That this
reflection
upon what is rationally necessary should be conceived of as recollection is connected with the fact that Plato, is little as any of his predecessors, recognises a creative activity of the consciousness, which produces its content.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Yet unfortunately nothing now known as to how he carried out in detail the methodical relation between the two modes of cognition, and how the process by which knowledge grows out of perception in the particular instance was thought by him.
More particularly, the theoretical explanation which Democritus
The very happv expression for this juur<if«r tA <pair6iumi. Cf. also Arist. Oen. et Corr. 832, a,
Hence, the expressions in which he recognised the truth in the phenome non e. g. Arist. Dt An. 404 27, and the like. To attempt, however, to construe out of this " sensualism" of Democritus, as has been attempted by E. Johnson (I'lauen, 18«8), contradicts completely the accounts with regard to his attitude toward Protagoras.
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Chap. 3, § 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. Ill
gave for the contents of perception consists, as with Leucippus, in the reduction of all phenomena to the mechanics of atoms. What appears in perception as qualitatively determined, and also as in volved iu qualitative change (dXAoiov/xt^ov), exists " in truth " only as a quantitative relation of the atoms, of their order, and their motion. The task of science is then to reduce all qualitative to quantitative relations, and to show in detail what quantitative rela tions of the absolute reality produce the qualitative characteristics of the reality which appears in phenomena. Thus, the prejudice in favour of khat may be perceived or imaged (anschauiich), as if spatial form and motion were something simpler, more comprehensible in themselves, and less of a problem than qualitative character and
alteration, is made the principle for the theoretical explanation of the world.
Since this principle is applied with complete systematic rigour to the whole of experience, Atomism regards the psychical life with all its essential elements and values as also a phenomenon, and the form and motion of the atoms which constitute the true Being of this phenomenon must be stated by the explanatory theory. Thus
matter in its form and motion is regarded as that which alone is truly real, and the entire mental or spiritual life as the derived, phenomenal reality. With this the system of Democritus first assumes the character of conscious, outspoken materialism.
2. In the properly physical doctrines, the teaching of Democritus presents, therefore, no change in principle as compared with that of Leucippus, though there is a great enrichment by careful detailed investigation. He emphasised still more sharply than his predeces sor, where possible, the thought of the mechanical necessity (dvayio/, which he also occasionally called Aoyos), in accordance with which all occurrence or change whatever takes place, and further defined this thought as involving that no operation of atoms upon one another is possible except through impact, through immediate con tact, and further, that this operation consists only in the change of the state of motion of the atoms which are also unchangeable as regards their form.
The atom itself as that which "is," in the proper sense of the word, has accordingly only the characteristics of abstract corpore ality, viz. the filling of a limited space, and the quality of being in motion in the void. Although all are imperceptibly small, they yet exhibit an endless variety of forms (JS«u or trxJPJlTa)- To form,
which constitutes the proper fundamental difference in the atoms, belongs in a certain sense also size ; yet it is to be observed that the same stereometrical form, e. g. the sphere, may appear in different
112 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part L
sizes. The larger the atom, the greater its mass ; for the essential quality of what is, is indeed materiality, space-claiming. For this reason Democritus asserted weight or lightness to be a function of size,1 evidently yielding to the mechanical analogies of daily life. In connection with these terms (/3opu and Koi)<^ov), however, we are not to think of the falling motion, but solely of the degree of mechani cal movability or of inertia. ' Hence it was also his opinion that as the atom-complexes whirled about, the lighter parts were forced out ward, while the more inert with their inferior mobility were gath ered in the middle.
The same properties communicate themselves as metaphysical qualities to things which are composed of atoms. The form and size of things is produced by the simple summation of the form and size of the component atoms ; though in this case, the inertia is not dependent solely upon the sum total of the magnitudes of the atoms, but upon the greater or less amount of empty space that remains between the individual particles when they are grouped together. The inertia depends therefore upon the less or greater degree of density. And since the ease with which particles may be displaced with reference to one another depends upon this interruption of the mass by empty space, the properties of hardness and softness belong also to the true reality that is known by thought.
All other properties, however, belong to things not in them selves, but only in so far as motions proceeding from things act upon the organs of perception ; they are " states of perception as it is in process of qualitative change. " But these states are also conditioned throughout by the things in which the perceived prop erties appear, and here the arrangement and the situation which the atoms have taken with reference to each other in the process of composition are of principal importance. 3
While, then, form, size, inertia, density, and hardness are properties of things irtrj, i. e. in truth, all that is perceived in them by the indi vidual senses as colour, sound, smell, taste, exists only vd/iwor diem, i. e. in the phenomenon. This doctrine, when taken up anew in the philosophy of the Renaissance (cf. Part IV. ch. 2) and later, was
1 As the most extensive exposition for this and for the following topic The- ophr. De Sens. 61 ff. (Doz. D. 516) is to be compared.
5 It is scarcely to be decided now whether the motion of their own, which Atomism ascribed to all the atoms as primitive and causeless, was thought ol by Democritus as conditioned already by the size or mass, so that the greater had, even from the beginning, possessed less velocity. At all events, these determinations held good for him within the sphere of the mechanical operation of the atoms on one another. What is larger can be pushed with greater diffi culty ; what is smaller can be pushed more easily.
» Cf. Arist Gen. et Corr. I. 2, 316 b 6.
Cbaf. 3, § 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. 113
designated as distinguishing between the primary and secondary fnalities of things, and it is desirable to introduce this expression htrre, since it corresponds throughout to the metaphysical and episte- nological sense in which Democritus made the Protagorean doctrine useful for his own purpose. While the Sophist would make all properties secondary and relative, Democritus admitted this only for the qualities perceived by special senses, and set over against these the quantitative determinations as primary and absolute. He there fore designated also as " genuine knowledge " the insight into the
primary qualities to be won through thought, while, on the contrary, perception which is directed toward the secondary qualities he termed " obscure knowledge " (yvrjvi^ — (XKorirj yvw/117).
3. The secondary qualities appear accordingly as dependent upon the primary ; they are not, however, dependent upon these alone, but rather upon the action of these upon the percipient agent. But in the atomistic system that which perceives, the mind or toul, can consist only of atoms. To be more explicit, it consists, according to Democritus, of the same atoms which constitute also the essence of fire: namely, the finest, smoothest, and most mobile.
These are indeed scattered also through the whole world, and in so far animals, plants, and other things may be regarded as animate, as having souls,' but they are united in largest numbers in the human body, where in life a fire-atom is placed between every two atoms of other sorts, and where they are held together by breathing.
Upon this presupposition, then, analogous, as we see, to the older systems, Democritus built up his explanation of phenomena from the true essence of things. That perception, and with the secondary qualities, arises from the action of things upon the fire- atoms of the soul. The reality which appears a necessary result of the true reality.
In carrying out this doctrine Democritus took up and refined the theories of perception advanced by his predecessors. The effluxes (ef. above, 3) which proceed from things to set in motion the
organs and through them the fire-atoms, he called images (ct&oAa), and regarded them as infinitely small copies of the things. Their impression upon the fire-atoms perception, and the similarity between the content of this perception and its object was held to be secured thereby. Since impact and pressure are the essence of all the mechanics of the atoms, touch regarded as the most primitive sense. The special organs, on the contrary, were regarded as capable of receiving only such images as corresponded to their own forma
tion and motion, and this theory of the specific energy of the sense was worked out very acutely Demooritus. From this
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114 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I.
followed also that in case there were things whose effluxes could not act upon any one of the organs, these would remain imperceptible for the ordinary man, and for these perhaps " other senses " might be accessible.
This theory of images appeared very plausible to ancient thought. It brought to definite expression, and indeed to a certain extent explained, the mode of representing things which is still common for the ordinary consciousness, as if our perceptions were " copies " of things existing outside of us. If one did not ask further how things should come to send out such miniature likenesses of them selves into the world, he might think that he understood, by means of this theory, how our " impressions " can resemble things with out. For this reason this theory at once attained the predominance in physiological psychology, and retained its position until after the beginnings of modern philosophy, where it was defended by Locke.
Its Significance, however, for the conceptions in the system of Democritus, lies in this, that it was regarded as describing that motion of the atoms in which perception consists. It remained hidden from this materialism, which was such from principle, as well as from all its later transformations, that perception as a psychical activity is something specifically different from any and every motion of atoms, however determined. But in seeking out the individual forms of motion from which the individual percep tions of the special senses arise, the philosopher of Abdera caused many a keen observation, many a fine suggestion, to become known.
4. It is interesting now that the same fate befell the materialistic; psychology of Democritus as had befallen the pre-Sophistic meta physicians (cf- § 6) : too, was obliged in certain respect to oblit erate again the epistemologica2 contrast between perception and thought. Since, that all psychical life regarded as motion of the fire-atoms,1 and since the motion of atoms in the connected sys tem of the universe conditioned by contact and impact, follows that thought, which knows the truly real, can be explained only from an impression which this truly real makes upon the fiery atoms, — explained therefore itself only through the efflux of such images. As psychological process, therefore, thought the same as percep tion, viz. impression of images upon fire-atoins the only difference
that in the case of perception the relatively coarse images of the atom-complexes are active, while thought, which apprehends true reality, rests upon contact of the fire-atoms with the finest images, with those which represent the atomic structure of things.
Arist. De An. 405 8.
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Chap. S, 5 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. 115
Odd and fantastic as this sounds, the indications are yet all in favour of the supposition that Democritus drew this conclusion from
the presuppositions of his m iterialistic psychology. This psychol ogy knew no independent, internal mechanism of ideas or conscious states, but only an arising of ideas through the motion of atoms Hence it regarded ideas that were evidently deceptive as also - impressions," and sought for these the exciting images. Dreams, tj§. were traced back to ci&uAa which had either penetrated into the body in the waking state and on account of their weak motion had previously produced no impression, or had first reached the fiery items in sleep, evading the senses. A mysterious ("magnetic," or -psychic," we should say to-day) action of men upon one another appeared comprehensible on this hypothesis, and an objective basis was given to faith in gods and demons by assuming giant forms in
infinite space from which corresponding images proceeded.
