrite about love without success.  Let us rather hear himself on that\nsubject, in his own characteristic mood of conviction.--\n\n     Try! she said (a certain Sibylline woman namely, from whose\n     lips Socrates in the Symposium is supposed to quote what follows)\n     Try to apply your mind as closely as possible to what I am going\n     to say.  For he who has been led thus far in the discipline of\n     love, beholding beautiful objects in the right order, coming now\n     towards the end of the doctrine of love, will on a sudden behold\n     a beauty wonderful in its nature:--that, Socrates! towards which\n     indeed the former exercises were all designed; being first of all\n     ever existent; having neither beginning nor end; neither growing\n     or fading away; and then, not beautiful in one way, unbeautiful\n     in another; beautiful now, but not then; beautiful in this\n     relation, unlovely in that; to some, but not to others.  Nor\n     again will that beauty appear to him to be beautiful as a face or\n     hands or anything else that belongs to the body; nor as any\n     kind of reasoning or science; nor as being resident in anything\n     else, as in a living creature or the earth or the sky or any\n     other [122] thing; but as being itself by itself, ever in a\n     single form with itself; all other beautiful things so\n     participating in it, that while they begin and cease to be, that\n     neither becomes more nor less nor suffers any other change.\n     Whenever, then, anyone, beginning from things here below, through\n     a right practice of love, ascending, begins to discern that other\n     beauty, he will almost have reached the end.  For this in truth\n     is the right method of proceeding towards the doctrine of love,\n     or of being conducted therein by another,--beginning from these\n     beautiful objects here below ever to be going up higher, with\n     that other beauty in view; using them as steps of a ladder;\n     mounting from the love of one fair person to the love of two;\n     and from the love of two to the love of all; and from the love\n     of beautiful persons to the love of beautiful employments--kala\n     epit\u00eadeumata+ (that means being a soldier, or a priest, or a\n     scholar) and from the love of beautiful employments to the love\n     of beautiful kinds of knowledge; till he passes from degrees of\n     knowledge to that knowledge which is the knowledge of nothing\n     else save the absolute Beauty itself, and knows it at length as\n     in itself it really is.  At this moment of life, dear Socrates!\n     said the Mantinean Sibyl, if at any moment, man truly lives,\n     beholding the absolute beauty--the which, so you have once seen\n     it, will appear beyond the comparison of gold, or raiment, or\n     those beautiful young persons, seeing whom now, like many another,\n     you are so overcome that you are ready, beholding those beautiful\n     persons and associating ever with them, if it were possible,\n     neither to eat nor drink but only to look into their eyes and\n     sit beside them.  What then, she asked, suppose we? if it were\n     given to any one to behold the absolute beauty, in its clearness,\n     its pureness, its unmixed essence; not replete with flesh and\n     blood and colours and other manifold vanity of this mortal life;\n     but if he were able to behold that divine beauty (monoeides)+\n     simply as it is.  Do you think, she said, that life would be a\n     poor thing to one whose eyes were fixed on that; seeing that,\n     (h\u00f4 dei)+ with the organ through which it must be seen, and\n     communing with that?  Do you not think rather, she asked, that\n     here alone it will be his, seeing the beautiful with that through\n     which it may be seen (namely with the imaginative reason, ho\n     nous+) to beget no mere phantasms of virtue, as it is no phantom\n     he [123] apprehends, but the true virtue, as he embraces what is\n     true?  And having begotten virtue (virtue is the child that will\n     be born of this mystic intellectual commerce, or connubium,\n     of the imaginative reason with ideal beauty) and reared it, he\n     will become dear to God, and if any man may be immortal he will\n     be.  Symposium, 210.+\n\nThe essential vice of sophistry, as Plato conceived it, was that for it\nno real things existed.  Real things did exist for Plato, things that\nwere \"an end in themselves\"; and the Platonic Socrates was right:--\nPlato has written so well there, because he was no scholar of the\nSophists as he understood them, but is writing of what he really knows.\n\nNOTES\n\n99. +Transliteration: sophistai.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"at\nAthens, one who professed to make men wise.\"\n\n102. +Transliteration: pleista eid\u00ea.  Pater's translation: \"the greatest\npossible variety.\"  Pater refers to the Funeral Oration given by\nPericles to commemorate the Athenians who, to date, had died in the\nPeloponnesian War.  Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 2.41.1.\n\n107. +Plato, Republic 492.\n\n109. +Transliteration: peithous didaskaloi.  Pater's translation:\n\"teachers of persuasion.\"  Plato, Republic 365d.\n\n109. +Transliteration: d\u00eamos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"the common\npeople.\"\n\n110. +Plato, Republic 496.\n\n111. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein.  Pater's translation: \"The\ndoing, by every part . . . of its own proper business therein.\"  The\ntranslation elaborates on the original, but captures its meaning\naccurately.  Plato, Republic 433a-b.\n\n111. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein.  Pater's translation: \"The\ndoing, by every part . . . of its own proper business therein.\"  Plato,\nRepublic 433a-b.\n\n112. +Transliteration: sophos gar kai theios an\u00ear.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"for he was a wise and excellent man.\"  Plato, Republic\n331e.\n\n112. +Transliteration: alla ti poiousa.  Pater's translation: \"but, by\ndoing what. . .\"  Plato, Republic 367b.\n\n112. +Transliteration: haut\u00ea di' haut\u00ean.  Pater's translation: \"in and\nby itself.\"  Plato, Republic 367e.\n\n113. +Transliteration: to ta opheilomena apodidonai.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"to restore what one owes.\"  Plato, Republic 331e and\n332a.\n\n118. +Transliteration: ho Lak\u00f4n.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"The\nLacedaemonian [i.e., Spartan].\"\n\n118. +Transliteration: tou legein etumos techn\u00ea.  Pater's translation:\n\"a genuine art of speech.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 260e.\n\n118. +Transliteration: Log\u00f4n ara techn\u00ean, ho t\u00ean al\u00eatheian m\u00ea eid\u00f4s,\ndoxas te teth\u00eareuk\u00f4s, geloion tina kai atexnon parexetai.  E-text\neditor's translation: \"In the art of speaking, therefore, the person\nwho does not know the truth, who has sought out only the opinions of\nothers, will come by nothing better than a kind of unskilled jesting.\"\nPlato, Phaedrus 262c.\n\n118. +Transliteration: texn\u00ea atexnos.  Pater's translation: \"[a]\nbastard art of mere words.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 260e.\n\n119. +Transliteration: Peri brachylogias, kai eleeinologias, kai\ndein\u00f4se\u00f4s.  E-text editor's translation: \"Concerning brevity, and\nspeech that moves to pity, and exaggeration. . .\"  Plato, Phaedrus\n272a.\n\n119. +Transliteration: ta pro trag\u00f4dias.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"the things before tragedy.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 269a.\n\n119. +Transliteration: ta pro trag\u00f4dias, all' ou tragika.  E-text\neditor's translation: \"the things before tragedy, but not tragedy\nitself.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 269a.\n\n119. +Transliteration: anank\u00ea logographik\u00ea.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"[the manner] required [in] prose-writing or speech-\nmaking.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 264b contains similar language.\n\n119. +Transliteration: pros doxan.  E-text editor's translation: \"in\naccordance with received opinion.\"  Plato, Republic 362a, among other\npassages.\n\n121. +Transliteration: psychag\u00f4gia.  Pater's translation: \"the control\nof minds.\"  The verb ag\u00f4 means \"lead or drive.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 261a\nand 271c.\n\n121. +Transliteration: trib\u00ea monon, kai empeiria alla techn\u00ea.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"[not] by mere empiric routine, but by the power of\nveritable fine art.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 270b.\n\n121. +Transliteration: chalepa ta kala.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"fine things are hard [to obtain].\"  Plato, Republic 435c.\n\n122. +Transliteration: kala epit\u00eadeumata.  Pater's translation:\n\"beautiful employments.\"  Plato, Symposium 211c.\n\n122. +Transliteration: monoeides.  E-text editor's translation: \"of one\nkind, simple.\"  Plato, Symposium 211a and 211e.\n\n122. +Transliteration: h\u00f4 dei.  E-text editor's translation: \"with what\nis necessary.\"  Plato, Symposium 212a.\n\n122. +Transliteration: ho nous.  Pater's translation: \"imaginative\nreason.\"  The word nous or noos generally means \"mind.\"  Plato,\nSymposium 210-212.\n\n123. +The passage Pater cites--Diotima's speech about love--runs from\n210-212a of the Symposium.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 6: THE GENIUS OF PLATO\n\n[124] ALL true criticism of philosophic doctrine, as of every other\nproduct of human mind, must begin with an historic estimate of the\nconditions, antecedent and contemporary, which helped to make it\nprecisely what it was.  But a complete criticism does not end there.\nIn the evolution of abstract doctrine as we find it written in the\nhistory of philosophy, if there is always, on one side, the fatal,\nirresistible, mechanic play of circumstance--the circumstances of a\nparticular age, which may be analysed and explained; there is always\nalso, as if acting from the opposite side, the comparatively\ninexplicable force of a personality, resistant to, while it is moulded\nby, them.  It might even be said that the trial-task of criticism, in\nregard to literature and art no less than to philosophy, begins exactly\nwhere the estimate of general conditions, of the conditions common to\nall the products of this or that particular age--of the \"environment\"--\nleaves off, and we touch what is unique in the individual genius [125]\nwhich contrived after all, by force of will, to have its own masterful\nway with that environment.  If in reading Plato, for instance, the\nphilosophic student has to re-construct for himself, as far as\npossible, the general character of an age, he must also, so far as he\nmay, reproduce the portrait of a person.  The Sophists, the Sophistical\nworld, around him; his master, Socrates; the Pre-Socratic philosophies;\nthe mechanic influence, that is to say, of past and present:--of course\nwe can know nothing at all of the Platonic doctrine except so far as we\nsee it in well-ascertained contact with all that; but there is also\nPlato himself in it.\n\n--A personality, we may notice at the outset, of a certain\ncomplication.  The great masters of philosophy have been for the most\npart its noticeably single-minded servants.  As if in emulation of\nAristotle's simplicity of character, his absorbing intellectualism--\nimpressive certainly, heroic enough, in its way--they have served\nscience, science in vacuo, as if nothing beside, faith, imagination,\nlove, the bodily sense, could detach them from it for an hour.  It is\nnot merely that we know little of their lives (there was so little to\ntell!) but that we know nothing at all of their temperaments; of which,\nthat one leading abstract or scientific force in them was in fact\nstrictly exclusive.  Little more than intellectual abstractions\nthemselves, in them [126] philosophy was wholly faithful to its\ncolours, or its colourlessness; rendering not grey only, as Hegel said\nof it, but all colours alike, in grey.\n\nWith Plato it was otherwise.  In him, the passion for truth did but\nbend, or take the bent of, certain ineradicable predispositions of his\nnature, in themselves perhaps somewhat opposed to that.  It is however\nin the blending of diverse elements in the mental constitution of Plato\nthat the peculiar Platonic quality resides.  Platonism is in one sense\nan emphatic witness to the unseen, the transcendental, the non-\nexperienced, the beauty, for instance, which is not for the bodily eye.\nYet the author of this philosophy of the unseen was,--Who can doubt it\nwho has read but a page of him? this, in fact, is what has led and kept\nto his pages many who have little or no turn for the sort of questions\nPlato actually discusses:--The author of this philosophy of the unseen\nwas one, for whom, as was said of a very different French writer, \"the\nvisible world really existed.\"  Austere as he seems, and on well-\nconsidered principle really is, his temperance or austerity,\naesthetically so winning, is attained only by the chastisement, the\ncontrol, of a variously interested, a richly sensuous nature.  Yes, the\nvisible world, so pre-eminently worth eye-sight at Athens just then,\nreally existed for him: exists still--there's the point!--is active\nstill everywhere, when he seems to have turned away from it to\ninvisible things.\n\n[127] To the somewhat sad-coloured school of Socrates, and its\ndiscipline towards apathy or contempt in such matters, he had brought\ncapacities of bodily sense with the making in them of an Odyssey; or\n(shall we say?) of a poet after the order of Sappho or Catullus; as\nindeed also a practical intelligence, a popular management of his own\npowers, a skill in philosophic yet mundane Greek prose, which might\nhave constituted him the most successful of Sophists.  You cannot help\nseeing that his mind is a storehouse of all the liveliest imageries of\nmen and things.  Nothing, if it really arrests eye or ear at all, is\ntoo trivial to note.  Passing through the crowd of human beings, he\nnotes the sounds alike of their solemn hymns and of their pettiest\nhandicraft.  A conventional philosopher might speak of  \"dumb matter,\"\nfor instance; but Plato has lingered too long in braziers' workshops to\nlapse into so stupid an epithet.  And if the persistent hold of\nsensible things upon him thus reveals itself in trifles, it is manifest\nno less in the way in which he can tell a long story,--no one more\neffectively! and again, in his graphic presentment of whole scenes from\nactual life, like that with which The Republic opens.  His Socrates,\nlike other people, is curious to witness a new religious function: how\nthey will do it.  As in modern times, it would be a pleasant occasion\nalso for meeting the acquaintance one likes best-- Synesometha pollois\n[128] t\u00f4n ne\u00f4n autothi.+  \"We shall meet a number of our youth there: we\nshall have a dialogue: there will be a torchlight procession in honour\nof the goddess, an equestrian procession: a novel feature!--What?\nTorches in their hands, passed on as they race?  Aye, and an\nillumination, through the entire night.  It will be worth seeing!\"--\nthat old midnight hour, as Carlyle says of another vivid scene,\n\"shining yet on us, ruddy-bright through the centuries.\"  Put alongside\nof that, and, for life-like charm, side by side with Murillo's Beggar-\nboys (you catch them, if you look at his canvas on the sudden, actually\nmoving their mouths, to laugh and speak and munch their crusts, all at\nonce) the scene in the Lysis of the dice-players.  There the boys are!\nin full dress, to take part in a religious ceremony.  It is scarcely\nover; but they are already busy with the knuckle-bones, some just\noutside the door, others in a corner.  Though Plato never tells one\nwithout due motive, yet he loves a story for its own sake, can make one\nof fact or fancy at a moment's notice, or re-tell other people's\nbetter: how those dear skinny grasshoppers of Attica, for instance, had\nonce been human creatures, who, when the Muses first came on earth,\nwere so absorbed by their music that they forgot even to eat and drink,\ntill they died of it.  And then the story of Gyges in The Republic, and\nthe ring that can make its wearer invisible: [129] --it goes as easily,\nas the ring itself round the finger.\n\nLike all masters of literature, Plato has of course varied excellences;\nbut perhaps none of them has won for him a larger number of friendly\nreaders than this impress of visible reality.  For him, truly (as he\nsupposed the highest sort of knowledge must of necessity be) all\nknowledge was like knowing a person.  The Dialogue itself, being, as it\nis, the special creation of his literary art, becomes in his hands, and\nby his masterly conduct of it, like a single living person; so\ncomprehensive a sense does he bring to bear upon it of the slowly-\ndeveloping physiognomy of the thing--its organic structure, its\nsymmetry and expression--combining all the various, disparate subjects\nof The Republic, for example, into a manageable whole, so entirely\nthat, looking back, one fancies this long dialogue of at least three\nhundred pages might have occupied, perhaps an afternoon.\n\nAnd those who take part in it!  If Plato did not create the \"Socrates\"\nof his Dialogues, he has created other characters hardly less life-\nlike.  The young Charmides, the incarnation of natural, as the aged\nCephalus of acquired, temperance; his Sophoclean amenity as he sits\nthere pontifically at the altar, in the court of his peaceful house;\nthe large company, of varied character and of every age, which moves in\nthose Dialogues, though still oftenest the young [130] in all their\nyouthful liveliness:--who that knows them at all can doubt Plato's hold\non persons, that of persons on him?  Sometimes, even when they are not\nformally introduced into his work, characters that had interested,\nimpressed, or touched him, inform and colour it, as if with their\npersonal influence, showing through what purports to be the wholly\nabstract analysis of some wholly abstract moral situation.  Thus, the\nform of the dying Socrates himself is visible pathetically in the\ndescription of the suffering righteous man, actually put into his own\nmouth in the second book of The Republic; as the winning brilliancy of\nthe lost spirit of Alcibiades infuses those pages of the sixth, which\ndiscuss the nature of one by birth and endowments an aristocrat, amid\nthe dangers to which it is exposed in the Athens of that day--the\nqualities which must make him, if not the saviour, the destroyer, of a\nsociety which cannot remain unaffected by his showy presence.\nCorruptio optimi pessima!  Yet even here, when Plato is dealing with\nthe inmost elements of personality, his eye is still on its object, on\ncharacter as seen in characteristics, through those details, which make\ncharacter a sensible fact, the changes of colour in the face as of tone\nin the voice, the gestures, the really physiognomic value, or the mere\ntricks, of gesture and glance and speech.  What is visibly expressive\nin, or upon, persons; those flashes of temper which check yet give\n[131] renewed interest to the course of a conversation; the delicate\ntouches of intercourse, which convey to the very senses all the\nsubtleties of the heart or of the intelligence:--it is always more than\nworth his while to make note of these.\n\nWe see, for instance, the sharp little pygmy bit of a soul that catches\nsight of any little thing so keenly, and makes a very proper lawyer.\nWe see, as well as hear, the \"rhapsodist,\" whose sensitive performance\nof his part is nothing less than an \"interpretation\" of it, artist and\ncritic at once: the personal vanities of the various speakers in his\nDialogues, as though Plato had observed, or overheard them, alone; and\nthe inevitable prominence of youth wherever it is present at all,\nnotwithstanding the real sweetness of manner and modesty of soul he\nrecords of it so affectionately.  It is this he loves best to linger\nby; to feel himself in contact with a condition of life, which\ntranslates all it is, so immediately, into delightful colour, and\nmovement, and sound.  The eighth and ninth books of The Republic are a\ngrave contribution, as you know, to abstract moral and political\ntheory, a generalisation of weighty changes of character in men and\nstates.  But his observations on the concrete traits of individuals,\nyoung or old, which enliven us on the way; the difference in sameness\nof sons and fathers, for instance; the influence of servants on their\nmasters; how the minute ambiguities of rank, as a family becomes [132]\nimpoverished, tell on manners, on temper; all the play of moral colour\nin the reflex of mere circumstance on what men really are:--the\ncharacterisation of all this has with Plato a touch of the peculiar\nfineness of Thackeray, one might say.  Plato enjoys it for its own\nsake, and would have been an excellent writer of fiction.\n\nThere is plenty of humour in him also of course, and something of\nirony--salt, to keep the exceeding richness and sweetness of his\ndiscourse from cloying the palate.  The affectations of sophists, or\nprofessors, their staginess or their inelegance, the harsh laugh, the\nswaggering ways, of Thrasymachus, whose determination to make the\ngeneral company share in a private conversation, is significant of his\nwhole character, he notes with a finely-pointed pencil, with something\nof the fineness of malice,--malin, as the French say.  Once\nThrasymachus had been actually seen to blush.  It is with a very\ndifferent sort of fineness Plato notes the blushes of the young; of\nHippocrates, for instance, in the Protagoras.  The great Sophist was\nsaid to be in Athens, at the house of Callicles, and the diligent young\nscholar is up betimes, eager to hear him.  He rouses Socrates before\ndaylight.  As they linger in the court, the lad speaks of his own\nintellectual aspirations; blushes at his confidence.  It was just then\nthat the morning sun blushed with his first beam, as if to reveal the\nlad's [133] blushing face.--Kai hos eipen erythriasas, \u00ead\u00ea gar\nhypephaine ti \u00eameras \u00f4ste kataphan\u00ea auton genesthai.+  He who noted that\nso precisely had, surely, the delicacy of the artist, a fastidious eye\nfor the subtleties of colour as soul made visibly expressive.  \"Poor\ncreature as I am,\" says the Platonic Socrates, in the Lysis, concerning\nanother youthful blush, \"Poor creature as I am, I have one talent: I\ncan recognise, at first sight, the lover and the beloved.\"\n\nSo it is with the audible world also.  The exquisite monotony of the\nvoice of the great sophist, for example, \"once set in motion, goes\nringing on like a brazen pot, which if you strike it continues to sound\ntill some one lays his hand upon it.\"  And if the delicacy of eye and\near, so also the keenness and constancy of his observation, are\nmanifest in those elaborately wrought images for which the careful\nreader lies in wait: the mutiny of the sailors in the ship--ship of the\nstate, or of one's own soul: the echoes and beams and shadows of that\nhalf-illuminated cavern, the human mind: the caged birds in the\nTheatetus, which are like the flighty, half-contained notions of an\nimperfectly educated understanding.  Real notions are to be ingrained\nby persistent thoroughness of the \"dialectic\" method, as if by\nconscientious dyers.  He makes us stay to watch such dyers busy with\ntheir purple stuff, as he had done; adding as it were ethic colour to\nwhat he sees with the eye, and [134] painting while he goes, as if on\nthe margin of his high philosophical discourse, himself scarcely aware;\nas the monkish scribe set bird or flower, with so much truth of earth,\nin the blank spaces of his heavenly meditation.\n\nNow Plato is one for whom the visible world thus \"really exists\"\nbecause he is by nature and before all things, from first to last,\nunalterably a lover.  In that, precisely, lies the secret of the\nsusceptible and diligent eye, the so sensitive ear.  The central\ninterest of his own youth--of his profoundly impressible youth--as\nhappens always with natures of real capacity, gives law and pattern to\nall that succeeds it.  Ta er\u00f4tika,+ as he says, the experience, the\ndiscipline, of love, had been that for Plato; and, as love must of\nnecessity deal above all with visible persons, this discipline involved\nan exquisite culture of the senses.  It is \"as lovers use,\" that he is\never on the watch for those dainty messages, those finer intimations,\nto eye and ear.  If in the later development of his philosophy the\nhighest sort of knowledge comes to seem like the knowledge of a person,\nthe relation of the reason to truth like the commerce of one person\nwith another, the peculiarities of personal relationship thus moulding\nhis conception of the properly invisible world of ideas, this is partly\nbecause, for a lover, the entire visible world, its hues and outline,\nits attractiveness, its power and bloom, must have associated\nthemselves pre-eminently [135] with the power and bloom of visible\nliving persons.  With these, as they made themselves known by word and\nglance and touch, through the medium of the senses, lay the forces,\nwhich, in that inexplicable tyranny of one person over another, shaped\nthe soul.\n\nJust there, then, is the secret of Plato's intimate concern with, his\npower over, the sensible world, the apprehensions of the sensuous\nfaculty: he is a lover, a great lover, somewhat after the manner of\nDante.  For him, as for Dante, in the impassioned glow of his\nconceptions, the material and the spiritual are blent and fused\ntogether.  While, in that fire and heat, what is spiritual attains the\ndefinite visibility of a crystal, what is material, on the other hand,\nwill lose its earthiness and impurity.  It is of the amorous temper,\ntherefore, you must think in connexion with Plato's youth--of this,\namid all the strength of the genius in which it is so large a\nconstituent,--indulging, developing, refining, the sensuous capacities,\nthe powers of eye and ear, of the fancy also which can re-fashion, of\nthe speech which can best respond to and reproduce, their liveliest\npresentments.  That is why when Plato speaks of visible things it is as\nif you saw them.  He who in the Symposium describes so vividly the\npathway, the ladder, of love, its joyful ascent towards a more perfect\nbeauty than we have ever yet actually seen, by way of a parallel to the\ngradual elevation of mind towards perfect [136] knowledge, knew all\nthat, we may be sure--ta er\u00f4tika +--h\u00eatt\u00f4n t\u00f4n kal\u00f4n +--subject to the\ninfluence of fair persons.  A certain penitential colour amid that glow\nof fancy and expression, hints that the final harmony of his nature had\nbeen but gradually beaten out, and invests the temperance, actually so\nconspicuous in his own nature, with the charms of a patiently\nelaborated effect of art.\n\nFor we must remind ourselves just here, that, quite naturally also,\ninstinctively, and apart from the austere influences which claimed and\nkept his allegiance later, Plato, with a kind of unimpassioned passion,\nwas a lover in particular of temperance; of temperance too, as it may\nbe seen, as a visible thing--seen in Charmides, say! in that subdued\nand grey-eyed loveliness, \"clad in sober grey\"; or in those youthful\nathletes which, in ancient marble, reproduce him and the like of him\nwith sound, firm outlines, such as temperance secures.  Still, that\nsome more luxurious sense of physical beauty had at one time greatly\ndisturbed him, divided him against himself, we may judge from his own\nwords in a famous passage of the Phaedrus concerning the management,\nthe so difficult management, of [137] those winged steeds of the body,\nwhich is the chariot of the soul.\n\nPuzzled, in some degree, Plato seems to remain, not merely in regard to\nthe higher love and the lower, Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemus,\nas he distinguishes them in the Symposium; nor merely with the\ndifficulty of arbitrating between some inward beauty, and that which is\noutward; with the odd mixture everywhere, save in its still\nunapprehended but eternal essence, of the beautiful with what is\notherwise; but he is yet more harassed by the experience (it is in this\nshape that the world-old puzzle of the existence of evil comes to him)\nthat even to the truest eyesight, to the best trained faculty of soul,\nthe beautiful would never come to seem strictly concentric with the\ngood.  That seems to have taxed his understanding as gravely as it had\ntried his will,--and he was glad when in the mere natural course of\nyears he was become at all events less ardent a lover.  'Tis he is the\nauthority for what Sophocles had said on the happy decay of the\npassions as age advanced: it was \"like being set free from service to a\nband of madmen.\"  His own distinguishing note is tranquil afterthought\nupon this conflict, with a kind of envy of the almost disembodied old\nage of Cephalus, who quotes that saying of Sophocles amid his placid\nsacrificial doings.  Connect with this quiet scene, and contrast with\nthe luxuriant power of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, what, [138] for\na certain touch of later mysticism in it, we might call Plato's evening\nprayer, in the ninth book of The Republic.--\n\n     When any one, being healthfully and temperately disposed\n     towards himself, turns to sleep, having stirred the reasonable\n     part of him with a feast of fair thoughts and high problems,\n     being come to full consciousness, himself with himself; and\n     has, on the other hand, committed the element of desire neither\n     to appetite, nor to surfeiting, to the end that this may slumber\n     well, and, by its pain or pleasure, cause no trouble to that\n     part which is best in him, but may suffer it, alone by itself,\n     in its pure essence, to behold and aspire towards some object,\n     and apprehend what it knows not--some event, of the past, it may\n     be, or something that now is, or will be hereafter; and in like\n     manner has soothed hostile impulse, so that, falling to no angry\n     thoughts against any, he goes not to rest with a troubled spirit,\n     but with those two parts at peace within, and with that third\n     part, wherein reason is engendered, on the move:--you know, I\n     think, that in sleep of this sort he lays special hold on truth,\n     and then least of all is there lawlessness in the visions of his\n     dreams.  Republic, 571.\n\nFor Plato, being then about twenty-eight years old, had listened to the\n\"Apology\" of Socrates; had heard from them all that others had heard or\nseen of his last hours; himself perhaps actually witnessed those last\nhours.  \"Justice itself \"--the \"absolute\" Justice--had then become\nalmost a visible object, and had greatly solemnised him.  The rich\nyoung man, rich also in intellectual gifts, who might have become (we\nsee this in the adroit management of his written work) the most\nbrilliant and effective of Sophists; who might have developed dialogues\ninto plays, tragedy, perhaps comedy, as he cared; [139] whose sensuous\nor graphic capacity might have made him the poet of an Odyssey, a\nSappho, or a Catullus, or, say! just such a poet as, just because he\nwas so attractive, would have been disfranchised in the Perfect City;\nwas become the creature of an immense seriousness, of a fully adult\nsense, unusual in Greek perhaps even more than in Roman writers, \"of\nthe weightiness of the matters concerning which he has to discourse,\nand of the frailty of man.\"  He inherits, alien as they might be to\ncertain powerful influences in his own temper, alike the sympathies and\nthe antipathies of that strange, delightful teacher, who had given him\n(most precious of gifts!) an inexhaustible interest in himself.  It is\nin this way he inherits a preference for those trying severities of\nthought which are characteristic of the Eleatic school; an antagonism\nto the successful Sophists of the day, in whom the old sceptical\n\"philosophy of motion\" seemed to be renewed as a theory of morals; and\nhenceforth, in short, this master of visible things, this so ardent\nlover, will be a lover of the invisible, with--Yes! there it is\nconstantly, in the Platonic dialogues, not to be explained away--with a\ncertain asceticism, amid all the varied opulence, of sense, of speech\nand fancy, natural to Plato's genius.\n\nThe lover, who is become a lover of the invisible, but still a lover,\nand therefore, literally, a seer, of it, carrying an elaborate\ncultivation of the bodily senses, of eye and ear, their natural [140]\nforce and acquired fineness--gifts akin properly to ta er\u00f4tika,+ as he\nsays, to the discipline of sensuous love--into the world of\nintellectual abstractions; seeing and hearing there too, associating\nfor ever all the imagery of things seen with the conditions of what\nprimarily exists only for the mind, filling that \"hollow land\" with\ndelightful colour and form, as if now at last the mind were veritably\ndealing with living people there, living people who play upon us\nthrough the affinities, the repulsion and attraction, of persons\ntowards one another, all the magnetism, as we call it, of actual human\nfriendship or love:--There, is the formula of Plato's genius, the\nessential condition of the specially Platonic temper, of Platonism.\nAnd his style, because it really is Plato's style, conforms to, and in\nits turn promotes in others, that mental situation.  