No More Learning

Socrates, by analogy of the arts, shows that
Might absolutely without tincture of justice is mere weakness, and that
there is honour even among thieves. Yet the exhibition of the 'law
working in the members' seems to have its weak side so long as we look
to individual men, in whom there are many conflicting influences, and
many personal chances and difficulties, which obscure the relation
between just action and happiness.

Socrates therefore will have justice 'writ large' in the community as a
whole, first pictured in its simpler, and then in its more complex and
luxurious forms. The relation of the individual to the community is
represented chiefly as one of education and training; and many strange
theories--as of the equal {148} training of men and women, and the
community of wives, ideas partially drawn from Sparta--are woven into
the ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view of
education, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community on
earth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) in
the myth of the steeds.

The purely earthly unideal life is represented as a life of men tied
neck and heels from birth in a cave, having their backs to the light,
and their eyes fixed only on the shadows which are cast upon the wall.
These they take for the only realities, and they may acquire much skill
in interpreting the shadows. Turn these men suddenly to the true
light, and they will be dazzled and blinded. They will feel as though
they had lost the realities, and been plunged into dreams. And in pain
and sorrow they will be tempted to grope back again to the familiar
darkness.

Yet if they hold on in patience, and struggle up the steep till the sun
himself breaks on their vision, what pain and dazzling once more, yet
at the last what glorious revelation! True, if they revisit their old
dwelling-place, they will not see as well as their fellows who are
still living contentedly there, knowing nothing other than the shadows.
They may even seem to these as dreamers who have lost their senses; and
should they try to enlighten these denizens of the cave, they may be
persecuted or {149} even put to death. Such are the men who have had a
sight of the heavenly verities, when compared with the children of
earth and darkness.

Yet the world will never be right till those who have had this vision
come back to the things of earth and order them according to the
eternal verities; the philosopher must be king if ever the perfect life
is to be lived on earth, either by individual or community. As it
would be expressed in Scriptural language, "The kingdoms of this world
must become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. "

For the training of these ideal rulers an ideal education is required,
which Plato calls dialectic; something of its nature is described later
on (p. 170), and we need not linger over it here.

The argument then seems to fall to a lower level. There are various
approximations in actual experience to the ideal community, each more
or less perfect according to the degree in which the good of the
individual is also made the good of all, and the interests of governors
and governed are alike. Parallel with each lower form of state is a
lower individual nature, the worst of all being that of the tyrant,
whose will is his only law, and his own self-indulgence his only
motive. In him indeed Might is Right; but his life is the very
antithesis of happiness. Nay, pleasure of any kind can give no law to
reason; reason can judge of pleasure, but not _vice versa_. There is
no profit to a {150} man though he gain the whole world, if _himself_
be lost; if he become worse; if the better part of him be silenced and
grow weaker. And after this 'fitful fever' is over, may there not be a
greater bliss beyond? There have been stories told us, visions of
another world, where each man is rewarded according to his works. And
the book closes with a magnificent Vision of Judgment. It is the story
of Er, son of Armenius, who being wounded in battle, after twelve days'
trance comes back to life, and tells of the judgment seat, of heavenly
bliss and hellish punishments, and of the renewal of life and the new
choice given to souls not yet purified wholly of sin. "God is
blameless; Man's Soul is immortal; Justice and Truth are the only
things eternally good. " Such is the final revelation.

The _Timaeus_ is an attempt by Plato, under the guise of a Pythagorean
philosopher, to image forth as in a vision or dream the actual framing
of the universe, conceived as a realisation of the Eternal Thought or
Idea. It will be remembered that in the analysis already given (p.
143) of the process of knowledge in individual men, Plato found that
prior to the suggestions of the senses, though not coming into
consciousness except in connection with sensation, men had _ideas_ that
gave them a power of rendering their sensations intelligible. In the
_Timaeus_ Plato attempts a vision of the universe as though he saw
{151} it working itself into actuality on the lines of those ideas.
The vision is briefly as follows: There is the Eternal Creator, who
desired to make the world because He was good and free from jealousy,
and therefore willed that all things should be like Himself; that is,
that the formless, chaotic, unrealised void might receive form and
order, and become, in short, real as He was. Thus creation is the
process by which the Eternal Creator works out His own image, His own
ideas, in and through that which is formless, that which has no name,
which is nothing but possibility,--dead earth, namely, or _Matter_.
And first the world-soul, image of the divine, is formed, on which as
on a "diamond network" the manifold structure of things is
fashioned--the stars, the seven planets with their sphere-music, the
four elements, and all the various creatures, aetherial or fiery,
aerial, aqueous, and earthy, with the consummation of them all in
microcosm, in the animal world, and specially in man.

One can easily see that this is an attempt by Plato to carry out the
reverse process in thought to that which first comes to thinking man.
Man has sensations, that is, he comes first upon that which is
conceivably last in creation, on the immediate and temporary things or
momentary occurrences of earth. In these sensations, as they
accumulate into a kind of habitual or unreasoned knowledge or opinion,
he discovers elements which have been active to {152} correlate the
sensations, which have from the first exercised a governing influence
upon the sensations, without which, indeed, no two sensations could be
brought together to form anything one could name. These regulative,
underlying, permanent elements are Ideas, _i. e. _ General Forms or
Notions, which, although they may come second as regards time into
consciousness, are by reason known to have been there before, because
through them alone can the sensations become intelligibly possible, or
thinkable, or namable. Thus Plato is led to the conception of an order
the reverse of our individual experience, the order of creation, the
order of God's thought, which is equivalent to the order of God's
working; for God's thought and God's working are inseparable.

Of course Plato, in working out his dream of creation absolutely
without any scientific knowledge, the further he travels the more
obviously falls into confusion and absurdity; where he touches on some
ideas having a certain resemblance to modern scientific discoveries, as
the law of gravitation, the circulation of the blood, the quantitative
basis of differences of quality, etc. , these happy guesses are apt to
lead more frequently wrong than right, because they are not kept in
check by any experimental tests. But taken as a 'myth,' which is
perhaps all that Plato intended, the work offers much that is
profoundly interesting.