In correspondence with this Democritus seems to have thought of
* genuine knowledge " as that motion of the fire-atoms which is pro duced by the impression of the smallest and finest images, — those which represent the atomic composition of things. This motion is, however, the most delicate, the finest, the gentlest of all — that which comes nearest to rest. With this definition the contrast between per ception and thought was expressed in quantitative terms — quite in the
spirit of the system. The coarse images of things as wholes set the aery atoms into relatively violent motion and produce by this means the '•obscure insight " which presents itself as perception ; the finest images, on the contrary, impress upon the fiery atoms a gentle, fine
motion which evokes the "genuine insight" into the atomic structure of things, i. e. thought. In consideration of this, Democritus com mends the thinker to turn away from the world of the senses, quite in contrast with the mode of thought which would develop truth out of perception. Those finest motions assert their influence only where the coarser are kept back ; and where too violent motions of the . fiery atoms take place, the result is false ideation, the iWo^pomlv. 1
5. This same quantitative contrast of strong and soft, violent and gentle motion, was laid by Democritus at the basis of his ethical fAeory also. * In so doing he stood with his psychology completely upon the inteUectualistic standpoint of Socrates in so far as he transposed the epistemological values of ideas immediately into ethical values of states of will. As from perception only that
: Theophr Dt Sent. 68 (Doz. D. 516).
» The resemblance with the theory of Aristippus (§ 7, 9) is so striking, that Ik* assumption of a causal connection ia scarcely to be avoided. Yet it may be that we should seek for this rather in a common dependence upon Protagoras,
in the interaction of Atomism and Hedonism upon each other.
'
116 Tlie Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part 1
obscure insight follows which has for its object the phenomenon and not the true essence, so also the pleasure which arises from the excitation of the senses is only relative (vo/^p), obscure, uncertain of itself, and deceitful. The true happiness, on the contrary, for which the wise man lives "according to nature" (<f>v<ru), the cv&u/to- v! a, which is the end (rc'Aot) and measure (ovpos) of human life, must not be sought in external goods, in sensuous satisfaction, but only in that gentle motion, that tranquil frame (cvcorw), which attends upon right insight, upon the gentle movement of the fiery atoms. This insight alone gives to the soul measure and harmony (£u/ajm- rpia), guards it from emotional astonishment (aOav/juuria), lends it security and imperturbability (drapa&a, aOa^fila. ) , — the ocean-calm
(yaAi/Vrj) of the soul that has become master of its passions through knowledge. True happiness is rest (ijo-vxwi), and rest is secured only by knowledge. Thus Democritus gains as the capstone of his system his personal ideal of life, — that of pure knowledge, free from all wishes ; with this ideal, this systematic materialism cul minates in a noble and lofty theory of life. And yet there is in it also a tendency which characterises the morals of the age of the Enlightenment : this peace of mind resting upon knowledge is the happiness of an individual life, and where the ethical teachings of Democritus extend beyond the individual, it is friendship, the rela tion of individual personalities to one another, that he praises, while he remains indifferent as regards connection with the state
§ 11. The System of Idealism.
The origin and development of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas is one of the most difficult and involved, as well as one of the most effective and fruitful, processes in the entire history of European thought, and the task of apprehending it properly is made still more difficult by the literary form in which it has been transmitted. The Platonic dialogues show the philosophy of their author in process of constant re-shaping : their composition extended through half a century. Since, however, the order in which the individual dialogues arose has not been transmitted to us and cannot be estab lished absolutely from external characteristics, pragmatic hypotheses based on the logical connections of thought must be called to our aid.
1. In the first place there is no question that the opposition between Socrates and the Sophists formed the starting-point for Platonic thought. Plato's first writings were dedicated to an affectionate and in the main, certainly, a faithful presentation of the Socratic doctrine of virtue. To this he attached a polemic
Chap. 3. § 11. ] System of Idealism : Plato. 117
against the Sophistic doctrines of society and knowledge marked by increasing keenness, but also by an increasing tendency toward establishing his own view upon an independent basis. The Platonic criticism of the Sophistic theories, however, proceeded essentially from the Socratic postulate. It admitted fully, in the spirit of Protagoras, the relativity of all knowledge gained through percep tion, but it found just in this the inadequacy of the Sophistic theory for a true science of ethics. 1 The knowledge which is necessary for virtue cannot consist in opinions as they arise from the changing states of motion in subject and object, nor can it consist of a rational consideration and legitimation of such opinions gained by perception ; * it must have a wholly different source and wholly different objects. Of the corporeal world and its changing states —
Plato held to thh view of Protagoras in its entirety — there is no science, but only perceptions and opinions ; it is accordingly an i*mrporeal world that forms the object of science, and this world most exist side by side with the corporeal world as independently as does knowledge side by side with opinion. 3
Here we have for the first time the claim of an immaterial reality, '•rought forward expressly and with full consciousness, and it is dear that this springs from the ethical need for a knowledge that is raised above all ideas gained by sense-perception. The assump tion of immateriality did not at first have as its aim, for Plato, the explanation of phenomena : its end was rather to assure an object for ethical knowledge. The idealistic metaphysics, therefore, in its first draft * builds entirely upon a new foundation of its own, with out any reference to the work of earlier science that had been directed toward investigating and understanding phenomena; it is aa immaterial Eleatism, which seeks true Being in the Ideas, with out troubling itself about the world of generation and occurrence, *hi'h it leaves to perception and opinion. *
To avoid numerous misunderstandings* we must, nevertheless, expressly point out that the Platonic conception of immateriality (•vwparor) is in nowise coincident with that of the spiritual or
psychical, as might be easily assumed from the modern mode of thinking. For the Platonic conception the particular psychical
1 On thin point, the Thecrtetut brings together the whole criticism of the S"f*. »ulc doctrine.
» Uf» *A*«4t nrrk XA>«*, Thtat. 201 E. (Probably a theory of Antisthenes. ) • Aria*. Met. I. «. 987 a 32 ; XIII. 4, 1078 b 12.
' A* act forth in the dialogues Pheedrut and the Symposium.
' la mitigations aa to theoretical and natural science are first found in the
■teat dialogues.
' To which the Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-PIatonic transformation of the
soonna of Ideas gave occasion. Cf. It. II. ch. 2, { 18.
1 18 The Greeks : Systematic Period.
[PahtI.
functions belong to the world of Becoming, precisely as do those of the body and of other corporeal things ; and on the other hand, in the true reality the " forms " or " shapes " of corporeality, the Ideas of sensuous qualities and relations, find a place precisely as do those of the spiritual relations. The identification of spirit or mind and incorporeality, the division of the world into mind and matter, is un- Platonic. The incorporeal world which Plato teaches is not yet the spiritual.
Kather, the Ideas are, for Plato, that incorporeal Being which is known through conceptions. Since, that is, the conceptions in which Socrates found the essence of science are not given as such in the reality that can be perceived, they must form a " second," " other " reality, different from the former, existing by itself, and this imma terial reality is related to the material, as Being to Becoming, as the abiding to the changing, as the simple to the manifold — in short, as the world of Parmenides to that of Heraclitus. The object of ethical knowledge, cognised through general conceptions, is that which " is " in the true sense : the ethical, the logical, and the phys ical ipxi (ground or first principle) are the same. This is the point in which all lines of earlier philosophy converge.
2. If the Ideas are to be " something other " than the percep tible world, knowledge of them through conceptions cannot be found in the content of perception, for they cannot be contained in it. With this turn of thought, which corresponds to the sharper separa tion of the two worlds, the Platonic doctrine of knowledge becomes much more rationalistic than that of Democritus, and goes also decidedly beyond that of Socrates ; for while the latter had devel oped the universal out of the opinions and perceptions of individuals inductively, and had found it as the common content in these opin ions and perceptions, Plato does not conceive of the process of induction in this analytical manner, but sees in perceptions only the suggestions or promptings with the help of which the soul bethinks itself of the conceptions, of the knowledge of the Ideas.
Plato expressed this rationalistic principle in the form that phil osophical knowledge is recollection (Ava/j-v^mt). He showed in the example of the Pythagorean proposition ' that mathematical knowl edge is not extracted from sense-perception, but that sense-percep tion offers only the opportunity on occasion of which the soul recollects the knowledge already present within her, that is, knowl edge that has purely rational validity. He points out that the pure mathematical relations are not present in corporeal reality ; on the
1 Meno, 80 ft. ■•-. .
Cm**. 8, § 11. ] System of Idealism : Plato. 119
contrary, the notion of these relations arises in us when similar figures of perception offer but the occasion therefor, and he extended this observation, which is completely applicable to mathematical knowledge, to the sum total of scientific knowledge.
That this reflection upon what is rationally necessary should be conceived of as recollection is connected with the fact that Plato, is little as any of his predecessors, recognises a creative activity of the consciousness, which produces its content. This is a general limit for all Greek psychology ; the content for ideas must somehow be given to the " soul " ; hence, if the Ideas are not given in perception, and the soul nevertheless finds them in herself on occasion of per ception, she must have already received these Ideas in some way or other. For this act of reception, however, Plato finds only the
mythical representation,1 that before the earthly life the souls have bekeid the pure forms of reality in the incorporeal world itself, that the perception of similar corporeal things calls the remembrance back to those forms forgotten in the corporeal earthly life, and that from this awakes the philosophical impulse, the love of the Ideas
(Igmt), by which the soul becomes raised again to the knowledge of that true reality. Here, too, as in the case of Democritus, it is shown that the entire ancient rationalism could form no idea of the process of thought except after the analogy of sensuous percep tion, particularly that of the sense of sight
What Socrates in his doctrine of the formation of conceptions had designated as induction, became transformed, therefore, for Plato, into an intuition that proceeds by recollecting (owaywyij) , into re flection upon a higher and purer perception (Anschauung). This pare perception, however, yields a plurality of ideas corresponding to the multiplicity of objects which occasion such perceptions, and from this grows the further task for science to know also the rela- Uam» of the Ideas to each other. This is a second step of Plato's
beyond Socrates, and is specially important for the reason that it led shortly to the apprehension of the logical relations between concep tions. It was principally the relations of the subordination and co ordination of concepts to which Plato became attentive. The division of the class-concepts or logical genera into their species phjliil a great part in his teaching. ' The possibility or impossibility of the onion of particular conceptions is brought more exactly into
' r%mdr. 240 B.