He breaks as it\nwere visible colour into the very texture of his work: his vocabulary,\nthe very stuff he manipulates, has its delightful aesthetic qualities;\nalmost every word, one might say, its figurative value.  And yet no one\nperhaps has with equal power literally sounded the unseen depths of\nthought, and, with what may be truly called \"substantial\" word and\nphrase, given locality there to the mere adumbrations, the dim hints\nand surmise, of the speculative mind.  For him, all gifts of sense and\nintelligence converge in one supreme faculty of theoretic vision,\nthe\u00f4ria,+ the imaginative reason.\n\n[141] To trace that thread of physical colour, entwined throughout, and\nmultiplied sometimes into large tapestried figures, is the business,\nthe enjoyment, of the student of the Dialogues, as he reads them.  For\nthis or that special literary quality indeed we may go safely by\npreference to this or that particular Dialogue; to the Gorgias, for\ninstance, for the readiest Attic wit, and a manly practical sense in\nthe handling of philosophy; to the Charmides, for something like the\neffect of sculpture in modelling a person; to the Timaeus, for certain\nbrilliant chromatic effects.  Yet who that reads the Theaetetus, or the\nPhaedrus, or the seventh book of The Republic, can doubt Plato's gift\nin precisely the opposite direction; that gift of sounding by words the\ndepths of thought, a plastic power literally, moulding to term and\nphrase what might have seemed in its very nature too impalpable and\nabstruse to lend itself, in any case, to language?  He gives names to\nthe invisible acts, processes, creations, of abstract mind, as\nmasterly, as efficiently, as Adam himself to the visible living\ncreations of old.  As Plato speaks of them, we might say, those\nabstractions too become visible living creatures.  We read the\nspeculative poetry of Wordsworth, or Tennyson; and we may observe that\na great metaphysical force has come into language which is by no means\npurely technical or scholastic; what a help such language is to the\nunderstanding, to a real hold over the things, the thoughts, the [142]\nmental processes, those words denote; a vocabulary to which thought\nfreely commits itself, trained, stimulated, raised, thereby, towards a\nhigh level of abstract conception, surely to the increase of our\ngeneral intellectual powers.  That, of course, is largely due to\nPlato's successor, to Aristotle's life-long labour of analysis and\ndefinition, and to his successors the Schoolmen, with their systematic\nculture of a precise instrument for the registration, by the analytic\nintellect, of its own subtlest movements.  But then, Aristotle, himself\nthe first of the Schoolmen, had succeeded Plato, and did but formulate,\nas a terminology \"of art,\" as technical language, what for Plato is\nstill vernacular, original, personal, the product in him of an\ninstinctive imaginative power--a sort of visual power, but causing\nothers also to see what is matter of original intuition for him.\n\nFrom first to last our faculty of thinking is limited by our command of\nspeech.  Now it is straight from Plato's lips, as if in natural\nconversation, that the language came, in which the mind has ever since\nbeen discoursing with itself concerning itself, in that inward\ndialogue, which is the \"active principle\" of the dialectic method as an\ninstrument for the attainment of truth.  For, the essential, or\ndynamic, dialogue, is ever that dialogue of the mind with itself, which\nany converse with Socrates or Plato does but promote.  The very words\nof Plato, then, [143] challenge us straightway to larger and finer\napprehension of the processes of our own minds; are themselves a\ndiscovery in the sphere of mind.  It was he made us freemen of those\nsolitary places, so trying yet so attractive: so remote and high, they\nseem, yet are naturally so close to us: he peopled them with\nintelligible forms.  Nay more!  By his peculiar gift of verbal\narticulation he divined the mere hollow spaces which a knowledge, then\nmerely potential, and an experience still to come, would one day\noccupy.  And so, those who cannot admit his actual speculative results,\nprecisely his report on the invisible theoretic world, have been to the\npoint sometimes, in their objection, that by sheer effectiveness of\nabstract language, he gave an illusive air of reality or substance to\nthe mere nonentities of metaphysic hypothesis--of a mind trying to feed\nitself on its own emptiness.\n\nJust there--in the situation of one, shaped, by combining nature and\ncircumstance, into a seer who has a sort of sensuous love of the\nunseen--is the paradox of Plato's genius, and therefore, always, of\nPlatonism, of the Platonic temper.  His aptitude for things visible,\nwith the gift of words, empowers him to express, as if for the eyes,\nwhat except to the eye of the mind is strictly invisible, what an\nacquired asceticism induces him to rank above, and sometimes, in terms\nof harshest dualism, oppose to, the sensible world.  Plato is to be\ninterpreted [144] not merely by his antecedents, by the influence upon\nhim of those who preceded him, but by his successors, by the temper,\nthe intellectual alliances, of those who directly or indirectly have\nbeen sympathetic with him.  Now it is noticeable that, at first sight\nsomewhat incongruously, a certain number of Manicheans have always been\nof his company; people who held that matter was evil.  Pointing\nsignificantly to an unmistakable vein of Manichean, or Puritan\nsentiment actually there in the Platonic Dialogues, these rude\ncompanions or successors of his, carry us back to his great\npredecessor, to Socrates, whose personal influence had so strongly\nenforced on Plato the severities, moral and intellectual, alike of\nParmenides and of the Pythagoreans.  The cold breath of a harshly\nabstract, a too incorporeal philosophy, had blown, like an east wind,\non that last depressing day in the prison-cell of Socrates; and the\nvenerable commonplaces then put forth, in which an overstrained pagan\nsensuality seems to be reacting, to be taking vengeance, on itself,\nturned now sick and suicidal, will lose none of their weight with\nPlato:--That \"all who rightly touch philosophy, study nothing else than\nto die, and to be dead,\"--that \"the soul reasons best, when, as much as\npossible, it comes to be alone with itself, bidding good-bye to the\nbody, and, to the utmost of its power, rejecting communion with it,\nwith the very touch of it, aiming at what is.\"\n\n[145] It was, in short, as if for the soul to have come into a human\nbody at all, had been the seed of disease in it, the beginning of its\nown proper death.\n\nAs for any adornments or provision for this body, the master had\ndeclared that a true philosopher as such would make as little of them\nas possible.  To those young hearers, the words of Socrates may well\nhave seemed to anticipate, not the visible world he had then delineated\nin glowing colour as if for the bodily eye, but only the chilling\ninfluence of the hemlock; and it was because Plato was only half\nconvinced of the Manichean or Puritan element in his master's doctrine,\nor rather was in contact with it on one side only of his complex and\ngenial nature, that Platonism became possible, as a temper for which,\nin strictness, the opposition of matter to spirit has no ultimate or\nreal existence.  Not to be \"pure\" from the body, but to identify it, in\nits utmost fairness, with the fair soul, by a gymnastic \"fused in\nmusic,\" became, from first to last, the aim of education as he\nconceived it.  That the body is but \"a hindrance to the attainment of\nphilosophy, if one takes it along with one as a companion in one's\nsearch\" (a notion which Christianity, at least in its later though\nwholly legitimate developments, will correct) can hardly have been the\nlast thought of Plato himself on quitting it.  He opens his door indeed\nto those austere monitors.  They correct the sensuous richness of his\ngenius, but could [146] not suppress it.  The sensuous lover becomes a\nlover of the invisible, but still a lover, after his earlier pattern,\ncarrying into the world of intellectual vision, of the\u00f4ria,+ all the\nassociations of the actual world of sight.  Some of its invisible\nrealities he can all but see with the bodily eye: the absolute\nTemperance, in the person of the youthful Charmides; the absolute\nRighteousness, in the person of the dying Socrates.  Yes, truly! all\ntrue knowledge will be like the knowledge of a person, of living\npersons, and truth, for Plato, in spite of his Socratic asceticism, to\nthe last, something to look at.  The eyes which had noted physical\nthings, so finely, vividly, continuously, would be still at work; and,\nPlato thus qualifying the Manichean or Puritan element in Socrates by\nhis own capacity for the world of sense, Platonism has contributed\nlargely, has been an immense encouragement towards, the redemption of\nmatter, of the world of sense, by art, by all right education, by the\ncreeds and worship of the Christian Church--towards the vindication of\nthe dignity of the body.\n\nIt was doubtless because Plato was an excellent scholar that he did not\nbegin to teach others till he was more than forty years old--one of the\ngreat scholars of the world, with Virgil and Milton: by which is\nimplied that, possessed of the inborn genius, of those natural powers,\n[147] which sometimes bring with them a certain defiance of rule, of\nthe intellectual habits of others, he acquires, by way of habit and\nrule, all that can be taught and learned; and what is thus derived from\nothers by docility and discipline, what is rang\u00e9, comes to have in him,\nand in his work, an equivalent weight with what is unique, impulsive,\nunderivable.  Raphael--Raphael, as you see him in the Blenheim Madonna,\nis a supreme example of such scholarship in the sphere of art.  Born of\na romantically ancient family, understood to be the descendant of Solon\nhimself, Plato had been in early youth a writer of verse.  That he\nturned to a more vigorous, though pedestrian mode of writing, was\nperhaps an effect of his corrective intercourse with Socrates, through\nsome of the most important years of his life,--from twenty to twenty-\neight.\n\nHe belonged to what was just then the discontented class, and might\nwell have taken refuge from active political life in political ideals,\nor in a kind of self-imposed exile.  A traveller, adventurous for that\nage, he certainly became.  After the Lehr-jahre, the Wander-jahre!--all\nround the Mediterranean coasts as far west as Sicily.  Think of what\nall that must have meant just then, for eyes which could see.  If those\njourneys had begun in angry flight from home, it was for purposes of\nself-improvement they were continued: the delightful fruit of them is\nevident in what he writes; and finding him [148] in friendly\nintercourse with Dionysius the elder, with Dio, and Dionysius the\nyounger, at the polished court of Syracuse, we may understand that they\nwere a search also for \"the philosophic king,\" perhaps for the\nopportune moment of realising \"the ideal state.\"  In that case, his\nquarrels with those capricious tyrants show that he was disappointed.\nFor the future he sought no more to pass beyond the charmed theoretic\ncircle, \"speaking wisdom,\" as was said of Pythagoras, only \"among the\nperfect.\"  He returns finally to Athens; and there, in the quiet\nprecincts of the Acad\u00eamus, which has left a somewhat dubious name to\nplaces where people come to be taught or to teach, founds, not a state,\nnor even a brotherhood, but only the first college, with something of a\ncommon life, of communism on that small scale, with Aristotle for one\nof its scholars, with its chapel, its gardens, its library with the\nauthentic text of his Dialogues upon the shelves: we may just discern\nthe sort of place through the scantiest notices.  His reign was after\nall to be in his writings.  Plato himself does nothing in them to\nretard the effacement which mere time brings to persons and their\nabodes; and there had been that, moreover, in his own temper, which\npromotes self-effacement.  Yet as he left it, the place remained for\ncenturies, according to his will, to its original use.  What he taught\nthrough the remaining forty years of his life, the method of that\nteaching, whether it [149] was less or more esoteric than the teaching\nof the extant Dialogues, is but matter of surmise.  Writers, who in\ntheir day might still have said much we should have liked to hear, give\nus little but old, quasi-supernatural stories, told as if they had been\nnew ones, about him.  The year of his birth fell, according to some, in\nthe very year of the death of Pericles (a significant date!) but is not\nprecisely ascertainable: nor is the year of his death, nor its manner.\nScribens est mortuus, says Cicero:--after the manner of a true scholar,\n\"he died pen in hand.\"\n\nNOTES\n\n127-28. +Transliteration: Synesometha pollois t\u00f4n ne\u00f4n autothi.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"We shall meet a number of our youth there.\"  Plato,\nRepublic 328a.\n\n133. +Transliteration: Kai hos eipen erythriasas, \u00ead\u00ea gar hypephaine ti\n\u00eameras \u00f4ste kataphan\u00ea auton genesthai.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"And he blushed as he spoke, for presently the day began to break, so\nas to make him visible.\"  Plato, Protagoras 312a.\n\n134. +Transliteration: Ta er\u00f4tika.  Pater's translation: \"the discipline\nof sensuous love;\" more literally, the phrase means \"things pertaining\nto love.\"  Plato, Symposium 177d.\n\n136. +Transliteration: ta er\u00f4tika.  Pater's translation: \"the discipline\nof sensuous love;\" more literally, the phrase means \"things pertaining\nto love.\"  Plato, Symposium 177d.\n\n136. +Transliteration: h\u00eatt\u00f4n t\u00f4n kal\u00f4n.  Pater's translation: \"subject\nto the influence of fair persons;\" more literally, \"yielding to\nbeauty.\"  Plato, Meno 76c.\n\n140. +Transliteration: ta er\u00f4tika.  Pater's translation: \"the discipline\nof sensuous love;\" more literally, the phrase means \"things pertaining\nto love.\"  Plato, Symposium 177d.\n\n140. +Transliteration: the\u00f4ria.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nlooking at, viewing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflection.\"\nPlato, Republic 486a.\n\n146. +Transliteration: the\u00f4ria.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nlooking at, viewing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflection.\"\nPlato, Republic 486a.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 7: THE DOCTRINE OF PLATO\n\nI. THE THEORY OF IDEAS\n\n[150] PLATONISM is not a formal theory or body of theories, but a\ntendency, a group of tendencies--a tendency to think or feel, and to\nspeak, about certain things in a particular way, discernible in Plato's\ndialogues as reflecting the peculiarities, the marked peculiarities, of\nhimself and his own mental complexion.  Those tendencies combine and\nfind their complete expression in what Plato's commentators, rather\nthan Plato, have called the \"theory of ideas,\" itself indeed not so\nmuch a doctrine or theory, as a way of regarding and speaking of\ngeneral terms, such as Useful or Just; of abstract notions, like\nEquality; of ideals, such as Beauty, or The Perfect City; of all those\nterms or notions, in short, which represent under general forms the\nparticular presentations of our individual experience; or, to use\nPlato's own frequent expression, borrowed [151] from his old Eleatic\nteachers, which reduce \"the Many to the One.\"\n\nWhat the nature of such representative terms and notions, genus and\nspecies, class-word, and abstract idea or ideal, may be; what their\nrelationship to the individual, the unit, the particulars which they\ninclude; is, as we know, one of the constant problems of logic.\nRealism, which supposes the abstraction, Animal for instance, or The\nJust, to be not a mere name, nomen, as with the nominalists, nor a mere\nsubjective thought as with the conceptualists, but to be res, a thing\nin itself, independent of the particular instances which come into and\npass out of it, as also of the particular mind which entertains it:--\nthat is one of the fixed and formal answers to this question; and Plato\nis the father of all realists.  Realism, as such, in the sense just\nindicated, is not in itself a very difficult or transcendental theory;\nbut rises, again and again, at least in a particular class of minds,\nquite naturally, as the answer to a natural question.  Taking our own\nstand as to this matter somewhere between the realist and the\nconceptualist:--See! we might say, there is a general consciousness, a\npermanent common sense, independent indeed of each one of us, but with\nwhich we are, each one of us, in communication.  It is in that, those\ncommon or general ideas really reside.  And we might add just here\n(giving his due to the nominalist also) that those abstract or common\n[152] notions come to the individual mind through language, through\ncommon or general names, Animal, Justice, Equality, into which one's\nindividual experience, little by little, drop by drop, conveys their\nfull meaning or content; and, by the instrumentality of such terms and\nnotions, thus locating the particular in the general, mediating between\ngeneral and particular, between our individual experience and the\ncommon experience of our kind, we come to understand each other, and to\nassist each other's thoughts, as in a common mental atmosphere, \"an\nintellectual world,\" as Plato calls it, a true no\u00eatos topos +.  So much\nfor the modern view; for what common sense might now suggest as to the\nnature of logical \"universals.\"\n\nPlato's realism however--what is called \"The Theory of Ideas\"--his way\nof regarding abstract term and general notion, what Plato has to say\nabout \"the Many and the One,\" is often very difficult; though of\nvarious degrees of difficulty, it must be observed, to various minds.\nFrom the simple and easily intelligible sort of realism attributed by\nAristotle to Socrates, seeking in \"universal definitions,\" or ideas,\nonly a serviceable instrument for the distinguishing of what is\nessential from what is unessential in the actual things about him,\nPlato passes by successive stages, which we should try to keep distinct\nas we read him, to what may be rightly called a \"transcendental,\" what\nto many minds has [153] seemed a fantastic and unintelligible habit of\nthought, regarding those abstractions, which indeed seem to become for\nhim not merely substantial things-in-themselves, but little short of\nliving persons, to be known as persons are made known to each other, by\na system of affinities, on the old Eleatic rule, homoion homoi\u00f4 +, like\nto like--these persons constituting together that common, eternal,\nintellectual world, a sort of divine family or hierarchy, with which\nthe mind of the individual, so far as it is reasonable, or really\nknows, is in communion or correspondence.  And here certainly is a\ntheory, a tendency to think or feel, and to speak, about which the\ndifficulties are many.\n\nYet as happens always with the metaphysical questions, or answers,\nwhich from age to age preoccupy acuter minds, those difficulties about\nthe Many and the One actually had their attractiveness for some in the\ndays of Plato.--\n\n     Our doctrine (says the Platonic Socrates in the Philebus) is,\n     that one and the same thing (the one common notion, namely,\n     embodied in one general term) which--hypo log\u00f4n +--under the\n     influence of our thoughts and words, of thought and language,\n     become one and many, circulates everywhere, in regard to\n     everything of which existence is asserted from time to time.\n     This law neither will cease to be, nor has it just now begun;\n     but something of the kind is, I think, an eternal and\n     ineradicable affection of our reason itself in us.  And\n     whenever a young man gets his first taste of this he is\n     delighted as having found the priceless pearl of philosophy;\n     he becomes an enthusiast in his delight; and eagerly sets in\n     motion-- kinei + --every definition [154] --logos+--every\n     conception or mental definition (it looked so fixed and\n     firm till then!) at one time winding things round each other\n     and welding them into one (that is, he drops all particulari-\n     ties out of view, and thinks only of the one common form) and\n     then again unwinding them, and dividing them into parts (he\n     becomes intent now upon the particularities of the particular,\n     till the one common term seems inapplicable) puzzling first,\n     and most of all, himself; and then any one who comes nigh him,\n     older or younger, or of whatever age he may be; sparing neither\n     father nor mother, nor any one else who will listen; scarcely\n     even the dumb creatures, to say nothing of men; for he would\n     hardly spare a barbarian, could he but find an interpreter.\n     Philebus, 15.+\n\nThe Platonic doctrine of \"the Many and the One\"--the problem with which\nwe are brought face to face in this choice specimen of the humour as\nwell as of the metaphysical power of Plato--is not precisely the\nquestion with which the speculative young man of our own day is likely\nto puzzle himself, or exercise the patience of his neighbour in a\nrailway carriage, of his dog, or even of a Chinese; though the\nquestions we are apt to tear to pieces, organism and environment, or\nprotoplasm perhaps, or evolution, or the Zeit-geist and its doings,\nmay, in their turn, come to seem quite as lifeless and unendurable.  As\nthe theological heresy of one age sometimes becomes the mere\ncommonplace of the next, so, in matters of philosophic enquiry, it\nmight appear that the all-absorbing novelty of one generation becomes\nnothing less than the standard of what is uninteresting, as such, to\nits successor.  Still in the discussion even of abstract truths it is\nnot so much [155] what he thinks as the person who is thinking, that\nafter all really tells.  Plato and Platonism we shall never understand\nunless we are patient with him in what he has to tell us about \"the\nMany and the One.\"\n\nPlato's peculiar view of the matter, then, passes with him into a phase\nof poetic thought; as indeed all that Plato's genius touched came in\ncontact with poetry.  Of course we are not naturally formed to love, or\nbe interested in, or attracted towards, the abstract as such; to\nnotions, we might think, carefully deprived of all the incident, the\ncolour and variety, which fits things--this or that--to the\nconstitution and natural habit of our minds, fits them for attachment\nto what we really are.  We cannot love or live upon genus and species,\naccident or substance, but for our minds, as for our bodies, need an\norchard or a garden, with fruit and roses.  Take a seed from the\ngarden.  What interest it has for us all lies in our sense of potential\ndifferentiation to come: the leaves, leaf upon leaf, the flowers, a\nthousand new seeds in turn.  It is so with animal seed; and with\nhumanity, individually, or as a whole, its expansion into a detailed,\never-changing, parti-coloured history of particular facts and persons.\nAbstraction, the introduction of general ideas, seems to close it up\nagain; to reduce flower and fruit, odour and savour, back again into\nthe dry and worthless seed.  We might as well be colour-blind at once,\nand there [156] is not a proper name left!  We may contrast generally\nthe mental world we actually live in, where classification, the\nreduction of all things to common types, has come so far, and where the\nparticular, to a great extent, is known only as the member of a class,\nwith that other world, on the other side of the generalising movement\nto which Plato and his master so largely contributed--a world we might\ndescribe as being under Homeric conditions, such as we picture to\nourselves with regret, for which experience was intuition, and life a\ncontinuous surprise, and every object unique, where all knowledge was\nstill of the concrete and the particular, face to face delightfully.\n\nTo that gaudy tangle of what gardens, after all, are meant to produce,\nin the decay of time, as we may think at first sight, the systematic,\nlogical gardener put his meddlesome hand, and straightway all ran to\nseed; to genus and species and differentia, into formal classes, under\ngeneral notions, and with--yes! with written labels fluttering on the\nstalks, instead of blossoms--a botanic or \"physic\" garden, as they used\nto say, instead of our flower-garden and orchard.  And yet (it must be\nconfessed on the other hand) what we actually see, see and hear, is\nmore interesting than ever; the nineteenth century as compared with the\nfirst, with Plato's days or Homer's; the faces, the persons behind\nthose masks which yet express so much, the flowers, or whatever it may\nhappen to be they carry or [157] touch.  The concrete, and that even as\na visible thing, has gained immeasurably in richness and compass, in\nfineness, and interest towards us, by the process, of which those acts\nof generalisation, of reduction to class and generic type, have\ncertainly been a part.  And holding still to the concrete, the\nparticular, to the visible or sensuous, if you will, last as first,\nthinking of that as essentially the one vital and lively thing, really\nworth our while in a short life, we may recognise sincerely what\ngeneralisation and abstraction have done or may do, are defensible as\ndoing, just for that--for the particular gem or flower--what its proper\nservice is to a mind in search, precisely, of a concrete and intuitive\nknowledge such as that.\n\nThink, for a moment, of the difference, as regards mental attitude,\nbetween the naturalist who deals with things through ideas, and the\nlayman (so to call him) in picking up a shell on the sea-shore; what it\nis that the subsumption of the individual into the species, its\nsubsequent alliance to and co-ordination with other species, really\ndoes for the furnishing of the mind of the former.  The layman, though\nwe need not suppose him inattentive, or unapt to retain impressions, is\nin fact still but a child; and the shell, its colours and convolution,\nno more than a dainty, very easily destructible toy to him.  Let him\nbecome a schoolboy about it, so to speak.  The toy he puts aside; his\nmind is [158] drilled perforce, to learn about it; and thereby is\nexercised, he may think, with everything except just the thing itself,\nas he cares for it; with other shells, with some general laws of life,\nand for a while it might seem that, turning away his eyes from the\n\"vanity\" of the particular, he has been made to sacrifice the concrete,\nthe real and living product of nature, to a mere dry and abstract\nproduct of the mind.  But when he comes out of school, and on the sea-\nshore again finds a fellow to his toy, perhaps a finer specimen of it,\nhe may see what the service of that converse with the general has\nreally been towards the concrete, towards what he sees--in regard to\nthe particular thing he actually sees.  By its juxtaposition and co-\nordination with what is ever more and more not it, by the contrast of\nits very imperfection, at this point or that, with its own proper and\nperfect type, this concrete and particular thing has, in fact, been\nenriched by the whole colour and expression of the whole circumjacent\nworld, concentrated upon, or as it were at focus in, it.  By a kind of\nshort-hand now, and as if in a single moment of vision, all that, which\nonly a long experience, moving patiently from part to part, could\nexhaust, its manifold alliance with the entire world of nature, is\nlegible upon it, as it lies there in one's hand.\n\nSo it is with the shell, the gem, with a glance of the eye; so it may\nbe with the moral act, [159] with a condition of the mind, or a\nfeeling.  You may draw, by use of this coinage (it is Hobbes's figure)\nthis coinage of representative words and thoughts, at your pleasure,\nupon the accumulative capital of the whole experience of humanity.\nGeneralisation, whatever Platonists, or Plato himself at mistaken\nmoments, may have to say about it, is a method, not of obliterating the\nconcrete phenomenon, but of enriching it, with the joint perspective,\nthe significance, the expressiveness, of all other things beside.  What\nbroad-cast light he enjoys!--that scholar, confronted with the sea-\nshell, for instance, or with some enigma of heredity in himself or\nanother, with some condition of a particular soul, in circumstances\nwhich may never precisely so occur again; in the contemplation of that\nsingle phenomenon, or object, or situation.  He not only sees, but\nunderstands (thereby only seeing the more) and will, therefore, also\nremember.  The significance of the particular object he will retain, by\nuse of his intellectual apparatus of notion and general law, as, to use\nPlato's own figure, fluid matter may be retained in vessels, not indeed\nof unbaked clay, but of alabaster or bronze.  So much by way of apology\nfor general ideas--abstruse, or intangible, or dry and seedy and\nwooden, as we may sometimes think them.\n\n\"Two things,\" says Aristotle, \"might rightly be attributed to Socrates:\ninductive reasoning, [160] and universal definitions.\"  Now when\nAristotle says this of Socrates, he is recording the institution of a\nmethod, which might be applied in the way just indicated, to natural\nobjects, to such a substance as carbon, or to such natural processes as\nheat or motion; but which, by Socrates himself, as by Plato after him,\nwas applied almost exclusively to moral phenomena, to the\ngeneralisation of aesthetic, political, ethical ideas, of the laws of\noperation (for the essence of every true conception, or definition, or\nidea, is a law of operation) of the feelings and the will.  To get a\nnotion, a definition, or idea, of motion, for example, which shall not\nexclude the subtler forms of it, heat for instance--to get a notion of\ncarbon, which shall include not common charcoal only, but the diamond,\na thing superficially so unlike it, and which shall also exclude,\nperhaps, some other substance, superficially almost indistinguishable\nfrom it: such is the business of physical science, in obedience to\nrules, outlined by Bacon in the first book of the Novum Organum, for\nsecuring those acts of \"inclusion\" and \"exclusion,\" inclusiones,\nexclusiones, naturae, debitae, as he says, \"which the nature of things\nrequires,\" if our thoughts are not to misrepresent them.\n\nIt was a parallel process, a process of inclusion, that one's resultant\nidea should be adequate, of rejection or exclusion, that this idea\nshould be not redundant, which Socrates applied [161] to practice;\nexercising, as we see in the Platonic Dialogues, the two opposed\nfunctions of synag\u00f4g\u00ea and diairesis,+ for the formation of just ideas of\nTemperance, Wisdom, Bravery, Justice itself--a classification of the\nphenomena of the entire world of feeling and action.  Ideas, if they\nfulfil their proper purpose, represent to the mind such phenomena, for\nits convenience, but may easily also misrepresent them.  In the\ntransition from the particulars to the general, and again in the\ntransition from the general idea, the mental word, to the spoken or\nwritten word, to what we call the definition, a door lies open, both\nfor the adulteration and the diminution of the proper content, of our\nconception, our definition.  The first growth of the Platonic \"ideas,\"\nas we see it in Socrates, according to the report of Aristotle,\nprovided against this twofold misrepresentation.  Its aim is to secure,\nin the terms of our discourse with others and with ourselves, precise\nequivalence to what they denote.  It was a \"mission\" to go about Athens\nand challenge people to guard the inlets of error, in the passage from\nfacts to their thoughts about them, in the passage from thoughts to\nwords.  It was an intellectual gymnastic, to test, more exactly than\nthey were in the habit of doing, the equivalence of words they used so\nconstantly as Just, Brave, Beautiful, to the thoughts they had; of\nthose thoughts to the facts of experience, which it was the business of\nthose [162] thoughts precisely to represent; to clear the mental air;\nto arrange the littered work-chamber of the mind.\n\nIn many of Plato's Dialogues we see no more than the ordered reflex of\nthis process, informal as it was in the actual practice of Socrates.\nOut of the accidents of a conversation, as from the confused currents\nof life and action, the typical forms of the vices and virtues emerge\nin definite outline.  The first contention of The Republic, for\ninstance, is to establish in regard to the nature of Justice, terms as\nexactly conterminous with thoughts, thoughts as exactly conterminous\nwith moral facts, as the notion of carbon is for the naturalist, when\nit has come to include both charcoal and the diamond, on the basis of\nthe essential law of their operation as experience reveals it.  Show\nus, not merely accidental truths about it; but, by the doing of what\n(Ti poiousa)+ in the very soul of its possessor, itself by itself,\nJustice is a good, and Injustice a bad thing.  That illustrates exactly\nwhat is meant by \"an idea,\" the force of \"knowledge through ideas,\" in\nthe particular instance of Justice.  