{153}

With the _Timaeus_ is associated another dialogue called the _Critias_,
which remains only as a fragment. In it is contained a description of
the celebrated visionary kingdom of Atlantis, lying far beyond the
pillars of Hercules, a land of splendour and luxury and power, a land
also of gentle manners and wise orderliness. "The fiction has
exercised a great influence over the imagination of later ages. As
many attempts have been made to find the great island as to discover
the country of the lost tribes. Without regard to the description of
Plato, and without a suspicion that the whole narrative is a
fabrication, interpreters have looked for the spot in every part of the
globe--America, Palestine, Arabia Felix, Ceylon, Sardinia, Sweden. The
story had also an effect on the early navigators of the sixteenth
century" (Jowett, _Plato_, vol. iii. p. 679).




{154}

CHAPTER XVI

PLATO (_continued_)

_Metaphysics and psychology--Reason and pleasure--Criticism of the
ideas--Last ideals_


We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as a
whole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, having
less of vivid characterisation, less humour, less dramatic interest,
less perfect construction in every way, but, on the other hand,
peculiarly interesting as presenting a kind of after-criticism of his
own philosophy. In them Plato brings his philosophic conceptions into
striking relation with earlier or rival theories such as the Eleatic,
the Megarian, the Cyrenaic, and the Cynic, and touches in these
connections on many problems of deep and permanent import.

The most remarkable feature in these later dialogues is the
disappearance, or even in some cases the apparently hostile criticism,
of the doctrine of Ideas, and consequently of Reminiscence as the
source of knowledge, and even, apparently, of Personal {155}
Immortality, so far as the doctrine of Reminiscence was imagined to
guarantee it. This, however, is perhaps to push the change of view too
far. We may say that Plato in these dialogues is rather the
psychologist than the metaphysician; he is attempting a revised
analysis of mental processes. From this point of view it was quite
intelligible that he should discover difficulties in his former theory
of our mental relation to the external reality, without therefore
seeing reason to doubt the existence of that reality. The position is
somewhat similar to that of a modern philosopher who attempts to think
out the psychological problem of Human Will in relation to Almighty and
Over-ruling Providence. One may very clearly see the psychological
difficulties, without ceasing to believe either in the one or the other
as facts.

Throughout Plato's philosophy, amidst every variation of expression, we
may take these three as practically fixed points of belief or of faith,
or at least of hope; _first_, that Mind is eternally master of the
universe; _second_, that Man in realising what is most truly himself is
working in harmony with the Eternal Mind, and is in this way a master
of nature, reason governing experience and not being a product of
experience; and _thirdly_ (as Socrates said before his judges), that at
death we go to powers who are wise and good, and to men departed who in
their day shared in the divine wisdom and goodness,--that, in short,
there is something remaining for the dead, and better for those that
have done good than for those that have done evil.

The first of the 'psychological dialogues,' as we have called them, is
the _Philebus_. The question here is of the _summum bonum_ or chief
good. What is it? Is it pleasure? Is it wisdom? Or is it both? In
the process of answering these questions Plato lays down rules for true
definition, and establishes classifications which had an immense
influence on his successor Aristotle, but which need not be further
referred to here.

The general gist of the argument is as follows. Pleasure could not be
regarded as a sufficient or perfect good if it was entirely emptied of
the purely intellectual elements of anticipation and consciousness and
memory. This would be no better than the pleasure of an oyster. On
the other hand, a purely intellectual existence can hardly be regarded
as perfect and sufficient either. The perfect life must be a union of
both.

But this union must be an orderly and rational union; in other words,
it must be one in which Mind is master and Pleasure servant; the
finite, the regular, the universal must govern the indefinite,
variable, particular. Thus in the perfect life there are four
elements; in the body, earth, water, air, fire; in the soul, the
finite, the indefinite, the union of the {157} two, and the cause of
that union. If this be so, he argues, may we not by analogy argue for
a like four-fold order in the universe? There also we find regulative
elements, and indefinite elements, and the union of the two. Must
there not also be the Great Cause, even Divine Wisdom, ordering and
governing all things?

The second of the psychological series is the _Parmenides_, in which
the great Eleatic philosopher, in company with his disciple Zeno, is
imagined instructing the youthful Socrates when the two were on a visit
to Athens, which may or may not be historical (see above, p. 34). The
most striking portion of this dialogue is the criticism already alluded
to of Plato's own theory of Ideas, put into the mouth of Parmenides.
Parmenides ascertains from Socrates that he is quite clear about there
being Ideas of Justice, Beauty, Goodness, eternally existing, but how
about Ideas of such common things as hair, mud, filth, etc. ? Socrates
is not so sure; to which Parmenides rejoins that as he grows older
philosophy will take a surer hold of him, and that he will recognise
the same law in small things and in great.

But now as to the nature of these Ideas. What, Parmenides asks, is the
relation of these, as eternally existing in the mind of God, to the
same ideas as possessed by individual men? Does each individual
actually _partake_ in the thought of God through {158} the ideas, or
are his ideas only _resemblances_ of the eternal? If he partakes, then
the eternal ideas are not one but many, as many as the persons who
possess them. If his ideas only resemble, then there must be some
basis of reference by which the resemblance is established, a _tertium
quid_ or third existence resembling both, and so _ad infinitum_.
Socrates is puzzled by this, and suggests that perhaps the Ideas are
only notions in our minds. But to this it is replied that there is an
end in that case of any reality in our ideas. Unless in some way they
have a true and causal relation with something beyond our minds, there
is an end of mind altogether, and with mind gone everything goes.

This, as Professor Jowett remarks, "remains a difficulty for us as well
as for the Greeks of the fourth century before Christ, and is the
stumbling-block of Kant's _Critic_, and of the Hamiltonian adaptation
of Kant as well as of the Platonic ideas. It has been said that 'you
cannot criticise Revelation. ' 'Then how do you know what is
Revelation, or that there is one at all? ' is the immediate rejoinder.
'You know nothing of things in themselves. '--'Then how do you know that
there are things in themselves? ' In some respects the difficulty
pressed harder upon the Greek than upon ourselves. For conceiving of
God more under the attribute of knowledge than we do, he was more under
the necessity of {159} separating the divine from the human, as two
spheres which had no communication with one another. "

Next follows an extraordinary analysis of the ideas of 'Being' and
'Unity,' remarkable not only for its subtlety, but for the relation
which it historically bears to the modern philosophic system of Hegel.
"Every affirmation is _ipso facto_ a negation;" "the negation of a
negation is an affirmation;" these are the psychological (if not
metaphysical) facts, on which the analysis of Parmenides and the
philosophy of Hegel are both founded.