* CL Pkileb. 16 C. Yet this dividing process is not any where especially promi- tm in the writings that are certainly Platonic. It is handled with the pedantry U a school in the Sophist and Politicus. Antiquity preserved " definitions " and '• diriaioui " from the Platonic school. In Athtnaus. 1 1. M* C, is an instance of SBOckary, by a comic poet, at this academical concept-splitting.
120 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part 1.
consideration,1 and as a methodical aid he recommended the hypo thetical method of discussion, which aims to examine a tentatively proposed conception by developing all the possible consequences that would follow from the possibility of its union with conceptions already known.
These logical operations taken as a whole, by means of which the Ideas and their relations to one another (KMvwvCa) were to be found, Plato denoted by the name dialectic. What is found in his writings concerning it has throughout a methodological character, but is not properly logical.
3. The doctrine of knowledge as recollection stood, however, in closest connection with Plato's conception of the relation of Ideas to the world ofphenomena. Between the higher world of oicria and the lower world of yciw«, between what is and what is in process of Becoming, he found that relation of similarity which exists between archetypes (impaSiiytiaTa) and their copies or images (<t&uXa) . In this, too, a strong influence of mathematics upon the Platonic philosophy is disclosed : as the Pythagoreans had already designated things as imitations of numbers, so Plato found that individual things always correspond to their class-concepts only to a certain degree, and that the class-concept is a logical ideal which none of its empirical examples comes up to. He expressed this by the conception of
It was thus at the same time established that that second world, that of the incorporeal Ideas, was to be regarded
as the higher, the more valuable, the more primitive world.
Yet this mode of representing the matter gave rather a deter
mination of their respective values than a view that was usable for metaphysical consideration : hence Plato sought for still other desig nations of the relation. The logical side of the matter, according to which the Idea as class-concept or species represents the total uni tary extent or compass, of which the individual things denote but a part, appears in the expression participation (ptOifa), which means that the individual thing but partakes in the universal essence of the Idea; and the changing process of this partaking is emphasised by the conception of presence (jrapowia). The class-concept or species is present in the thing so long as the latter possesses the qualities which dwell in the Idea. The Ideas come and go, and as these now communicate themselves to things and now again withdraw, the qualities in these things which are like the Ideas are successively changed to the eye of perception.
The precise designation of this relation was, for Plato, an object 1 Phcedo, 102 B.
imitation (/u/t>7o-t? ) .
Chap. 3, $ 11. ] S>/ ft em of Idealism: Plato. 121
of only secondary interest, provided only the difference between the world of Ideas and the corporeal world, and the dependence of the latter upon the former, were recognised. 1 Most important and sufficient for him was the conviction that by means of conceptions that knowledge which virtue needs of what truly and really could be won.
A. Peipeis, Oniologia Platonica. Leipe. 1883.
4. But the logico-metaphysical interest which Plato grafted upon the Socratic doctrine of knowledge carried him far beyond the master as regards the contents of this doctrine. The general characteristics which he developed for the essence of the Ideas applied to all class-concepts, and the immaterial world was therefore
peopled with the archetypes of the entire world of experience. So many class-concepts, so many Ideas for Plato, too, there are count- lea "forms. " In so far criticism* was right in saying that Plato's world of Ideas was the world of perception thought over again in conception.
In fact, according to the first draft of the Platonic philosophy, tbere are Ideas of everything possible, of things, qualities, and relations of the good and the beautiful as well as of the bad and the ugly. Since the Idea defined methodologically, in purely formal way, as class-concept, every class-concept whatever belongs to the higher world of pure forms and in the dialogue Parmenides* mA only was Plato's attention called by a man schooled in the Eleatie Sophistic doctrine to all kinds of dialectical difficulties which inhere in the logical relation of the one Idea to its many copies, bat he was also rallied, spitefully enough, with the thought of all the foul companions that would be met in his world of pure
conceptual forms.
Plato's philosophy had no principle that could serve as weapon
against such an objection, nor there in the dialogues any intima tion that he had attempted to announce definite criterion for the mrl~iio* of those class-concepts that were to be regarded as Ideas, a* f-onstituents of the higher incorporeal world. Nor do the ex amples which he adduces permit such principle to be recognised we can only say that seems as in course of time he continually emphasised more strongly the attributes expressing worth (as the
irood and the beautiful), the mathematical relations (greatness and Ruallness, numerical determinations, etc. ), and the types of species m the organic world, while, on the contrary, he no longer reckoned
Fkmdo, 100 D. Arlst. Met. 990 Parm. 130 C.
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122 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part L
among the Ideas mere concepts of relation, especially negative notions and things made by human art. 1
5. Our knowledge of the systematic connection and order which Plato intended to affirm in the realm of Ideas remains ultimately as obscure as that in regard to the preceding point. Urgent as he was to establish co-ordination and subordination among the conceptions, the thought of a logically arranged pyramid of conceptions which must culminate in the conception that was most general and poorest in content seems not to have been carried out. A very problematical attempt to set up a limited number (five) of most general concep tions1 is presented in the Sophist (254 ff. ). But these attempts, which tend toward the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories, are not to be traced back with certainty to Plato himself.
With him we find, rather, only the doctrine presented in the Philebus, as well as in the Republic, that the Idea of the Good is the highest, embracing, ruling, and realising all others. Plato defines this Idea as regards its content as little as did Socrates; he de termined it only by means of the relation, that it should represent in its content the highest absolute end of all reality, of the incor poreal as of the corporeal. The subordination of the other Ideas to this highest Idea is accordingly not the logical subordination of a particular under the general, but the teleological of the means to the end.
In the latest period of his philosophising, concerning which we have only intimations in the Laws and in critical, notices of Aris totle,3 and in the teachings of his nearest successors, the imperfec tion of this solution of the logical problem seems to have led Plato to the unfortunate thought of developing the system of Ideas ac cording to the method of the Pythagorean number-theory. The
also, to be sure, had the purpose of attaching the abiding arrangements of things symbolically to the development of the number series. But that was only a makeshift, because they had as yet no idea of the logical arrangement of conceptions : hence, when Plato, in connection with his other thoughts, fell back upon this makeshift, designated the Idea of the Good as the h, the One, and attempted to derive from it the duality (Sww) of the Infinite or Indefinite, and the Measure (awnpov and ripas, = even and odd ; cf. § 4, 11), and from this, further, the other Ideas in such a way as to present a series of the conditioning and the conditioned, neither
' Cf. also Arist. 3tet. XII. 3, 1070 c 18.
3 Being, rest, motion, sameness (raArtmii) and otherness (b-cpirtit), i. e. the
division of Being into the resting (ofio-Io), ever the same with itself, and the moved (yirtett), in process of constant change.
Pythagoreans
8 Cf. A Trendelenburg, Platonis de Ideis et Xnmeris Doctrina (Leips. 1826).
CuAf. 3, | ll. ] System of Idealism: Plato. 123
this deplorable construction nor the fact that men like Speusippus, Xenocrates, Philippus, and Archytas undertook to carry it out in detail, would be worth more particular mention, were not this just the point to which the speculation of the Neo- Pythagoreans and the Xeo-Platonists became attached. For by this gradation which Plato thus began within the oiWu the world of true reality, the division i"» the conception of reality, which had developed out of the opposi tion between perception and thought, became multiplied, and thus
ualism was again abolished. For when to the One, or the Idea of the Good, was ascribed the highest absolute reality, and to the vari ous strata of the world of Ideas, a reality of constantly decreasing worth in proportion as they were removed from the One in the system in numbers, there arose from this a scale of realities which extended from the One down to the lowest reality, — that of the corporeal world. Fantastic as this thought may be, it yet evinced its force and influence in the development of thought, even to the threshold of modern philosophy. Its power, however, lies doubtless u> all cases in its amalgamation of attributes of worth with these
rarious grades of reality.
6. While as metaphysics, the doctrine of Ideas fell into such seri
ous difficulties, it was carried out in an extremely happy, simple, and transparent manner in that domain which formed its proper home, — that of ethics. For the systematic elaboration of this, however, Plato needed a psychology, and that, too, of another sort than the psychology which had arisen in previous science, out of the presup- positions of natural philosophy, and with the aid of individual per ceptions or opinions. When, in contrast with this, he developed his psychology from the postulates of the doctrine of Ideas, the result was of course a purely metaphysical theory which stood and fell with its postulate, yet it was at the same time, by reason of the import of the doctrine of Ideas, a first attempt to understand the psychical life from within, and in accordance with its internal char acter and articulation.
The conception of the soul or mind was in itself a difficulty ' in the dualism of the doctrine of Ideas. For Plato, also, "soul" was cm the one hand the living element, that which is moved of itself and moves other things, and on the other hand, that which perceives, knows, and wills. As principle of life and of motion, the soul
tvrlongs. therefore, to the lower world of Becoming, and in this it remains when it perceives and directs its desires toward objects of the senses. But this same soul, nevertheless, by its true knowledge
• Pkttdo, 76 ff. , 106, Pkttdr. 246, Laws, X. 896.
124 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I-
of the Ideas, becomes partaker in the higher reality of abiding Being. Hence it must be assigned a position between the two worlds — not the timeless, unchanged essence of the Ideas, but a vitality which. survives change ; i. e. immortality. Here, for the first time, personal immortality is brought forward by Plato as a part of philosophic teaching. Of the proofs which the Phcedo adduces for this, those are most in accord with the spirit of the system which reason from the soul's knowledge of Ideas to its relationship with eternity ; in correspondence with the form of the system is the dialectic false conclusion that the soul cannot be or become dead, because its essential characteristic is life ; the most tenable of the arguments is the reference to the unity and substantiality which the soul evinces in ruling the body.