It will include perhaps, on the\none hand, forms of Justice so remote from the Justice of our everyday\nexperience as to seem inversions of it; it will clearly exclude, on the\nother hand, acts and thoughts, not it, yet, phenomenally, so like it,\nas to deceive the very gods; and its area will be expanded sufficiently\nto include, not the individual [163] only, but the state.  And you, the\nphilosophic student, were to do that, not for one virtue only, but for\nPiety, and Beauty, and the State itself, and Knowledge, and Opinion,\nand the Good.  Nay, you might go on and do the same thing for the\nphysical, when you came to the end of the moral, world, were life long\nenough, and if you had the humour for it:--for Motion, Number, Colour,\nSound.  That, then, was the first growth of the Platonic ideas, as\nderived immediately from Socrates, whose formal contribution to\nphilosophy had been \"universal definitions,\" developed \"inductively,\"\nby the twofold method of \"inclusion\" and \"exclusion.\"\n\nAristotle adds, however, that Socrates had stopped at the point here\nindicated: he had not gone on, like some others, to make those\nuniversal notions or definitions \"separable\"--separable, that is to\nsay, from the particular and concrete instances, from which he had\ngathered them.  Separable: ch\u00f4ristos + (famous word!) that is precisely\nwhat general notions become in what is specially called \"the Platonic\nTheory of Ideas.\"  The \"Ideas\" of Plato are, in truth, neither more nor\nless than those universal definitions, those universal conceptions, as\nthey look, as they could not but look, amid the peculiar lights and\nshadows, in the singularly constituted atmosphere, under the strange\nlaws of refraction, and in the proper perspective, of Plato's house of\nthought.  By its peculiarities, subsequent thought--philosophic, [164]\npoetic, theological--has been greatly influenced; by the intense\nsubjectivities, the accidents, so to speak, of Plato's genius, of Plato\nhimself; the ways constitutional with him, the magic or trick of his\npersonality, in regarding the intellectual material he was occupied\nwith--by Plato's psychology.  And it is characteristic of him, again,\nthat those peculiarities of his mental attitude are evidenced\ninformally; by a tendency, as we said, by the mere general tone in\nwhich he speaks of Beauty, for instance, \"as it really is,\" of all that\n\"really is,\" under its various forms; a manner of speaking, not\nexplicit, but veiled, in various degrees, under figures, as at the end\nof the sixth book of The Republic, or under mythological fantasies,\nlike those of the Phaedrus.  He seems to have no inclination for the\nresponsibilities of definite theory; for a system such as that of the\nNeo-Platonists for instance, his own later followers, who, in a kind of\nprosaic and cold-blooded transcendentalism, developed as definite\nphilosophic dogma, hard enough in more senses than one, what in Plato\nis to the last rather poetry than metaphysical reasoning--the\nirrepressible because almost unconscious poetry, which never deserts\nhim, even when treating of what is neither more nor less than a chapter\nin the rudiments of logic.\n\nThe peculiar development of the Socratic realism by Plato can then only\nbe understood [165] by a consideration of the peculiarities of Plato's\ngenius; how it reacted upon those abstractions; what they came to seem\nin its peculiar atmosphere.  The Platonic doctrine of \"Ideas,\" as was\nsaid, is not so much a doctrine, as a way of speaking or feeling about\ncertain elements of the mind; and this temper, this peculiar way of\nfeeling, of speaking, which for most of us will have many difficulties,\nis not uniformly noticeable in Plato's Dialogues, but is to be found\nmore especially in the Phaedo, the Symposium, and in certain books of\nThe Republic, above all in the Phaedrus.  Here is a famous passage from\nit:--\n\n     There (that is to say, at a particular point in a sort of\n     Pythagorean mental pilgrimage through time and space) there,\n     at last, its utmost travail and contest awaits the soul.\n     For the immortal souls, so-called, when they were upon the\n     highest point, passed out and stood (as you might stand upon\n     the outside of a great hollow sphere) upon the back of the sky.\n     And as they stand there, the revolution of the spheres carries\n     them round; and they behold the things that are beyond the sky.\n     That supercelestial place none of our poets on earth has ever\n     yet sung of, nor will ever sing, worthily.  And thus it is:\n     for I must make bold to state the truth, at any rate,\n     especially as it is about truth, that I am speaking.  For the\n     colourless, and formless, and impalpable Being, being in very\n     truth of (that is, relative to) the soul, is visible by reason\n     alone as one's guide.  Centered about that, the generation, or\n     seed, genos,+--the people, of true knowledge inhabits this\n     place.  As, then, the intelligence of God, which is nourished\n     by pure or unmixed reason and knowledge (ak\u00earat\u00f4,+ unmixed\n     with sense) so, the intelligence of every other soul also,\n     which is about to receive that which properly belongs to it,\n     beholding, after long interval, that which is, loves [166] it\n     (that's the point!) and by the vision of truth is fed; and\n     fares well; until, in cycle, the revolving movement brings\n     it round again to the same place.  And in that journey round\n     it looks upon justice itself; it looks upon Temperance, upon\n     Knowledge; not that knowledge to which the process of becoming\n     (the law of change, namely, of birth and death and decay)\n     attaches; nor that which is, as it were, one in one thing,\n     another in another, of those things which now we speak of as\n     being; but the knowledge which is in that which in very deed is\n     (t\u00ean en t\u00f4 ho estin on ontos epist\u00eam\u00ean ousan)+ and having beheld,\n     after the same manner, all other things that really are, and\n     feasted upon them, being passed back again to the interior of\n     the sky, the soul returned home.  Phaedrus, 247.+\n\nOnly, as Plato thinks, that return was, in fact, an exile.\nThere, in that attractive, but perhaps not wholly acceptable, sort of\ndiscourse, in some other passages like it, Plato has gone beyond his\nmaster Socrates, on two planes or levels, so to speak, of speculative\nascent, which we may distinguish from each other, by way of making a\nlittle clearer what is in itself certainly so difficult.\n\nFor Plato, then, not by way of formal theory, we must remember, but by\na turn of thought and speech (while he speaks of them, in fact) the\nSocratic \"universals,\" the notions of Justice and the like, are become,\nfirst, things in themselves--the real things; and secondly, persons, to\nbe known as persons must be; and to be loved, for the perfections, the\nvisible perfections, we might say--intellectually visible--of [167]\ntheir being.  \"It looks upon Justice itself; it looks upon Temperance;\nupon Knowledge.\"\n\nHitherto, in the Socratic disputations, the ideas had been creations,\nserviceable creations, of men's thought, of our reason.  With Plato,\nthey are the creators of our reason--those treasures of experience,\nstacked and stored, which, to each one of us, come as by inheritance,\nor with no proportionate effort on our part, to direct, to enlarge and\nrationalise, from the first use of language by us, our manner of taking\nthings.  For Plato, they are no longer, as with Socrates, the\ninstruments by which we tabulate and classify and record our\nexperience--mere \"marks\" of the real things of experience, of what is\nessential in this or that, and common to every particular that goes by\na certain common name; but are themselves rather the proper objects of\nall true knowledge, and a passage from all merely relative experience\nto the \"absolute.\"  In proportion as they lend themselves to the\nindividual, in his effort to think, they create reason in him; they\nreproduce the eternal reason for him.  For Socrates, as Aristotle\nunderstands him, they were still in service to, and valid only in and\nby, the experience they recorded, with no locus standi beyond.  For\nPlato, for Platonists, they are become--Justice and Beauty, and the\nperfect State, or again Equality (that which we must bring with us, if\nwe are to apprehend sensible [168] instances thereof, but which no two\nequal things here, two coins, ever really attain) nay, Couch, or Tree,\nevery general thought, or name of a thing, whatever--separate\n(ch\u00f4ristos)+ separable from, as being essentially independent of, the\nindividual mind which conceives them; as also of the particular\ntemporary instances which come under them, come and go, while they\nremain for ever--those eternal \"forms,\" of Tree, Equality, Justice, and\nso forth.\n\nThat, then, is the first stage, or plane, of Platonic\ntranscendentalism.  Our common ideas, without which, in fact, we none\nof us could think at all, are not the consequence, not the products,\nbut the cause of our reason in us: we did not make them; but they make\nus what we are, as reasonable beings.  The eternal Being, of\nParmenides, one and indivisible, has been diffused, divided, resolved,\nrefracted, differentiated, into the eternal Ideas, a multiple,\nnumerous, stellar world, so to call it--abstract light into stars:\nJustice, Temperance as it is, Bravery as it is.  Permanence,\nindependency, indefectible identity with itself--all those qualities\nwhich Parmenides supposed in the one and indivisible reality--belong to\nevery one of those ideas severally.\n\nIt was like a recrudescence of polytheism in that abstract world; a\nreturn of the many gods of Homer, veiled now as abstract notions, Love,\n[169] Fear, Confidence, and the like; and as such, the modern\nanthropologist, our student of the natural history of man, would rank\nthe Platonic theory as but a form of what he calls \"animism.\"  Animism,\nthat tendency to locate the movements of a soul like our own in every\nobject, almost in every circumstance, which impresses one with a sense\nof power, is a condition of mind, of which the simplest illustration is\nprimitive man adoring, as a divine being endowed with will, the\nmeteoric stone that came rushing from the sky.  That condition\n\"survives\" however, in the negro, who thinks the discharging gun a\nliving creature; as it survives also, more subtly, in the culture of\nWordsworth and Shelley, for whom clouds and peaks are kindred spirits;\nin the pantheism of Goethe; and in Schelling, who formulates that\npantheism as a philosophic, a Platonic, theory.  Such \"animistic\"\ninstinct was, certainly, a natural element in Plato's mental\nconstitution,--the instinctive effort to find anima, the conditions of\npersonality, in whatever pre-occupied his mind, a mind, be it\nremembered, of which the various functions, as we reckon them,\nimagination, reason, intuition, were still by no means clearly analysed\nand differentiated from each other, but participated, all alike and all\ntogether, in every single act of mind.\n\nAnd here is the second stage of the Platonic idealism, the second grade\nof Plato's departure [170] from the simpler realism of his master, as\nnoted by Aristotle, towards that  \"intelligible world,\" opposed by him\nso constantly to the visible world, into which many find it so hard to\nfollow him at all, and in which the \"ideas\" become veritable persons.\nTo speak, to think, to feel, about abstract ideas as if they were\nliving persons; that, is the second stage of Plato's speculative\nascent.  With the lover, who had graduated, was become a master, in the\nschool of love, but had turned now to the love of intellectual and\nstrictly invisible things, it was as if the faculty of physical vision,\nof the bodily eye, were still at work at the very centre of\nintellectual abstraction.  Abstract ideas themselves became animated,\nliving persons, almost corporeal, as if with hands and eyes.  And it\nis, as a consequence, but partly also as a secondary reinforcing cause,\nof this mental condition, that the idea of Beauty becomes for Plato the\ncentral idea; the permanently typical instance of what an idea means;\nof its relation to particular things, and to the action of our thoughts\nupon them.  It was to the lover dealing with physical beauty, a thing\nseen, yet unseen--seen by all, in some sense, and yet, truly, by one\nand not by another, as if through some capricious, personal self-\ndiscovery, by some law of affinity between the seer and what is seen,\nthe knowing and the known--that the nature and function of an idea, as\nsuch, would come home most clearly. [170] And then, while visible\nbeauty is the clearest, the most certain thing, in the world (lovers\nwill always tell you so) real with the reality of something hot or cold\nin one's hand, it also comes nearest of all things, so Plato assures\nus, to its eternal pattern or prototype.  For some reason, the eternal\nidea of beauty had left visible copies of itself, shadows, antitypes,\nout of all proportion, in their truthfulness and adequacy, to any copy,\nleft here with us, of Justice, for instance, or Equality, or the\nPerfect State.  The typical instance of an abstract idea, yet pre-\noccupying the mind with all the colour and circumstance of the\nrelationship of person to person, the idea of Beauty, conveyed into the\nentire theory of ideas, the associations which belong properly to such\nrelationships only.  A certain measure of caprice, of capricious\npreference or repulsion, would thus be naturally incidental to the\ncommerce of men's minds with what really is, with the world in which\nthings really are, only so far as they are truly known.  \"Philosophers\nare lovers of truth and of that which is--impassioned lovers\": Tou\nontos te kai al\u00eatheias erastas tous philosophous.+  They are the\ncornerstone, as readers of The Republic know, of the ideal state--those\nimpassioned lovers, erastas,+ of that which really is, and in comparison\nwherewith, office, wealth, honour, the love of which has rent Athens,\nthe world, to pieces, will be of no more than secondary importance.\n\n[172] He is in truth, in the power, in the hands, of another, of\nanother will--this lover of the Ideas--attracted, corrected, guided,\nrewarded, satiated, in a long discipline, that \"ascent of the soul into\nthe intelligible world,\" of which the ways of earthly love (ta er\u00f4tika)+\nare a true parallel.  His enthusiasm of knowledge is literally an\nenthusiasm: has about it that character of possession of one person by\nanother, by which those \"animistic\" old Greeks explained natural\nmadness.  That philosophic enthusiasm, that impassioned desire for true\nknowledge, is a kind of madness (mania)+ the madness to which some have\ndeclared great wit, all great gifts, to be always allied--the fourth\nspecies of mania, as Plato himself explains in the Phaedrus.  To\nnatural madness, to poetry and the other gifts allied to it, to\nprophecy like that of the Delphic pythoness, he has to add, fourthly,\nthe \"enthusiasm of the ideas.\"\n\n     The whole course of our theory hitherto (he there tells us)\n     relates to that fourth form of madness; wherein, when any one,\n     seeing the beauty that is here below, and having a reminiscence\n     of the true, feels, or finds, his wings (pter\u00f4tai)+ fluttering\n     upwards, in his eagerness to soar above, but unable, like a\n     bird looking towards the sky, heedless of things below, he is\n     charged with unsoundness of mind.  I have told how this is the\n     most excellent of all forms of enthusiasm (or possession) both\n     to its possessor and to him who participates in it; how it comes\n     of the noblest causes; and that the lover who has a share of\n     this madness is called a lover of the beautiful.  For, as has\n     been said, every soul of man, by its very nature, has seen the\n     things that really are, otherwise it would not have come into\n     this form of life (into a human body).  But to rise from things\n     here to the recollection of those, is not an easy matter [173]\n     for every soul; neither for those which then had but a brief\n     view of things there; nor for such as were unlucky in their\n     descent hither, so that, through the influence of certain\n     associations, turning themselves to what is not right, they\n     have forgotten the sacred forms which then they saw.  Few souls,\n     in truth, remain, to which the gift of reminiscence adequately\n     pertains.  These, when they see some likeness of things there,\n     are lost in amazement, and belong no longer to themselves;\n     only, they understand not the true nature of their affection,\n     because they lack discernment.  Now, of Justice, and of\n     Temperance, and of all those other qualities which are precious\n     to souls, there is no clear light in their semblances here below;\n     but, through obscure organs, with difficulty, very few, coming\n     to their figures, behold the generation (genos,+ the people)\n     of that which is figured.  At that moment it was possible to\n     behold Beauty in its clearness, when, with the choir of the\n     blessed following on, ourselves with Zeus, some with one, some\n     with another, of the gods, they looked upon a blissful vision\n     and view, and were made partakers in what it is meet and right\n     to call the most blessed of all mysteries; the which we\n     celebrated, sound and whole then, and untouched by the evil\n     things that awaited us in time to come, as being admitted to\n     mystic sights, whole and sound and at unity with themselves,\n     in pure light gazing on them, being ourselves pure, and\n     unimpressed by this we carry about now and call our body,\n     imprisoned like a fish in its shell.\n\n     Let memory be indulged thus far; for whose sake, in regret\n     for what was then, I have now spoken somewhat at length.\n     As regards Beauty, as I said, it both shone out, in its true\n     being, among those other eternal forms; and when we came down\n     hither we apprehended it through the clearest of all our bodily\n     senses, gleaming with utmost brightness.  For sight comes to\n     us keenest of all our bodily senses, though Wisdom is not seen\n     by it.  Marvellous loves, in truth, would that (namely, Wisdom)\n     have afforded, had it presented any manifest image of itself,\n     such as that of Beauty, had it reached our bodily vision--that,\n     and all those other amiable forms.  But now Beauty alone has\n     had this fortune; so that it is the clearest, the most certain,\n     of all things; and the most lovable.  Phaedrus, 249.+\n\nNOTES\n\n152. +Transliteration: no\u00eatos topos.  Pater's translation: \"intellectual\nworld.\"  Plato, Republic 508b and 517b.\n\n153. +Transliteration: homoion homoi\u00f4.  Pater's translation: \"like to\nlike.\"  Variants of the phrase occur in many of Plato's dialogues; see,\nfor example, Parmenides 132d.\n\n153. +Transliteration: hypo log\u00f4n.  Pater's translation: \"under the\ninfluence of  . . . thought and language.\"  Plato, Philebus 15d.\n\n153. +Transliteration: kinei.  Pater's translation: \"sets in motion.\"\nPlato, Philebus 15e.\n\n154. +Transliteration: logos.  Pater's contextual translation:\n\"definition.\"  Plato, Philebus 15e.\n\n154. +The passage begins at Philebus 15d.\n\n161. +Transliteration: synag\u00f4g\u00ea . . . diairesis.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinition / E-text editor's translation: \".\"  For example, Phaedrus\n266b.\n\n162. +Transliteration: Ti poiousa.  Pater's translation: \"by the doing\nof what.\"\n\n163. +Transliteration: ch\u00f4ristos.  Pater's translation: \"separable.\"\nThe term occurs often in Aristotle's Metaphysics.  For example, see\nMetaphysics 1090a.\n\n165. +Transliteration: genos.  Pater's translation: \"seed, generation.\"\nLiddell and Scott definition: \"race, descent.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 247a.\n165. +Transliteration: ak\u00earat\u00f4.  Pater's translation: \"unmixed with\nsense.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 247a.\n\n166. +Transliteration: t\u00ean en t\u00f4 ho estin on ontos epist\u00eam\u00ean ousan.\nPater's translation: \"the knowledge which is in that which in very deed\nis.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 247e.\n\n166. See Plato, Phaedrus 247b ff.\n\n168. +Transliteration: ch\u00f4ristos.  Pater's translation: \"separable.\"\nThe term occurs often in Aristotle's Metaphysics.  For example, see\nMetaphysics 1090a.\n\n171. +Transliteration: Tou ontos te kai al\u00eatheias erastas tous\nphilosophous.  Liddell and Scott definition / E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"Philosophers are lovers of truth and of that which is\n. . .\"  Plato, Republic 501d.\n\n171. +Transliteration: erastas.  See previous note.\n\n172. +Transliteration: ta er\u00f4tika.  Pater's translation: \"the discipline\nof sensuous love;\" more literally, the phrase means \"things pertaining\nto love.\"  For one instance, see Plato, Symposium 177d.\n\n172. +Transliteration: mania.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"madness,\nfrenzy.\"  See, for example, Plato, Phaedrus 249d.\n\n172. +Transliteration: pter\u00f4tai.  E-text editor's translation: \"[he] is\nfurnished with wings.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 249d.\n\n173. +Transliteration: genos.  Pater's translation: \"seed, generation.\"\nLiddell and Scott definition: \"race, descent.\"  Plato, Phaedrus 247a.\n\n173. +This passage begins at Phaedrus 249d.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 7: THE DOCTRINE OF PLATO\n\nII. DIALECTIC\n\n[174] Three different forms of composition have, under the intellectual\nconditions of different ages, prevailed--three distinct literary\nmethods, in the presentation of philosophic thought; the metrical form\nearliest, when philosophy was still a matter of intuition, imaginative,\nsanguine, often turbid or obscure, and became a Poem, Peri Physe\u00f4s,+\n\"Concerning Nature\"; according to the manner of Pythagoras, \"his golden\nverses,\" of Parmenides or Empedokles, after whom Lucretius in his turn\nmodelled the finest extant illustration of that manner of writing, of\nthinking.\n\nIt was succeeded by precisely the opposite manner, when native\nintuition had shrunk into dogmatic system, the dry bones of which\nrattle in one's ears, with Aristotle, or Aquinas, or Spinoza, as a\nformal treatise; the perfected philosophic temper being situated midway\nbetween those opposites, in the third essential form of the literature\nof philosophy, namely the essay; that characteristic literary type of\nour own time, a time so rich and various in special apprehensions of\ntruth, so tentative and dubious in its sense of their ensemble, and\nissues.  Strictly appropriate form of our modern philosophic\nliterature, the essay came into use at what was really the invention of\nthe relative, [175] or \"modern\" spirit, in the Renaissance of the\nsixteenth century.*\n\nThe poem, the treatise, the essay: you see already that these three\nmethods of writing are no mere literary accidents, dependent on the\npersonal choice of this or that particular writer, but necessities of\nliterary form, determined directly by matter, as corresponding to three\nessentially different ways in which the human mind relates itself to\ntruth.  If oracular verse, stimulant but enigmatic, is the proper\nvehicle of enthusiastic intuitions; if the treatise, with its ambitious\narray of premiss and conclusion, is the natural out-put of scholastic\nall-sufficiency; so, the form of the essay, as we have it towards the\nend of the sixteenth century, most significantly in Montaigne,\nrepresentative essayist because the representative doubter, inventor of\nthe name as, in essence, of the thing--of the essay, in its seemingly\nmodest aim, its really large and adventurous possibilities--is\nindicative of Montaigne's peculiar function in regard to his age, as in\ntruth the commencement of our own.  It provided him with precisely the\nliterary form necessary to a mind for which truth itself is but a\npossibility, realisable not as general conclusion, but rather as the\nelusive effect of a particular personal experience; to a mind which,\nnoting [176] faithfully those random lights that meet it by the way,\nmust needs content itself with suspension of judgment, at the end of\nthe intellectual journey, to the very last asking: Que scais-je?  Who\nknows?--in the very spirit of that old Socratic contention, that all\ntrue philosophy is but a refined sense of one's ignorance.\n\nAnd as Aristotle is the inventor of the treatise, so the Platonic\nDialogue, in its conception, its peculiar opportunities, is essentially\nan essay--an essay, now and then passing into the earlier form of\nphilosophic poetry, the prose-poem of Heraclitus.  There have been\neffective writers of dialogue since, Bruno, for instance, Berkeley,\nLandor, with whom, however, that literary form has had no strictly\nconstitutional propriety to the kind of matter it conveyed, as lending\nitself (that is to say) structurally to a many-sided but hesitant\nconsciousness of the truth.  Thus, with Berkeley, its purpose is but to\ngive a popular turn to certain very dogmatic opinions, about which\nthere is no diffidence, there are no half-lights, in the writer's own\nmind.  With Plato, on the other hand, with Plato least of all is the\ndialogue--that peculiar modification of the essay--anything less than\nessential, necessary, organic: the very form belongs to, is of the\norganism of, the matter which it embodies.  For Plato's Dialogues, in\nfact, reflect, they refine [177] upon while they fulfil, they idealise,\nthe actual method, in which, by preference to anything like formal\nlecturing (the lecture being, so to speak, a treatise in embryo)\nSocrates conveyed his doctrine to others.  We see him in those\nDialogues of Plato, still loitering in the public places, the open\nhouses, the suburban roads, of Athens, as if seeking truth from others;\nseeking it, doubtless, from himself, but along with, and by the help\nof, his supposed scholars, for whom, indeed, he can but bring their own\nnative conceptions of truth to the birth; but always faithfully\nregistering just so much light as is given, and, so to speak, never\nconcluding.\n\nThe Platonic Dialogue is the literary transformation, in a word, of\nwhat was the intimately home-grown method of Socrates, not only of\nconveying truth to others, but of coming by it for himself.  The\nessence of that method, of \"dialectic\" in all its forms, as its very\nname denotes, is dialogue, the habit of seeking truth by means of\nquestion and answer, primarily with one's self.  Just there, lies the\nvalidity of the method--in a dialogue, an endless dialogue, with one's\nself; a dialogue concerning those first principles, or \"universal\ndefinitions,\" or notions, those \"ideas,\" which, according to Plato, are\nthe proper objects of all real knowledge; concerning the adequacy of\none's hold upon them; the relationship to them of other notions; the\nplausible conjectures in our own or other minds, [178] which come short\nof them; the elimination, by their mere presence in the mind, of\npositive ignorance or error.  Justice, Beauty, Perfect Polity, and the\nlike, in outlines of eternal and absolute certainty:--they were to be\napprehended by \"dialectic,\" literally, by a method (methodos)+ a\ncircuitous journey, presented by the Platonic dialogues in its most\naccomplished literary form.\n\nFor the certainty, the absolute and eternal character, of such ideas\ninvolved, with much labour and scruple, repeated acts of qualification\nand correction; many readjustments to experience; expansion, by larger\nlights from it; those exclusions and inclusions, debitae naturae (to\nrepeat Bacon's phrase) demanded, that is to say, by the veritable\nnature of the facts which those ideas are designed to represent.\n\"Representation\" was, in fact, twofold, and comprehended many\nsuccessive steps under each of its divisions.  The thought was to be\nadjusted, first, to the phenomena, to the facts, daintily, to the end\nthat the said thought might just cover those facts, and no more.  To\nthe thought, secondly, to the conception, thus articulated, it was\nnecessary to adjust the term; the term, or \"definition,\" by which it\nmight be conveyed into the mind of another.  The dialogue--the freedom,\nthe variety and elasticity, of dialogue, informal, easy, natural, alone\nafforded the room necessary for that long and complex process.  If one,\nif Socrates, seemed to become [179] the teacher of another, it was but\nby thinking aloud for a few moments over his own lesson, or leaning\nupon that other as he went along that difficult way which each one must\nreally prosecute for himself, however full such comradeship might be of\nhappy occasions for the awakening of the latent knowledge, with which\nmind is by nature so richly stored.  The Platonic Socrates, in fact,\ndoes not propose to teach anything: is but willing, \"along with you,\"\nand if you concur, \"to consider, to seek out, what the thing may be.\nPerchance using our eyes in common, rubbing away, we might cause\nJustice, for instance, to glint forth, as from fire-sticks.\"*\n\n\"And,\" again, \"is not the road to Athens made for conversation?\"  Yes!\nIt might seem that movement, after all, and any habit that promoted\nmovement, promoted the power, the successes, the fortunate parturition,\nof the mind.  A method such as this, a process (processus) a movement\nof thought, which is the very converse of mathematical or demonstrative\nreasoning, and incapable therefore of conventional or scholastic form,\nof \"exactness,\" in fact; which proceeded to truth, not by the analysis\nand application of an axiom, but by a gradual suppression of error, of\nerror in the form of partial or exaggerated truths on the subject-\nmatter proposed, found its proper [180] literary vehicle in a dialogue,\nthe more flexible the better.  It was like a journey indeed, that essay\ntowards Justice, for example, or the true Polity; a journey, not along\nthe simple road to Athens, but to a mountain's top.  The proportions,\nthe outline, the relation of the thing to its neighbours,--how do the\ninexperienced in such journeys mistake them, as they climb!  What\nrepeated misconceptions, embodying, one by one, some mere particularity\nof view, the perspective of this or that point of view, forthwith\nabandoned, some apprehension of mountain form and structure, just a\nlittle short, or, it may be, immeasurably short, of what Plato would\ncall the \"synoptic\" view of the mountain as a whole.  From this or that\npoint, some insignificant peak presented itself as the mountain's\nveritable crest: inexperience would have sworn to the truth of a wholly\nillusive perspective, as the next turn in the journey assured one.  It\nis only upon the final step, with free view at last on every side,\nuniting together and justifying all those various, successive, partial\napprehensions of the difficult way--only on the summit, comes the\nintuitive comprehension of what the true form of the mountain really\nis; with a mental, or rather an imaginative hold upon which, for the\nfuture, we can find our way securely about it; observing perhaps that,\nnext to that final intuition, the first view, the first impression, had\nbeen truest about it.\n\n[181] Such, in its full scope, is the journey or pilgrimage, the method\n(hodos, kin\u00easis, methodos)+ of the Socratic, of the perfected Platonic\ndialectic, towards the truth, the true knowledge, of Bravery or\nFriendship, for instance; of Space or Motion, again, as suggested in\nthe seventh book of The Republic; of the ideal City, of the immaculate\nBeauty.  You are going about Justice, for example--that great complex\nelevation on the level surface of life, whose top, it may be, reaches\nto heaven.  You fancy you have grasped its outline.  Alla metath\u00f4metha.+\nYou are forced on, perhaps by your companion, a step further, and the\nview has already changed.  \"Persevere,\" Plato might say, \"and a step\nmay be made, upon which, again, the whole world around may change, the\nentire horizon and its relation to the point you stand on--a change\nfrom the half-light of conjecture to the full light of indefectible\ncertitude.\"  That, of course, can only happen by a summary act of\nintuition upon the entire perspective, wherein all those partial\napprehensions, which one by one may have seemed inconsistent with each\nother, find their due place, or (to return to the Platonic Dialogue\nagain, to the actual process of dialectic as there exposed) by that\nfinal impression of a subject, a theorem, in which the mind attains a\nhold, as if by a single imaginative act, through all the transitions of\na long conversation, upon all the seemingly opposite contentions of all\nthe various speakers at once.  We see already why [182] Platonic\ndialectic--the ladder, as Plato thinks, by which alone we can ascend\ninto the entirely reasonable world (no\u00eatos topos)+ beginning with the\nboyish difficulties and crudities of Meno, for instance, is a process\nwhich may go on, at least with those gifted by nature and opportunity,\nas in the Perfect City,--may go on to the close of life, and, as\nPythagorean theory suggests, perhaps does not end even then.\n\nThe process of dialectic, as represented in the Platonic Dialogues, may\nseem, therefore, inconsistent with itself, if you isolate this or that\nparticular movement, in what is a very complex process, with many\nphases of development.  It is certainly difficult, and that not merely\non a first reading, to grasp the unity of the various statements Plato\nhas made about it.  