We may pass more rapidly by the succeeding dialogues of the series: the
_Theaetetus_ (already quoted from above, p. 89), which is a close and
powerful investigation of the nature of knowledge on familiar Platonic
lines; the _Sophist_, which is an analysis of fallacious reasoning; and
the _Statesman_, which, under the guise of a dialectical search for the
true ruler of men, represents once more Plato's ideal of government,
and contrasts this with the ignorance and charlatanism of actual
politics.

In relation to subsequent psychology, and more particularly to the
logical system of Aristotle, these dialogues are extremely important.
We may indeed say that the systematic logic of Aristotle, as contained
in the _Organon_, is little more than an abstract {160} or digest of
the logical theses of these dialogues. Definition and division, the
nature and principle of classification, the theory of predication, the
processes of induction and deduction, the classification and criticism
of fallacies,--all these are to be found in them. The only addition
really made by Aristotle was the systematic theory of the syllogism.

The _Laws_, the longest of Plato's works, seems to have been composed
by him in the latest years of his long life, and was probably not
published till after his death. It bears traces of its later origin in
the less artful juncture of its parts, in the absence of humour, in the
greater overloading of details, in the less graphic and appropriate
characterisation of the speakers. These speakers are three--an
Athenian, a Cretan, and a Spartan. A new colony is to be led forth
from Crete, and the Cretan takes advice of the others as to the
ordering of the new commonwealth. We are no longer, as in _The
Republic_, in an ideal world, a city coming down from, or set in, the
heavens. There is no longer a perfect community; nor are philosophers
to be its kings. Laws more or less similar to those of Sparta fill
about half the book. But the old spirit of obedience and
self-sacrifice and community is not forgotten; and on all men and
women, noble and humble alike, the duty is cast, to bear in common the
common burden of life.

{161}

Thus, somewhat in sadness and decay, yet with a dignity and moral
grandeur not unworthy of his life's high argument, the great procession
of the Ideal Philosopher's dialogues closes.




{162}

CHAPTER XVII

PLATO (_concluded_)

_Search for universals--The thoughts of God--God cause and
consummation--Dying to earth--The Platonic education_


If we attempt now, by way of appendix to this very inadequate summary
of the dialogues, to give in brief review some account of the main
doctrines of Plato, as they may be gathered from a general view of
them, we are at once met by difficulties many and serious. In the case
of a genius such as Plato's, at once ironical, dramatic, and
allegorical, we cannot be absolutely certain that in any given passage
Plato is expressing, at all events adequately and completely, his own
personal views, even at the particular stage of his own mental
development then represented. And when we add to this that in a long
life of unceasing intellectual development, Plato inevitably grew out
of much that once satisfied him, and attained not infrequently to new
points of view even of doctrines or conceptions which remained
essentially unchanged, a Platonic dogma in the strict sense must
clearly not be expected. One may, however, attempt in rough outline to
summarise the main {163} _tendencies_ of his thought, without
professing to represent its settled and authenticated results.

[251]

We may begin by an important summary of Plato's philosophy given by
Aristotle (_Met_. A. 6): "In immediate succession to the Pythagorean
and Eleatic philosophies came the work of Plato. In many respects his
views coincided with these; in some respects, however, he is
independent of the Italians. For in early youth he became a student of
Cratylus and of the school of Heraclitus, and accepted from them the
view that the objects of sense are in eternal flux, and that of these,
therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge. Then came Socrates, who
busied himself only with questions of morals, and not at all with the
world of physics. But in his ethical inquiries his search was ever for
universals, and he was the first to set his mind to the discovery of
definitions. Plato following him in this, came to the conclusion that
these universals could not belong to the things of sense, which were
ever changing, but to some other kind of existences. Thus he came to
conceive of universals as forms or _ideas_ of real existences, by
reference to which, and in consequence of analogies to which, the
things of sense in every case received their names, and became
thinkable objects. "

From this it followed to Plato that in so far as the senses took an
illusive appearance of themselves giving {164} the knowledge which
really was supplied by reason as the organ of ideas, in the same degree
the body which is the instrument of sense can only be a source of
illusion and a hindrance to knowledge. The wise man, therefore, will
seek to free himself from the bonds of the body, and die while he lives
by philosophic contemplation, free as far as possible from the
disturbing influence of the senses. This process of _rational_
realisation Plato called Dialectic. The objects contemplated by the
reason, brought into consciousness on the occurrence of sensible
perception, but never caused by these, were not mere notions in the
mind of the individual thinker, nor were they mere properties of
individual things; this would be to make an end of science on the one
hand, of reality on the other. Nor had they existence in any mere
place, not even beyond the heavens. Their home was Mind, not this mind
or that, but Mind Universal, which is God.

In these 'thoughts of God' was the root or essence which gave reality
to the things of sense; they were the Unity which realised itself in
multiplicity. It is because things partake of the Idea that we give
them a name. The thing as such is seen, not known; the idea as such is
known, not seen.

[252]

The whole conception of Plato in this connection is based on the
assumption that there is such a thing as knowledge. If all things are
ever in change, then knowledge is impossible; but conversely, if there
is {165} such a thing as knowledge, then there must be a continuing
object of knowledge; and beauty, goodness, [253] reality are then no
dreams. The process of apprehension of these 'thoughts of God,' these
eternal objects of knowledge, whether occasioned by sensation or not,
is essentially a process of self-inquiry, or, as he in one stage called
it, of Reminiscence. The process is the same in essence, whether going
on in thought or expressed in speech; it is a process of _naming_. Not
that names ever resemble realities fully; they are only approximations,
limited by the conditions [254] of human error and human convention.
There is nevertheless an inter-communion between ideas and things. We
must neither go entirely with those who affirm the one (the Eleatics),
nor with those who affirm the many (the Heracliteans), but accept both.
There is a union in all that exists both of That Which _Is_, and of
that concerning which all we can say is that it is _Other_ than what
is. This 'Other,' through union with what is, attains to being of a
kind; while on the other hand, What Is by union with the 'Other'
attains to variety, and thus more fully realises itself.