In consequence of this intermediate position the soul must bear in itself the traits of both worlds ; there must be in its essence some thing which corresponds to the world of Ideas, and something which corresponds to the world of perception. The former is the rational nature (Aoyio-TiKoV or vovs), the seat of knowledge and of the virtue which corresponds to it ; in the latter, the irrational nature, Plato made a further distinction of two elements, — the nobler, which inclines towards the Reason, and the lower, which resists it. The nobler he found in the ardent, spirited Will (Spirit, Ov(uk), the lower in the sensuous desire (Appetite, imOvixui) . Thus Reason, Spirit, and Appetite are the three forms of activity of the soul, the classes or species (tlS-q) of its states.
These fundamental psychological conceptions which had thus grown out of considerations of ethical worth are employed by Plato to set forth the moral destiny of the individual. The fettering of the soul to the body is at once a consequence and a punishment of the sensuous appetite. Plato extends the immortal existence of the soul equally beyond the two boundaries of the earthly life. The sin for the sake of which the soul is ensnared in the world of sense is to be sought in a pre-existent state ; ' its destiny in the hereafter ' will depend upon how far it has freed itself in the earthly life from the sensuous appetite, and turned to its higher vocation — knowledge of the Ideas. But inasmuch as the ultimate goal of the soul appears to be to strip off the sensuous nature, the three forms of activity are designated also as parts of the soul. In the Timaeus Plato even portrays the process of the formation of the soul out of these parts, and retains immortality for the rational part only.
1 These doctrines are depicted in the form of mythical allegories which make use of motives from the popular faith and from the Mystery-cults. V. Phcedr. 846 ff. ; Oorgias, 623 ff. ; Rep. 614 ff. ; Phcedo. 107 ff.
C«ap. 3, 5 11. ] Syttem of Idealism: Plato. 126
It is already clear from these changing determinations that the relation of these three fundamental forms of the psychical life to the none too strongly emphasised unity of the soul's nature was not dearly thought out ; nor is it possible to give to these conceptions formed from the ethical need the significance of purely psychologi cal distinctions, such as hare since been made. 1
7. But at all events there followed in this way, from the doctrine of the two worlds, a negative morals that would fly from the world, iml in which the withdrawal from the world of sense and the spir- ttiuhsation of life were praised as ideals of wisdom.
the Phacrto that breathes this earnest disposition in its portrayal of the death of Socrates ; the same ethical theory prevails in such dia-
1'Vues as the Gorgias, the Theostetus, and, in part, the Republic. Bnt in Plato's own nature the heavy blood of the thinker was associated with the light heart-beat of the artist, and thus while his philosophy lured him into the realm of bodiless forms, the whole charm of Hellenic beauty was living and active within him. Strongly as he therefore combated root and branch the theory of Aristippns, which would fain regard man's strivings as satisfied with sensuous pleasure, it was nevertheless his opinion that the Idea of the Good becomes realised even in the world of sense. Joy in the beautiful, pleasure in the sensuous imitation of the Idea, painless because free from the element of wishing, the development of knowledge and practical artistic skill, the intelligent understand ing of the mathematical relations which measure empirical reality, and the appropriate ordering of the individual life, — all these were mined by him as at least preparatory stages and participations in that highest good which consists in knowledge of the Ideas, and of
the highest among them, the Idea of the Good. In the Symposium and in the Philebus he has given expression to this his estimate of the goods of life.
This same thought, that ethical values and standards must illu mine the whole circuit of human life, was used in another form by Hato in that presentation of the system of the virtues which he <W*lop*»d in the Republic. Here he showed that each part of the soul has a definite task to fulfil, and so a perfection of its own to reach : the rational part, in wisdom (o-o^ta), the spirited ($vfu*t&is) in energy of will (courage, dVSpia), the appetitive (ImbvuijTiKw) in
1 That the question here (or Plato was essentially that of the gradation of the j»> chteal from the point of view of relative worth, is shown not only in the •■njiorment made of these distinctions in ethics and politics, but also in such -mark* as those which designated this triple division as characteristic for the ■liflrreot organic beings (plant, animal, man), or for the different peoples. ahabitanu of southern countries, of northern countries, and the Greeks.
It is not only
126 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
self-catUrol (moderation, <r<a<f>po<ruvT)) ; that, however, in addition to all these, as the virtue of the soul as a whole, there must be the right relation of these parts, complete uprightness (justice, Smaioo-vii) ) .
The true significance, however, of these four cardinal virtues, is first unfolded upon a higher domain, that of politics.
8. The tendency of the doctrine of Ideas, directed as it was toward the general and the universal, exhibited its most perfect operation in the aspect now to be noticed, viz. that the ethical ideal of the Platonic philosophy lay not in the ability and happi ness of the individual, but in the ethical perfection of the species. True to the logical principle of the doctrine of Ideas, that which truly in the ethical sense, not the individual man, but mankind, and the form in which this truly existent humanity appears is the organic union of individuals in the state. The ethical ideal becomes for Plato the political, and in the midst of the time which saw the dissolution of Greek political life, and in opposition to those doc trines which proclaimed only the principle of individual happiness, he raised the conception of the state to an all-controlling height.
He considered the state, however, not from the side of its empiri cal origin, but in reference to its task, viz. that of presenting in large the ideal of humanity, and of educating the citizen to that particular virtue which makes him truly happy. Convinced that his project could be realised, with force necessary, he wove into its fabric not only features which he approved of the then-existing Greek political life, in particular those of the aristocratic Doric constitutions, but also all the ideals for whose fulfilment he hoped from the right formation of public life.
K. F. Hermann, (its. Abhandlunyen, 122 ff. E. Zeller, Vortrage und Ab- handlungen, 62 ff.
If the ideal state to present man in large, must consist of the three parts which correspond to the three parts of the soul, — the teaching class, the warrior class, and the working class. It belongs to the first class alone, that of the cultured (<£iAdo-o<£ot), to guide the state and to rule1 (&p\ovtis), to give laws and to watch over their observance. The virtue proper to this class wisdom, insight into that which for the advantage of the whole, and which demanded by the ethical aim of the whole. To support this class there the second class, that of the public officials (In-ucovpot guardians, <£ij'Auk<s- which has to evince the virtue of the fearless performance of duty
as maintains the order of the state within and without Hence the Xo-ywrocA* called also yycuonicir.
(Av&pia)
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Chap. 3, $ 11. ] Syttem of Idealism : Plato. 127
It is, however, obedience which holds the desires in check, self-control {<rw4>poaivrj), that becomes the great mass of the people, the artisans and farmers (ytwpyoi k<u brjiuovpyoi) , who have to care for providing for the external means of the states by their labour and industry. 1
Only when each class thus does its duty and maintains its appro priate virtue does the nature of the state correspond to the ideal of
justice (iuauotrwr)).
The principle of aristocracy in education, which is of decisive im
portance in the Platonic ideal of the state, appears most clearly in the provision that for the great mass of the third class only the ordinary ability of practical life is claimed, and in that this is re garded as sufficient for their purpose, while the education, which the state has the right and duty to take in hand itself in order to train its citizens for its own ends, is given only to the two other classes. By means of a constantly repeated process of selection continued from birth to the late years, the government causes the two upper classes to be continually renewed, strata by strata; and in order that no individual interest may remain to hold back these classes, who are properly the organs of the whole body, in the fulfilment of their task, they are to renounce family life and private property. Their lot is that of education by the state, absence of family relations, community of life and of goods. He who is to live for the ends of the whole, for the ethical education of the people, must not be bound to the individual by any personal interest. To this thought, which found its historic realisation in the sacerdotal state of the mediaeval hierarchy, is limited whatever of communism, community of wives, etc. , men have professed to discover in the Platonic teaching. The great Idealist carries out to its extreme consequences the thought that the end of human life consists in moral education, and that the entire organisation of a community must be arranged for this sole end.
9. With this a new relation between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena was discovered, and one which corresponded most perfectly to the spirit of the Platonic system : the Idea of the Good disclosed itself as the task, as the end (rcXot), which the phenomenon of human life in society has to fulfil. This discovery became of decisive importance for the final form taken by Plato's metaphysical system.
For, as first projected, the doctrine of Ideas had been precisely as incompetent as the Eleatic doctrine of Being to explain empirical reality. The class-concepts were held to give knowledge of the
1 Hence the third put of the soul is called also the ^iXoxfifMar**. . ■
128 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Past i
absolute reality,1 which, purely for itself, simple and changeless, without origin and imperishable, forms a world by itself, and, as in corporeal, is separated from the world where things arise. Hence, as was demonstrated in the dialogue the Sophist,* in a keen polemic against the doctrine of Ideas, this doctrine formed no principle of motion, and therefore no explanation of facts, because it excluded from itself all motion and change.
But however little Plato's interests may have been directed toward this end, the conception of the Idea as true Being ultimately- demanded, nevertheless, that the phenomenon should be regarded, not only as something other, something imitative, something that participated, but also as something dependent. It demanded that
But that which is itself absolutely unchangeable and immovable, and •xcludes every particular function from itself, cannot be a cause in
the Idea be regarded as cause of~OCVurrenee and change (curia) .
the mechanical sense, but only in the sense that it presents the end for the sake of which the occurrence takes place. Here for the first time the relation between the two worlds of Being and Becoming (ovcruz and ycVccnt) is fully defined ; all change and occurrence exists for the sake of the Idea ; 9 the Idea is the final cause of phenomena.
This foundation of teleological metaphysics Plato gives in the Philebus and in the middle books of the Republic, and adds at once a further culminating thought by introducing as the final cause of all occurrence, the world of Ideas as a whole, but in particular the high est Idea, to which all the rest are subordinate in the sense of means to end, — the Idea of the Good. This, referring to Anaxagoras, he designates as the World-reason (wros), or as the deity. *
Side by side with this motif taken from Anaxagoras, another of a Pythagorean nature appears with increasing force in a later form of the doctrine of Ideas, a motif in accordance with which the imperfection of the phenomenon is pointed out as in contrast with the true Being. This inadequacy, however, could not be derived from Being itself, and just as Leucippus, in order to understand plurality and motion, had declared that in addition to the Being of
1 Symp. 211 B, aftri Ka0' avri fuB' airov povotitit itl tv.
2 Page 246 ff.
More particularly, the theoretical explanation which Democritus
The very happv expression for this juur<if«r tA <pair6iumi. Cf. also Arist. Oen. et Corr. 832, a,
Hence, the expressions in which he recognised the truth in the phenome non e. g. Arist. Dt An. 404 27, and the like. To attempt, however, to construe out of this " sensualism" of Democritus, as has been attempted by E. Johnson (I'lauen, 18«8), contradicts completely the accounts with regard to his attitude toward Protagoras.