Now it may seem to differ from ordinary reasoning\nby a certain plausibility only: it is logic, plus persuasion; helping,\ngently enticing, a child out of his natural errors; carefully\nexplaining difficulties by the way, as one can best do, by question and\nanswer with him; above all, never falling into the mistake of the\nobscurum per obscurius.  At another time it may seem to aim at\nplausibility of another sort; at mutual complaisance, as Thrasymachus\ncomplains.  It would be possible, of course, to present an insincere\ndialogue, in which certain of the disputants shall be mere men of\nstraw.  In the Philebus again, dialectic is only the name of the\nprocess (described there [183] as exactly, almost as technically, as\nAristotle, or some modern master of applied logic, might describe it)\nof the resolution of a genus into its species.  Or it lapses into\n\"eristic\"--into an argument for its own sake; or sinks into logomachy,\na mere dispute about words.  Or yet again, an immense, a boundless\npromise is made for it, as in the seventh book of The Republic.  It is\na life, a systematised, but comprehensive and far-reaching,\nintellectual life, in which the reason, nay, the whole nature of man,\nrealises all it was designed to be, by the beatific \"vision of all time\nand all existence.\"\n\nNow all these varying senses of the word \"dialectic\" fall within\ncompass, if we remember that for Plato, as for every other really\nphilosophic thinker, method must be one; that it must cover, or be\nunderstood to cover, the entire process, all the various processes, of\nthe mind, in pursuit of properly representative ideas, of a reasoned\nreflex of experience; and that for Plato, this process is essentially a\nlong discourse or reasoning of the mind with itself.  It is that\ndynamic, or essential, dialogue of the mind with itself, which lends,\nor imputes, its active principle to the written or spoken dialogue,\nwhich, in return, lends its name to the method it figures--\n\"dialectic.\"  Well! in that long and complex dialogue of the mind with\nitself, many persons, so to speak, will necessarily take part; so many\npersons as there are possible contrasts or shades [184] in the\napprehension of some complex subject.  The advocatus diaboli will be\nheard from time to time.  The dog also, or, as the Greeks said, the\nwolf, will out with his story against the man; and one of the\ninterlocutors will always be a child, turning round upon us innocently,\ncandidly, with our own admissions, or surprising us, perhaps at the\nlast moment, by what seems his invincible ignorance, when we thought it\nrooted out of him.  There will be a youth, inexperienced in the\ncapacities of language, who will compel us to allow much time to the\ndiscussion of words and phrases, though not always unprofitably.  And\nto the last, let us hope, refreshing with his enthusiasm, the weary or\ndisheartened enquirer (who is always also of the company) the rightly\nsanguine youth, ingenuous and docile, to whom, surely, those friendly\nliving ideas will be willing, longing, to come, after that Platonic law\nof affinity, so effectual in these matters--homoion homoi\u00f4.+\n\nWith such a nature above all, bringing with it its felicities of\ntemperament, with the sort of natures (as we may think) which\nintellectually can but thrive, a method like that, the dialectic\nmethod, will also have its felicities, its singular good fortunes.  A\nvoyage of discovery, prosecuted almost as if at random, the Socratic or\nPlatonic \"dialogue of enquiry,\" seems at times to be in charge of a\nkind of \"Providence.\"  Or again, it will be as when hunters or bird-\ncatchers \"beat [185] the bush,\" as we say: Plato elaborates that figure\nin The Republic.  Only, if they be knowing in the process, a fair\npercentage of birds will be found and taken.  All the chances, or\ngraces, of such a method, as actually followed in a whole life of free\nenquiry, The Republic, for a watchful reader, represents in little.\nAnd when, using still another figure, Socrates says: \"I do not yet\nknow, myself; but, we must just go where the argument carries us, as a\nvessel runs before the wind,\" he breathes the very soul of the\n\"dialectic method\":--hop\u00ea an ho logos, h\u00f4sper pneuma, pher\u00ea, taut\u00ea\niteon.+\n\nThis dialectic method, this continuous discourse with one's self,\nbeing, for those who prosecute it with thoroughness, co-extensive with\nlife itself--a part of the continuous company we keep with ourselves\nthrough life--will have its inequalities; its infelicities; above all,\nits final insecurity.  \"We argue rashly and adventurously,\" writes\nPlato, most truly, in the Timaeus--aye, we, the Platonists, as such,\nsometimes--\"by reason that, like ourselves, our discourses (our\nPlatonic discourses, as such) have much participation in the temerity\nof chance.\"  Of course, as in any other occasional conversation, with\nits dependence on the hour and the scene, the persons we are with, the\nhumours of the moment, there will always be much of accident in this\nessentially informal, this un-methodical, [186] method; and, therefore,\nopportunities for misuse, sometimes consciously.  The candid reader\nnotes instances of such, even in The Republic, not always on the part\nof Thrasymachus:--in this \"new game of chess,\" played, as Plato puts\nit, not with counters, but with words, and not necessarily for the\nprize of truth, but, it may be, for the mere enjoyment of move and\ncounter-move, of check-mating.\n\nSince Zeno's paradoxes, in fact, the very air of Athens was become\nsophisticated, infected with questionings, often vain enough; and the\nPlatonic method had been, in its measure, determined by (the unfriendly\nmight say, was in truth only a deposit from) that infected air.\n\"Socrates,\" as he admits, \"is easily refuted.  Say rather, dear\nAgathon, that you cannot refute the truth.\"  That is reassuring,\ncertainly!  For you might think sometimes, uneasily, of the Platonic\nSocrates, that, as he says of the Sophist, or of himself perhaps en\ncaricature, in the Euthydemus, \"Such is his skill in the war of words,\nthat he can refute any proposition whatever, whether true or false\";\nthat, in short, there is a dangerous facility abroad for proving all\nthings whatever, equally well, of which Socrates, and his presumable\nallotment of truth, has but the general allotment.\n\nThe friendly, on the other hand, might rejoin even then, that, as\nLessing suggests, the search for truth is a better thing for us than\nits possession.\n\n[187] Plato, who supposes any knowledge worth the name to be \"absolute\nand eternal\"; whose constant contention it is, to separate longo\nintervallo, by the longest possible interval, science (epist\u00eam\u00ea)+ as the\npossession of irresistible truth, from any and every sort  of knowledge\nwhich falls short of that; would hardly have accepted the suggestion of\nLessing.  Yet, in spite of all that, in spite of the demand he makes\nfor certainty and exactness and what is absolute, in all real\nknowledge, he does think, or inclines his reader to think, that truth,\nprecisely because it resembles some high kind of relationship of\npersons to persons, depends a good deal on the receiver; and must be,\nin that degree, elusive, provisional, contingent, a matter of various\napproximation, and of an \"economy,\" as is said; that it is partly a\nsubjective attitude of mind:--that philosophic truth consists in the\nphilosophic temper.  \"Socrates in Plato,\" remarks Montaigne acutely,\n\"disputes, rather to the profit of the disputants, than of the dispute.\nHe takes hold of the first subject, like one who has a more profitable\nend in view than to explain it; namely, to clear the understandings\nthat he takes upon him to instruct and exercise.\"\n\nJust there, in fact, is the justification of Plato's peculiar\ndialectical method, of its inexactness, its hesitancy, its scruples and\nreserve, as if he feared to obtrude knowledge on an unworthy receiver.\nThe treatise, as the proper instrument of dogma [188] --the Ethics of\nAristotle, the Ethics of Spinoza--begins with a truth, or with a clear\nconviction of truth, in the axiom or definition, which it does but\npropose further to explain and apply.--The treatise, as the instrument\nof a dogmatic philosophy begins with an axiom or definition: the essay\nor dialogue, on the other hand, as the instrument of dialectic, does\nnot necessarily so much as conclude in one; like that long dialogue\nwith oneself, that dialectic process, which may be co-extensive with\nlife.  It does in truth little more than clear the ground, as we say,\nor the atmosphere, or the mental tablet, that one may have a fair\nchance of knowing, or seeing, perhaps: it does but put one into a duly\nreceptive attitude towards such possible truth, discovery, or\nrevelation, as may one day occupy the ground, the tablet,--shed itself\non the purified air; it does not provide a proposition, nor a system of\npropositions, but forms a temper.\n\nWhat Plato presents to his readers is then, again, a paradox, or a\nreconciliation of opposed tendencies: on one side, the largest possible\ndemand for infallible certainty in knowledge (it was he fixed that\nideal of absolute truth, to which, vainly perhaps, the human mind, as\nsuch, aspires) yet, on the other side, the utmost possible inexactness,\nor contingency, in the method by which actually he proposes to attain\nit.  It has been said that the humour of Socrates, of which the [189]\nfamous Socratic irony--the pretence to have a bad memory, to dislike or\ndistrust long and formal discourse, to have taught nothing, to be but a\nmid-wife in relation to other people's thoughts--was an element, is\nmore than a mere personal trait; that it was welcome as affording a\nmeans of escape from the full responsibilities of his teaching.  It\nbelonged, in truth, to the tentative character of dialectic, of\nquestion and answer as the method of discovery, of teaching and\nlearning, to the position, in a word, of the philosophic essayist.\nThat it was thus, might be illustrated abundantly from the Platonic\ndialogues.  The irony, the Socratic humour, so serviceable to a\ndiffident teacher, are, in fact, Plato's own.  Kindyneuei,+ \"it may\nchance to be,\" is, we may notice, a favourite catchword of his.  The\nphilosopher of Being, or, of the verb, \"To be,\" is after all afraid of\nsaying, \"It is.\"\n\nFor, again, person dealing with person--with possible caprice,\ntherefore, at least on one side--or intelligence with intelligence, is\nwhat Plato supposes in the reception of truth:--that, and not an exact\nmechanism, a precise machine, operating on, or with, an exactly\nponderable matter.  He has fears for truth, however carefully\nconsidered.  To the very last falsehood will lurk, if not about truth\nitself, about this or that assent to it.  The receiver may add the\nfalsities of his own nature to the truth he receives.  The proposition\nwhich embodies it very [190] imperfectly, may not look to him, in those\ndark chambers of his individuality, of himself, into which none but he\ncan ever get, to test the matter, what it looks to me, or to you.  We\nmay not even be thinking of, not looking at, the same thing, when we\ntalk of Beauty, and the like; objects which, after all, to the\nPlatonist are matters of the\u00f4ria,+ of immediate intuition, of immediate\nvision, or, as Plato sometimes fancied, of an earlier personal\nexperience; and which, as matter of such intuition, are incapable of\nanalysis, and therefore, properly, incommunicable by words.  Place,\nthen, must be left to the last in any legitimate dialectic process for\npossible after-thoughts; for the introduction, so to speak, of yet\nanother interlocutor in the dialogue, which has, in fact, no necessary\nconclusion, and leaves off only because time is up, or when, as he\nsays, one leaves off seeking through weariness (apokamn\u00f4n).+  \"What\nthought can think, another thought can mend.\"  Another turn in the\nendless road may change the whole character of the perspective.  You\ncannot, as the Sophist proposed to do (that was part of his\nfoolishness) take and put truth into the soul.  If you could, it might\nbe established there, only as an \"inward lie,\" as a mistake.  \"Must I\ntake the argument, and literally insert it into your mind?\" asks\nThrasymachus.  \"Heaven forbid\": answers Socrates.  That is precisely\nwhat he fears most, for himself, and for others; and from first to\nlast, demands, as the first condition of comradeship [191] in that long\njourney in which he conceives teacher and learner to be but fellow-\ntravellers, pilgrims side by side, sincerity, above all sincerity with\none's self--that, and also freedom in reply.  \"Answer what you think,\nmegaloprep\u00f4s +--liberally.\"  For it is impossible to make way otherwise,\nin a method which consists essentially in the development of knowledge\nby question and answer.\n\nMisuse, again, is of course possible in a method which admits of no\nobjective sanction or standard; the success of which depends on a\nloyalty to one's self, in the prosecution of it, of which no one else\ncan be cognisant.  And if we can misuse it with ourselves, how much\nmore certainly can the expert abuse it with another.  At every turn of\nthe conversation, a door lies open to sophistry.  Sophistry, logomachy,\neristic: we may learn what these are, sometimes, from Plato's own\npractice.  That justice is only useful as applied to things useless;\nthat the just man is a kind of thief; and the like; is hardly so much\nas sophistry.  And this too was possible in a method, which, with all\nits large outlook, has something of the irregularity, the accident, the\nheats and confusion, of life itself--a method of reasoning which can\nonly in a certain measure be reasoned upon.  How different the\nexactness which Aristotle supposes, and does his best to secure, in\nscientific procedure!  For him, dialectic, Platonic dialectic, is, at\nbest, a part of  \"eristic\" [192] --of the art, or trick, of merely\npopular and approximate debate, in matters where science is out of the\nquestion, and rhetoric has its office, not in providing for the\nintelligence, but in moulding the sentiments and the will.  Conversely\nto that absoluteness and necessity which Plato himself supposes in all\nreal knowledge, as \"the spectacle of all time and all existence,\" it\nmight seem that the only sort of truth attainable by his actual method,\nmust be the truth of a particular time and place, for one and not for\nanother.  Dialogos peirastikos,+ \"a Dialogue of search\":--every one of\nPlato's Dialogues is in essence such like that whole, life-long,\nendless dialogue which dialectic, in its largest scope, does but\nformulate, and in which truly the last, the infallible word, after all,\nnever gets spoken.  Our pilgrimage is meant indeed to end in nothing\nless than the vision of what we seek.  But can we ever be quite sure\nthat we are really come to that?  By what sign or test?\n\nNow oppose all this, all these peculiarities of the Platonic method, as\nwe find it, to the exact and formal method of Aristotle, of Aquinas, of\nSpinoza, or Hegel; and then suppose one trained exclusively on Plato's\ndialogues.  Is it the eternal certainty, after all, the immutable and\nabsolute character of truth, as Plato conceived it, that he would be\nlikely to apprehend?  We have here another of those contrasts of\ntendency, constitutional [193] in the genius of Plato, and which may\nadd to our interest in him.  Plato is to be explained, as we say, or\ninterpreted, partly through his predecessors, and his contemporaries;\nbut in part also by his followers, by the light his later mental\nkinsmen throw back on the conscious or unconscious drift of his\nteaching.  Now there are in the history of philosophy two opposite\nPlatonic traditions; two legitimate yet divergent streams of influence\nfrom him.  Two very different yet equally representative scholars we\nmay see in thought emerging from his school.  The  \"theory of the\nIdeas,\" the high ideal, the uncompromising demand for absolute\ncertainty, in any truth or knowledge worthy of the name; the immediate\nor intuitive character of the highest acts of knowledge; that all true\ntheory is indeed \"vision\":--for the maintenance of that side of the\nPlatonic position we must look onward to Aristotle, and the Schoolmen\nof all ages, to Spinoza, to Hegel; to those mystic aspirants to\n\"vision\" also, the so-called Neo-Platonists of all ages, from Proclus\nto Schelling.  From the abstract, metaphysical systems of those, the\necstasy and illuminism of these, we may mount up to the actual words of\nPlato in the Symposium, the fifth book of The Republic, the Phaedrus.\n\nBut it is in quite different company we must look for the tradition,\nthe development, of Plato's actual method of learning and teaching.\nThe Academy of Plato, the established seat of his [194] philosophy,\ngave name to a school, of which Lucian, in Greek, and in Latin, Cicero,\nare the proper representatives,--Cicero, the perfect embodiment of what\nis still sometimes understood to be the \"academic spirit,\" surveying\nall sides, arraying evidence, ascertaining, measuring, balancing,\ntendencies, but ending in suspension of judgment.  If Platonism from\nage to age has meant, for some, ontology, a doctrine of \"being,\" or the\nnearest attainable approach to or substitution for that; for others,\nPlatonism has been in fact only another name for scepticism, in a\nrecognisable philosophic tradition.  Thus, in the Middle Age, it\nqualifies in the Sic et Non the confident scholasticism of Abelard.  It\nis like the very trick and impress of the Platonic Socrates himself\nagain, in those endless conversations of Montaigne--that typical\nsceptic of the age of the Renaissance--conversations with himself, with\nthe living, with the dead through their writings, which his Essays do\nbut reflect.  Typical Platonist or sceptic, he is therefore also the\ntypical essayist.  And the sceptical philosopher of Bordeaux does but\ncommence the modern world, which, side by side with its metaphysical\nreassertions, from Descartes to Hegel, side by side also with a\nconstant accumulation of the sort of certainty which is afforded by\nempirical science, has had assuredly, to check wholesomely the\npretensions of one and of the other alike, its doubts.--\"Their name is\nlegion,\" says a modern writer.  Reverent [195] and irreverent,\nreasonable and unreasonable, manly and unmanly, morbid and healthy,\nguilty and honest, wilful, inevitable--they have been called,\nindifferently, in an age which thirsts for intellectual security, but\ncannot make up its mind.  Q'ue scais-je? it cries, in the words of\nMontaigne; but in the spirit also of the Platonic Socrates, with whom\nsuch dubitation had been nothing less than a religious duty or service.\n\nSanguine about any form of absolute knowledge, of eternal, or\nindefectible, or immutable truth, with our modern temperament as it is,\nwe shall hardly become, even under the direction of Plato, and by the\nreading of the Platonic Dialogues.  But if we are little likely to\nrealise in his school, the promise of  \"ontological\" science, of a\n\"doctrine of Being,\" or any increase in our consciousness of\nmetaphysical security, are likely, rather, to acquire there that other\nsort of Platonism, a habit, namely, of tentative thinking and suspended\njudgment, if we are not likely to enjoy the vision of his \"eternal and\nimmutable ideas,\" Plato may yet promote in us what we call \"ideals\"--\nthe aspiration towards a more perfect Justice, a more perfect Beauty,\nphysical and intellectual, a more perfect condition of human affairs,\nthan any one has ever yet seen; that kosmos,+ in which things are only\nas they are thought by a perfect mind, to which experience is\nconstantly approximating us, but which it does not provide.  There they\nstand, the two [196] great landmarks of the intellectual or spiritual\nlife as Plato conceived it: the ideal, the world of \"ideas,\" \"the great\nperhaps,\" for which it is his merit so effectively to have opened room\nin the mental scheme, to be known by us, if at all, through our\naffinities of nature with it, which, however, in our dealings with\nourselves and others we may assume to be objective or real:--and then,\nover against our imperfect realisation of that ideal, in ourselves, in\nnature and history, amid the personal caprices (it might almost seem)\nof its discovery of itself to us, as the appropriate attitude on our\npart, the dialectical spirit, which to the last will have its\ndiffidence and reserve, its scruples and second thoughts.  Such\ncondition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development\nand under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity,\nof the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a\nquestion--the \"philosophic temper,\" in short, for which a survival of\nquery will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely\nascertained knowledge.\n\nNOTES\n\n174. +Transliteration: Peri Physe\u00f4s.  Pater's translation: \"Concerning\nNature.\"\n\n174. \u00b1Sic. This form, \"situate,\" may be Pater's archaism for situated,\nor it may simply be a typographic error in the original published\nedition.\n\n175. *Essay--\"A loose sally of the mind,\" says Johnson's Dictionary.\nBailey's earlier Dictionary gives another suggestive use of the word\n\"among miners\"--A little trench or hole, which they dig to search for\nore.\n\n178. +Transliteration: methodos.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"method.\"  Plato, Republic 531c.\n\n179. *Skepsasthai kai syz\u00eat\u00easai hoti pote estin; kai, tach' an, par'\nall\u00eala skopountes, kai tribontes, h\u00f4sper ek purei\u00f4n, eklampsai\npoi\u00easaimen t\u00ean dikaiosyn\u00ean.  Pater's translation: \"to consider, to seek\nout, what the thing may be.  Perchance using our eyes in common,\nrubbing away, we might cause Justice, for instance, to glint forth, as\nfrom fire-sticks.\"  Plato, Meno 80d for the first line and, for the\nremainder, Republic 435a.\n\n181. +Transliteration: hodos, kin\u00easis, methodos.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinitions: \"path, motion, method.\"\n\n181. +Transliteration: Alla metath\u00f4metha.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"But let us follow out [a different path of thought],\" or \"let's\nexamine this from a different perspective.\"  For example, Plato,\nRepublic 334e.\n\n182. +Transliteration: no\u00eatos topos.  Pater's translation: \"reasonable\nworld.\"  Plato, Republic 508b.\n\n184. +Transliteration: homoion homoi\u00f4.  Pater's translation: \"like to\nlike.\"  Variants of the phrase occur in many of Plato's dialogues; see,\nfor example, Parmenides 132d.\n\n185. +Transliteration: hop\u00ea an ho logos, h\u00f4sper pneuma, pher\u00ea, taut\u00ea\niteon.  Pater's translation: \"we must just go where the argument\ncarries us, as a vessel runs before the wind.\"  Plato, Republic 394d.\n\n187. +Transliteration: epist\u00eam\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition \"1.\nknowledge, understanding, skill, experience, wisdom; 2. scientific\nknowledge.\"\n\n189. +Transliteration: Kindyneuei.  Pater's translation: \"it may chance\nto be.\"\n\n190. +Transliteration: the\u00f4ria.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nlooking at, viewing, beholding . . . contemplation, reflection.\"  Pater\ndefines it in Platonic terms as \"immediate intuition.\"  For example,\nPlato, Republic 486a.\n\n190. +Transliteration: apokamn\u00f4n.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"grow[ing] quite weary.\"  See, for example, Plato, Protagoras 333b.\n\n191. +Transliteration: megaloprep\u00f4s.  Liddell and Scott definition / E-\ntext editor's translation: \"liberally.\"  The exchange between\nThrasymachus and Socrates to which Pater refers begins at Republic\n345b.\n\n192. +Transliteration: Dialogos peirastikos.  Pater's translation: \"a\nDialogue of search.\"\n\n195. +Transliteration: kosmos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"I. 1.\norder; 2. good order, good behaviour, decency; 3. a set form or order:\nof states, government; 4. the mode or fashion of a thing; II. an\nornament. . .; III. the world or universe, from its perfect\narrangement.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 8: LACEDAEMON\n\n[197] AMONG the Greeks, philosophy has flourished longest, and is still\nmost abundant, at Crete and Lacedaemon; and there there are more\nteachers of philosophy than anywhere else in the world.  But the\nLacedaemonians deny this, and pretend to be unlearned people, lest it\nshould become manifest that it is through philosophy they are supreme\nin Greece; that they may be thought to owe their supremacy to their\nfighting and manly spirit, for they think that if the means of their\nsuperiority were made known all the Greeks would practise this.  But\nnow, by keeping it a secret, they have succeeded in misleading the\nLaconisers in the various cities of Greece; and in imitation of them\nthese people buffet themselves, and practise gymnastics, and put on\nboxing-gloves, and wear short cloaks, as if it were by such things that\nthe Lacedaemonians excel all other Greeks.  But the Lacedaemonians,\nwhen they wish to have intercourse with their philosophers without\nreserve, and are weary of going to them by stealth, make legal\nproclamation that those Laconisers should depart, with any other aliens\nwho may be sojourning among them, and thereupon betake themselves to\ntheir sophists unobserved by strangers.  And you may know that what I\nsay is true, and that the Lacedaemonians are better instructed than all\nother people in philosophy and the art of discussion in this way.  If\nany one will converse with even the most insignificant of the\nLacedaemonians, he may find him indeed in the greater part of what he\nsays seemingly but a poor creature; but then at some chance point in\nthe conversation he will throw in some brief compact saying, worthy of\nremark, like a clever archer, so that his interlocutor shall seem no\nbetter than a child.  Of [198] this fact some both of those now living\nand of the ancients have been aware, and that to Laconise consists in\nthe study of philosophy far rather than in the pursuit of gymnastic,\nfor they saw that to utter such sayings as those was only possible for\na perfectly educated man.  Of these was Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of\nMytilene, Bias the Prienean, and our own Solon, Cleobulus the Lindian,\nand Myson of Chen, and the seventh among them was called Chilon, a\nLacedaemonian.  These were all zealous lovers and disciples of the\nculture of the Lacedaemonians.  And any one may understand that their\nphilosophy was something of this kind, short rememberable sayings\nuttered by each of them.  They met together and offered these in\ncommon, as the first fruits of philosophy, to Apollo in his temple at\nDelphi, and they wrote upon the walls these sayings known and read of\nall men: Gn\u00f4thi sauton and M\u00eaden agan.  Protagoras, 343.+\n\nOf course there is something in that of the romance to which the genius\nof Plato readily inclined him; something also of the Platonic humour or\nirony, which suggests, for example, to Meno, so anxious to be\ninstructed in the theory of virtue, that the philosophic temper must be\ndeparted from Attica, its natural home, to Thessaly--to the rude\nnorthern capital whence that ingenuous youth was freshly arrived.\nPartly romantic, partly humorous, in his Laconism, Plato is however\nquite serious in locating a certain spirit at Lacedaemon of which his\nown ideal Republic would have been the completer development; while the\npicture he draws of it presents many a detail taken straight from\nLacedaemon as it really was, as if by an admiring visitor, who had in\nperson paced the streets of the Dorian metropolis it was so difficult\nfor any [199] alien to enter.  What was actually known of that stern\nplace, of the Lacedaemonians at home, at school, had charmed into\nfancies about it other philosophic theorists; Xenophon for instance,\nwho had little or nothing of romantic tendency about them.\n\nAnd there was another sort of romancing also, quite opposite to this of\nPlato, concerning the hard ways among themselves of those\nLacedaemonians who were so invincible in the field.  \"The\nLacedaemonians,\" says Pausanias, \"appear to have admired least of all\npeople poetry and the praise which it bestows.\"  \"At Lacedaemon there\nis more philosophy than anywhere else in the world,\" is what Plato, or\nthe Platonic Socrates, had said.  Yet, on the contrary, there were some\nwho alleged that true Lacedaemonians--Lacedaemonian nobles--for their\nprotection against the \"effeminacies\" of culture, were denied all\nknowledge of reading and writing.  But then we know that written books\nare properly a mere assistant, sometimes, as Plato himself suggests, a\ntreacherous assistant, to memory; those conservative Lacedaemonians\nbeing, so to speak, the people of memory pre-eminently, and very\nappropriately, for, whether or not they were taught to read and write,\nthey were acknowledged adepts in the Pythagorean philosophy, a\nphilosophy which attributes to memory so preponderating a function in\nthe mental life.  \"Writing,\" says K. O. M\u00fcller in his laborious, [200]\nyet, in spite of its air of coldness, passably romantic work on The\nDorians--an author whose quiet enthusiasm for his subject resulted\nindeed in a patient scholarship which well befits it: \"Writing,\" he\nsays, \"was not essential in a nation where laws, hymns, and the praises\nof illustrious men--that is, jurisprudence and history--were taught in\ntheir schools of music.\"  Music, which is or ought to be, as we know,\naccording to those Pythagorean doctrines, itself the essence of all\nthings, was everywhere in the Perfect City of Plato; and among the\nLacedaemonians also, who may be thought to have come within measurable\ndistance of that Perfect City, though with no conscious theories about\nit, music (mousik\u00ea)+ in the larger sense of the word, was everywhere,\nnot to alleviate only but actually to promote and inform, to be the\nvery substance of their so strenuous and taxing habit of life.  What\nwas this \"music,\" this service or culture of the Muses, this harmony,\npartly moral, doubtless, but also throughout a matter of elaborate\nmovement of the voice, of musical instruments, of all beside that could\nin any way be associated to such things--this music, for the\nmaintenance, the perpetual sense of which those vigorous souls were\nready to sacrifice so many opportunities, privileges, enjoyments of a\ndifferent sort, so much of their ease, of themselves, of one another?\n\nPlatonism is a highly conscious reassertion [201] of one of the two\nconstituent elements in the Hellenic genius, of the spirit of the\nhighlands namely in which the early Dorian forefathers of the\nLacedaemonians had secreted their peculiar disposition, in contrast\nwith the mobile, the marine and fluid temper of the littoral Ionian\npeople.  The Republic of Plato is an embodiment of that Platonic\nreassertion or preference, of Platonism, as the principle of a society,\nideal enough indeed, yet in various degrees practicable.  It is not\nunderstood by Plato to be an erection de novo, and therefore only on\npaper.  Its foundations might be laid in certain practicable changes to\nbe enforced in the old schools, in a certain reformed music which must\nbe taught there, and would float thence into the existing homes of\nGreece, under the shadow of its old temples, the sanction of its old\nreligion, its old memories, the old names of things.  Given the central\nidea, with its essentially renovating power, the well-worn elements of\nsociety as it is would rebuild themselves, and a new colour come\ngradually over all things as the proper expression of a certain new\nmind in them.\n\nAnd in fact such embodiments of the specially Hellenic element in\nHellenism, compacted in the natural course of political development,\nthere had been, though in a less ideal form, in those many Dorian\nconstitutions to which Aristotle refers.  To Lacedaemon, in The\nRepublic itself, admiring allusions abound, covert, yet bold [202]\nenough, if we remember the existing rivalry between Athens and her\nneighbour; and it becomes therefore a help in the study of Plato's\npolitical ideal to approach as near as we may to that earlier actual\nembodiment of its principles, which is also very interesting in itself.\nThe Platonic City of the Perfect would not have been cut clean away\nfrom the old roots of national life: would have had many links with the\nbeautiful and venerable Greek cities of past and present.  The ideal,\npoetic or romantic as it might seem, would but have begun where they\nhad left off, where Lacedaemon, in particular, had left off.  Let us\nthen, by way of realising the better the physiognomy of Plato's\ntheoretic building, suppose some contemporary student of The Republic,\na pupil, say! in the Athenian Academy, determined to gaze on the actual\nface of what has so strong a family likeness to it.  Stimulated by his\nmaster's unconcealed Laconism, his approval of contemporary Lacedaemon,\nhe is at the pains to journey thither, and make personal inspection of\na place, in Plato's general commendations of which he may suspect some\nhumour or irony, but which has unmistakably lent many a detail to his\nideal Republic, on paper, or in thought.\n\nHe would have found it, this youthful Anacharsis, hard to get there,\npartly through the nature of the country, in part because the people of\nLacedaemon (it was a point of system with them, as we heard just now)\nwere suspicious of [203] foreigners.  