[258]

That which Plato here calls 'What Is' he elsewhere calls 'The Limiting
or Defining'; the 'Other' he calls 'The Unlimited or Undefined. ' Each
has a function in the divine process. The thoughts of God attain
realisation in the world of things which change and pass, through the
infusion {166} of themselves in, or the superimposing of themselves
upon, that which is Nothing apart from them,--the mere negation of what
is, and yet necessary as the 'Other' or correlative of what is. Thus
we get, in fact, _four_ forms of existence: there is the Idea or
Limiting (apart); there is the Negative or Unlimited (apart), there is
the Union of the two (represented in language by subject and
predicate), which as a whole is this frame of things as we know it; and
fourthly, there is the _Cause_ of the Union, which is God. And God is
cause not only as the beginning of all things, but also as the measure
and law of their perfection, and the end towards which they go. He is
the Good, and the cause of Good, and the consummation and realisation
of Good.

This absolute Being, this perfect Good, we cannot see, blinded as we
are, like men that have been dwelling in a cave, by excess of light.
We must, therefore, look on Him indirectly, as on an image of Him, in
our own souls and in the world, in so far as in either we discern, by
reason, that which is rational and good.

[269]

Thus God is not only the cause and the end of all good, He is also the
cause and the end of all knowledge. Even as the sun is not only the
most glorious of all visible objects, but is also the cause of the life
and beauty of all other things, and the provider of the light whereby
we see them, so also {167} is it for the eye of the soul. God is its
light, God is the most glorious object of its contemplation, God we
behold imaged forth in all the objects which the soul by reason
contemplates.

[260]

The ideas whereof the 'Other' (or, as he again calls it, the 'Great and
Small' or 'More and Less,' meaning that which is unnamable, or wholly
neutral in character, and which may therefore be represented equally by
contradictory attributes) by participation becomes a resemblance, Plato
compared to the 'Numbers' of the Pythagoreans (cf. above, p. 25).
Hence, Aristotle remarks (_Met_. A. 6), Plato found in the ideas the
originative or formative Cause of things, that which made them what
they were or could be called,--their _Essence_; in the 'Great and
Small' he found the opposite principle or _Matter_ (Raw Material) of
things.

In this way the antithesis of Mind and Matter, whether on the great
scale in creation or on the small in rational perception, is not an
antithesis of unrelated opposition. Each is correlative of the other,
so to speak as the male and the female; the one is generative,
formative, active, positive; the other is capable of being impregnated,
receptive, passive, negative; but neither can realise itself apart from
the other.

[262]

This relation of 'Being' with that which is 'Other than Being' is
Creation, wherein we can {168} conceive of the world as coming to be,
yet not in [261] Time. And in the same way Plato speaks of a third
form, besides the Idea and that which receives it, namely, 'Formless
Space, the mother of all things. ' As Kant might have formulated it,
Time and Space are not prior to creation, they are forms under which
creation becomes thinkable.

[271]

The 'Other' or Negative element, Plato more or less vaguely connected
with the evil that is in the world. This evil we can never expect to
perish utterly from the world; it must ever be here as the antithesis
of the good. But with the gods it dwells not; here in this mortal
nature, and in this region of mingling, it must of necessity still be
found. The wise man will therefore seek to die to the evil, and while
yet in this world of mortality, to think immortal things, and so as far
as may be flee from the evil. Thereby shall he liken himself to the
divine. For it is a likening to the divine to be just and holy and
true.

[273]

This, then, is the _summum bonum_, the end of life. For as the
excellence or end of any organ or instrument consists in that
perfection of its parts, whereby each separately and the whole together
work well towards the fulfilling of that which it is designed to
accomplish, so the excellence of man must consist in a perfect ordering
of all his parts to the perfect working of his whole organism as a
{169} [276] rational being. The faculties of man are three: the Desire
of the body, the Passion of the heart, the Thought of the soul; the
perfect working of all three, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom, and
consequently the perfect working of the whole man, is Righteousness.
From this springs that ordered tranquillity which is at once true
happiness and perfect virtue.

[277]

Yet since individual men are not self-sufficient, but have separate
capacities, and a need of union for mutual help and comfort, the
perfect realisation of this virtue can only be in a perfect civic [278]
community. And corresponding with the three parts of the man there
will be three orders in the community: the Workers and Traders, the
Soldiers, and the Ruling or Guardian class. When all these perform
their proper functions in perfect harmony, then is the perfection of
the whole realised, in Civic Excellence or Justice.

[281]

To this end a careful civic education is necessary, _first_, because to
_know_ what is for the general good is difficult, for we have to learn
not only in general but in detail that even the individual good can be
secured only through the general; and _second_, because few, if any,
are capable of seeking the general good, even if they know it, without
the guidance of discipline and the restraints of law. Thus, with a
view to its own perfection, and the good of all {170} its members,
Education is the chief work of the State.

It will be remembered (see foregoing page) that in Plato's division of
the soul of man there are three faculties, Desire, Passion, Reason; in
the division of the soul's perfection three corresponding virtues,
Temperance, Courage, Wisdom; and in the division of the state three
corresponding orders, Traders, Soldiers, Guardians. So in Education
there are three stages. First, _Music_ (including all manner of
artistic and refining influences), whose function it is so to attemper
the desires of the heart that all animalism and sensualism may be
eliminated, and only the love and longing for that which is lovely and
of good report may remain. Second, _Gymnastic_, whose function it is
through ordered labour and suffering so to subdue and rationalise the
passionate part of the soul, that it may become the willing and
obedient servant of that which is just and true. And third,
_Mathematics_, by which the rational element of the soul may be trained
to realise itself, being weaned, by the ordered apprehension of the
'diamond net' of laws which underlie all the phenomena of nature, away
from the mere surface appearances of things, the accidental,
individual, momentary,--to the deep-seated realities, which are
necessary, universal, eternal.