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Chap. 3, § 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. Ill
gave for the contents of perception consists, as with Leucippus, in the reduction of all phenomena to the mechanics of atoms. What appears in perception as qualitatively determined, and also as in volved iu qualitative change (dXAoiov/xt^ov), exists " in truth " only as a quantitative relation of the atoms, of their order, and their motion. The task of science is then to reduce all qualitative to quantitative relations, and to show in detail what quantitative rela tions of the absolute reality produce the qualitative characteristics of the reality which appears in phenomena. Thus, the prejudice in favour of khat may be perceived or imaged (anschauiich), as if spatial form and motion were something simpler, more comprehensible in themselves, and less of a problem than qualitative character and
alteration, is made the principle for the theoretical explanation of the world.
Since this principle is applied with complete systematic rigour to the whole of experience, Atomism regards the psychical life with all its essential elements and values as also a phenomenon, and the form and motion of the atoms which constitute the true Being of this phenomenon must be stated by the explanatory theory. Thus
matter in its form and motion is regarded as that which alone is truly real, and the entire mental or spiritual life as the derived, phenomenal reality. With this the system of Democritus first assumes the character of conscious, outspoken materialism.
2. In the properly physical doctrines, the teaching of Democritus presents, therefore, no change in principle as compared with that of Leucippus, though there is a great enrichment by careful detailed investigation. He emphasised still more sharply than his predeces sor, where possible, the thought of the mechanical necessity (dvayio/, which he also occasionally called Aoyos), in accordance with which all occurrence or change whatever takes place, and further defined this thought as involving that no operation of atoms upon one another is possible except through impact, through immediate con tact, and further, that this operation consists only in the change of the state of motion of the atoms which are also unchangeable as regards their form.
The atom itself as that which "is," in the proper sense of the word, has accordingly only the characteristics of abstract corpore ality, viz. the filling of a limited space, and the quality of being in motion in the void. Although all are imperceptibly small, they yet exhibit an endless variety of forms (JS«u or trxJPJlTa)- To form,
which constitutes the proper fundamental difference in the atoms, belongs in a certain sense also size ; yet it is to be observed that the same stereometrical form, e. g. the sphere, may appear in different
112 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part L
sizes. The larger the atom, the greater its mass ; for the essential quality of what is, is indeed materiality, space-claiming. For this reason Democritus asserted weight or lightness to be a function of size,1 evidently yielding to the mechanical analogies of daily life. In connection with these terms (/3opu and Koi)<^ov), however, we are not to think of the falling motion, but solely of the degree of mechani cal movability or of inertia. ' Hence it was also his opinion that as the atom-complexes whirled about, the lighter parts were forced out ward, while the more inert with their inferior mobility were gath ered in the middle.
The same properties communicate themselves as metaphysical qualities to things which are composed of atoms. The form and size of things is produced by the simple summation of the form and size of the component atoms ; though in this case, the inertia is not dependent solely upon the sum total of the magnitudes of the atoms, but upon the greater or less amount of empty space that remains between the individual particles when they are grouped together. The inertia depends therefore upon the less or greater degree of density. And since the ease with which particles may be displaced with reference to one another depends upon this interruption of the mass by empty space, the properties of hardness and softness belong also to the true reality that is known by thought.
All other properties, however, belong to things not in them selves, but only in so far as motions proceeding from things act upon the organs of perception ; they are " states of perception as it is in process of qualitative change. " But these states are also conditioned throughout by the things in which the perceived prop erties appear, and here the arrangement and the situation which the atoms have taken with reference to each other in the process of composition are of principal importance. 3
While, then, form, size, inertia, density, and hardness are properties of things irtrj, i. e. in truth, all that is perceived in them by the indi vidual senses as colour, sound, smell, taste, exists only vd/iwor diem, i. e. in the phenomenon. This doctrine, when taken up anew in the philosophy of the Renaissance (cf. Part IV. ch. 2) and later, was
1 As the most extensive exposition for this and for the following topic The- ophr. De Sens. 61 ff. (Doz. D. 516) is to be compared.
5 It is scarcely to be decided now whether the motion of their own, which Atomism ascribed to all the atoms as primitive and causeless, was thought ol by Democritus as conditioned already by the size or mass, so that the greater had, even from the beginning, possessed less velocity. At all events, these determinations held good for him within the sphere of the mechanical operation of the atoms on one another. What is larger can be pushed with greater diffi culty ; what is smaller can be pushed more easily.
» Cf. Arist Gen. et Corr. I. 2, 316 b 6.
Cbaf. 3, § 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. 113
designated as distinguishing between the primary and secondary fnalities of things, and it is desirable to introduce this expression htrre, since it corresponds throughout to the metaphysical and episte- nological sense in which Democritus made the Protagorean doctrine useful for his own purpose. While the Sophist would make all properties secondary and relative, Democritus admitted this only for the qualities perceived by special senses, and set over against these the quantitative determinations as primary and absolute. He there fore designated also as " genuine knowledge " the insight into the
primary qualities to be won through thought, while, on the contrary, perception which is directed toward the secondary qualities he termed " obscure knowledge " (yvrjvi^ — (XKorirj yvw/117).
3. The secondary qualities appear accordingly as dependent upon the primary ; they are not, however, dependent upon these alone, but rather upon the action of these upon the percipient agent. But in the atomistic system that which perceives, the mind or toul, can consist only of atoms. To be more explicit, it consists, according to Democritus, of the same atoms which constitute also the essence of fire: namely, the finest, smoothest, and most mobile.
These are indeed scattered also through the whole world, and in so far animals, plants, and other things may be regarded as animate, as having souls,' but they are united in largest numbers in the human body, where in life a fire-atom is placed between every two atoms of other sorts, and where they are held together by breathing.
Upon this presupposition, then, analogous, as we see, to the older systems, Democritus built up his explanation of phenomena from the true essence of things. That perception, and with the secondary qualities, arises from the action of things upon the fire- atoms of the soul. The reality which appears a necessary result of the true reality.
In carrying out this doctrine Democritus took up and refined the theories of perception advanced by his predecessors. The effluxes (ef. above, 3) which proceed from things to set in motion the
organs and through them the fire-atoms, he called images (ct&oAa), and regarded them as infinitely small copies of the things. Their impression upon the fire-atoms perception, and the similarity between the content of this perception and its object was held to be secured thereby. Since impact and pressure are the essence of all the mechanics of the atoms, touch regarded as the most primitive sense. The special organs, on the contrary, were regarded as capable of receiving only such images as corresponded to their own forma
tion and motion, and this theory of the specific energy of the sense was worked out very acutely Demooritus. From this
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114 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I.
followed also that in case there were things whose effluxes could not act upon any one of the organs, these would remain imperceptible for the ordinary man, and for these perhaps " other senses " might be accessible.
This theory of images appeared very plausible to ancient thought. It brought to definite expression, and indeed to a certain extent explained, the mode of representing things which is still common for the ordinary consciousness, as if our perceptions were " copies " of things existing outside of us. If one did not ask further how things should come to send out such miniature likenesses of them selves into the world, he might think that he understood, by means of this theory, how our " impressions " can resemble things with out. For this reason this theory at once attained the predominance in physiological psychology, and retained its position until after the beginnings of modern philosophy, where it was defended by Locke.
Its Significance, however, for the conceptions in the system of Democritus, lies in this, that it was regarded as describing that motion of the atoms in which perception consists. It remained hidden from this materialism, which was such from principle, as well as from all its later transformations, that perception as a psychical activity is something specifically different from any and every motion of atoms, however determined. But in seeking out the individual forms of motion from which the individual percep tions of the special senses arise, the philosopher of Abdera caused many a keen observation, many a fine suggestion, to become known.
4. It is interesting now that the same fate befell the materialistic; psychology of Democritus as had befallen the pre-Sophistic meta physicians (cf- § 6) : too, was obliged in certain respect to oblit erate again the epistemologica2 contrast between perception and thought. Since, that all psychical life regarded as motion of the fire-atoms,1 and since the motion of atoms in the connected sys tem of the universe conditioned by contact and impact, follows that thought, which knows the truly real, can be explained only from an impression which this truly real makes upon the fiery atoms, — explained therefore itself only through the efflux of such images. As psychological process, therefore, thought the same as percep tion, viz. impression of images upon fire-atoins the only difference
that in the case of perception the relatively coarse images of the atom-complexes are active, while thought, which apprehends true reality, rests upon contact of the fire-atoms with the finest images, with those which represent the atomic structure of things.
Arist. De An. 405 8.
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Chap. S, 5 10. ] System of Materialism : Democritus. 115
Odd and fantastic as this sounds, the indications are yet all in favour of the supposition that Democritus drew this conclusion from
the presuppositions of his m iterialistic psychology. This psychol ogy knew no independent, internal mechanism of ideas or conscious states, but only an arising of ideas through the motion of atoms Hence it regarded ideas that were evidently deceptive as also - impressions," and sought for these the exciting images. Dreams, tj§. were traced back to ci&uAa which had either penetrated into the body in the waking state and on account of their weak motion had previously produced no impression, or had first reached the fiery items in sleep, evading the senses. A mysterious ("magnetic," or -psychic," we should say to-day) action of men upon one another appeared comprehensible on this hypothesis, and an objective basis was given to faith in gods and demons by assuming giant forms in
infinite space from which corresponding images proceeded.