Romantic dealers in political\ntheory at Athens were safe in saying pretty much what they pleased\nabout its domestic doings.  Still, not so far away, made, not in idea\nand by the movements of an abstract argument, the mere strokes of a\nphilosophic pen, but solidified by constancy of character, fortified\nanew on emergency by heroic deeds, for itself, for the whole of Greece,\nthough with such persistent hold throughout on an idea, or system of\nideas, that it might seem actually to have come ready-made from the\nmind of some half-divine Lycurgus, or through him from Apollo himself,\ncreator of that music of which it was an example:--there, in the hidden\nvalley of the Eurotas, it was to be found, as a visible centre of\nactual human life, the place which was alleged to have come, harsh\nparadox as it might sound to Athenian ears, within measurable distance\nof civic perfection, of the political and social ideal.\n\nOur youthful academic adventurer then, making his way along those\ndifficult roads, between the ridges of the Eastern Acadian Mountains,\nand emerging at last into \"hollow\" Laconia, would have found himself in\na country carefully made the most of by the labour of serfs; a land of\nslavery, far more relentlessly organised according to law than anywhere\nelse in Greece, where, in truth, for the most part slavery was a kind\nof accident.  But whatever rigours these slaves of Laconia were\notherwise subjected to, they [204] enjoyed certainly that kind of well-\nbeing which does come of organisation, from the order and regularity of\nsystem, living under central military authority, and bound themselves\nto military service; to furnish (as under later feudal institutions) so\nmany efficient men-at-arms on demand, and maintain themselves in\nreadiness for war as they laboured in those distantly-scattered farms,\nseldom visited by their true masters from Lacedaemon, whither year by\nyear they sent in kind their heavy tribute of oil, barley and wine.\nThe very genius of conservatism here enthroned, secured, we may be\nsure, to this old-fashioned country life something of the personal\ndignity, of the enjoyments also, natural to it; somewhat livelier\nreligious feasts, for example, than their lords allowed themselves.\nStray echoes of their boisterous plebeian mirth on such occasions have\nreached us in Greek literature.\n\nBut if the traveller had penetrated a little more closely he would have\nbeen told certain startling stories, with at least a basis of truth in\nthem, even as regards the age of Plato.  These slaves were Greeks: no\nrude Scythians, nor crouching, decrepit Asiatics, like ordinary\nprisoners of war, the sort of slaves you could buy, but genuine Greeks,\nspeaking their native tongue, if with less of muscular tension and\nenergy, yet probably with pleasanter voice and accent than their\nessentially highland masters.  Physically they throve, under something\nof the same discipline which had made [205] those masters the masters\nalso of all Greece.  They saw them now and then--their younger lords,\nbrought, under strict tutelage, on those long hunting expeditions, one\nof their so rare enjoyments, prescribed for them, as was believed, by\nthe founder of their polity.  But sometimes (here was the report which\nmade one shudder even in broad daylight, in those seemingly reposeful\nplaces) sometimes those young nobles of Lacedaemon reached them on a\ndifferent kind of pursuit: came by night, secretly, though by no means\ncontrarily to the laws of a state crafty as it was determined, to\nmurder them at home, or a certain moiety of them; one here or there\nperhaps who, with good Achaean blood in his veins, and under a\nwholesome mode of life, was grown too tall, or too handsome, or too\nfruitful a father, to feel quite like a slave.  Under a sort of slavery\nthat makes him strong and beautiful, where personal beauty was so\ngreatly prized, his masters are in fact jealous of him.\n\nBut masters thus hard to others, these Lacedaemonians, as we know, were\nthe reverse of indulgent to themselves.  While, as a matter of theory,\npower and privilege belonged exclusively to the old, to the seniors\n(hoi gerontes, h\u00ea gerousia)+ ruling by a council wherein no question\nmight be discussed, one might only deliver one's Aye! or No! Lacedaemon\nwas in truth before all things an organised place of discipline, an\norganised [206] opportunity also, for youth, for the sort of youth that\nknew how to command by serving--a constant exhibition of youthful\ncourage, youthful self-respect, yet above all of true youthful\ndocility; youth thus committing itself absolutely, soul and body, to a\ncorporate sentiment in its very sports.  There was a third sort of\nregulation visits the lads of Lacedaemon were driven to pay to those\ncountry places, the vales, the uplands, when, to brace youthful\nstomachs and develope resource, they came at stated intervals as a kind\nof mendicants or thieves, feet and head uncovered through frost and\nheat, to steal their sustenance, under penalties if detected--\"a\nsurvival,\" as anthropologists would doubtless prove, pointing out\ncollateral illustrations of the same, from a world of purely animal\ncourage and keenness.  Whips and rods used in a kind of monitorial\nsystem by themselves had a great part in the education of these young\naristocrats, and, as pain surely must do, pain not of bodily disease or\nwretched accidents, but as it were by dignified rules of art, seem to\nhave refined them, to have made them observant of the minutest\ndirection in those musical exercises, wherein eye and ear and voice and\nfoot all alike combined.  There could be nothing paraleipomenon,+ as\nPlato says, no \"oversights,\" here.  No! every one, at every moment,\nquite at his best; and, observe especially, with no superfluities;\nseeing that when we have to do with music of any kind, with matters of\nart, in stone, in words, [207] in the actions of life, all\nsuperfluities are in very truth \"superfluities of naughtiness,\" such as\nannihilate music.\n\nThe country through which our young traveller from his laxer school of\nAthens seeks his way to Lacedaemon, this land of a noble slavery, so\npeacefully occupied but for those irregular nocturnal terrors, was\nperhaps the loveliest in Greece, with that peculiarly blent loveliness,\nin which, as at Florence, the expression of a luxurious lowland is duly\nchecked by the severity of its mountain barriers.  It was a type of the\nDorian purpose in life--sternness, like sea-water infused into wine,\novertaking a matter naturally rich, at the moment when fulness may lose\nits savour and expression.  Amid the corn and oleanders--corn \"so tall,\nclose, and luxuriant,\" as the modern traveller there still finds--it\nwas visible at last, Lacedaemon, koil\u00ea Spart\u00ea,+ \"hollow Sparta,\" under\nthe sheltering walls of Taygetus, the broken and rugged forms of which\nwere attributed to earthquake, but without proper walls of its own.  In\nthat natural fastness, or trap, or falcon's nest, it had no need of\nthem, the falcon of the land, with the hamlets (polichnia)+ a hundred\nand more, dispersed over it, in jealously enforced seclusion from one\nanother.\n\nFrom the first he notes \"the antiquated appearance\" of Lacedaemon, by\nno means a \"growing\" place, always rebuilding, remodelling itself,\nafter the newest fashion, with shapeless suburbs [208] stretching\nfarther and farther on every side of it, grown too large perhaps, as\nPlato threatens, to be a body, a corporate unity, at all: not that, but\nstill, and to the last, itself only a great village, a solemn, ancient,\nmountain village.  Even here of course there had been movement, some\nsort of progress, if so it is to be called, linking limb to limb; but\nlong ago.  Originally a union, after the manner of early Rome, of\nperhaps three or four neighbouring villages which had never lost their\nphysiognomy, like Rome it occupied a group of irregular heights, the\noutermost roots of Taygetus, on the bank of a river or mountain\ntorrent, impetuous enough in winter, a series of wide shallows and deep\npools in the blazing summer.  It was every day however, all the year\nround, that Lacedaemonian youth plunged itself in the Eurotas.  Hence,\nfrom this circumstance of the union there of originally disparate\nparts, the picturesque and expressive irregularity, had they had time\nto think it such, of the \"city\" properly so termed, the one open place\nor street, High Street, or Corso--Aphetais by name, lined, irregularly\nagain, with various religious and other monuments.  It radiated on all\nsides into a mazy coil, an ambush, of narrow crooked lanes, up and\ndown, in which attack and defence would necessarily be a matter of\nhand-to-hand fighting.  In the outskirts lay the citizens' houses,\nroomier far than those of Athens, with spacious, walled courts, almost\nin the country.  Here, in contrast [209] to the homes of Athens, the\nlegitimate wife had a real dignity, the unmarried woman a singular\nfreedom.  There were no door-knockers: you shouted at the outer gate to\nbe let in.  Between the high walls lanes passed into country roads,\nsacred ways to ancient sacro-sanct localities, Therapnae, Amyclae, on\nthis side or that, under the shade of mighty plane-trees.\n\nPlato, as you may remember, gives a hint that, like all other visible\nthings, the very trees--how they grow--exercise an aesthetic influence\non character.  The diligent legislator therefore would have his\npreferences, even in this matter of the trees under which the citizens\nof the Perfect City might sit down to rest.  What trees? you wonder.\nThe olive? the laurel, as if wrought in grandiose metal? the cypress?\nthat came to a wonderful height in Dorian Crete: the oak? we think it\nvery expressive of strenuous national character.  Well! certainly the\nplane-tree for one, characteristic tree of Lacedaemon then and now; a\nvery tranquil and tranquillising object, spreading its level or gravely\ncurved masses on the air as regally as the tree of Lebanon itself.  A\nvast grove of such was the distinguishing mark of Lacedaemon in any\ndistant view of it; that, and, as at Athens, a colossal image, older\nthan the days of Phidias--the Demos of Lacedaemon, it would seem,\ntowering visibly above the people it protected.  Below those mighty\ntrees, on an island in their national river, [210] were the \"playing-\nfields,\" where Lacedaemonian youth after sacrifice in the Ephebeum\ndelighted others rather than itself (no \"shirking\" was allowed) with a\nsort of football, under rigorous self-imposed rules--tearing, biting--a\nsport, rougher even than our own, et m\u00eame tr\u00e8s dangereux, as our Attic\nneighbours, the French, say of the English game.\n\nThey were orderly enough perforce, the boys, the young men, within the\ncity--seen, but not heard, except under regulations, when they made the\nbest music in the world.  Our visitor from Athens when he saw those\nyouthful soldiers, or military students, as Xenophon in his pretty\ntreatise on the polity of Lacedaemon describes, walking with downcast\neyes, their hands meekly hidden in their cloaks, might have thought\nthem young monks, had he known of such.\n\nA little mountain town, however ambitious, however successful in its\nambition, would hardly be expected to compete with Athens, or Corinth,\nitself a Dorian state, in art-production, yet had not only its\ncharacteristic preferences in this matter, in plastic and literary art,\nbut had also many venerable and beautiful buildings to show.  The\nAthenian visitor, who is standing now in the central space of\nLacedaemon, notes here, as being a trait also of the \"Perfect City\" of\nacademic theory, that precisely because these people find themselves\nvery susceptible to the [211] influences of form and colour and sound,\nto external aesthetic influence, but have withal a special purpose, a\ncertain strongly conceived disciplinary or ethic ideal, that therefore\na peculiar humour prevails among them, a self-denying humour, in regard\nto these things.  Those ancient Pelopid princes, from whom the\nhereditary kings of historic Lacedaemon, come back from exile into\ntheir old home, claim to be descended, had had their palaces, with a\ncertain Homeric, Asiatic splendour, of wrought metal and the like;\nconsiderable relics of which still remained, but as public or sacred\nproperty now.  At the time when Plato's scholar stands before them, the\nhouses of these later historic kings--two kings, as you remember,\nalways reigning together, in some not quite clearly evolved\ndifferentiation of the temporal and spiritual functions--were plain\nenough; the royal doors, when beggar or courtier approached them, no\ndaintier than Lycurgus had prescribed for all true Lacedaemonian\ncitizens; rude, strange things to look at, fashioned only, like the\nceilings within, with axe and saw, of old mountain oak or pine from\nthose great Taygetan forests, whence came also the abundant iron, which\nthis stern people of iron and steel had super-induced on that earlier\ndreamy age of silver and gold--steel, however, admirably tempered and\nwrought in its application to military use, and much sought after\nthroughout Greece.\n\nLayer upon layer, the relics of those earlier [212] generations, a\nwhole succession of remarkable races, lay beneath the strenuous\nfootsteps of the present occupants, as there was old poetic legend in\nthe depths of their seemingly so practical or prosaic souls.  Nor\nbeneath their feet only: the relics of their worship, their\nsanctuaries, their tombs, their very houses, were part of the scenery\nof actual life.  Our young Platonic visitor from Athens, climbing\nthrough those narrow winding lanes, and standing at length on the open\nplatform of the Aphetais, finds himself surrounded by treasures, modest\ntreasures of ancient architecture, dotted irregularly here and there\nabout him, as if with conscious design upon picturesque effect, such\nirregularities sometimes carrying in them the secret of expression, an\naccent.  Old Alcman for one had been alive to the poetic opportunities\nof the place; boasts that he belongs to Lacedaemon, \"abounding in\nsacred tripods\"; that it was here the Heliconian Muses had revealed\nthemselves to him.  If the private abodes even of royalty were rude it\nwas only that the splendour of places dedicated to religion and the\nstate might the more abound.  Most splendid of them all, the Stoa\nPoekile, a cloister or portico with painted walls, to which the spoils\nof the Persian war had been devoted, ranged its pillars of white marble\non one side of the central space: on the other, connecting those high\nmemories with the task of the living, lay the Choros, where, at the\nGymnopaedia, the Spartan youth danced in honour of Apollo.\n\n[213] Scattered up and down among the monuments of victory in battle\nwere the heroa, tombs or chapels of the heroes who had purchased it\nwith their blood--Pausanias, Leonidas, brought home from Thermopylae\nforty years after his death.  \"A pillar too,\" says Pausanias, \"is\nerected here, on which the paternal names are inscribed of those who at\nThermopylae sustained the attack of the Medes.\"  Here in truth all\ndeities put on a martial habit--Aphrodite, the Muses, Eros himself,\nAthene Chalcioecus, Athene of the Brazen House, an antique temple\ntowering above the rest, built from the spoils of some victory long\nsince forgotten.  The name of the artist who made the image of the\ntutelary goddess was remembered in the annals of early Greek art,\nGitiades, a native of Lacedaemon.  He had composed a hymn also in her\npraise.  Could we have seen the place he had restored rather than\nconstructed, with its covering of mythological reliefs in brass or\nbronze, perhaps Homer's descriptions of a seemingly impossible sort of\nmetallic architecture would have been less taxing to his reader's\nimagination.  Those who in other places had lost their taste amid the\nfacile splendours of a later day, might here go to school again.\n\nThroughout Greece, in fact, it was the Doric style which came to\nprevail as the religious or hieratic manner, never to be surpassed for\nthat purpose, as the Gothic style seems likely to do with us.  Though\nit is not exclusively the invention [214] of Dorian men, yet, says\nM\u00fcller, \"the Dorian character created the Doric architecture,\" and he\nnotes in it, especially, the severity of the perfectly straight,\nsmartly tapering line of its column; the bold projection of the\ncapital; the alternation of long unornamented plain surfaces with\nnarrower bands of decorated work; the profound shadows; the expression\nof security, of harmony, infused throughout; the magnificent pediment\ncrowning the whole, like the cornice of mountain wall beyond, around,\nand above it.  Standing there in the Aphetais, amid these venerable\nworks of art, the visitor could not forget the natural architecture\nabout him.  As the Dorian genius had differentiated itself from the\ncommon Hellenic type in the heart of the mountains of Epirus, so here\nat last, in its final and most characteristic home, it was still\nsurrounded by them:--ophrya te kai koilainetai.+\n\nWe know, some of us, what such mountain neighbourhood means.  The\nwholesome vigour, the clearness and purity they maintain in matters\nsuch as air, light, water; how their presence multiplies the contrasts,\nthe element of light and shadow, in things; the untouched perfection of\nthe minuter ornament, flower or crystal, they permit one sparingly;\ntheir reproachful aloofness, though so close to us, keeping sensitive\nminds at least in a sort of moral alliance with their remoter\nsolitudes.  \"The whole life of the Lacedaemonian community,\" says\nM\u00fcller, [215] \"had a secluded, impenetrable, and secret character.\"\nYou couldn't really know it unless you were of it.\n\nA system which conceived the whole of life as matter of attention,\npatience, a fidelity to detail, like that of good soldiers and\nmusicians, could not but tell also on the merest handicrafts,\nconstituting them in the fullest sense of a craft.  If the money of\nSparta was, or had recently been, of cumbrous iron, that was because\nits trade had a sufficient variety of stock to be mainly by barter, and\nwe may suppose the market (into which, like our own academic youth at\nOxford, young Spartans were forbidden to go) full enough of business--\nmany a busy workshop in those winding lanes.  The lower arts certainly\nno true Spartan might practise; but even Helots, artisan Helots, would\nhave more than was usual elsewhere of that sharpened intelligence and\nthe disciplined hand in such labour which really dignify those who\nfollow it.  In Athens itself certain Lacedaemonian commodities were\nmuch in demand, things of military service or for every-day use, turned\nout with flawless adaptation to their purpose.\n\nThe Helots, then, to whom this business exclusively belonged, a race of\nslaves, distinguishable however from the slaves or serfs who tilled the\nland, handing on their mastery in those matters in a kind of guild,\nfather to son, through old-established families of flute- [216]\nplayers, wine-mixers, bakers, and the like, thus left their hereditary\nlords, Les Gens Fleur-de-lis\u00e9s (to borrow an expression from French\nfeudalism) in unbroken leisure, to perfect themselves for the proper\nfunctions of gentlemen--schol\u00ea,+ leisure, in the two senses of the word,\nwhich in truth involve one another--their whole time free, to be told\nout in austere schools.  Long easeful nights, with more than enough to\neat and drink, the \"illiberal\" pleasures of appetite, as Aristotle and\nPlato agree in thinking them, are of course the appropriate reward or\nremedy of those who work painfully with their hands, and seem to have\nbeen freely conceded to those Helots, who by concession of the State,\nfrom first to last their legal owner, were in domestic service, and\nsometimes much petted in the house, though by no means freely conceded\nto the \"golden youth\" of Lacedaemon--youth of gold, or gilded steel.\nThe traditional Helot, drunk perforce to disgust his young master with\nthe coarseness of vice, is probably a fable; and there are other\nstories full of a touching spirit of natural service, of\nsubmissiveness, of an instinctively loyal admiration for the brilliant\nqualities of one trained perhaps to despise him, by which the servitor\nmust have become, in his measure, actually a sharer in them.  Just\nhere, for once, we see that slavish \u00eathos,+ the servile range of\nsentiment, which ought to accompany the condition of slavery, if it be\nindeed, as Aristotle supposes, one of the [217] natural relationships\nbetween man and man, idealised, or aesthetically right, pleasant and\nproper; the aret\u00ea,+ or \"best possible condition,\" of the young servitor\nas such, including a sort of bodily worship, and a willingness to share\nthe keen discipline which had developed the so attractive gallantry of\nhis youthful lords.\n\nA great wave, successive waves, of invasion, sufficiently remote to\nhave lost already all historic truth of detail, had left them--these\nHelots, and the Perioeci, in the country round about--thus to serve\namong their own kinsmen, though so close to them in lineage, so much on\na level with their masters in essential physical qualities that to the\nlast they could never be entirely subdued in spirit.  Patient modern\nresearch, following the track of a deep-rooted national tradition\nveiled in the mythological figments which centre in what is called \"The\nReturn of the Heraclidae,\" reveals those northern immigrants or\ninvaders, at various points on their way, dominant all along it, from a\ncertain deep vale in the heart of the mountains of Epirus southwards,\ngradually through zone after zone of more temperate lowland, to reach\ntheir perfection, highlanders from first to last, in this mountain\n\"hollow\" of Lacedaemon.  They claim supremacy, not as Dorian invaders,\nbut as kinsmen of the old Achaean princes of the land; yet it was to\nthe fact of conquest, to the necessity of [218] maintaining a position\nso strained, like that, as Aristotle expressly pointed out, of a\nbeleaguered encampment in an enemy's territory, that the singular\ninstitutions of Lacedaemon, the half-military, half-monastic spirit,\nwhich prevailed in this so gravely beautiful place, had been originally\ndue.  But observe!--Its moral and political system, in which that\nslavery was so significant a factor, its discipline, its aesthetic and\nother scruples, its peculiar moral \u00eathos,+ having long before our\nPlatonic student comes thither attained its original and proper ends,\nsurvived,--there is the point! survived as an end in itself, as a\nmatter of sentiment, of public and perhaps still more of personal\npride, though of the finer, the very finest sort, in one word as an\nideal.  Pericles, as you remember, in his famous vindication of the\nAthenian system, makes his hearers understand that the ends of the\nLacedaemonian people might have been attained with less self-sacrifice\nthan theirs.  But still, there it remained, h\u00ea diaita D\u00f4rik\u00ea+--the\ngenuine Laconism of the Lacedaemonians themselves, their traditional\nconception of life, with its earnestness, its precision and strength,\nits loyalty to its own type, its impassioned completeness; a spectacle,\naesthetically, at least, very interesting, like some perfect instrument\nshaping to what they visibly were, the most beautiful of all people, in\nGreece, in the world.\n\nGymnastic, \"bodily exercise,\" of course, does [219] not always and\nnecessarily effect the like of that.  A certain perfectly preserved old\nRoman mosaic pavement in the Lateran Museum, presents a terribly fresh\npicture of the results of another sort of \"training,\" the monstrous\ndevelopment by a cruel art, by exercise, of this or that muscle,\nchanging boy or man into a merely mechanic instrument with which his\nbreeders might make money by amusing the Roman people.  Victor Hugo's\nodious dream of L'homme qui rit, must have had something of a prototype\namong those old Roman gladiators.  The Lacedaemonians, says Xenophon on\nthe other hand, homoi\u00f4s apo te t\u00f4n skel\u00f4n kai apo cheir\u00f4n kai apo\ntrach\u00ealou gymnazontai.+  Here too, that is to say, they aimed at, they\nfound, proportion, Pythagorean symmetry or music, and bold as they\ncould be in their exercises (it was a Lacedaemonian who, at Olympia,\nfor the first time threw aside the heavy girdle and ran naked to the\ngoal) forbade all that was likely to disfigure the body.  Though we\nmust not suppose all ties of nature rent asunder, nor all connexion\nbetween parents and children in those genial, retired houses at an end\nin very early life, it was yet a strictly public education which began\nwith them betimes, and with a very clearly defined programme,\nconservative of ancient traditional and unwritten rules, an\naristocratic education for the few, the liberales--\"liberals,\" as we\nmay say, in that the proper sense of the word.  It made them, in [220]\nvery deed, the lords, the masters, of those they were meant by-and-by\nto rule; masters, of their very souls, of their imagination, enforcing\non them an ideal, by a sort of spiritual authority, thus backing, or\nbacked by, a very effective organisation of \"the power of the sword.\"\nIn speaking of Lacedaemon, you see, it comes naturally to speak out of\nproportion, it might seem, of its youth, and of the education of its\nyouth.  But in fact if you enter into the spirit of Lacedaemonian\nyouth, you may conceive Lacedaemonian manhood for yourselves.  You\ndivine already what the boy, the youth, so late in obtaining his\nmajority, in becoming a man, came to be in the action of life, and on\nthe battle-field.  \"In a Doric state,\" says M\u00fcller, \"education was, on\nthe whole, a matter of more importance than government.\"\n\nA young Lacedaemonian, then, of the privileged class left his home, his\ntender nurses in those large, quiet old suburban houses early, for a\npublic school, a schooling all the stricter as years went on, to be\nfollowed, even so, by a peculiar kind of barrack-life, the temper of\nwhich, a sort of military monasticism (it must be repeated) would beset\nhim to the end.  Though in the gymnasia of Lacedaemon no idle by-\nstanders, no--well! Platonic loungers after truth or what not--were\npermitted, yet we are told, neither there nor in Sparta generally,\nneither there nor anywhere else, were the boys permitted [221] to be\nalone.  If a certain love of reserve, of seclusion, characterised the\nSpartan citizen as such, it was perhaps the cicatrice of that wrench\nfrom a soft home into the imperative, inevitable gaze of his fellows,\nbroad, searching, minute, his regret for, his desire to regain, moral\nand mental even more than physical ease.  And his education continued\nlate; he could seldom think of marriage till the age of thirty.\nEthically it aimed at the reality, aesthetically at the expression, of\nreserved power, and from the first set its subject on the thought of\nhis personal dignity, of self-command, in the artistic way of a good\nmusician, a good soldier.  It is noted that \"the general accent of the\nDoric dialect has itself the character not of question or entreaty, but\nof command or dictation.\"  The place of deference, of obedience, was\nlarge in the education of Lacedaemonian youth; and they never\ncomplained.  It involved however for the most part, as with ourselves,\nthe government of youth by itself; an implicit subordination of the\nyounger to the older, in many degrees.  Quite early in life, at school,\nthey found that superiors and inferiors, homoioi and hypomeiones,+ there\nreally were; and their education proceeded with systematic boldness on\nthat fact.  Eir\u00ean, melleir\u00ean, sideun\u00eas,+ and the like--words, titles,\nwhich indicate an unflinching elaboration of the attitudes of youthful\nsubordination and command with responsibility--remain as a part of what\nwe might [222] call their \"public-school slang.\"  They ate together \"in\ntheir divisions\" (agelai)+ on much the same fare every day at a sort of\nmesses; not reclined, like Ionians or Asiatics, but like heroes, the\nprincely males, in Homer, sitting upright on their wooden benches; were\n\"inspected\" frequently, and by free use of viv\u00e2 voce examination\n\"became adepts in presence of mind,\" in mental readiness and vigour, in\nthe brief mode of speech Plato commends, which took and has kept its\nname from them; with no warm baths allowed; a daily plunge in their\nriver required.  Yes!  The beauty of these most beautiful of all people\nwas a male beauty, far remote from feminine tenderness; had the\nexpression of a certain asc\u00easis in it; was like un-sweetened wine.  In\ncomparison with it, beauty of another type might seem to be wanting in\nedge or accent.\n\nAnd they could be silent.  Of the positive uses of the negation of\nspeech, like genuine scholars of Pythagoras, the Lacedaemonians were\nwell aware, gaining strength and intensity by repression.  Long spaces\nof enforced silence had doubtless something to do with that expressive\nbrevity of utterance, which could be also, when they cared, so\ninexpressive of what their intentions really were--something to do with\nthe habit of mind to which such speaking would come naturally.  In\ncontrast with the ceaseless prattle of Athens, Lacedaemonian assemblies\nlasted as short a time as possible, all standing.  A [223]\nLacedaemonian ambassador being asked in whose name he was come,\nreplies: \"In the name of the State, if I succeed; if I fail, in my\nown.\"  What they lost in extension they gained in depth.\n\nHad our traveller been tempted to ask a young Lacedaemonian to return\nhis visit at Athens, permission would have been refused him.  He\nbelonged to a community bent above all things on keeping indelibly its\nown proper colour.  Its more strictly mental education centered, in\nfact, upon a faithful training of the memory, again in the spirit of\nPythagoras, in regard to what seemed best worth remembering.  Hard and\npractical as Lacedaemonians might seem, they lived nevertheless very\nmuch by imagination; and to train the memory, to preoccupy their minds\nwith the past, as in our own classic or historic culture of youth, was\nin reality to develope a vigorous imagination.  In music (mousik\u00ea)+ as\nthey conceived it, there would be no strictly selfish reading, writing\nor listening; and if there was little a Lacedaemonian lad had to read\nor write at all, he had much to learn, like a true conservative, by\nheart: those unwritten laws of which the Council of Elders was the\nauthorised depositary, and on which the whole public procedure of the\nstate depended; the archaic forms of religious worship; the names of\ntheir kings, of victors in their games or in battle; the brief record\nof great events; the oracles they had received; the rhetrai, from [224]\nLycurgus downwards, composed in metrical Lacedaemonian Greek; their\nhistory and law, in short, actually set to music, by Terpander and\nothers, as was said.  What the Lacedaemonian learned by heart he was\nfor the most part to sing, and we catch a glimpse, an echo, of their\nboys in school chanting; one of the things in old Greece one would have\nliked best to see and hear--youthful beauty and strength in perfect\nservice--a manifestation of the true and genuine Hellenism, though it\nmay make one think of the novices at school in some Gothic cloister, of\nour own old English schools, nay, of the young Lacedaemonian's cousins\nat Sion, singing there the law and its praises.\n\nThe Platonic student of the ways of the Lacedaemonians observes then,\nis interested in observing, that their education, which indeed makes no\nsharp distinction between mental and bodily exercise, results as it had\nbegun in \"music\"--ends with body, mind, memory above all, at their\nfinest, on great show-days, in the dance.  Austere, self-denying\nLacedaemon had in fact one of the largest theatres in Greece, in part\nscooped out boldly on the hill-side, built partly of enormous blocks of\nstone, the foundations of which may still be seen.  We read what Plato\nsays in The Republic of \"imitations,\" of the imitative arts, imitation\nreaching of course its largest development on the stage, and are\nperhaps surprised at the importance he assigns, in every department of\n[225] human culture, to a matter of that kind.  But here as elsewhere\nto see was to understand.  We should have understood Plato's drift in\nhis long criticism and defence of imitative art, his careful system of\nrules concerning it, could we have seen the famous dramatic\nLacedaemonian dancing.  They danced a theme, a subject.  A complex and\nelaborate art this must necessarily have been, but, as we may gather,\nas concise, direct, economically expressive, in all its varied sound\nand motion, as those swift, lightly girt, impromptu Lacedaemonian\nsayings.  With no movement of voice or hand or foot, paraleipomenon,+\nunconsidered, as Plato forbids, it was the perfect flower of their\ncorrection, of that minute patience and care which ends in a perfect\nexpressiveness; not a note, a glance, a touch, but told obediently in\nthe promotion of a firmly grasped mental conception, as in that perfect\npoetry or sculpture or painting, in which \"the finger of the master is\non every part of his work.\"  We have nothing really like it, and to\ncomprehend it must remember that, though it took place in part at least\non the stage of a theatre--was in fact a ballet-dance, it had also the\ncharacter both of a liturgical service and of a military inspection;\nand yet, in spite of its severity of rule, was a natural expression of\nthe delight of all who took part in it.