And just as there was a perfectness of the soul {171} transcending all
particular virtues, whether of Temperance or Courage or Wisdom, namely,
that absolute Rightness or Righteousness which gathered them all into
itself, so at the end of these three stages of education there is a
higher mood of thought, wherein the soul, purified, chastened,
enlightened, in communing with itself through _Dialectic_ (the Socratic
art of questioning transfigured) communes also with the Divine, and in
thinking out its own deepest thoughts, thinks out the thoughts of the
great Creator Himself, becomes one with Him, finds its final
realisation through absorption into Him, and in His light sees light.




{172}

CHAPTER XVIII

ARISTOTLE

_An unruly pupil--The philosopher's library--The predominance of
Aristotle--Relation to Plato--The highest philosophy--Ideas and
things--The true realism_


Plato before his death bequeathed his Academy to his nephew Speusippus,
who continued its president for eight years; and on his death the
office passed to Xenocrates, who held it for twenty-five years. From
him it passed in succession to Polemo, Crates, Crantor, and others.
Plato was thus the founder of a school or sect of teachers who busied
themselves with commenting, expanding, modifying here and there the
doctrines of the master. Little of their works beyond the names has
been preserved, and indeed we can hardly regret the loss.
These men no
doubt did much to popularise the thoughts of their master, and in this
way largely influenced the later development of philosophy; but they
had nothing substantial to add, and so the stern pruning-hook of time
has cut them off from remembrance.

[297]

Aristotle was the son of a Greek physician, member of the colony of
Stagira in Thrace. His father, Nicomachus by name, was a man of such
{173} eminence in his profession as to hold the post of physician to
Amyntas, king of Macedonia, father of Philip the subverter of Greek
freedom. Not only was his father an expert physician, he was also a
student of natural history, and wrote several works on the subject. We
shall find that the fresh element which Aristotle brought to the
Academic philosophy was in a very great measure just that minute
attention to details and keen apprehension of vital phenomena which we
may consider he inherited from his father. He was born 384 B. C. , and
on the death of his father, in his eighteenth year, he came to Athens,
and became a student of philosophy under Plato, whose pupil he
continued to be for twenty years,--indeed till the death of the master.
That he, undoubtedly a far greater man than Speusippus or Xenocrates,
should not have been nominated to the succession has been variously
explained; he is said to have been lacking in respect and gratitude to
the master; Plato is said to have remarked of him that he needed the
curb as much as Xenocrates needed the spur. The facts really need no
explanation. The original genius is never sufficiently subordinate and
amenable to discipline. He is apt to be critical, to startle his
easy-going companions with new and seemingly heterodox views, he is the
'ugly duckling' whom all the virtuous and commonplace brood must cackle
{174} at. The Academy, when its great master died, was no place for
Aristotle. He retired to Atarneus, a city of Mysia opposite to Lesbos,
where a friend named Hermias was tyrant, and there he married Hermias'
niece. After staying at Atarneus some three years he was invited by
Philip, now king of Macedon, to undertake the instruction of his son
Alexander, the future conqueror, who was then thirteen years old. He
remained with Alexander for eight years, though of course he could
hardly be regarded as Alexander's tutor during all that time, since
Alexander at a very early age was called to take a part in public
affairs. However a strong friendship was formed between the
philosopher and the young prince, and in after years Alexander loaded
his former master with benefits. Even while on his march of conquest
through Asia he did not forget him, but sent him from every country
through which he passed specimens which might help him in his projected
History of Animals, as well as an enormous sum of money to aid him in
his investigations.

After the death of Philip, Aristotle returned to Athens, and opened a
school of philosophy on his own account in the Lyceum. Here some
authorities tell us he lectured to his pupils while he paced up and
down before them; hence the epithet applied to the school, the
_Peripatetics_. Probably, however, the name is derived from the
'Peripati' or covered {175} walks in the neighbourhood of that temple
in which he taught. He devoted his mornings to lectures of a more
philosophical and technical character; to these only the abler and more
advanced students were admitted. In the afternoons he lectured on
subjects of a more popular kind--rhetoric, the art of politics,
etc. --to larger audiences. Corresponding with this division, he also
was in the habit of classifying his writings as Acroatic or technical,
and Exoteric or popular. He accumulated a large library and museum, to
which he contributed an astonishing number of works of his own, on
every conceivable branch of knowledge.

The after history of Aristotle's library, including the MSS. of his own
works, is interesting and even romantic. Aristotle's successor in the
school was Theophrastus, who added to the library bequeathed him by
Aristotle many works of his own, and others purchased by him.
Theophrastus bequeathed the entire library to Neleus, his friend and
pupil, who, on leaving Athens to reside at Scepsis in the Troad, took
the library with him. There it remained for nearly two hundred years
in possession of the Neleus family, who kept the collection hidden in a
cellar for fear it should be seized to increase the royal library of
Pergamus. In such a situation the works suffered much harm from worms
and damp, till at last (_circa_ 100 B. C. ) they were brought out {176}
and sold to one Apellicon, a rich gentleman resident in Athens, himself
a member of the Peripatetic school. In 86 B. C. Sulla, the Roman
dictator, besieged and captured Athens, and among other prizes conveyed
the library of Apellicon to Rome, and thus many of the most important
works of Aristotle for the first time were made known to the Roman and
Alexandrian schools. It is a curious circumstance that the philosopher
whose influence was destined to be paramount for more than a thousand
years in the Christian era, was thus deprived by accident of his
legitimate importance in the centuries immediately following his own.

But his temporary and accidental eclipse was amply compensated in the
effect upon the civilised world which he subsequently exercised. So
all-embracing, so systematic, so absolutely complete did his philosophy
appear, that he seemed to after generations to have left nothing more
to discover. He at once attained a supremacy which lasted for some two
thousand years, not only over the Greek-speaking world, but over every
form of the civilisation of that long period, Greek, Roman, Syrian,
Arabic, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Africa to Britain.
His authority was accepted equally by the learned doctors of Moorish
Cordova and the Fathers of the Church; to know Aristotle was to have
all {177} knowledge; not to know him was to be a boor; to deny him was
to be a heretic.