In correspondence with this Democritus seems to have thought of
* genuine knowledge " as that motion of the fire-atoms which is pro duced by the impression of the smallest and finest images, — those which represent the atomic composition of things. This motion is, however, the most delicate, the finest, the gentlest of all — that which comes nearest to rest. With this definition the contrast between per ception and thought was expressed in quantitative terms — quite in the
spirit of the system. The coarse images of things as wholes set the aery atoms into relatively violent motion and produce by this means the '•obscure insight " which presents itself as perception ; the finest images, on the contrary, impress upon the fiery atoms a gentle, fine
motion which evokes the "genuine insight" into the atomic structure of things, i. e. thought. In consideration of this, Democritus com mends the thinker to turn away from the world of the senses, quite in contrast with the mode of thought which would develop truth out of perception. Those finest motions assert their influence only where the coarser are kept back ; and where too violent motions of the . fiery atoms take place, the result is false ideation, the iWo^pomlv. 1
5. This same quantitative contrast of strong and soft, violent and gentle motion, was laid by Democritus at the basis of his ethical fAeory also. * In so doing he stood with his psychology completely upon the inteUectualistic standpoint of Socrates in so far as he transposed the epistemological values of ideas immediately into ethical values of states of will. As from perception only that
: Theophr Dt Sent. 68 (Doz. D. 516).
» The resemblance with the theory of Aristippus (§ 7, 9) is so striking, that Ik* assumption of a causal connection ia scarcely to be avoided. Yet it may be that we should seek for this rather in a common dependence upon Protagoras,
in the interaction of Atomism and Hedonism upon each other.
'
116 Tlie Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part 1
obscure insight follows which has for its object the phenomenon and not the true essence, so also the pleasure which arises from the excitation of the senses is only relative (vo/^p), obscure, uncertain of itself, and deceitful. The true happiness, on the contrary, for which the wise man lives "according to nature" (<f>v<ru), the cv&u/to- v! a, which is the end (rc'Aot) and measure (ovpos) of human life, must not be sought in external goods, in sensuous satisfaction, but only in that gentle motion, that tranquil frame (cvcorw), which attends upon right insight, upon the gentle movement of the fiery atoms. This insight alone gives to the soul measure and harmony (£u/ajm- rpia), guards it from emotional astonishment (aOav/juuria), lends it security and imperturbability (drapa&a, aOa^fila. ) , — the ocean-calm
(yaAi/Vrj) of the soul that has become master of its passions through knowledge. True happiness is rest (ijo-vxwi), and rest is secured only by knowledge. Thus Democritus gains as the capstone of his system his personal ideal of life, — that of pure knowledge, free from all wishes ; with this ideal, this systematic materialism cul minates in a noble and lofty theory of life. And yet there is in it also a tendency which characterises the morals of the age of the Enlightenment : this peace of mind resting upon knowledge is the happiness of an individual life, and where the ethical teachings of Democritus extend beyond the individual, it is friendship, the rela tion of individual personalities to one another, that he praises, while he remains indifferent as regards connection with the state
§ 11. The System of Idealism.
The origin and development of the Platonic doctrine of Ideas is one of the most difficult and involved, as well as one of the most effective and fruitful, processes in the entire history of European thought, and the task of apprehending it properly is made still more difficult by the literary form in which it has been transmitted. The Platonic dialogues show the philosophy of their author in process of constant re-shaping : their composition extended through half a century. Since, however, the order in which the individual dialogues arose has not been transmitted to us and cannot be estab lished absolutely from external characteristics, pragmatic hypotheses based on the logical connections of thought must be called to our aid.
1. In the first place there is no question that the opposition between Socrates and the Sophists formed the starting-point for Platonic thought. Plato's first writings were dedicated to an affectionate and in the main, certainly, a faithful presentation of the Socratic doctrine of virtue. To this he attached a polemic
Chap. 3. § 11. ] System of Idealism : Plato. 117
against the Sophistic doctrines of society and knowledge marked by increasing keenness, but also by an increasing tendency toward establishing his own view upon an independent basis. The Platonic criticism of the Sophistic theories, however, proceeded essentially from the Socratic postulate. It admitted fully, in the spirit of Protagoras, the relativity of all knowledge gained through percep tion, but it found just in this the inadequacy of the Sophistic theory for a true science of ethics. 1 The knowledge which is necessary for virtue cannot consist in opinions as they arise from the changing states of motion in subject and object, nor can it consist of a rational consideration and legitimation of such opinions gained by perception ; * it must have a wholly different source and wholly different objects. Of the corporeal world and its changing states —
Plato held to thh view of Protagoras in its entirety — there is no science, but only perceptions and opinions ; it is accordingly an i*mrporeal world that forms the object of science, and this world most exist side by side with the corporeal world as independently as does knowledge side by side with opinion. 3
Here we have for the first time the claim of an immaterial reality, '•rought forward expressly and with full consciousness, and it is dear that this springs from the ethical need for a knowledge that is raised above all ideas gained by sense-perception. The assump tion of immateriality did not at first have as its aim, for Plato, the explanation of phenomena : its end was rather to assure an object for ethical knowledge. The idealistic metaphysics, therefore, in its first draft * builds entirely upon a new foundation of its own, with out any reference to the work of earlier science that had been directed toward investigating and understanding phenomena; it is aa immaterial Eleatism, which seeks true Being in the Ideas, with out troubling itself about the world of generation and occurrence, *hi'h it leaves to perception and opinion. *
To avoid numerous misunderstandings* we must, nevertheless, expressly point out that the Platonic conception of immateriality (•vwparor) is in nowise coincident with that of the spiritual or
psychical, as might be easily assumed from the modern mode of thinking. For the Platonic conception the particular psychical
1 On thin point, the Thecrtetut brings together the whole criticism of the S"f*. »ulc doctrine.
» Uf» *A*«4t nrrk XA>«*, Thtat. 201 E. (Probably a theory of Antisthenes. ) • Aria*. Met. I. «. 987 a 32 ; XIII. 4, 1078 b 12.
' A* act forth in the dialogues Pheedrut and the Symposium.
' la mitigations aa to theoretical and natural science are first found in the
■teat dialogues.
' To which the Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-PIatonic transformation of the
soonna of Ideas gave occasion. Cf. It. II. ch. 2, { 18.
1 18 The Greeks : Systematic Period.
[PahtI.
functions belong to the world of Becoming, precisely as do those of the body and of other corporeal things ; and on the other hand, in the true reality the " forms " or " shapes " of corporeality, the Ideas of sensuous qualities and relations, find a place precisely as do those of the spiritual relations. The identification of spirit or mind and incorporeality, the division of the world into mind and matter, is un- Platonic. The incorporeal world which Plato teaches is not yet the spiritual.
Kather, the Ideas are, for Plato, that incorporeal Being which is known through conceptions. Since, that is, the conceptions in which Socrates found the essence of science are not given as such in the reality that can be perceived, they must form a " second," " other " reality, different from the former, existing by itself, and this imma terial reality is related to the material, as Being to Becoming, as the abiding to the changing, as the simple to the manifold — in short, as the world of Parmenides to that of Heraclitus. The object of ethical knowledge, cognised through general conceptions, is that which " is " in the true sense : the ethical, the logical, and the phys ical ipxi (ground or first principle) are the same. This is the point in which all lines of earlier philosophy converge.
2. If the Ideas are to be " something other " than the percep tible world, knowledge of them through conceptions cannot be found in the content of perception, for they cannot be contained in it. With this turn of thought, which corresponds to the sharper separa tion of the two worlds, the Platonic doctrine of knowledge becomes much more rationalistic than that of Democritus, and goes also decidedly beyond that of Socrates ; for while the latter had devel oped the universal out of the opinions and perceptions of individuals inductively, and had found it as the common content in these opin ions and perceptions, Plato does not conceive of the process of induction in this analytical manner, but sees in perceptions only the suggestions or promptings with the help of which the soul bethinks itself of the conceptions, of the knowledge of the Ideas.
Plato expressed this rationalistic principle in the form that phil osophical knowledge is recollection (Ava/j-v^mt). He showed in the example of the Pythagorean proposition ' that mathematical knowl edge is not extracted from sense-perception, but that sense-percep tion offers only the opportunity on occasion of which the soul recollects the knowledge already present within her, that is, knowl edge that has purely rational validity. He points out that the pure mathematical relations are not present in corporeal reality ; on the
1 Meno, 80 ft. ■•-. .
Cm**. 8, § 11. ] System of Idealism : Plato. 119
contrary, the notion of these relations arises in us when similar figures of perception offer but the occasion therefor, and he extended this observation, which is completely applicable to mathematical knowledge, to the sum total of scientific knowledge.
That this reflection upon what is rationally necessary should be conceived of as recollection is connected with the fact that Plato, is little as any of his predecessors, recognises a creative activity of the consciousness, which produces its content. This is a general limit for all Greek psychology ; the content for ideas must somehow be given to the " soul " ; hence, if the Ideas are not given in perception, and the soul nevertheless finds them in herself on occasion of per ception, she must have already received these Ideas in some way or other. For this act of reception, however, Plato finds only the
mythical representation,1 that before the earthly life the souls have bekeid the pure forms of reality in the incorporeal world itself, that the perception of similar corporeal things calls the remembrance back to those forms forgotten in the corporeal earthly life, and that from this awakes the philosophical impulse, the love of the Ideas
(Igmt), by which the soul becomes raised again to the knowledge of that true reality. Here, too, as in the case of Democritus, it is shown that the entire ancient rationalism could form no idea of the process of thought except after the analogy of sensuous percep tion, particularly that of the sense of sight
What Socrates in his doctrine of the formation of conceptions had designated as induction, became transformed, therefore, for Plato, into an intuition that proceeds by recollecting (owaywyij) , into re flection upon a higher and purer perception (Anschauung). This pare perception, however, yields a plurality of ideas corresponding to the multiplicity of objects which occasion such perceptions, and from this grows the further task for science to know also the rela- Uam» of the Ideas to each other. This is a second step of Plato's
beyond Socrates, and is specially important for the reason that it led shortly to the apprehension of the logical relations between concep tions. It was principally the relations of the subordination and co ordination of concepts to which Plato became attentive. The division of the class-concepts or logical genera into their species phjliil a great part in his teaching. ' The possibility or impossibility of the onion of particular conceptions is brought more exactly into
' r%mdr. 240 B.