\n\nSo perfect a spectacle the gods themselves might be thought pleased to\nwitness; were in [226] consequence presented with it as an important\nelement in the religious worship of the Lacedaemonians, in whose life\nreligion had even a larger part than with the other Greeks,\nconspicuously religious, deisidaimones,+ involved in religion or\nsuperstition, as the Greeks generally were.  More closely even than\ntheir so scrupulous neighbours they associated the state, its acts and\nofficers, with a religious sanction, religious usages, theories,\ntraditions.  While the responsibilities of secular government lay upon\nthe Ephors, those mysteriously dual, at first sight useless, and yet so\nsanctimoniously observed kings, \"of the house of Heracles,\" with\nsomething of the splendour of the old Achaean or Homeric kings, in life\nas also in death, the splendid funerals, the passionate archaic laments\nwhich then followed them, were in fact of spiritual or priestly rank,\nthe living and active centre of a poetic religious system, binding them\n\"in a beneficent connexion\" to the past, and in the present with\nspecial closeness to the oracle of Delphi.\n\nOf that catholic or general centre of Greek religion the Lacedaemonians\nwere the hereditary and privileged guardians, as also the peculiar\npeople of Apollo, the god of Delphi; but, observe! of Apollo in a\npeculiar development of his deity.  In the dramatic business of\nLacedaemon, centering in these almost liturgical dances, there was\nlittle comic acting.  The fondness of the slaves for buffoonery and\nloud [227] laughter, was to their master, who had no taste for the\nlike, a reassuring note of his superiority.  He therefore indulged them\nin it on occasion, and you might fancy that the religion of a people so\nstrenuous, ever so full of their dignity, must have been a religion of\ngloom.  It was otherwise.  The Lacedaemonians, like those monastic\npersons of whom they so often remind one, as a matter of fact however\nsurprising, were a very cheerful people; and the religion of which they\nhad so much, deeply imbued everywhere with an optimism as of hopeful\nyouth, encouraged that disposition, was above all a religion of sanity.\nThe observant Platonic visitor might have taken note that something of\nthat purgation of religious thought and sentiment, of its expression in\nliterature, recommended in Plato's Republic, had been already quietly\neffected here, towards the establishment of a kind of cheerful daylight\nin men's tempers.\n\nIn furtherance then of such a religion of sanity, of that harmony of\nfunctions, which is the Aristotelian definition of health, Apollo,\nsanest of the national gods, became also the tribal or home god of\nLacedaemon.  That common Greek worship of Apollo they made especially\ntheir own, but (just here is the noticeable point) with a marked\npreference for the human element in him, for the mental powers of his\nbeing over those elemental or physical forces of production, which he\nalso mystically represents, and which resulted [228] sometimes in an\norgiastic, an unintellectual, or even an immoral service.  He remains\nyouthful and unmarried.  In congruity with this, it is observed that,\nin a quasi-Roman worship, abstract qualities and relationships, ideals,\nbecome subsidiary objects of religious consideration around him, such\nas sleep, death, fear, fortune, laughter even.  Nay, other gods also\nare, so to speak, Apollinised, adapted to the Apolline presence;\nAphrodite armed, Enyalius in fetters, perhaps that he may never depart\nthence.  Amateurs everywhere of the virile element in life, the\nLacedaemonians, in truth, impart to all things an intellectual\ncharacter.  Adding a vigorous logic to seemingly animal instincts, for\nthem courage itself becomes, as for the strictly philosophic mind at\nAthens, with Plato and Aristotle, an intellectual condition, a form of\nright knowledge.\n\nSuch assertion of the consciously human interest in a religion based\noriginally on a preoccupation with the unconscious forces of nature,\nwas exemplified in the great religious festival of Lacedaemon.  As a\nspectator of the Hyacinthia, our Platonic student would have found\nhimself one of a large body of strangers, gathered together from\nLacedaemon and its dependent towns and villages, within the ancient\nprecincts of Amyclae, at the season between spring and summer when\nunder the first fierce heat of the year the abundant hyacinths fade\nfrom the fields.  Blue flowers, [229] you remember, are the rarest, to\nmany eyes the loveliest; and the Lacedaemonians with their guests were\nmet together to celebrate the death of the hapless lad who had lent his\nname to them, Hyacinthus, son of Apollo, or son of an ancient mortal\nking who had reigned in this very place; in either case, greatly\nbeloved of the god, who had slain him by sad accident as they played at\nquoits together delightfully, to his immense sorrow.  That Boreas (the\nnorth-wind) had maliciously miscarried the discus, is a circumstance we\nhardly need to remind us that we have here, of course, only one of many\ntransparent, unmistakable, parables or symbols of the great solar\nchange, so sudden in the south, like the story of Proserpine, Adonis,\nand the like.  But here, more completely perhaps than in any other of\nthose stories, the primary elemental sense had obscured itself behind\nits really tragic analogue in human life, behind the figure of the\ndying youth.  We know little of the details of the feast; incidentally,\nthat Apollo was vested on the occasion in a purple robe, brought in\nceremony from Lacedaemon, woven there, Pausanias tells us, in a certain\nhouse called from that circumstance Chiton.+  You may remember how\nsparing these Lacedaemonians were of such dyed raiment, of any but the\nnatural and virgin colouring of the fleece; that purple or red,\nhowever, was the colour of their royal funerals, as indeed Amyclae\nitself was famous for purple stuffs--Amyclaeae vestes.  As [230] the\ngeneral order of the feast, we discern clearly a single day of somewhat\nshrill gaiety, between two days of significant mourning after the\nmanner of All Souls' Day, directed from mimic grief for a mythic\nobject, to a really sorrowful commemoration by the whole Lacedaemonian\npeople--each separate family for its own deceased members.\n\nIt was so again with those other youthful demi-gods, the Dioscuri,\nthemselves also, in old heroic time, resident in this venerable place:\nAmyclaei fratres, fraternal leaders of the Lacedaemonian people.  Their\nstatues at this date were numerous in Laconia, or the docana, primitive\nsymbols of them, those two upright beams of wood, carried to battle\nbefore the two kings, until it happened that through their secret\nenmity a certain battle was lost, after which one king only proceeded\nto the field, and one part only of that token of fraternity, the other\nremaining at Sparta.  Well! they were two stars, you know, at their\noriginal birth in men's minds, Gemini, virginal fresh stars of dawn,\nrising and setting alternately--those two half-earthly, half-celestial\nbrothers, one of whom, Polydeuces, was immortal.  The other, Castor,\nthe younger, subject to old age and death, had fallen in battle, was\nfound breathing his last.  Polydeuces thereupon, at his own prayer, was\npermitted to die: with undying fraternal affection, had forgone one\nmoiety of his privilege, and lay in the grave for a day in his [231]\nbrother's stead, but shone out again on the morrow; the brothers thus\never coming and going, interchangeably, but both alike gifted now with\nimmortal youth.\n\nIn their origin, then, very obviously elemental deities, they were thus\nbecome almost wholly humanised, fraternised with the Lacedaemonian\npeople, their closest friends of the whole celestial company, visitors,\nas fond legend told, at their very hearths, found warming themselves in\nthe half-light at their rude fire-sides.  Themselves thus visible on\noccasion, at all times in devout art, they were the starry patrons of\nall that youth was proud of, delighted in, horsemanship, games, battle;\nand always with that profound fraternal sentiment.  Brothers, comrades,\nwho could not live without each other, they were the most fitting\npatrons of a place in which friendship, comradeship, like theirs, came\nto so much.  Lovers of youth they remained, those enstarred types of\nit, arrested thus at that moment of miraculous good fortune as a\nconsecration of the clean, youthful friendship, \"passing even the love\nof woman,\" which, by system, and under the sanction of their founder's\nname, elaborated into a kind of art, became an elementary part of\neducation.  A part of their duty and discipline, it was also their\ngreat solace and encouragement.  The beloved and the lover, side by\nside through their long days of eager labour, and above all on the\nbattlefield, became respectively, ait\u00eas,+ the [232] hearer, and\neispn\u00ealas,+ the inspirer; the elder inspiring the younger with his own\nstrength and noble taste in things.\n\nWhat, it has been asked, what was there to occupy persons of the\nprivileged class in Lacedaemon from morning to night, thus cut off as\nthey were from politics and business, and many of the common interests\nof men's lives?  Our Platonic visitor would have asked rather, Why this\nstrenuous task-work, day after day; why this loyalty to a system, so\ncostly to you individually, though it may be thought to have survived\nits original purpose; this laborious, endless, education, which does\nnot propose to give you anything very useful or enjoyable in itself?\nAn intelligent young Spartan might have replied: \"To the end that I\nmyself may be a perfect work of art, issuing thus into the eyes of all\nGreece.\"  He might have observed--we may safely observe for him--that\nthe institutions of his country, whose he was, had a beauty in\nthemselves, as we may observe also of some at least of our own\ninstitutions, educational or religious: that they bring out, for\ninstance, the lights and shadows of human character, and relieve the\npresent by maintaining in it an ideal sense of the past.  He might have\nadded that he had his friendships to solace him; and to encourage him,\nthe sense of honour.\n\nHonour, friendship, loyalty to the ideal of the [233] past, himself as\na work of art!  There was much of course in his answer.  Yet still,\nafter all, to understand, to be capable of, such motives, was itself\nbut a result of that exacting discipline of character we are trying to\naccount for; and the question still recurs, To what purpose?  Why, with\nno prospect of Israel's reward, are you as scrupulous, minute, self-\ntaxing, as he?  A tincture of asceticism in the Lacedaemonian rule may\nremind us again of the monasticism of the Middle Ages.  But then,\nmonastic severity was for the purging of a troubled conscience, or for\nthe hope of an immense prize, neither of which conditions is to be\nsupposed here.  In fact the surprise of Saint Paul, as a practical man,\nat the slightness of the reward for which a Greek spent himself,\nnatural as it is about all pagan perfection, is especially applicable\nabout these Lacedaemonians, who indeed had actually invented that so\n\"corruptible\" and essentially worthless parsley crown in place of the\nmore tangible prizes of an earlier age.  Strange people!  Where,\nprecisely, may be the spring of action in you, who are so severe to\nyourselves; you who, in the words of Plato's supposed objector that the\nrulers of the ideal state are not to be envied, have nothing you can\nreally call your own, but are like hired servants in your own houses,--\nqui manducatis panem doloris?+\n\nAnother day-dream, you may say, about those [234] obscure ancient\npeople, it was ever so difficult really to know, who had hidden their\nactual life with so much success; but certainly a quite natural dream\nupon the paradoxical things we are told of them, on good authority.  It\nis because they make us ask that question; puzzle us by a paradoxical\nidealism in life; are thus distinguished from their neighbours; that,\nlike some of our old English places of education, though we might not\ncare to live always at school there, it is good to visit them on\noccasion; as some philosophic Athenians, as we have now seen, loved to\ndo, at least in thought.\n\nNOTES\n\n198. +Transliteration: Gn\u00f4thi sauton . . . M\u00eaden agan.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"Know thyself . . . nothing too much.\"  Plato, Protagoras\n343b.\n\n200. +Transliteration: mousik\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"any art\nover which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung\nto music....\"\n\n205. +Transliteration: hoi gerontes, h\u00ea gerousia.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinitions: \"the old . . . a Council of Elders, Senate, esp. at\nSparta, where it consisted of 28.\"\n\n206. +Transliteration: paraleipomenon.  Pater's translation:\n\"oversights.\"  The verb paraleip\u00f4 means, \"to leave on one side . . .\nleave unnoticed.\"\n\n207. +Transliteration: koil\u00ea Spart\u00ea.  Pater's translation: \"hollow\nSparta.\"\n\n207. +Transliteration: polichnia.  Pater's translation: \"hamlets.\"\n\n214. +Transliteration: ophrya te kai koilainetai.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"craggy and hollowed out.\"  Strabo cites this proverb\nabout Corinth.  Strabo, Geography, Book 8, Chapter 6, Section 23.\n\n216. +Transliteration: schol\u00ea.  Pater's translation: \"leisure.\"\n\n216. +Transliteration: \u00eathos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"an\naccustomed place . . . custom, usage, habit.\"\n\n217. +Transliteration: aret\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"goodness,\nexcellence, of any kind.\"\n\n218. +Transliteration: \u00eathos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"an\naccustomed place . . . custom, usage, habit.\"\n\n218. +Transliteration: h\u00ea diaita D\u00f4rik\u00ea.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"the Dorian way of life.\"\n\n219. +Transliteration: homoi\u00f4s apo te t\u00f4n skel\u00f4n kai apo cheir\u00f4n kai apo\ntrach\u00ealou gymnazontai.  E-text editor's translation: \"Their exercises\ntrain the legs, arms and neck with the same care.\"  Xenophon, Minor\nWorks, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, Chapter 5, Section 9.\n\n221. +Transliteration: homoioi . . . hypomeiones.  Pater's translation:\n\"superiors and inferiors.\"\n\n221. +Transliteration: Eir\u00ean, melleir\u00ean, sideun\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinition of the first term: \"a Lacedaemonian youth from his 18th.\nyear, when he was entitled to speak in the assembly and to lead an\narmy.\"  I have not come across the second or third terms, but the root\nmeaning of the words suggests that they would mean, roughly,  \"one who\nis of age, or nearly of age\" and \"a young man who is old enough to bear\na sword.\"\n\n222. +Transliteration: agelai.  Pater's translation: \"in their\ndivisions.\"\n\n223. +Transliteration: mousik\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"any art\nover which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung\nto music....\"\n\n225. +Transliteration: paraleipomenon.  Pater's translation:\n\"oversights.\"  The verb paraleip\u00f4 means, \"to leave on one side . . .\nleave unnoticed.\"\n\n226. +Transliteration: deisidaimones.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"fearing the gods,\" in both a good and bad sense--i.e. either pious or\nsuperstitious.\n\n229. +A Chit\u00f4n was \"a woollen shirt worn next the body.\"  (Liddell and\nScott.)\n\n231. +Transliteration: ait\u00eas.  Pater's translation: \"the hearer.\"\n\n232. +Transliteration: eispn\u00ealas.  Pater's translation: \"the hearer.\"\n\n233. +Psalm 127, verse 2.  The King James Bible translation is \"to eat\nthe bread of sorrows.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 9: THE REPUBLIC\n\n[235] \"THE Republic,\" as we may realise it mentally within the limited\nproportions of some quite imaginable Greek city, is the protest of\nPlato, in enduring stone, in law and custom more imperishable still,\nagainst the principle of flamboyancy or fluidity in things, and in\nmen's thoughts about them.  Political \"ideals\" may provide not only\ntypes for new states, but also, in humbler function, a due corrective\nof the errors, thus renewing the life, of old ones.  But like other\nmedicines the corrective or critical ideal may come too late, too near\nthe natural end of things.  The theoretic attempt made by Plato to\narrest the process of disintegration in the life of Athens, of Greece,\nby forcing it back upon a simpler and more strictly Hellenic type,\nended, so far as they were concerned, in theory.\n\nIt comes of Plato's literary skill, his really dramatic handling of a\nconversation, that one subject rises naturally out of another in the\n[236] course of it, that in the lengthy span of The Republic, though\nthey are linked together after all with a true logical coherency, now\njustice, now the ideal state, now the analysis of the individual soul,\nor the nature of a true philosopher, or his right education, or the law\nof political change, may seem to emerge as the proper subject of the\nwhole book.  It is thus incidentally, and by way of setting forth the\ndefinition of Justice or Rightness, as if in big letters, that the\nconstitution of the typically Right State is introduced into what,\naccording to one of its traditional titles-- Peri Dikaiosyn\u00eas +--might\nactually have figured as a dialogue on the nature of Justice.  But tod'\n\u00ean h\u00f4s eoike prooimion+--the discussion of the theory of the abstract\nand invisible rightness was but to introduce the practical architect,\nthe creator of the right state.  Plato then assumes rather than\ndemonstrates that so facile parallel between the individual\nconsciousness and the social aggregate, passes lightly backwards and\nforwards from the rightness or wrongness, the normal or abnormal\nconditions, of the one to those of the other, from you and me to the\n\"colossal man,\" whose good or bad qualities, being written up there on\na larger scale, are easier to read, and if one may say so, \"once in\nbricks and mortar,\" though but on paper, is lavish of a world as it\nshould be.  A strange world in some ways!  Let us look from the small\ntype of the individual to the monumental [237] inscription on those\nhigh walls, as he proposes; while his fancy wandering further and\nfurther, over tower and temple, its streets and the people in them, as\nif forgetful of his original purpose he tells us all he sees in thought\nof the City of the Perfect.\n\nTo the view of Plato, as of all other Greek citizens, the state, in its\nlocal habitation here or there, had been in all cases the gift or\nordinance of one or another real though half-divine founder, some Solon\nor Lycurgus, thereafter a proper object of piety, of filial piety, for\never, among those to whom he had bequeathed the blessings of civilised\nlife.  Himself actually of Solon's lineage, Plato certainly is less\naware than those who study these matters in the \"historic spirit\" of\nthe modern world that for the most part, like other more purely\nphysical things, states \"are not made, but grow.\"  Yet his own work as\na designer or architect of what shall be new is developed quite\nnaturally out of the question how an already existing state, such as\nthe actual Athens of the day, might secure its pre-eminence, or its\nvery existence.  Close always, by the concrete turn of his genius, to\nthe facts of the place and the hour, his first thought is to suggest a\nremedy for the peculiar evils of the Athenians at that moment; and in\nhis delineation of the ideal state he does but elevate what Athens in\nparticular, a ship so early going to pieces, might well be forced to\nbecome for her salvation, were [238] it still possible, into the\neternal type of veritable statecraft, of a city as such, \"a city at\nunity in itself,\" defiant of time.  He seems to be seeking in the first\ninstance a remedy for the sick, a desperate political remedy; and\nthereupon, as happens with really philosophic enquirers, the view\nenlarges on all sides around him.\n\nThose evils of Athens then, which were found in very deed somewhat\nlater to be the infirmity of Greece as a whole, when, though its\nversatile gifts of intellect might constitute it the teacher of its\neventual masters, it was found too incoherent politically to hold its\nown against Rome:--those evils of Athens, of Greece, came from an\nexaggerated assertion of the fluxional, flamboyant, centrifugal Ionian\nelement in the Hellenic character.  They could be cured only by a\ncounter-assertion of the centripetal Dorian ideal, as actually seen\nbest at Lacedaemon; by the way of simplification, of a rigorous\nlimitation of all things, of art and life, of the souls, aye, and of\nthe very bodies of men, as being the integral factors of all beside.\nIt is in those simpler, corrected outlines of a reformed Athens that\nPlato finds the \"eternal form\" of the State, of a city as such, like a\nwell-knit athlete, or one of those perfectly disciplined Spartan\ndancers.  His actual purpose therefore is at once reforming and\nconservative.  The drift of his charge is, in his own words, that no\npolitical constitution then existing is suitable to the philosophic,\nthat is to [239] say, as he conceives it, to the aristocratic or kingly\nnature.  How much that means we shall see by and bye, when he maintains\nthat in the City of the Perfect the kings will be philosophers.  It\nmeans that those called, like the gifted, lost Alcibiades, to be the\nsaviours of the state, as a matter of fact become instead its\ndestroyers.  The proper soil in which alone that precious exotic seed,\nthe kingly or aristocratic seed, will attain its proper qualities, in\nwhich alone it will not yield wine inferior to its best, or rather,\ninstead of bearing any wine at all, become a deadly poison, is still to\nbe laid down according to rules of art, the ethic or political art; but\nonce provided must be jealously kept from innovation.  Organic unity\nwith one's self, body and soul, is the well-being, the rightness, or\nrighteousness, or justice of the individual, of the microcosm; but is\nthe ideal also, it supplies the true definition, of the well-being of\nthe macrocosm, of the social organism, the state.  On this Plato has to\ninsist, to the disadvantage of what we actually see in Greece, in\nAthens, with all its intricacies of disunion, faction against faction,\nas displayed in the later books of Thucydides.  Remember! the question\nPlato is asking throughout The Republic, with a touch perhaps of the\nnarrowness, the fanaticism, or \"fixed idea,\" of Machiavel himself, is,\nnot how shall the state, the place we must live in, be gay or rich or\npopulous, but strong--strong enough to remain [240] itself, to resist\nsolvent influences within or from without, such as would deprive it not\nmerely of the accidental notes of prosperity but of its own very being.\n\nNow what hinders this strengthening macrocosmic unity, the oneness of\nthe political organism with itself, is that the unit, the individual,\nthe microcosm, fancies itself, or would fain be, a rival macrocosm,\nindependent, many-sided, all-sufficient.  To make him that, as you\nknow, had been the conscious aim of the Athenian system in the\neducation of its youth, as also in its later indirect education of the\ncitizen by the way of political life.  It was the ideal of one side of\nthe Greek character in general, of much that was brilliant in it and\nseductive to others.  In this sense, Pericles himself interprets the\neducational function of the city towards the citizen:--to take him as\nhe is, and develope him to the utmost on all his various sides, with a\nvariety in those parts however, as Plato thinks, by no means likely to\npromote the unity of the whole, of the state as such, which must move\nall together if it is to move at all, at least against its foes.  With\nthis at first sight quite limited purpose then, paradoxical as it might\nseem to those whose very ideal lay precisely in such manifold\ndevelopment, to Plato himself perhaps, manifold as his own genius and\nculture conspicuously were--paradoxical [241] as it might seem, Plato's\ndemand is for the limitation, the simplifying, of those constituent\nparts or units; that the unit should be indeed no more than a part, it\nmight be a very small part, in a community, which needs, if it is still\nto subsist, the wholeness of an army in motion, of the stars in their\ncourses, of well-concerted music, if you prefer that figure, or, as the\nmodern reader might perhaps object, of a machine.  The design of Plato\nis to bring back the Athenian people, the Greeks, to thoughts of order,\nto disinterestedness in their functions, to that self-concentration of\nsoul on one's own part, that loyal concession of their proper parts to\nothers, on which such order depends, to a love of it, a sense of its\nextreme aesthetic beauty and fitness, according to that indefectible\ndefinition of Justice, of what is right, to hen prattein, to ta hautou\nprattein+, in opposition, as he thinks, to those so fascinating\nconditions of Injustice, poikilia, pleonexia, polypragmosyn\u00ea,+ figuring\naway, as they do sometimes, so brilliantly.\n\nFor Plato would have us understand that men are in truth after all\nnaturally much simpler, much more limited in character and capacity,\nthan they seem.  Such diversity of parts and function as is presupposed\nin his definition of Justice has been fixed by nature itself on human\nlife.  The individual, as such, humble as his proper function may be,\nis unique in fitness for, in a consequent \"call\" to, that function.  We\n[242] know how much has been done to educate the world, under the\nsupposition that man is a creature of very malleable substance,\nindifferent in himself, pretty much what influences may make of him.\nPlato, on the other hand, assures us that no one of us \"is like another\nall in all.\"--Pr\u00f4ton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios hekast\u00f4, alla\ndiapher\u00f4n t\u00ean physin, allos ep allou ergou praxin +.--But for this,\nsocial Justice, according to its eternal form or definition, would in\nfact be nowhere applicable.  Once for all he formulates clearly that\nimportant notion of the function, (ergon)+ of a thing, or of a person.\nIt is that which he alone can do, or he better than any one else.\n\nThat Plato should exaggerate this definiteness in men's natural\nvocations, thus to be read as it were in \"plain figures\" upon each, is\none of the necessities of his position.  Effect of nature itself, such\ninequality between men, this differentiation of one from another, is to\nbe further promoted by all the cunning of the political art.  The\ncounter-assertion of the natural indifference of men, their pliability\nto circumstance, while it is certainly truer to our modern experience,\nis also in itself more hopeful, more congruous with all the processes\nof education.  But for Plato the natural inequality of men, if it is\nthe natural ground of that versatility, (poikilia),+ of the wrongness or\nInjustice he must needs correct, will be the natural ground of Justice\nalso, as essentially a unity or harmony enforced on disparate [243]\nelements, unity as of an army, or an order of monks, organic, mechanic,\nliturgical, whichever you please to call it; but a kind of music\ncertainly, if the founder, the master, of the state, for his proper\npart, can but compose the scattered notes.\n\nJust here then is the original basis of society--gignetai toinyn h\u00f4s\neg\u00f4mai polis epeid\u00ea tunchanei h\u00eam\u00f4n hekastos ouk autark\u00eas +--at first in\nits humblest form; simply because one can dig and another spin; yet\nalready with anticipations of The Republic, of the City of the Perfect,\nas developed by Plato, as indeed also, beyond it, of some still more\ndistant system \"of the services of angels and men in a wonderful\norder\"; for the somewhat visionary towers of Plato's Republic blend of\ncourse with those of the Civitas Dei of Augustine.  Only, though its\ntop may one day \"reach unto heaven,\" it by no means came down thence;\nbut, as Plato conceives, arises out of the earth, out of the humblest\nnatural wants.  Grote was right.--There is a very shrewd matter-of-fact\nutilitarian among the dramatis personae which together make up the\ncomplex genius of Plato.  Poi\u00easei h\u00f4s eg\u00f4mai t\u00ean polin h\u00eametera\nchreia+.--Society is produced by our physical necessities, our\ninequality in regard to them:--an inequality in three broad divisions\nof unalterable, incommunicable type, of natural species, among men,\nwith corresponding differentiation of political and social functions:\nthree firmly outlined orders [244] in the state, like three primitive\ncastes, propagating, reinforcing, their peculiarities of condition, as\nPlato will propose, by exclusive intermarriage, each within itself.  As\nin the class of the artisans (hoi d\u00eamiourgoi)+ some can make swords\nbest, others pitchers, so, on the larger survey, there will be found\nthose who can use those swords, or, again, think, teach, pray, or lead\nan army, a whole body of swordsmen, best, thus defining within\nimpassable barriers three essential species of citizenship--the\nproductive class, the military order, the governing class thirdly, or\nspiritual order.\n\nThe social system is in fact like the constitution of a human being.\nThere are those who have capacity, a vocation, to conceive thoughts,\nand rule their brethren by intellectual power.  Collectively of course\nthey are the mind or brain, the mental element, in the social organism.\nThere are those secondly, who have by nature executive force, who will\nnaturally wear arms, the sword in the sheath perhaps, but who will also\non occasion most certainly draw it.  Well, these are like the active\npassions and the ultimately decisive will in the bosom of man, most\nconspicuous as anger--anger, it may be, resentment, against known wrong\nin another or in one's self, the champion of conscience, flinging away\nthe scabbard, setting the spear against the foe, like a soldier of\nspirit.  They are in a word the conscience, the armed conscience, of\nthe state, [245] nobly bred, sensitive for others and for themselves,\ninformed by the light of reason in their natural kings.  And then,\nthirdly, protected, controlled, by the thought, the will, above them,\nlike those appetites in you and me, hunger, thirst, desire, which have\nbeen the motive, the actual creators, of the material order all around\nus, there will be the \"productive\" class, labouring perfectly in the\ncornfields, in the vineyards, or on the vessels which are to contain\ncorn and wine, at a thousand handicrafts, every one still exquisitely\ndifferentiated, according to Plato's rule of right--eis hen kata physin\n+; as within the military class also there will be those who command and\nthose who can but obey, and within the true princely class again those\nwho know all things and others who have still much to learn; those also\nwho can learn and teach one sort of knowledge better than another.\n\nPlato however, in the first steps of the evolution of the State, had\nlighted quite naturally on what turns out to be a mistaken or\ninadequate ideal of it, in an idyll pretty enough, indeed, from \"The\nGolden Age.\"--How sufficient it seems for a moment, that innocent\nworld! is, nevertheless, actually but a false ideal of human society,\nallowing in fact no place at all for Justice; the very terms of which,\nprecisely because they involve differentiation of life and its\nfunctions, are inapplicable to a society, if so it may be called, still\nessentially inorganic.  In [246] a condition, so rudimentary as to\npossess no opposed parts at all, of course there will be no place for\ndisturbance of parts, for proportion or disproportion of faculty and\nfunction.  It is, in truth, to a city which has lost its first\ninnocence (polis \u00ead\u00ea tryph\u00f4sa)+ that we must look for the consciousness\nof Justice and Injustice; as some theologians or philosophers have held\nthat it was by the \"Fall\" man first became a really moral being.\n\nNow in such a city, in the polis \u00ead\u00ea tryph\u00f4sa,+ there will be an\nincrease of population:-- kai h\u00ea ch\u00f4ra pou h\u00ea tote hikan\u00ea smikra ex\nhikan\u00eas estai.+  And in an age which perhaps had the military spirit in\nexcess Plato's thoughts pass on immediately to wars of aggression:--\noukoun t\u00eas t\u00f4n pl\u00easion ch\u00f4ras h\u00eamin apotm\u00eateon?+  We must take something,\nif we can, from Megara or from Sparta; which doubtless in its turn\nwould do the same by us.  As a measure of relief however that was not\nnecessarily the next step.  The needs of an out-pushing population\nmight have suggested to Plato what is perhaps the most brilliant and\nanimating episode in the entire history of Greece, its early\ncolonisation, with all the bright stories, full of the piety, the\ngenerosity of a youthful people, that had gathered about it.  No, the\nnext step in social development was not necessarily going to war.  In\neither case however, aggressive action against our neighbours, or\ndefence of our distant brethren beyond the seas [247] at Cyrene or\nSyracuse against rival adventurers, we shall require a new class of\npersons, men of the sword, to fight for us if need be.  Ah!  You hear\nthe notes of the trumpet, and therewith already the stir of an\nenlarging human life, its passions, its manifold interests.  Phylakes\nor epikouroi,+ watchmen or auxiliaries, our new servants comprehend at\nfirst our masters to be, whom a further act of differentiation will\ndistinguish as philosophers and kings from the strictly military order.