His style has nothing of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his works
with no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar,
without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasional
touches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less of
rhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by which
he correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and in
the extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fills
the scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise every
thinker and writer who has preceded him; he classifies them as he
classifies the mental faculties, the parts of logical speech, the parts
of sophistry, the parts of rhetoric, the parts of animals, the parts of
the soul, the parts of the state; he defines, distinguishes, combines,
classifies, with the same sureness and minuteness of method in them
all. He can start from a general conception, expand it into its parts,
separate these again by distinguishing details till he brings the
matter down to its lowest possible terms, or _infimae species_. Or he
can start from these, find analogies among them constituting more
general species, and so in ascending scale travel surely up to a
general conception, or _summum genus_.

In his general conception of philosophy he was {178} to a large extent
in agreement with Plato; but he endeavoured to attain to a more
technical precision; he sought to systematise into greater
completeness; he pared off everything which he considered merely
metaphorical or fanciful, and therefore non-essential. The operations
of nature, the phenomena of life, were used in a much fuller and more
definite way to illustrate or even formulate the theory; but in its
main ideas Aristotle's philosophy is Plato's philosophy. The one
clothed it in poetry, the other in formulae; the one had a more
entrancing vision, the other a clearer and more exact apprehension; but
there is no essential divergence.

Aristotle's account of the origin or foundation of [300] philosophy is
as follows (_Met_. A. 2): "Wonder is and always has been the first
incentive to philosophy. At first men wondered at what puzzled them
near at hand, then by gradual advance they came to notice and wonder at
things still greater, as at the phases of the moon, the eclipses of sun
and moon, the wonders of the stars, and the origin of the universe.
Now he who is puzzled and in a maze regards himself as a know-nothing;
wherefore the philosopher is apt to be fond of wondrous tales or myths.
And inasmuch as it was a consciousness of ignorance that drove men to
philosophy, it is for the correction of this ignorance, and not for any
material utility, that the pursuit of knowledge exists. Indeed it is,
{179} as a rule, only when all other wants are well supplied that, by
way of ease and recreation, men turn to this inquiry. And thus, since
no satisfaction beyond itself is sought by philosophy, we speak of it
as we speak of the freeman. We call that man free whose existence is
for himself and not for another; so also philosophy is of all the
sciences the only one that is free, for it alone exists for itself.

"Moreover, this philosophy, which is the investigation of the first
causes of things, is the most truly educative among the sciences. For
instructors are persons who show us the causes of things. And
knowledge for the sake of knowledge belongs most properly to that
inquiry which deals with what is most truly a matter of knowledge. For
he who is seeking knowledge for its own sake will choose to have that
knowledge which most truly deserves the name, the knowledge, namely, of
what most truly appertains to knowledge. Now the things that most
truly appertain to knowledge are the first causes; for in virtue of
one's possession of these, and by deduction from these, all else comes
to be known; we do not come to know them through what is inferior to
them and underlying them. . . . The wise man ought therefore to know
not only those things which are the outcome and product of first
causes, he must be possessed of the truth as to the first causes
themselves. And wisdom indeed is just this {180} thoughtful science, a
science of what is highest, not truncated of its head. "

[301]

"To the man, therefore, who has in fullest measure this knowledge of
universals, all knowledge must lie to hand; for in a way he knows all
that underlies them. Yet in a sense these universals are what men find
hardest to apprehend, because they stand at the furthest extremity from
the perceptions of sense. "

[302]

"Yet if anything exist which is eternal, immovable, freed from gross
matter, the contemplative science alone can apprehend this. Physical
science certainly cannot, for physics is of that which is ever in flux;
nor can mathematical science apprehend it; we must look to a mode of
science prior to and higher than both. The objects of physics are
neither unchangeable nor free from matter; the objects of mathematics
are indeed unchangeable, but we can hardly say they are free from
matter; they have certainly relations with matter. But the first and
highest science has to do with that which is unmoved and apart from
matter; its function is with the eternal first causes of things. There
are therefore three modes of theoretical inquiry: the science of
physics, the science of mathematics, the science of God. For it is
clear that if the divine is anywhere, it must be in that form of
existence I have spoken of (_i. e. _ in first causes). . . . If,
therefore, there be {181} any form of existence immovable, this we must
regard as prior, and the philosophy of this we must consider the first
philosophy, universal for the same reason that it is first. It deals
with existence as such, inquiring what it is and what are its
attributes as pure existence. "

This is somewhat more technical than the language of Plato, but if we
compare it with what was said above (p. 142) we shall find an essential
identity. Yet Aristotle frequently impugns Plato's doctrine of ideas,
sometimes on the lines already [322] taken by Plato himself (above, p.
158), sometimes in other ways. Thus (_Met_. Z. 15, 16) he says: "That
which is _one_ cannot be in many places at one time, but that which is
common or general is in many places at one time. Hence it follows that
no universal exists apart from the individual things. But those who
hold the doctrine of ideas, on one side are right, viz. in maintaining
their separate existence, if they are to be substances or existences at
all. On the other side they are wrong, because by the idea or form
which they maintain to be separate they mean the one attribute
predicable of many things. The reason why they do this is because they
cannot indicate what these supposed imperishable essences are, apart
from the individual substances which are the objects of perception.
The result is that they simply represent them under the same forms as
{182} those of the perishable objects of sensation which are familiar
to our senses, with the addition of a phrase--_i. e. _ they say 'man as
such,' 'horse as such,' or 'the absolute man,' 'the absolute horse. '"

Aristotle here makes a point against Plato and his school, inasmuch as,
starting from the assumption that of the world of sense there could be
no knowledge, no apprehension fixed or certain, and setting over
against this a world of general forms which were fixed and certain,
they had nothing with which to fill this second supposed world except
the data of sense as found in individuals. Plato's mistake was in
confusing the mere 'this,' which is the conceived starting-point of any
sensation, but which, like a mathematical point, has nothing which can
be said about it, with individual objects as they exist and are known
in all the manifold and, in fact, infinite relations of reality. The
bare subject 'this' presents at the one extreme the same emptiness, the
same mere possibility of knowledge, which is presented at the other by
the bare predicate 'is. ' But Plato, having an objection to the former,
as representing to him the merely physical and therefore the passing
and unreal, clothes it for the nonce in the various attributes which
are ordinarily associated with it when we say, 'this man,' 'this
horse,' only to strip them off successively as data of sensation, and
so at last get, by an illusory process of {183} abstraction and
generalisation, to the ultimate generality of being, which is the mere
'is' of bare predication converted into a supposed eternal substance.