* CL Pkileb. 16 C. Yet this dividing process is not any where especially promi- tm in the writings that are certainly Platonic. It is handled with the pedantry U a school in the Sophist and Politicus. Antiquity preserved " definitions " and '• diriaioui " from the Platonic school. In Athtnaus. 1 1. M* C, is an instance of SBOckary, by a comic poet, at this academical concept-splitting.
120 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part 1.
consideration,1 and as a methodical aid he recommended the hypo thetical method of discussion, which aims to examine a tentatively proposed conception by developing all the possible consequences that would follow from the possibility of its union with conceptions already known.
These logical operations taken as a whole, by means of which the Ideas and their relations to one another (KMvwvCa) were to be found, Plato denoted by the name dialectic. What is found in his writings concerning it has throughout a methodological character, but is not properly logical.
3. The doctrine of knowledge as recollection stood, however, in closest connection with Plato's conception of the relation of Ideas to the world ofphenomena. Between the higher world of oicria and the lower world of yciw«, between what is and what is in process of Becoming, he found that relation of similarity which exists between archetypes (impaSiiytiaTa) and their copies or images (<t&uXa) . In this, too, a strong influence of mathematics upon the Platonic philosophy is disclosed : as the Pythagoreans had already designated things as imitations of numbers, so Plato found that individual things always correspond to their class-concepts only to a certain degree, and that the class-concept is a logical ideal which none of its empirical examples comes up to. He expressed this by the conception of
It was thus at the same time established that that second world, that of the incorporeal Ideas, was to be regarded
as the higher, the more valuable, the more primitive world.
Yet this mode of representing the matter gave rather a deter
mination of their respective values than a view that was usable for metaphysical consideration : hence Plato sought for still other desig nations of the relation. The logical side of the matter, according to which the Idea as class-concept or species represents the total uni tary extent or compass, of which the individual things denote but a part, appears in the expression participation (ptOifa), which means that the individual thing but partakes in the universal essence of the Idea; and the changing process of this partaking is emphasised by the conception of presence (jrapowia). The class-concept or species is present in the thing so long as the latter possesses the qualities which dwell in the Idea. The Ideas come and go, and as these now communicate themselves to things and now again withdraw, the qualities in these things which are like the Ideas are successively changed to the eye of perception.
The precise designation of this relation was, for Plato, an object 1 Phcedo, 102 B.
imitation (/u/t>7o-t? ) .
Chap. 3, $ 11. ] S>/ ft em of Idealism: Plato. 121
of only secondary interest, provided only the difference between the world of Ideas and the corporeal world, and the dependence of the latter upon the former, were recognised. 1 Most important and sufficient for him was the conviction that by means of conceptions that knowledge which virtue needs of what truly and really could be won.
A. Peipeis, Oniologia Platonica. Leipe. 1883.
4. But the logico-metaphysical interest which Plato grafted upon the Socratic doctrine of knowledge carried him far beyond the master as regards the contents of this doctrine. The general characteristics which he developed for the essence of the Ideas applied to all class-concepts, and the immaterial world was therefore
peopled with the archetypes of the entire world of experience. So many class-concepts, so many Ideas for Plato, too, there are count- lea "forms. " In so far criticism* was right in saying that Plato's world of Ideas was the world of perception thought over again in conception.
In fact, according to the first draft of the Platonic philosophy, tbere are Ideas of everything possible, of things, qualities, and relations of the good and the beautiful as well as of the bad and the ugly. Since the Idea defined methodologically, in purely formal way, as class-concept, every class-concept whatever belongs to the higher world of pure forms and in the dialogue Parmenides* mA only was Plato's attention called by a man schooled in the Eleatie Sophistic doctrine to all kinds of dialectical difficulties which inhere in the logical relation of the one Idea to its many copies, bat he was also rallied, spitefully enough, with the thought of all the foul companions that would be met in his world of pure
conceptual forms.
Plato's philosophy had no principle that could serve as weapon
against such an objection, nor there in the dialogues any intima tion that he had attempted to announce definite criterion for the mrl~iio* of those class-concepts that were to be regarded as Ideas, a* f-onstituents of the higher incorporeal world. Nor do the ex amples which he adduces permit such principle to be recognised we can only say that seems as in course of time he continually emphasised more strongly the attributes expressing worth (as the
irood and the beautiful), the mathematical relations (greatness and Ruallness, numerical determinations, etc. ), and the types of species m the organic world, while, on the contrary, he no longer reckoned
Fkmdo, 100 D. Arlst. Met. 990 Parm. 130 C.
'
*
9,
a
a
b 1.
>
it
is
I. ;
if
;
;
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is,
is
;
122 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part L
among the Ideas mere concepts of relation, especially negative notions and things made by human art. 1
5. Our knowledge of the systematic connection and order which Plato intended to affirm in the realm of Ideas remains ultimately as obscure as that in regard to the preceding point. Urgent as he was to establish co-ordination and subordination among the conceptions, the thought of a logically arranged pyramid of conceptions which must culminate in the conception that was most general and poorest in content seems not to have been carried out. A very problematical attempt to set up a limited number (five) of most general concep tions1 is presented in the Sophist (254 ff. ). But these attempts, which tend toward the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories, are not to be traced back with certainty to Plato himself.
With him we find, rather, only the doctrine presented in the Philebus, as well as in the Republic, that the Idea of the Good is the highest, embracing, ruling, and realising all others. Plato defines this Idea as regards its content as little as did Socrates; he de termined it only by means of the relation, that it should represent in its content the highest absolute end of all reality, of the incor poreal as of the corporeal. The subordination of the other Ideas to this highest Idea is accordingly not the logical subordination of a particular under the general, but the teleological of the means to the end.
In the latest period of his philosophising, concerning which we have only intimations in the Laws and in critical, notices of Aris totle,3 and in the teachings of his nearest successors, the imperfec tion of this solution of the logical problem seems to have led Plato to the unfortunate thought of developing the system of Ideas ac cording to the method of the Pythagorean number-theory. The
also, to be sure, had the purpose of attaching the abiding arrangements of things symbolically to the development of the number series. But that was only a makeshift, because they had as yet no idea of the logical arrangement of conceptions : hence, when Plato, in connection with his other thoughts, fell back upon this makeshift, designated the Idea of the Good as the h, the One, and attempted to derive from it the duality (Sww) of the Infinite or Indefinite, and the Measure (awnpov and ripas, = even and odd ; cf. § 4, 11), and from this, further, the other Ideas in such a way as to present a series of the conditioning and the conditioned, neither
' Cf. also Arist. 3tet. XII. 3, 1070 c 18.
3 Being, rest, motion, sameness (raArtmii) and otherness (b-cpirtit), i. e. the
division of Being into the resting (ofio-Io), ever the same with itself, and the moved (yirtett), in process of constant change.
Pythagoreans
8 Cf. A Trendelenburg, Platonis de Ideis et Xnmeris Doctrina (Leips. 1826).
CuAf. 3, | ll. ] System of Idealism: Plato. 123
this deplorable construction nor the fact that men like Speusippus, Xenocrates, Philippus, and Archytas undertook to carry it out in detail, would be worth more particular mention, were not this just the point to which the speculation of the Neo- Pythagoreans and the Xeo-Platonists became attached. For by this gradation which Plato thus began within the oiWu the world of true reality, the division i"» the conception of reality, which had developed out of the opposi tion between perception and thought, became multiplied, and thus
ualism was again abolished. For when to the One, or the Idea of the Good, was ascribed the highest absolute reality, and to the vari ous strata of the world of Ideas, a reality of constantly decreasing worth in proportion as they were removed from the One in the system in numbers, there arose from this a scale of realities which extended from the One down to the lowest reality, — that of the corporeal world. Fantastic as this thought may be, it yet evinced its force and influence in the development of thought, even to the threshold of modern philosophy. Its power, however, lies doubtless u> all cases in its amalgamation of attributes of worth with these
rarious grades of reality.
6. While as metaphysics, the doctrine of Ideas fell into such seri
ous difficulties, it was carried out in an extremely happy, simple, and transparent manner in that domain which formed its proper home, — that of ethics. For the systematic elaboration of this, however, Plato needed a psychology, and that, too, of another sort than the psychology which had arisen in previous science, out of the presup- positions of natural philosophy, and with the aid of individual per ceptions or opinions. When, in contrast with this, he developed his psychology from the postulates of the doctrine of Ideas, the result was of course a purely metaphysical theory which stood and fell with its postulate, yet it was at the same time, by reason of the import of the doctrine of Ideas, a first attempt to understand the psychical life from within, and in accordance with its internal char acter and articulation.
The conception of the soul or mind was in itself a difficulty ' in the dualism of the doctrine of Ideas. For Plato, also, "soul" was cm the one hand the living element, that which is moved of itself and moves other things, and on the other hand, that which perceives, knows, and wills. As principle of life and of motion, the soul
tvrlongs. therefore, to the lower world of Becoming, and in this it remains when it perceives and directs its desires toward objects of the senses. But this same soul, nevertheless, by its true knowledge
• Pkttdo, 76 ff. , 106, Pkttdr. 246, Laws, X. 896.
124 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Part I-
of the Ideas, becomes partaker in the higher reality of abiding Being. Hence it must be assigned a position between the two worlds — not the timeless, unchanged essence of the Ideas, but a vitality which. survives change ; i. e. immortality. Here, for the first time, personal immortality is brought forward by Plato as a part of philosophic teaching. Of the proofs which the Phcedo adduces for this, those are most in accord with the spirit of the system which reason from the soul's knowledge of Ideas to its relationship with eternity ; in correspondence with the form of the system is the dialectic false conclusion that the soul cannot be or become dead, because its essential characteristic is life ; the most tenable of the arguments is the reference to the unity and substantiality which the soul evinces in ruling the body.