\nPlato nevertheless in his search for the true idea of Justice, of\nrightness in things, may be said now to have seen land.  Organic\nrelationship is come into the rude social elements and made of them a\nbody, a society.  Rudimentary though it may still be, the definition of\nJustice, as also of Injustice, is now applicable to its processes.\nThere is a music in the affairs of men, in which one may take one's due\npart, which one may spoil.\n\nCriticising mythology Plato speaks of certain fables, to be made by\nthose who are apt at such things, under proper spiritual authority, so\nto term it, h\u00f4s en pharmakou eidei ta pseud\u00ea ta en deonti genomena,+\nmedicinable lies or fictions, with a provisional or economised truth in\nthem, set forth under such terms as simple souls could best receive.\nJust here, at the end of the third book of The Republic he introduces\nsuch a fable: phoinikikon pseudos,+ he calls it, a miner's story, about\ncopper and silver and gold, such as may really [248] have been current\namong the primitive inhabitants of the island from which metal and the\nart of working it had been introduced into Greece.--\n\n     And I shall try first of all to persuade the rulers themselves\n     and our soldiers, and afterwards the rest of the community, as\n     to the matter of the rearing and the education we gave them,\n     that in fact it did but seem to happen with them, they seemed\n     to experience all that, only as in dreams.  They were then in\n     very truth nourished and fashioned beneath the earth within,\n     and the armour upon them and their equipment put together; and\n     when they were perfectly wrought out the earth even their mother\n     put them forth.  Now, therefore, it is their duty to think\n     concerning the land in which they are as of a mother, or\n     foster-mother, and to protect it if any foe come against it,\n     and to think of their fellow-citizens as being their brothers,\n     born of the earth as they.  All ye in the city, therefore, are\n     brothers, we shall say to them proceeding with our story; but\n     God, when he made you, mixed gold in the generation of those\n     among you fit to be our kings, for which cause they are the\n     most precious of all; and silver in those fit to be our guards;\n     and in the husbandmen and all other handicraftsmen iron and\n     brass.  Forasmuch then as ye are all of one kindred, for the\n     most part ye would beget offspring like to yourselves; but at\n     times a silver child will come of one golden, and from the\n     silver a child of gold, and so forth, interchangeably.  To\n     those who rule, then, first and above all God enjoins that of\n     nothing shall they be so careful guardians, nothing shall they\n     so earnestly regard, as the young children--what metal has\n     been mixed to their hands in the souls of these.  And if a\n     child of their own be born with an alloy of iron or brass, they\n     shall by no means have pity upon it, but, allotting unto it the\n     value which befits its nature, they shall thrust it into the\n     class of husbandmen or artisans.  And if, again, of these a\n     child be born with gold or silver in him, with due estimate\n     they shall promote such to wardenship or to arms, inasmuch as\n     an oracular saying declares that the city is perished already\n     when it has iron or brass to guard it.  Can you suggest a way\n     of getting them to believe this mythus?  Republic, 414.\n\n[249] Its application certainly is on the surface: the Lacedaemonian\ndetails also--the military turn taken, the disinterestedness of the\npowerful, their monastic renunciation of what the world prizes most,\nabove all the doctrine of a natural aristocracy with its \"privileges\nand also its duties.\"  Men are of simpler structure and capacities than\nyou have fancied, Plato would assure us, and more decisively appointed\nto this rather than to that order of service.  Nay, with the boldness\nproper to an idealist, he does not hesitate to represent them (that is\nthe force of the mythus) as actually made of different stuff; and\nsociety, assuming a certain aristocratic humour in the nature of\nthings, has for its business to sanction, safeguard, further promote\nit, by law.\n\nThe state therefore, if it is to be really a living creature, will\nhave, like the individual soul, those sensuous appetites which call the\nproductive powers into action, and its armed conscience, and its far-\nreaching intellectual light: its industrial class, that is to say, its\nsoldiers, its kings--the last, a kind of military monks, as you might\nthink, on a distant view, their minds full of a kind of heavenly\neffulgence, yet superintending the labours of a large body of work-\npeople in the town and the fields about it.  Of the industrial or\nproductive class, the artists and artisans, Plato speaks only in\noutline, but is significant in what he says; and enough remains of the\nactual fruits [250] of Greek industry to enable us to complete his\noutline for ourselves, as we may also, by aid of Greek art, together\nwith the words of Homer and Pindar, equip and realise the full\ncharacter of the true Platonic \"war-man\" or knight; and again, through\nsome later approximate instances, discern something of those\nextraordinary, half-divine, philosophic kings.\n\nWe must let industry then mean for Plato all it meant, would naturally\nmean, for a Greek, amid the busy spectacle of Athenian handicrafts.\nThe \"rule\" of Plato, its precepts of temperance, proportion, economy,\nthough designed primarily for its soldiers, and its kings or archons,\nfor the military and spiritual orders, would probably have been\nincumbent also in relaxed degree upon those who work with their hands;\nand we have but to walk through the classical department of the Louvre\nor the British Museum to be reminded how those qualities of temperance\nand the like did but enhance, could not chill or impoverish, the\nartistic genius of Greek workmen.  In proportion to what we know of the\nminor handicrafts of Greece we shall find ourselves able to fill up, as\nthe condition of everyday life in the streets of Plato's City of the\nPerfect, a picture of happy protected labour, \"skilled\" to the utmost\ndegree in all its applications.  Those who prosecute it will be\nallowed, as we may gather, in larger proportion than those who \"watch,\"\nin silent thought or sword in hand, such animal [251] liberties as seem\nnatural and right, and are not really \"illiberal,\" for those who labour\nall day with their bodies, though they too will have on them in their\nservice some measure of the compulsion which shapes the action of our\nkings and soldiers to such effective music.  With more or less of\nasceticism, of a \"common life,\" among themselves, they will be the\npeculiar sphere of the virtue of temperance in the State, as being the\nentirely willing subjects of wholesome rule.  They represent, as we\nsaw, in the social organism, the bodily appetites of the individual,\nits converse with matter, in a perfect correspondence, if all be right\nthere, with the conscience and with the reasonable soul in it.\nLabouring by system at the production of perfect swords, perfect lamps,\nperfect poems too, and a perfect coinage, such as we know, to enable\nthem the more readily to exchange their produce (nomisma t\u00eas allag\u00eas\nheneka)+ working perhaps in guilds and under rules to insure perfection\nin each specific craft, refining matter to the last degree, they would\nconstitute the beautiful body of the State, in rightful service, like\nthe copper and iron, the bronze and the steel, they manipulate so\nfinely, to its beautiful soul--to its natural though hereditary\naristocracy, its \"golden\" humanity, its kings, in whom Wisdom, the\nlight, of a comprehensive Synopsis, indefectibly resides, and who, as\nbeing not merely its discursive or practical reason, but its faculty of\ncontemplation likewise, will be also its priests, the [252] medium of\nits worship, of its intercourse with the gods.\n\nBetween them, between that intellectual or spiritual order, those novel\nphilosophic kings, and the productive class of the artists and\nartisans, moves the military order, as the sensitive armed conscience,\nthe armed will, of the State, its executive power in the fullest sense\nof that term--a \"standing army,\" as Plato supposes, recruited from a\ngreat hereditary caste born and bred to such functions, and certainly\nvery different from the mere \"militia\" of actual Greek states, hastily\nsummoned at need to military service from the fields and workshops.\nRemember that the veritable bravery also, as the philosopher sees it,\nis a form of that \"knowledge,\" which in truth includes in itself all\nother virtues, all good things whatever; that it is a form of \"right\nopinion,\" and has a kind of insight in it, a real apprehension of the\noccasion and its claims on one's courage, whether it is worth while to\nfight, and to what point.  Platonic knighthood then will have in it\nsomething of the philosophy which resides in plenitude in the class\nabove it, by which indeed this armed conscience of the State, the\nmilitary order, is continuously enlightened, as we know the conscience\nof each one of us severally needs to be.  And though Plato will not\nexpect his fighting-men, like the Christian knight, like Saint Ranieri\nGualberto, [253] to forgive their enemies, yet, moving one degree out\nof the narrower circle of Greek habits, he does require them, in\nconformity with a certain Pan-Hellenic, a now fully realised national\nsense, which fills himself, to love the whole Greek race, to spare the\nfoe, if he be Greek, the last horrors of war, to think of the soil, of\nthe dead, of the arms and armour taken from them, with certain scruples\nof a natural piety.\n\nAs the knights share the dignity of the regal order, are in fact\nultimately distinguished from it by degree rather than in kind, so they\nwill be sharers also in its self-denying \"rule.\"  In common with it,\nthey will observe a singular precept which forbids them so much as to\ncome under the same roof with vessels or other objects wrought of gold\nor silver--they \"who are most worthy of it,\" precisely because while\n\"many iniquities have come from the world's coinage, they have gold in\nthem undefiled.\"  Yet again we are not to suppose in Platonic Greece--\nhow could we indeed anywhere within the range of Greek conceptions?--\nanything rude, uncomely, or unadorned.  No one who reads carefully in\nthis very book of The Republic those pages of criticism which concern\nart quite as much as poetry, a criticism which drives everywhere at a\nconscientious nicety of workmanship, will suppose that.  If kings and\nknights never drink from vessels of silver or gold, their earthen cups\nand platters, we may be sure, would be what we can [254] still see; and\nthe iron armour on their bodies exquisitely fitted to them, to its\npurpose, with that peculiar beauty which such fitness secures.  See\nthem, then, moving, in perfect \"Justice\" or \"Rightness,\" to their\nDorian music, their so expressive plain-song, under the guidance of\ntheir natural leaders, those who can see and fore-see--of those who\nknow.\n\nThat they may be one!--If, like an individual soul, the state has\nattained its normal differentiation of parts, as with that also its\nvitality and effectiveness will be proportionate to the unity of those\nparts in their various single operations.  The productive, the\nexecutive, the contemplative orders, respectively, like their\npsychological analogues, the senses, the will, and the intelligence,\nwill be susceptible each of its own proper virtue or excellence,\ntemperance, bravery, spiritual illumination.  Only, let each work\naright in its own order, and a fourth virtue will supervene upon their\nunited perfections, the virtue or perfection of the organic whole as\nsuch.  The Justice which Plato has been so long in search of will be\nmanifest at last--that perfect oikeiopragia,+ which will be also perfect\nco-operation.  Oneness, unity, community, an absolute community of\ninterests among fellow-citizens, philadelphia, over against the selfish\nambition of those naturally ascendant, like Alcibiades or Crito, in\nthat competition for office, for wealth and honours, which has rent\nAthens into factions ever breeding [255] on themselves, the centripetal\nforce versus all centrifugal forces:--on this situation, Plato, in the\ncentral books of The Republic, dwells untired, in all its variety of\nsynonym and epithet, the conditions, the hazard and difficulty of its\nrealisation, its analogies in art, in music, in practical life, like\nthree strings of a lyre, or like one colossal person, the painted d\u00eamos+\nor civic genius on the walls of a Greek town-house, or, again, like the\nconsummate athlete whose body, with no superfluities, is the precise,\nthe perfectly finished, instrument of his will.  Hence, at once cause\nand effect of such \"seamless\" unity, his paradoxical new law of\nproperty in the City of the Perfect--mandatum novum, a \"new\ncommandment,\" we might fairly call it--ta t\u00f4n phil\u00f4n koina.+  \"And no\none said that aught of the things he possessed was his own but they had\nall things common.\"  Ah, you see!  Put yourself in Plato's company, and\ninevitably, from time to time, he will seem to pass with you beyond the\nutmost horizon actually opened to him.\n\nUpon the aristocratic class therefore, in its two divisions, the army\nand the church or hierarchy, so to speak, the \"rule\" of Plato--poverty,\nobedience, contemplation, will be incumbent in its fullest rigour.\n\"Like hired servants in their own house,\" they may not seem very\nenviable persons, on first thoughts.  But remember again that Plato's\ncharge against things as they are is partly in a theoretic interest--\nthe philosopher, [256] the philosophic soul, loves unity, but finds it\nnowhere, neither in the State nor in its individual members: it is\npartly also practical, and of the hour.  Divided Athens, divided\nGreece, like some big, lax, self-neglectful person would be an easy\nprey to any well-knit adversary really at unity in himself.  It is by\nway of introducing a constringent principal into a mass of amorphic\nparticles, that Plato proclaims that these friends will have all things\nin common; and, challenged by the questions of his companions in the\ndialogue to say how far he will be ready to go in the application of so\nparadoxical a rule, he braces himself to a surprising degree of\nconsistency.  How far then will Plato, a somewhat Machiavelian\ntheorist, as you saw, and with something of \"fixed\" ideas about\npractical things, taking desperate means towards a somewhat exclusively\nconceived ideal of social well-being, be ready to go?\n\nNow we have seen that the genuine citizens of his Perfect City will\nhave much of monasticism, of the character of military monks, about\nthem already, with their poverty, their obedience, their contemplative\nhabit.  And there is yet another indispensable condition of the\nmonastic life.  The great Pope Hildebrand, by the rule of celibacy, by\nmaking \"regulars\" to that extent of the secular clergy, succeeded, as\nmany have thought, in his design of making them in very deed, soul and\nbody, but parts of the corporate order they [257] belonged to; and what\nPlato is going to add to his rule of life, for the archontes,+ who are\nto be philopolides,+ to love the corporate body they belong to better\nthan themselves, is in its actual effects something very like a law of\ncelibacy.  Difficult, paradoxical, as he admits it to be, he is pressed\non by his hearers, and by the natural force of his argument,\nreluctantly to declare that the rule of communism will apply to a man's\nownership of his wife and children.\n\nObserve!  Plato proposes this singular modification of married life as\nan elevation or expansion of the family, but, it may be rightly\nobjected, is, in truth, only colouring with names exclusively\nappropriate to the family, arrangements which will be a suppression of\nall those sentiments that naturally pertain to it.  The wisdom of Plato\nwould certainly deprive mothers of that privacy of affection, regarding\nwhich the wisdom of Solomon beamed forth, by sending all infants soon\nafter birth to be reared in a common nursery, where the facts of their\nactual parentage would be carefully obliterated.  The result, as he\nsupposes, will be a common and universal parentage, sonship,\nbrotherhood; but surely with but a shadowy realisation of the\naffections, the claims, of these relationships.  It will involve a loss\nof differentiation in life, and be, as such, a movement backward, to a\nbarbarous or merely animal grade of existence.\n\n[258] Ta t\u00f4n phil\u00f4n koina.+--With this soft phrase, then, Plato would\ntake away all those precious differences that come of our having a\nlittle space in things to do what one will or can with.  The Platonic\nstate in fact, with its extraordinary common marriages, would be\ndealing precisely after the manner of those who breed birds or dogs.  A\nstrange forbidding experiment, it seems, or should seem, to us, looking\nback on it in the light of laws now irrevocably fixed on these subjects\nby the judgment of the Christian church.  We must remember however, in\nfairness, that Plato in this matter of the relation of the sexes\nespecially, found himself in a world very different from ours,\nregulated and refined, as it already is in some degree, by Christian\nideas about women and children.  A loose law of marriage, beyond it\nconcubinage in some degree sanctioned by religion, beyond that again\nmorbid vice: such was the condition of the Greek world.  What Christian\nmarriage, in harmonious action with man's true nature, has done to\ncounteract this condition, that Plato tried to do by a somewhat forced\nlegislation, which was altogether out of harmony with the facts of\nman's nature.  Neither the church nor the world has endorsed his\ntheories about it.  Think, in contrast, of the place occupied in\nChristian art by the mother and her child.  What that represents in\nlife Plato wishes to take from us, though, as he would have us think,\nin our own behalf.\n\n[259] And his views of the community of male and female education, and\nof the functions of men and women in the State, do but come of the\nrelief of women in large measure from home-duties.  Such duties\nbecoming a carefully economised department of the State, the women will\nhave leisure to share the work of men; and will need a corresponding\neducation.  The details of their common life in peace and war he\ncertainly makes effective and bright.  But if we think of his proposal\nas a reinstatement of the Amazon we have in effect condemned it.  For\nthe Amazon of mythology and art is but a survival from a half-animal\nworld, which Theseus, the embodiment of adult reason, had long since\novercome.\n\nPlato himself divides this confessedly so difficult question into two:\nIs the thing good? and in the second place, Is it possible?  Let us\nadmit that at that particular crisis, or even generally, what he\nproposes is for the best.  Thereupon the question which suggested\nitself in regard to the community of goods recurs with double force:\nWhere may lie the secret of the magnanimity (that is the term to hold\nby) which will make wealth and office, with all their opportunities for\npuissant wills, no motive in life at all?  Is it possible, and under\nwhat conditions--this disinterestedness on the part of those who might\ndo what they will as with their own, this indifference, this surrender,\nnot of one's goods and [260] time only, but of one's last resource,\none's very home, for \"the greatest happiness of the greatest number.\"--\nThose are almost the exact words of Plato.  How shall those who might\nbe egotists on the scale of an Alcibiades or an Alexander be kept to\nthis strange \"new mandate\" of altruism?  How shall a paradox so bold be\nbrought within the range of possibilities?  Well! by the realisation of\nanother paradox,--if we make philosophers our kings or our kings\nphilosophers.  It is the last \"wave of paradox,\" from the advancing\ncrest of which Plato still shrinks back, oddly reluctant, as we may\nthink, to utter his whole mind.  But, concede his position, and all\nbeside, in the strange, paradoxical new world he is constructing, its\nextraordinary reaches of philadelphia, will be found practicable.\n\nOur kings must be philosophers.  But not, we must carefully note,\nbecause, as people are apt to fancy, philosophers as such necessarily\ndespise or are unable to feel what is fascinating in the world of\naction, are un-formed or withered on one side, and, as regards the\nallurements of the world of sense, are but \"corpses.\"  For Plato\ncertainly they are no starvelings.  The philosophic, or aristocratic,\nor kingly, nature, as he conceives it, will be the perfect flower of\nthe whole compass of natural endowments, promoted to the utmost by the\nartificial influences of society--kalokagathos +--capable therefore in\nthe extreme degree of success in a purely \"self-regarding\" policy, of\nan [261] exploitation, in their own interests, of all that men in\ngeneral value most, to the surfeiting, if they cared, of their\nambition, their vanity, their love of liberty or license.\n\nNor again must our kings be philosophers mainly because in such case\nthe world will be very wisely, very knowingly, governed.  Of course it\nwould be well that wise men should rule.  Even a Greek, still \"a youth\nin the youth of the world,\" who indeed was not very far gone from an\nessentially youthful evaluation of things, was still apt to think with\nCroesus that the richest must of course be the happiest of men, and to\nhave a head-ache when compelled to think, even he would have taken so\nmuch for granted.  That it would be well that wise men should govern,\nwise after the Platonic standard, bringing, that is to say, particular\ndetails under coherent general rules, able to foresee and influence the\nfuture by their knowledge of the past:--there is no paradox in that: it\nbelongs rather, you might complain, to the range of platitudes.  But,\nremember! the hinge of Plato's whole political argument is, that the\nruinous divisions of Athens, of Greece, of the entire social community,\nis the want of disinterestedness in its rulers; not that they are unfit\nto rule; rather, that they have often, it may be, a natural call to\noffice--those exceptional high natures--but that they \"abound\" therein\nexclusively \"in their own sense.\"  And the precise point of paradox in\nphilosophic kingship, [262] as Plato takes it, is this, that if we have\nphilosophers for our kings, our archons, we shall be under a sort of\nrulers who as such have made sacrifice of themselves, and in coming to\noffice at all must have taken upon them \"the form of a servant.\"--\n\n     For thus it is.--If you can find out a life better than being\n     a king, for those who shall be kings, a well-governed city\n     will become possible, and not otherwise.  For in that city\n     alone will those be kings who are in very deed rich.  But if\n     poor men, hungering after their private good, proceed to public\n     offices, it is not possible; for, the kingly office becoming an\n     object of contention, the sort of battle which results, being\n     at home and internal, destroys them, along with the common-\n     wealth.--Most truly, he replied.--Have you then, I asked, any\n     kind of life which can despise political offices, other than\n     the life of true philosophers?--Certainly not.--Yet still it\n     is necessary that those who come to office should not be lovers\n     of it; otherwise the rival lovers will fight.--That must be\n     so.--Whom then will you compel to proceed to the guardianship\n     of the city save those, who, being wisest of all in regard to\n     the conditions of her highest welfare, are themselves possessed\n     of privileges of another order, and a life better than the\n     politician's?  Republic, 520.\n\nMore capable than others of an adroit application of all that power\nusually means in the way of personal advantage, your \"legitimate,\" and\nreally elect royalty or aristocracy must be secured from the love of\nit; you must insure their magnanimity in office by a counter-charm.\nBut where is such a charm, or counter-charm, to be found?  Throughout,\nas usual in so provident a writer as Plato, the answer to that leading\n[263] question has had its prelude, even in the first book.--\n\n     Therefore it was, for my part, friend Thrasymachus, I was saying\n     just now that no one would be willing of his own motion to rule,\n     and take in hand the ills of other people to set them right, but\n     that he would ask a reward; because he who will do fairly by his\n     art, or prosper by his art, never does what is best for himself,\n     nor ordains that, in ordaining what is proper to his art, but\n     what is best for the subject of his rule.  By reason of which\n     indeed, as it seems, there must needs be a reward for those who\n     shall be willing to rule, either money, or honour, or a penalty\n     unless he will rule.--How do you mean this Socrates? said\n     Glaucon: for the two rewards I understand; but the penalty, of\n     which you speak, and have named as in the place of a reward, I\n     do not understand.--Then you do not understand, I said, the\n     reward of the best, for the sake of which the most virtuous\n     rule, when they are willing to rule.  Or do you not know that\n     the being fond of honours, fond of money, is said to be, and\n     is, a disgrace?--For my part, Yes! he said.--On this ground\n     then, neither for money are the good willing to rule, nor for\n     honour; for they choose neither, in openly exacting hire as\n     a return for their rule, to be called hirelings, nor, in taking\n     secretly therefrom, thieves.  Nor again is it for honour they\n     will rule; for they are not ambitious.  Therefore it is, that\n     necessity must be on them, and a penalty, if they are to be\n     willing to rule: whence perhaps it has come, that to proceed\n     with ready will to the office of ruler, and not to await\n     compulsion, is accounted indecent.  As for the penalty,--the\n     greatest penalty is to be ruled by one worse than oneself,\n     unless one will rule.  And it is through fear of that, the\n     good seem to me to rule, when they rule: and then they proceed\n     to the office of ruler, not as coming to some good thing, nor\n     as to profit therein, but as to something unavoidable, and\n     as having none better than themselves to whom to entrust it,\n     nor even as good.  Since it seems likely that if a city of good\n     men came to be, not to rule would be the matter of contention,\n     as nowadays to rule; and here it would become manifest that a\n     ruler in very deed, in the nature of things, considers not what\n     is profitable for himself, but for the subject of his rule.\n     So [264] that every intelligent person would choose rather to\n     be benefited by another, than by benefiting another to have\n     trouble himself.  Republic, 346.\n\nNow if philosophy really is where Plato consistently puts it, and is\nall he claims for it, then, for those capable of it, who are capable\nalso in the region of practice, it will be precisely \"that better thing\nthan being a king for those who must be our kings, our archons.\"  You\nsee that the various elements of Platonism are interdependent; that\nthey really cohere.\n\nJust at this point then you must call to memory the greatness of the\nclaim Plato makes for philosophy--a promise, you may perhaps think,\nlarger than anything he has actually presented to his readers in the\nway of a philosophic revelation justifies.  He seems, in fact, to\npromise all, or almost all, that in a later age natures great and high\nhave certainly found in the Christian religion.  If philosophy is only\nstar-gazing, or only a condition of doubt, if what the sophist or the\nphilistine says of it is all that can be said, it could hardly compete\nwith the rewards which the vulgar world holds out to its servants.  But\nfor Plato, on the other hand, if philosophy is anything at all, it is\nnothing less than an \"escape from the evils of the world,\" and\nhomoi\u00f4sis t\u00f4 the\u00f4,+ a being made like to God.  It provides a\nsatisfaction not for the intelligence only but for the whole nature of\nman, his imagination and faith, his affections, his capacity [265] for\nreligious devotion, and for some still unimagined development of the\ncapacities of sense.\n\nHow could anything which belongs to the world of mere phenomenal change\nseem great to him who is \"the spectator of all time and all existence\"?\n\"For the excellency\" of such knowledge as that, we might say, he must\n\"count all things but loss.\"  By fear of punishment in some roundabout\nway, he might indeed be compelled to descend into \"the cave,\" \"to take\nin hand the wrongs of other people to set them right\"; but of course\nthe part he will take in your sorry exhibition of passing shadows, and\ndreamy echoes concerning them, will not be for himself.  You may think\nhim, that philosophic archon or king, who in consenting to be your\nmaster has really taken upon himself \"the form of a servant\"--you may\nthink him, in our late age of philosophic disillusion, a wholly\nchimerical being.  Yet history records one instance in which such a\nfigure actually found his way to an imperial throne, and with a certain\napproach to the result Plato promises.  It was precisely because his\nwhole being was filled with philosophic vision, that the Emperor Marcus\nAurelius, that fond student of philosophy, of this very philosophy of\nPlato, served the Roman people so well in peace and war--with so much\ndisinterestedness, because, in fact, so reluctantly.  Look onward, and\nwhat is strange and inexplicable in his realisation of the Platonic\nscheme--strange, if we consider how cold and [266] feeble after all\nwere the rays of light on which he waited so devoutly--becomes clear in\nthe person of Saint Louis, who, again, precisely because his whole\nbeing was full of heavenly vision, in self-banishment from it for a\nwhile, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace\nand war.  The presence, then, the ascendancy amid actual things, of the\nroyal or philosophic nature, as Plato thus conceives it--that, and\nnothing else, will be the generating force, the seed, of the City of\nthe Perfect, as he conceives it: this place, in which the great things\nof existence, known or divined, really fill the soul.  Only, he for one\nwould not be surprised if no eyes actually see it.  Like his master\nSocrates, as you know, he is something of a humorist; and if he\nsometimes surprises us with paradox or hazardous theory, will sometimes\nalso give us to understand that he is after all not quite serious.  So\nabout this vision of the City of the Perfect, The Republic, Kallipolis,+\nUranopolis, Utopia, Civitas Dei, The Kingdom of Heaven--\n\n     Suffer me, he says, to entertain myself as men of listless\n     minds are wont to do when they journey alone.  Such persons,\n     I fancy, before they have found out in what way ought of what\n     they desire may come to be, pass that question by lest they\n     grow weary in considering whether the thing be possible or no;\n     and supposing what they wish already achieved, they proceed at\n     once to arrange all the rest, pleasing themselves in the\n     tracing out all they will do, when that shall have come to\n     pass--making a mind already idle idler still.  Republic, 144.\n\nNOTES\n\n236. +Transliteration: Peri Dikaiosyn\u00eas.  Pater's translation: \"on the\nnature of justice.\"\n\n236. +Transliteration: tod' \u00ean h\u00f4s eoike prooimion.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"this was only by way of introduction.\"  Plato, Republic\n357a.\n\n241. +Transliteration: to hen prattein, to ta hautou prattein.  E-text\neditor's translation: \"to do one thing [only], to do only things proper\nto oneself.\"  Plato, Republic 369e.\n\n241. +Transliteration: poikilia, pleonexia, polypragmosyn\u00ea.  Liddell and\nScott definitions: \"poikilia = metaph: cunning; pleonexia = a\ndisposition to take more than one's share; polupragmosun\u00ea = meddling.\"\n\n242. +Transliteration: Pr\u00f4ton men phyetai hekastos ou pany homoios\nhekast\u00f4, alla diapher\u00f4n t\u00ean physin, allos ep allou ergou praxin.  E-\ntext editor's translation: \"To begin with, each person is of a nature\nnot the same as  another's; rather, people differ in nature, and so one\nperson will be best fitted for one task, and another for a different\nkind of work.\"  Plato, Republic 370a-b.\n\n242. +Transliteration: ergon.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"work . . .\nemployment.\"\n\n242. +Transliteration: poikilia.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"metaph:\ncunning.\"\n\n243. +Transliteration: gignetai toinyn h\u00f4s eg\u00f4mai polis epeid\u00ea tunchanei\nh\u00eam\u00f4n hekastos ouk autark\u00eas.  E-text editor's translation: \"As I see\nit, the city will come into existence because it so happens that as\nindividuals we are not sufficient to provide for ourselves.\"  Plato,\nRepublic 369b.\n\n243. +Transliteration: Poi\u00easei h\u00f4s eg\u00f4mai t\u00ean polin h\u00eametera chreia.  E-\ntext editor's translation: \"As I see it, it will be our needs that\ncreate the city.\"  Plato, Republic 369c.\n\n244. +Transliteration: hoi d\u00eamiourgoi.  