Aristotle was as convinced as Plato that there must be some fixed and
immovable object or reality corresponding to true and certain
knowledge, but with his scientific instincts he was not content to have
it left in a condition of emptiness, attractive enough to the more
emotional and imaginative Plato. And hence we have elsewhere quite as
strong and definite statements as those quoted above about universals
[316] (p. 180), to the effect that existence is in the fullest and most
real sense to be predicated of _individual_ things, and that only in a
secondary sense can existence be predicated of universals, in virtue of
their being found in individual things. Moreover, among universals the
_species_, he maintains, has more of existence in it than the genus,
because it is nearer to the individual or primary existence. For if
you predicate of an individual thing of what species it is, you supply
a statement more full of information and more closely connected with
the thing than if you predicate to what genus it belongs; for example,
if asked, "What is this? " and you answer, "A man," you give more
information than if you say, "A living creature. "

How did Aristotle reconcile these two points of {184} view, the one, in
which he conceives thought as starting from first causes, the most
universal objects of knowledge, and descending to particulars; the
other, in which thought starts from the individual objects, and
predicates of them by apprehension of their properties? The antithesis
is no accidental one; on the contrary, it is the governing idea of his
Logic, with its ascending process or Induction, and its descending
process or Syllogism. Was thought a mere process in an unmeaning
circle, the 'upward and downward way' of Plato?

As to this we may answer first that while formally Aristotle displays
much the same 'dualism' or unreconciled separation of the 'thing' and
the 'idea' as Plato, his practical sense and his scientific instincts
led him to occupy himself largely not with either the empty 'thing' or
the equally empty 'idea,' but with the true _individuals_, which are at
the same time the true universals, namely, real objects as known,
having, so far as they are known, certain forms or categories under
which you can class them, having, so far as they are not yet fully
known, a certain raw material for further inquiry through observation.
In this way Thought and Matter, instead of being in eternal and
irreconcilable antagonism as the Real and the Unreal, become parts of
the same reality, the first summing up the knowledge of things already
attained, the second symbolising the infinite {185} [317] possibilities
of further ascertainment. And thus the word 'Matter' is applied by
Aristotle to the highest genus, as the relatively indefinite compared
with the more fully defined species included under it; it is also
applied by him to the individual object, in so far as that object
contains qualities not yet fully brought into predication.

[319]

And second, we observe that Aristotle introduced a new conception which
to his view established a _vital relation_ between the universal and
the individual. This conception he formulated in the correlatives,
_Potentiality_ and _Actuality_. With these he closely connected the
idea of _Final Cause_. The three to Aristotle constituted a single
reality; they are organically correlative. In a living creature we
find a number of members or organs all closely interdependent and
mutually conditioning each other. Each has its separate function, yet
none of them can perform its particular function well unless all the
others are performing theirs well, and the effect of the right
performance of function by each is to enable the others also to perform
theirs. The total result of all these mutually related functions is
_Life_; this is their End or Final Cause, which does not exist apart
from them, but is constituted at every moment by them. This Life is at
the same time the condition on which alone each and every one of the
functions constituting it can be performed. Thus {186} life in an
organism is at once the end and the middle and the beginning; it is the
cause final, the cause formal, the cause efficient. Life then is an
_Entelechy_, as Aristotle calls it, by which he means the realisation
in unity of the total activities exhibited in the members of the living
organism.

In such an existence every part is at once a potentiality and an
actuality, and so also is the whole. We can begin anywhere and travel
out from that point to the whole; we can take the whole and find in it
all the parts.




{187}

CHAPTER XIX

ARISTOTLE (_continued_)

_Realisation and reminiscence--The crux of philosophy--Reason in
education--The chief good--Origin of communities_


If we look closely at this conception of Aristotle's we shall see that
it has a nearer relation to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and even to
the doctrine of Reminiscence, than perhaps even Aristotle himself
realised. The fundamental conception of Plato, it will be remembered,
is that of an eternally existing 'thought of God,' in manifold forms or
'ideas,' which come into the consciousness of men in connection with or
on occasion of sensations, which are therefore in our experience later
than the sensations, but which we nevertheless by reason recognise as
necessarily prior to the sensations, inasmuch as it is through these
ideas alone that the sensations are knowable or namable at all. Thus
the final end for man is by contemplation and 'daily dying to the world
of sense,' to come at last into the full inheritance in conscious
knowledge of that 'thought of God' which was latent from the first in
his soul, and of which in its fulness God Himself is eternally and
necessarily possessed.

{188}

[311]

This is really Aristotle's idea, only Plato expresses it rather under a
psychological, Aristotle under a vital, formula. God, Aristotle says,
is eternally and necessarily Entelechy, absolute realisation. _To us_,
that which is first _in time_ (the individual perception) is not first
in _essence_, or absolutely. What is first in essence or absolutely,
is the universal, that is, the form or idea, the datum of reason. And
this distinction between time and the absolute, between our individual
experience and the essential or ultimate reality, runs all through the
philosophy of Aristotle. The 'Realisation' of Aristotle is the
'Reminiscence' of Plato.

This conception Aristotle extended to Thought, to the various forms of
life, to education, to morals, to politics.

_Thought_ is an entelechy, an organic whole, in which every process
conditions and is conditioned by every other. If we begin with
sensation, the sensation, blank as regards predication, has relations
to that which is infinitely real,--the object, the real thing before
us,--which relations science will never exhaust. If we start from the
other end, with the datum of thought, consciousness, existence, mind,
this is equally blank as regards predication, yet it has relations to
another existence infinitely real,--the subject that thinks,--which
relations religion and morality and sentiment and love will never
exhaust. Or, as {189} Aristotle and as common sense prefers to do, if
we, with our developed habits of thought and our store of accumulated
information, choose to deal with things from a basis midway between the
two extremes, in the ordinary way of ordinary people, we shall find
both processes working simultaneously and in organic correlation. That
is to say, we shall be increasing the _individuality_ of the objects
known, by the operation of true thought and observation in the
discovery of new characters or qualities in them; we shall be
increasing by the same act the _generality_ of the objects known, by
the discovery of new relations, new genera under which to bring them.
Individualisation and generalisation are only opposed, as mutually
conditioning factors of the same organic function.