In consequence of this intermediate position the soul must bear in itself the traits of both worlds ; there must be in its essence some thing which corresponds to the world of Ideas, and something which corresponds to the world of perception. The former is the rational nature (Aoyio-TiKoV or vovs), the seat of knowledge and of the virtue which corresponds to it ; in the latter, the irrational nature, Plato made a further distinction of two elements, — the nobler, which inclines towards the Reason, and the lower, which resists it. The nobler he found in the ardent, spirited Will (Spirit, Ov(uk), the lower in the sensuous desire (Appetite, imOvixui) . Thus Reason, Spirit, and Appetite are the three forms of activity of the soul, the classes or species (tlS-q) of its states.
These fundamental psychological conceptions which had thus grown out of considerations of ethical worth are employed by Plato to set forth the moral destiny of the individual. The fettering of the soul to the body is at once a consequence and a punishment of the sensuous appetite. Plato extends the immortal existence of the soul equally beyond the two boundaries of the earthly life. The sin for the sake of which the soul is ensnared in the world of sense is to be sought in a pre-existent state ; ' its destiny in the hereafter ' will depend upon how far it has freed itself in the earthly life from the sensuous appetite, and turned to its higher vocation — knowledge of the Ideas. But inasmuch as the ultimate goal of the soul appears to be to strip off the sensuous nature, the three forms of activity are designated also as parts of the soul. In the Timaeus Plato even portrays the process of the formation of the soul out of these parts, and retains immortality for the rational part only.
1 These doctrines are depicted in the form of mythical allegories which make use of motives from the popular faith and from the Mystery-cults. V. Phcedr. 846 ff. ; Oorgias, 623 ff. ; Rep. 614 ff. ; Phcedo. 107 ff.
C«ap. 3, 5 11. ] Syttem of Idealism: Plato. 126
It is already clear from these changing determinations that the relation of these three fundamental forms of the psychical life to the none too strongly emphasised unity of the soul's nature was not dearly thought out ; nor is it possible to give to these conceptions formed from the ethical need the significance of purely psychologi cal distinctions, such as hare since been made. 1
7. But at all events there followed in this way, from the doctrine of the two worlds, a negative morals that would fly from the world, iml in which the withdrawal from the world of sense and the spir- ttiuhsation of life were praised as ideals of wisdom.
the Phacrto that breathes this earnest disposition in its portrayal of the death of Socrates ; the same ethical theory prevails in such dia-
1'Vues as the Gorgias, the Theostetus, and, in part, the Republic. Bnt in Plato's own nature the heavy blood of the thinker was associated with the light heart-beat of the artist, and thus while his philosophy lured him into the realm of bodiless forms, the whole charm of Hellenic beauty was living and active within him. Strongly as he therefore combated root and branch the theory of Aristippns, which would fain regard man's strivings as satisfied with sensuous pleasure, it was nevertheless his opinion that the Idea of the Good becomes realised even in the world of sense. Joy in the beautiful, pleasure in the sensuous imitation of the Idea, painless because free from the element of wishing, the development of knowledge and practical artistic skill, the intelligent understand ing of the mathematical relations which measure empirical reality, and the appropriate ordering of the individual life, — all these were mined by him as at least preparatory stages and participations in that highest good which consists in knowledge of the Ideas, and of
the highest among them, the Idea of the Good. In the Symposium and in the Philebus he has given expression to this his estimate of the goods of life.
This same thought, that ethical values and standards must illu mine the whole circuit of human life, was used in another form by Hato in that presentation of the system of the virtues which he <W*lop*»d in the Republic. Here he showed that each part of the soul has a definite task to fulfil, and so a perfection of its own to reach : the rational part, in wisdom (o-o^ta), the spirited ($vfu*t&is) in energy of will (courage, dVSpia), the appetitive (ImbvuijTiKw) in
1 That the question here (or Plato was essentially that of the gradation of the j»> chteal from the point of view of relative worth, is shown not only in the •■njiorment made of these distinctions in ethics and politics, but also in such -mark* as those which designated this triple division as characteristic for the ■liflrreot organic beings (plant, animal, man), or for the different peoples. ahabitanu of southern countries, of northern countries, and the Greeks.
It is not only
126 The Greeks : Systematic Period. [Part I.
self-catUrol (moderation, <r<a<f>po<ruvT)) ; that, however, in addition to all these, as the virtue of the soul as a whole, there must be the right relation of these parts, complete uprightness (justice, Smaioo-vii) ) .
The true significance, however, of these four cardinal virtues, is first unfolded upon a higher domain, that of politics.
8. The tendency of the doctrine of Ideas, directed as it was toward the general and the universal, exhibited its most perfect operation in the aspect now to be noticed, viz. that the ethical ideal of the Platonic philosophy lay not in the ability and happi ness of the individual, but in the ethical perfection of the species. True to the logical principle of the doctrine of Ideas, that which truly in the ethical sense, not the individual man, but mankind, and the form in which this truly existent humanity appears is the organic union of individuals in the state. The ethical ideal becomes for Plato the political, and in the midst of the time which saw the dissolution of Greek political life, and in opposition to those doc trines which proclaimed only the principle of individual happiness, he raised the conception of the state to an all-controlling height.
He considered the state, however, not from the side of its empiri cal origin, but in reference to its task, viz. that of presenting in large the ideal of humanity, and of educating the citizen to that particular virtue which makes him truly happy. Convinced that his project could be realised, with force necessary, he wove into its fabric not only features which he approved of the then-existing Greek political life, in particular those of the aristocratic Doric constitutions, but also all the ideals for whose fulfilment he hoped from the right formation of public life.
K. F. Hermann, (its. Abhandlunyen, 122 ff. E. Zeller, Vortrage und Ab- handlungen, 62 ff.
If the ideal state to present man in large, must consist of the three parts which correspond to the three parts of the soul, — the teaching class, the warrior class, and the working class. It belongs to the first class alone, that of the cultured (<£iAdo-o<£ot), to guide the state and to rule1 (&p\ovtis), to give laws and to watch over their observance. The virtue proper to this class wisdom, insight into that which for the advantage of the whole, and which demanded by the ethical aim of the whole. To support this class there the second class, that of the public officials (In-ucovpot guardians, <£ij'Auk<s- which has to evince the virtue of the fearless performance of duty
as maintains the order of the state within and without Hence the Xo-ywrocA* called also yycuonicir.
(Av&pia)
1
itis I. is
is
; is it
is ).
is
;
if
»'s
is
Chap. 3, $ 11. ] Syttem of Idealism : Plato. 127
It is, however, obedience which holds the desires in check, self-control {<rw4>poaivrj), that becomes the great mass of the people, the artisans and farmers (ytwpyoi k<u brjiuovpyoi) , who have to care for providing for the external means of the states by their labour and industry. 1
Only when each class thus does its duty and maintains its appro priate virtue does the nature of the state correspond to the ideal of
justice (iuauotrwr)).
The principle of aristocracy in education, which is of decisive im
portance in the Platonic ideal of the state, appears most clearly in the provision that for the great mass of the third class only the ordinary ability of practical life is claimed, and in that this is re garded as sufficient for their purpose, while the education, which the state has the right and duty to take in hand itself in order to train its citizens for its own ends, is given only to the two other classes. By means of a constantly repeated process of selection continued from birth to the late years, the government causes the two upper classes to be continually renewed, strata by strata; and in order that no individual interest may remain to hold back these classes, who are properly the organs of the whole body, in the fulfilment of their task, they are to renounce family life and private property. Their lot is that of education by the state, absence of family relations, community of life and of goods. He who is to live for the ends of the whole, for the ethical education of the people, must not be bound to the individual by any personal interest. To this thought, which found its historic realisation in the sacerdotal state of the mediaeval hierarchy, is limited whatever of communism, community of wives, etc. , men have professed to discover in the Platonic teaching. The great Idealist carries out to its extreme consequences the thought that the end of human life consists in moral education, and that the entire organisation of a community must be arranged for this sole end.
9. With this a new relation between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena was discovered, and one which corresponded most perfectly to the spirit of the Platonic system : the Idea of the Good disclosed itself as the task, as the end (rcXot), which the phenomenon of human life in society has to fulfil. This discovery became of decisive importance for the final form taken by Plato's metaphysical system.
For, as first projected, the doctrine of Ideas had been precisely as incompetent as the Eleatic doctrine of Being to explain empirical reality. The class-concepts were held to give knowledge of the
1 Hence the third put of the soul is called also the ^iXoxfifMar**. . ■
128 The Greeks: Systematic Period. [Past i
absolute reality,1 which, purely for itself, simple and changeless, without origin and imperishable, forms a world by itself, and, as in corporeal, is separated from the world where things arise. Hence, as was demonstrated in the dialogue the Sophist,* in a keen polemic against the doctrine of Ideas, this doctrine formed no principle of motion, and therefore no explanation of facts, because it excluded from itself all motion and change.
But however little Plato's interests may have been directed toward this end, the conception of the Idea as true Being ultimately- demanded, nevertheless, that the phenomenon should be regarded, not only as something other, something imitative, something that participated, but also as something dependent. It demanded that
But that which is itself absolutely unchangeable and immovable, and •xcludes every particular function from itself, cannot be a cause in
the Idea be regarded as cause of~OCVurrenee and change (curia) .
the mechanical sense, but only in the sense that it presents the end for the sake of which the occurrence takes place. Here for the first time the relation between the two worlds of Being and Becoming (ovcruz and ycVccnt) is fully defined ; all change and occurrence exists for the sake of the Idea ; 9 the Idea is the final cause of phenomena.
This foundation of teleological metaphysics Plato gives in the Philebus and in the middle books of the Republic, and adds at once a further culminating thought by introducing as the final cause of all occurrence, the world of Ideas as a whole, but in particular the high est Idea, to which all the rest are subordinate in the sense of means to end, — the Idea of the Good. This, referring to Anaxagoras, he designates as the World-reason (wros), or as the deity. *
Side by side with this motif taken from Anaxagoras, another of a Pythagorean nature appears with increasing force in a later form of the doctrine of Ideas, a motif in accordance with which the imperfection of the phenomenon is pointed out as in contrast with the true Being. This inadequacy, however, could not be derived from Being itself, and just as Leucippus, in order to understand plurality and motion, had declared that in addition to the Being of
1 Symp. 211 B, aftri Ka0' avri fuB' airov povotitit itl tv.
2 Page 246 ff.