Liddell and Scott definition of\nd\u00eamiourgos: \"workman.\"\n\n245. +Transliteration: eis hen kata physin.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"to one activity in accordance with [a given person's]\nnature.\"  Plato, Republic 372e..\n\n246. +Transliteration: polis \u00ead\u00ea tryph\u00f4sa.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"a city already [grown] luxurious.\"  The verb trypha\u00f4 means \"to live\nsoftly or delicately, fare sumptuously, live in luxury.\"  (Liddell and\nScott.)  Plato, Republic 372e.\n\n246. +Transliteration: polis \u00ead\u00ea tryph\u00f4sa.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"a city already [grown] luxurious.\"  The verb trypha\u00f4 means \"to live\nsoftly or delicately, fare sumptuously, live in luxury.\"  (Liddell and\nScott.)  Plato, Republic 372e.\n\n246. +Transliteration: kai h\u00ea ch\u00f4ra pou h\u00ea tote hikan\u00ea smikra ex hikan\u00eas\nestai.  E-text editor's translation: \"And the land that used to be\nsufficient will be insufficient.\"  Plato, Republic 373d.\n\n246. +Transliteration: oukoun t\u00eas t\u00f4n pl\u00easion ch\u00f4ras h\u00eamin apotm\u00eateon.\nE-text editor's translation: \"And so we will appropriate for ourselves\nsome of our neighbor's land.\"  Plato, Republic 373d.\n\n247. +Transliteration: Phylakes . . . epikouroi.  Pater's translation:\n\"watchmen or auxiliaries.\"\n\n247. +Transliteration: h\u00f4s en pharmakou eidei ta pseud\u00ea ta en deonti\ngenomena.  E-text editor's translation: \"timely falsehoods that take\nthe form of medicine.\"  Plato, Republic 389b and 414b contain parts of\nthe quotation.\n\n247. +Transliteration: phoinikikon pseudos.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"Phoenician story.\"  Plato, Republic 414c.\n\n251. +Transliteration: nomisma t\u00eas allag\u00eas heneka.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"a common currency for exchange.\"  Plato, Republic 371b.\n\n254. +Transliteration: oikeiopragia.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"functioning,\" from oikeios (proper to a thing, fitting) and pragos or,\nin everyday non-poetic speech, pragma(deed).  Plato, Republic 434c.\n\n255. +Transliteration: d\u00eamos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"the\ncommons, common people, plebeians; in Attica, townships or hundreds.\"\n\n255. +Transliteration: ta t\u00f4n phil\u00f4n koina.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"the possessions of friends are held in common.\"  Plato,\nPhaedrus 279c contains similar language.\n\n257. +Transliteration: archontes.  Liddell and Scott definition of\narchon: \"ruler.\"\n\n257. +Transliteration: philopolides.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"[those] loving [their] city, state, or country.\"\n\n258. +Transliteration: Ta t\u00f4n phil\u00f4n koina.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"the possessions of friends are held in common.\"  Plato,\nPhaedrus 279c contains similar language.\n\n260. +Transliteration: kalokagathos.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"beautiful and good, noble and good.\"\n\n264. +Transliteration: homoi\u00f4sis t\u00f4 the\u00f4.  Pater's translation: \"a\n[process or act of] being made like to God.\"  Plato, Republic 454c.\n\n266. +Transliteration: Kallipolis.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"beautiful city.\"  Plato, Republic 527c.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER 10: PLATO'S AESTHETICS\n\n[267] WHEN we remember Plato as the great lover, what the visible world\nwas to him, what a large place the idea of Beauty, with its almost\nadequate realisation in that visible world, holds in his most abstract\nspeculations as the clearest instance of the relation of the human mind\nto reality and truth, we might think that art also, the fine arts,\nwould have been much for him; that the aesthetic element would be a\nsignificant one in his theory of morals and education.  Ta terpna en\nHelladi+ (to use Pindar's phrase) all the delightful things in Hellas:--\nPlato least of all could have been unaffected by their presence around\nhim.  And so it is.  Think what perfection of handicraft, what a subtle\nenjoyment therein, is involved in that specially Platonic rule, to mind\none's business (to ta hautou prattein)+ that he who, like Fra Damiano of\nBergamo, has a gift for poikilia,+ intarsia or marqueterie, for example,\nshould confine himself exclusively to that.  Before him, [268] you\nknow, there had been no theorising about the beautiful, its place in\nlife, and the like; and as a matter of fact he is the earliest critic\nof the fine arts.  He anticipates the modern notion that art as such\nhas no end but its own perfection,--\"art for art's sake.\"  Ar' oun kai\nhekast\u00ea t\u00f4n techn\u00f4n esti ti sympheron allo \u00ea hoti malista telean\neinai;+  We have seen again that not in theory only, by the large place\nhe assigns to our experiences regarding visible beauty in the formation\nof his doctrine of ideas, but that in the practical sphere also, this\ngreat fact of experience, the reality of beauty, has its importance\nwith him.  The loveliness of virtue as a harmony, the winning aspect of\nthose \"images\" of the absolute and unseen Temperance, Bravery, Justice,\nshed around us in the visible world for eyes that can see, the claim of\nthe virtues as a visible representation by human persons and their acts\nof the eternal qualities of  \"the eternal,\" after all far out-weigh, as\nhe thinks, the claim of their mere utility.  And accordingly, in\neducation, all will begin and end \"in music,\" in the promotion of\nqualities to which no truer name can be given than symmetry, aesthetic\nfitness, tone.  Philosophy itself indeed, as he conceives it, is but\nthe sympathetic appreciation of a kind of music in the very nature of\nthings.\n\nThere have been Platonists without Plato, and a kind of traditional\nPlatonism in the world, independent of, yet true in spirit to, the\nPlatonism [269] of the Platonic Dialogues.  Now such a piece of\ntraditional Platonism we find in the hypothesis of some close connexion\nbetween what may be called the aesthetic qualities of the world about\nus and the formation of moral character, between aesthetics and ethics.\nWherever people have been inclined to lay stress on the colouring, for\ninstance, cheerful or otherwise, of the walls of the room where\nchildren learn to read, as though that had something to do with the\ncolouring of their minds; on the possible moral effect of the beautiful\nancient buildings of some of our own schools and colleges; on the\nbuilding of character, in any way, through the eye and ear; there the\nspirit of Plato has been understood to be, and rightly, even by those\nwho have perhaps never read Plato's Republic, in which however we do\nfind the connexion between moral character and matters of poetry and\nart strongly asserted.  This is to be observed especially in the third\nand tenth books of The Republic.  The main interest of those books lies\nin the fact, that in them we read what Plato actually said on a subject\nconcerning which people have been so ready to put themselves under his\nauthority.\n\nIt is said with immediate reference to metre and its various forms in\nverse, as an element in the general treatment of style or manner\n(lexis)+ as opposed to the  matter (logoi)+ in the imaginative\nliterature, with which as in time past the [270] education of the\ncitizens of the Perfect City will begin.  It is however at his own\nexpress suggestion that we may apply what he says, in the first\ninstance, about metre and verse, to all forms of art whatever, to music\n(mousik\u00ea)+ generally, to all those matters over which the Muses of Greek\nmythology preside, to all productions in which the form counts equally\nwith, or for more than, the matter.  Assuming therefore that we have\nhere, in outline and tendency at least, the mind of Plato in regard to\nthe ethical influence of aesthetic qualities, let us try to distinguish\nclearly the central lines of that tendency, of Platonism in art, as it\nis really to be found in Plato.\n\n\"You have perceived have you not,\" observes the Platonic Socrates,\n\"that acts of imitation, if they begin in early life, and continue,\nestablish themselves in one's nature and habits, alike as to the body,\nthe tones of one's voice, the ways of one's mind.\"\n\nYes, that might seem a matter of common observation; and what is\nstrictly Platonic here and in what follows is but the emphasis of the\nstatement.  Let us set it however, for the sake of decisive effect, in\nimmediate connexion with certain other points of Plato's aesthetic\ndoctrine.\n\nImitation then, imitation through the eye and ear, is irresistible in\nits influence over human nature.  And secondly, we, the founders, the\npeople, of the Republic, of the city that shall be [271] perfect, have\nfor our peculiar purpose the simplification of human nature: a purpose\nsomewhat costly, for it follows, thirdly, that the only kind of music,\nof art and poetry, we shall permit ourselves, our citizens, will be of\na very austere character, under a sort of \"self-denying ordinance.\"  We\nshall be a fervently aesthetic community, if you will; but therewith\nalso very fervent \"renunciants,\" or ascetics.\n\nIn the first place, men's souls are, according to Plato's view, the\ncreatures of what men see and hear.  What would probably be found in a\nlimited number only of sensitive people, a constant susceptibility to\nthe aspects and other sensible qualities of things and persons, to the\nelement of expression or form in them and their movements, to phenomena\nas such--this susceptibility Plato supposes in men generally.  It is\nnot so much the matter of a work of art, what is conveyed in and by\ncolour and form and sound, that tells upon us educationally--the\nsubject, for instance, developed by the words and scenery of a play--as\nthe form, and its qualities, concision, simplicity, rhythm, or,\ncontrariwise, abundance, variety, discord.  Such \"aesthetic\" qualities,\nby what we might call in logical phrase, metabasis eis allo genos,+ a\nderivation into another kind of matter, transform themselves, in the\ntemper of the patient the hearer or spectator, into terms of ethics,\ninto the sphere of the desires and the will, of the moral taste,\nengendering, nursing [272] there, strictly moral effects, such\nconditions of sentiment and the will as Plato requires in his City of\nthe Perfect, or quite the opposite, but hardly in any case indifferent,\nconditions.\n\nImitation:--it enters into the very fastnesses of character; and we,\nour souls, ourselves, are for ever imitating what we see and hear, the\nforms, the sounds which haunt our memories, our imagination.  We\nimitate not only if we play a part on the stage but when we sit as\nspectators, while our thoughts follow the acting of another, when we\nread Homer and put ourselves, lightly, fluently, into the place of\nthose he describes: we imitate unconsciously the line and colour of the\nwalls around us, the trees by the wayside, the animals we pet or make\nuse of, the very dress we wear.  Only, Hina m\u00ea ek t\u00eas mim\u00ease\u00f4s tou\neinai apolaus\u00f4sin.+--Let us beware how men attain the very truth of what\nthey imitate.\n\nThat then is the first principle of Plato's aesthetics, his first\nconsideration regarding the art of the City of the Perfect.  Men,\nchildren, are susceptible beings, in great measure conditioned by the\nmere look of their \"medium.\"  Like those insects, we might fancy, of\nwhich naturalists tell us, taking colour from the plants they lodge on,\nthey will come to match with much servility the aspects of the world\nabout them.\n\nBut the people of the Perfect City would not [273] be there at all\nexcept by way of a refuge, an experiment, or tour de force, in moral\nand social philosophy; and this circumstance determines the second\nconstituent principle of Plato's aesthetic scheme.  We, then, the\nfounders, the citizens, of the Republic have a peculiar purpose.  We\nare here to escape from, to resist, a certain vicious centrifugal\ntendency in life, in Greek and especially in Athenian life, which does\nbut propagate a like vicious tendency in ourselves.  We are to become--\nlike little pieces in a machine! you may complain.--No, like performers\nrather, individually, it may be, of more or less importance, but each\nwith a necessary and inalienable part, in a perfect musical exercise\nwhich is well worth while, or in some sacred liturgy; or like soldiers\nin an invincible army, invincible because it moves as one man.  We are\nto find, or be put into, and keep, every one his natural place; to\ncultivate those qualities which will secure mastery over ourselves, the\nsubordination of the parts to the whole, musical proportion.  To this\nend, as we saw, Plato, a remorseless idealist, is ready even to\nsuppress the differences of male and female character, to merge, to\nlose the family in the social aggregate.\n\nImitation then, we may resume, imitation through the eye and ear, is\nirresistible in its influence on human nature.  Secondly, the founders\nof the Republic are by its very purpose bound to the simplification of\nhuman nature: [274] and our practical conclusion follows in logical\norder.  We shall make, and sternly keep, a \"self-denying\" ordinance in\nthis matter, in the matter of art, of poetry, of taste in all its\nvarieties; a rule, of which Plato's own words, applied by him in the\nfirst instance to rhythm or metre, but like all he says on that subject\nfairly applicable to the whole range of musical or aesthetic effects,\nwill be the brief summary: Alternations will be few and far between:--\nhow differently from the methods of the poetry, the art, the choruses,\nwe most of us love so much, not necessarily because our senses are\ninapt or untrained:--Smikrai hai metabolai.+  We shall allow no musical\ninnovations, no Aristophanic cries, no imitations however clever of\n\"the sounds of the flute or the lyre,\" no free imitation by the human\nvoice of bestial or mechanical sounds, no such artists as are \"like a\nmirror turning all about.\"  There were vulgarities of nature, you see,\nin the youth of ideal Athens even.  Time, of course, as such, is itself\na kind of artist, trimming pleasantly for us what survives of the rude\nworld of the past.  Now Plato's method would promote or anticipate the\nwork of time in that matter of vulgarities of taste.  Yes, when you\nread his precautionary rules, you become fully aware that even in\nAthens there were young men who affected what was least fortunate in\nthe habits, the pleasures, the sordid business of the class below them.\n[275] But they would not be allowed quite their own way in the streets\nor elsewhere in a reformed world, to whose chosen imperial youth\n(Basilik\u00ea phyl\u00ea)+ it would not be permitted even to think of any of\nthose things--oudeni prosechein ton voun.+  To them, what was illiberal,\nthe illiberal crafts, would be (thanks to their well-trained power of\nintellectual abstraction!) as though it were not.  And if art, like\nlaw, be, as Plato thinks, \"a creation of mind, in accordance with right\nreason,\" we shall not wish our boys to sing like mere birds.\n\nYet what price would not the musical connoisseur pay to handle the\ninstruments we may see in fancy passing out through the gates of the\nCity of the Perfect, banished, not because there is no one within its\nwalls who knows the use of, or would receive pleasure from, them (a\ndelicate susceptibility in these matters Plato, as was said,\npresupposes) but precisely because they are so seductive, must be\nconveyed therefore to some other essentially less favoured\nneighbourhood, like poison, say! moral poison, for one's enemies'\nwater-springs.  A whole class of painters, sculptors, skilled workmen\nof various kinds go into like banishment--they and their very tools;\nnot, observe again carefully, because they are bad artists, but very\ngood ones.--Alla m\u00ean, \u00f4 Adeimante, h\u00eadys ge kai ho kekramenos.+  Art, as\nsuch, as Plato knows, has no purpose but itself, its own perfection.\nThe proper art of the [276] Perfect City is in fact the art of\ndiscipline.  Music (mousik\u00ea)+ all the various forms of fine art, will be\nbut the instruments of its one over-mastering social or political\npurpose, irresistibly conforming its so imitative subject units to\ntype: they will be neither more nor less than so many variations, so to\nspeak, of the trumpet-call.\n\nOr suppose again that a poet finds his way to us, \"able by his genius,\nas he chooses, or as his audience chooses, to become all things, or all\npersons, in turn, and able to transform us too into all things and\npersons in turn, as we listen or read, with a fluidity, a versatility\nof humour almost equal to his own, a poet myriad-minded, as we say,\nalmost in Plato's precise words, as our finest touch of praise, of\nShakespeare for instance, or of Homer, of whom he was thinking:--Well!\nwe shall have been set on our guard.  We have no room for him.  Divine,\ndelightful, being, \"if he came to our city with his works, his poems,\nwishing to make an exhibition of them, we should certainly do him\nreverence as an object, sacred, wonderful, delightful, but we should\nnot let him stay.  We should tell him that there neither is, nor may\nbe, any one like that among us, and so send him on his way to some\nother city, having anointed his head with myrrh and crowned him with a\ngarland of wool, as something in himself half-divine, and for ourselves\nshould make use of some more austere and less pleasing sort of poet,\nfor his practical [277] uses.\"  T\u00f4 aust\u00earoter\u00f4 kai a\u00eadester\u00f4 poi\u00eat\u00ea,\n\u00f4phelias heneka.+  Not, as I said, that the Republic any more than\nLacedaemon will be an artless place.  Plato's aesthetic scheme is\nactually based on a high degree of sensibility to such influences in\nthe people he is dealing with.--\n\n     Right speech, then, and rightness of harmony and form and\n     rhythm minister to goodness of nature; not that good-nature\n     which we so call with a soft name, being really silliness,\n     but the frame of mind which in very truth is rightly and\n     fairly ordered in regard to the moral habit.--Most certainly\n     he said.--Must not these qualities, then, be everywhere\n     pursued by the young men if they are to do each his own\n     business?--Pursued, certainly.--Now painting, I suppose, is\n     full of them (those qualities which are partly ethical, partly\n     aesthetic) and all handicraft such as that; the weaver's art\n     is full of them, and the inlayer's art and the building of\n     houses, and the working of all the other apparatus of life;\n     moreover the nature of our own bodies, and of all other living\n     things.  For in all these, rightness or wrongness of form is\n     inherent.  And wrongness of form, and the lack of rhythm, the\n     lack of harmony, are fraternal to faultiness of mind and charac-\n     ter, and the opposite qualities to the opposite condition--the\n     temperate and good character:--fraternal, aye! and copies of\n     them.--Yes, entirely so: he said.--\n\n     Must our poets, then, alone be under control, and compelled to\n     work the image of the good into their poetic works, or not to\n     work among us at all; or must the other craftsmen too be\n     controlled, and restrained from working this faultiness and\n     intemperance and illiberality and formlessness of character\n     whether into the images of living creatures, or the houses\n     they build, or any other product of their craft whatever;\n     or must he who is unable so to do be forbidden to practise\n     his art among us, to the end that our guardians may not,\n     nurtured in images of vice as in a vicious pasture, cropping\n     and culling much every day little by little from many sources,\n     composing together some one great evil in their own souls, go\n     undetected?  Must we not rather seek for those craftsmen who\n     have the [278] power, by way of their own natural virtue, to\n     track out the nature of the beautiful and seemly, to the end\n     that, living as in some wholesome place, the young men may\n     receive good from every side, whencesoever, from fair works\n     of art, either upon sight or upon hearing anything may strike,\n     as it were a breeze bearing health from kindly places, and\n     from childhood straightway bring them unaware to likeness and\n     friendship and harmony with fair reason?--Yes: he answered: in\n     this way they would be by far best educated.--Well then, I said,\n     Glaucon, on these grounds is not education in music of the\n     greatest importance--because, more than anything else, rhythm\n     and harmony make their way down into the inmost part of the\n     soul, and take hold upon it with the utmost force, bringing\n     with them rightness of form, and rendering its form right, if\n     one be correctly trained; if not, the opposite? and again\n     because he who has been trained in that department duly, would\n     have the sharpest sense of oversights (t\u00f4n paraleipomen\u00f4n)+ and\n     of things not fairly turned out, whether by art or nature (m\u00ea\n     kal\u00f4s d\u00eamiourg\u00eathent\u00f4n \u00ea m\u00ea kal\u00f4s phynt\u00f4n)+ and disliking them,\n     as he should, would commend things beautiful, and, by reason of\n     his delight in these, receiving them into his soul, be nurtured\n     of them, and become kalokagathos,+ while he blamed the base,\n     as he should, and hated it, while still young, before he was\n     able to apprehend a reason, and when reason comes would welcome\n     it, recognising it by its kinship to himself--most of all one\n     thus taught?--Yes: he answered: it seems to me that for reasons\n     such as these their education should be in music.  Republic, 400.\n\nUnderstand, then, the poetry and music, the arts and crafts, of the\nCity of the Perfect--what is left of them there, and remember how the\nGreeks themselves were used to say that \"the half is more than the\nwhole.\"  Liken its music, if you will, to Gregorian music, and call to\nmind the kind of architecture, military or monastic again, that must be\nbuilt to such music, and then the kind of colouring that will fill its\n[279] jealously allotted space upon the walls, the sort of carving that\nwill venture to display itself on cornice or capital.  The walls, the\npillars, the streets--you see them in thought! nay, the very trees and\nanimals, the attire of those who move along the streets, their looks\nand voices, their style--the hieratic Dorian architecture, to speak\nprecisely, the Dorian manner everywhere, in possession of the whole of\nlife.  Compare it, for further vividness of effect, to Gothic building,\nto the Cistercian Gothic, if you will, when Saint Bernard had purged it\nof a still barbaric superfluity of ornament.  It seems a long way from\nthe Parthenon to Saint Ouen \"of the aisles and arches,\" or Notre-Dame\nde Bourges; yet they illustrate almost equally the direction of the\nPlatonic aesthetics.  Those churches of the Middle Age have, as we all\nfeel, their loveliness, yet of a stern sort, which fascinates while\nperhaps it repels us.  We may try hard to like as well or better\narchitecture of a more or less different kind, but coming back to them\nagain find that the secret of final success is theirs.  The rigid logic\nof their charm controls our taste, as logic proper binds the\nintelligence: we would have something of that quality, if we might, for\nourselves, in what we do or make; feel, under its influence, very\ndiffident of our own loose, or gaudy, or literally insignificant,\ndecorations.  \"Stay then,\" says the Platonist, too sanguine perhaps,--\n\"Abide,\" he says to youth, \"in these [280] places, and the like of\nthem, and mechanically, irresistibly, the soul of them will impregnate\nyours.  With whatever beside is in congruity with them in the order of\nhearing and sight, they will tell (despite, it may be, of unkindly\nnature at your first making) upon your very countenance, your walk and\ngestures, in the course and concatenation of your inmost thoughts.\"\n\nAnd equation being duly made of what is merely personal and temporary\nin Plato's view of the arts, it may be salutary to return from time to\ntime to the Platonic aesthetics, to find ourselves under the more\nexclusive influence of those qualities in the Hellenic genius he has\nthus emphasised.  What he would promote, then, is the art, the\nliterature, of which among other things it may be said that it solicits\na certain effort from the reader or spectator, who is promised a great\nexpressiveness on the part of the writer, the artist, if he for his\npart will bring with him a great attentiveness.  And how satisfying,\nhow reassuring, how flattering to himself after all, such work really\nis--the work which deals with one as a scholar, formed, mature and\nmanly.  Bravery--andreia+ or manliness--manliness and temperance, as we\nknow, were the two characteristic virtues of that old pagan world; and\nin art certainly they seem to be involved in one another.  Manliness in\nart, what can it be, as distinct from that which in opposition to it\n[281] must be called the feminine quality there,--what but a full\nconsciousness of what one does, of art itself in the work of art,\ntenacity of intuition and of consequent purpose, the spirit of\nconstruction as opposed to what is literally incoherent or ready to\nfall to pieces, and, in opposition to what is hysteric or works at\nrandom, the maintenance of a standard.  Of such art \u00eathos+ rather than\npathos+ will be the predominant mood.  To use Plato's own expression\nthere will be here no paraleipomena,+ no \"negligences,\" no feminine\nforgetfulness of one's self, nothing in the work of art unconformed to\nthe leading intention of the artist, who will but increase his power by\nreserve.  An artist of that kind will be apt, of course, to express\nmore than he seems actually to say.  He economises.  He will not spoil\ngood things by exaggeration.  The rough, promiscuous wealth of nature\nhe reduces to grace and order: reduces, it may be, lax verse to staid\nand temperate prose.  With him, the rhythm, the music, the notes, will\nbe felt to follow, or rather literally accompany as ministers, the\nsense,--akolouthein ton logon.+\n\nWe may fairly prefer the broad daylight of Veronese to the contrasted\nlight and shade of Rembrandt even; and a painter will tell you that the\nformer is actually more difficult to attain.  Temperance, the\ntemperance of the youthful Charmides, super-induced on a nature\noriginally rich and impassioned,--Plato's own [282] native preference\nfor that is only reinforced by the special needs of his time, and the\nvery conditions of the ideal state.  The diamond, we are told, if it be\na fine one, may gain in value by what is cut away.  It was after such\nfashion that the manly youth of Lacedaemon had been cut and carved.\nLenten or monastic colours, brown and black, white and grey, give their\nutmost value for the eye (so much is obvious) to the scarlet flower,\nthe lighted candle, the cloth of gold.  And Platonic aesthetics,\nremember! as such, are ever in close connexion with Plato's ethics.  It\nis life itself, action and character, he proposes to colour; to get\nsomething of that irrepressible conscience of art, that spirit of\ncontrol, into the general course of life, above all into its energetic\nor impassioned acts.\n\nSuch Platonic quality you may trace of course not only in work of\nDoric, or, more largely, of Hellenic lineage, but at all times, as the\nvery conscience of art, its saving salt, even in ages of decadence.\nYou may analyse it, as a condition of literary style, in historic\nnarrative, for instance; and then you have the stringent, shorthand art\nof Thucydides at his best, his masterly feeling for master-facts, and\nthe half as so much more than the whole.  Pindar is in a certain sense\nhis analogue in verse.  Think of the amount of attention he must have\nlooked for, in those who were, not to read, but to sing him, or to\nlisten while he was sung, and to understand. [283] With those fine,\nsharp-cut gems or chasings of his, so sparely set, how much he leaves\nfor a well-drilled intelligence to supply in the way of connecting\nthought.\n\nAnd you may look for the correlative of that in Greek clay, in Greek\nmarble, as you walk through the British Museum.  But observe it, above\nall, at work, checking yet reinforcing his naturally fluent and\nluxuriant genius, in Plato himself.  His prose is a practical\nillustration of the value of that capacity for correction, of the\neffort, the intellectual astringency, which he demands of the poet\nalso, the musician, of all true citizens of the ideal Republic,\nenhancing the sense of power in one's self, and its effect upon others,\nby a certain crafty reserve in its exercise, after the manner of a true\nexpert.  Chalepa ta kala+--he is faithful to the old Greek saying.\nPatience,--\"infinite patience,\" may or may not be, as was said, of the\nvery essence of genius; but is certainly, quite as much as fire, of the\nmood of all true lovers.  Is\u00f4s to legomenon al\u00eathes, hoti chalepa ta\nkala.+  Heraclitus had preferred the \"dry soul,\" or the \"dry light\" in\nit, as Bacon after him the siccum lumen.  And the dry beauty,--let\nPlato teach us, to love that also, duly.\n\n1891-1892.\n\nNOTES\n\n267. +Transliteration: Ta terpna en Helladi.  Pater's translation: \"all\nthe delightful things in Hellas.\"  Pindar, though I have not located\nthe poem to which Pater refers.\n\n267. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"to do only things proper to oneself.\"  Plato, Republic\n369e.\n\n267. +Transliteration: poikilia.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"metaph:\ncunning.\"\n\n268. +Transliteration: Ar' oun kai hekast\u00ea t\u00f4n techn\u00f4n esti ti sympheron\nallo \u00ea hoti malista telean einai.  E-text editor's translation: \"Does\nthere belong to each of the arts any advantage other than perfection?\"\nPlato, Republic 341d.  Pater's reading is perhaps anachronistic in\nsuggesting that Plato anticipated modern thinking about the autonomy of\nart.\n\n269. +Transliteration: lexis.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\nspeaking, speech . . . a way of speaking, diction, style.\"\n\n269. +Transliteration: logoi.  Pater's contextual translation: \"matter.\"\n\n270. +Transliteration: mousik\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"any art\nover which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung\nto music....\"\n\n271. +Transliteration: metabasis eis allo genos.  Pater's translation:\n\"a derivation into another kind of matter.\"\n\n272. +Transliteration: Hina m\u00ea ek t\u00eas mim\u00ease\u00f4s tou einai apolaus\u00f4sin.\nE-text editor's translation: \"lest they draw the reality only from\ntheir imitation of it.\"  Plato, Republic 395c.\n\n274. +Transliteration: Smikrai hai metabolai.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"our senses are inapt or untrained.\"  Plato, Republic\n397c.\n\n275. +Transliteration: Basilik\u00ea phyl\u00ea.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"royal tribe.\"\n\n275. +Transliteration: oudeni prosechein ton voun.  Pater's translation:\n\"[they] would not be permitted even to think of any of those things.\"\nPlato, Republic 396b.\n\n275. +Transliteration: Alla m\u00ean, \u00f4 Adeimante, h\u00eadys ge kai ho\nkekramenos.  E-text editor's translation: \"But indeed, Adeimantus, the\nmixed kind of art also is pleasant.\"  Plato, Republic 397d.\n\n276. +Transliteration: mousik\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"any art\nover which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung\nto music....\"\n\n277. +Transliteration: T\u00f4 aust\u00earoter\u00f4 kai a\u00eadester\u00f4 poi\u00eat\u00ea, \u00f4phelias\nheneka.  Pater's translation: \"some more austere and less pleasing sort\nof poet, for his practical uses.\"  Plato, Republic 398a.\n\n278. +Transliteration: t\u00f4n paraleipomen\u00f4n.  Pater's translation:\n\"oversights.\"  The verb paraleip\u00f4 means, \"to leave on one side . . .\nleave unnoticed.\"  Plato, Republic 401e.\n\n278. +Transliteration: m\u00ea kal\u00f4s d\u00eamiourg\u00eathent\u00f4n \u00ea m\u00ea kal\u00f4s phynt\u00f4n.\nPater's translation: \"not fairly turned out, whether by art or nature.\"\nPlato, Republic 401e.\n\n278. +Transliteration: kalokagathos.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"beautiful and good, noble and good.\"  Plato, Republic 401e.\n\n280. +Transliteration: andreia.  Pater's translation: \"manliness.\"\n\n281. +Transliteration: \u00eathos.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"an\naccustomed place . . . custom, usage, habit.\"\n\n281. +Transliteration: pathos.  Liddell and Scott definition \"1.\nanything that befalls one, a suffering, misfortune, calamity; 2. a\npassive condition: a passion, affection; 3. an incident.\"\n\n281. +Transliteration: paraleipomena.  Pater's translation:\n\"oversights.\"\n\n281. +Transliteration: akolouthein ton logon.  Pater's translation:\n\"follow the sense.\"  Plato, Republic 398d.\n\n283. +Transliteration: Chalepa ta kala.  E-text editor's translation:\n\"fine things are hard [to obtain or understand].\"  Plato, Republic\n435c.\n\n283. +Transliteration: Is\u00f4s to legomenon al\u00eathes, hoti chalepa ta kala.\nE-text editor's translation: \"Perhaps the saying is true--namely, that\nfine things are hard [to obtain or understand].\"  Plato, Republic 435c.","title":"Plato and Platonism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":74249}