[316]

This analysis of thought must be regarded rather as a paraphrase of
Aristotle than as a literal transcript. He is hesitating and obscure,
and at times apparently self-contradictory. He has not, any more than
Plato, quite cleared himself of the confusion between the mutually
contrary individual and universal in _propositions_, and the
organically correlative individual and universal in _things as known_.
But on the whole the tendency of his analysis is towards an
apprehension of the true realism, which neither denies matter in favour
of mind nor mind in favour of matter, but recognises that both mind and
matter are organically correlated, and ultimately identical.

{190}

The crux of philosophy, so far as thus apprehended by Aristotle, is no
longer in the supposed dualism of mind and matter, but there is a crux
still. What is the meaning of this 'Ultimately'? Or, putting it in
Aristotle's formula, Why this relation of potentiality and actuality?
Why this eternal coming to be, even if the coming to be is no
unreasoned accident, but a coming to be of that which is vitally or in
germ _there_? Or theologically, Why did God make the world? Why this
groaning and travailing of the creature? Why this eternal 'By and by'
wherein all sin is to disappear, all sorrow to be consoled, all the
clashings and the infinite deceptions of life to be stilled and
satisfied? An illustration of Aristotle's attempt to answer this
question will be given later on (p. 201). That the answer is a failure
need not surprise us. If we even now 'see only as in a glass darkly'
on such a question, we need not blame Plato or Aristotle for not seeing
'face to face. '

[326]

_Life_ is an entelechy, not only abstractedly, as already shown (above,
p. 186), but in respect of the varieties of its manifestations. We
pass from the elementary life of mere growth common to plants and
animals, to the animal life of impulse and sensation, thence we rise
still higher to the life of rational action which is the peculiar
function of man. Each is a _potentiality_ to that which is immediately
above it; in {191} other words, each contains in germ the possibilities
which are realised in that stage which is higher. Thus is there a
touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, a purpose running
through all the manifestations of life; each is a preparation for
something higher.

[339]

_Education_ is in like manner an entelechy. For what is the
_differentia_, the distinguishing character of the life of man?
Aristotle answers, the possession of reason. It is the action of
reason upon the desires that raises the life of man above the brutes.
This, observe, is not the restraining action of something wholly alien
to the desires, which is too often how Plato represents the matter.
This would be to lose the dynamic idea. The desires, as Aristotle
generally conceives them, are there in the animal life, prepared, so to
speak, to receive the organic perfection which reason alone can give
them. Intellect, on the other hand, is equally in need of the desires,
for thought without desire cannot supply motive. If intellect is
_logos_ or reason, desire is that which is fitted to be obedient to
reason.

It will be remembered that the question to which Plato addressed
himself in one of his earlier dialogues, already frequently referred
to, the _Meno_, was the teachableness of Virtue; in that dialogue he
comes to the conclusion that Virtue is teachable, but that there are
none capable of teaching it; for the {192} wise men of the time are
guided not by knowledge but by right opinion, or by a divine instinct
which is incommunicable. Plato is thus led to seek a machinery of
education, and it is with a view to this that he constructs his ideal
_Republic_. Aristotle took up this view of the state as educative of
the individual citizens, and brought it under the dynamic formula. In
the child reason is not actual; there is no rational law governing his
acts, these are the immediate result of the strongest impulse. Yet
only when a succession of virtuous acts has formed the virtuous habit
can a man be said to be truly good. How is this process to begin? The
answer is that the reason which is only latent or dynamic in the child
is actual or realised in the parent or teacher, or generally in the
community which educates the child. The law at first then is imposed
on the child from without, it has an appearance of unnaturalness, but
only an appearance. For the law is there in the child, prepared, as he
goes on in obedience, gradually to answer from within to the summons
from without, till along with the virtuous habit there emerges also
into the consciousness of the child, no longer a child but a man, the
apprehension of the law as his own truest nature.

These remarks on education are sufficient to show that in Morals also,
as conceived by Aristotle, there is a law of vital development. It may
be {193} sufficient by way of illustration to quote the introductory
sentences of Aristotle's _Ethics_, in which the question of the nature
of the chief good is, in his usual tentative manner, discussed: "If
there be any end of what we do which we desire for itself, while all
other ends are desired for it, that is, if we do not in every case have
some ulterior end (for if that were so we should go on to infinity, and
our efforts would be vain and useless), this ultimate end desired for
itself will clearly be the chief good and the ultimate best. Now since
every activity, whether of knowing or doing, aims at some good, it is
for us to settle what the good is which the civic activity aims
at,--what, in short, is the ultimate end of all 'goods' connected with
conduct? So far as the name goes all are pretty well agreed as to the
answer; gentle and simple alike declare it to be happiness, involving,
however, in their minds on the one hand well-living, on the other hand,
well-doing. When you ask them, however, to define this happiness more
exactly, you find that opinions are divided, and the many and the
philosophers have different answers.

"But if you ask a musician or a sculptor or any man of skill, any
person, in fact, who has some special work and activity, what the chief
good is for him, he will tell you that the chief good is in the work
well done. If then man has any special work or function, we may assume
that the chief good for man {194} will be in the well-doing of that
function. What now is man's special function? It cannot be mere
living, for that he has in common with plants, and we are seeking what
is peculiar to him. The mere life of nurture and growth must therefore
be put on one side. We come next to life as sensitive to pleasure and
pain. But this man shares with the horse, the ox, and other animals.
What remains is the life of action of a reasonable being. Now of
reason as it is in man there are two parts, one obeying, one possessing
and considering. And there are also two aspects in which the active or
moral life may be taken, one potential, one actual. Clearly for our
definition of the chief good we must take the moral life in its full
actual realisation, since this is superior to the other.

"If our view thus far be correct, it follows that the chief good for
man consists in the full realisation and perfection of the life of man
as man, in accordance with the specific excellence belonging to that
life, and if there be more specific excellences than one, then in
accordance with that excellence which is the best and the most rounded
or complete. We must add, however, the qualification, 'in a rounded
life. ' For one swallow does not make a summer, nor yet one day.