The scheme of government proposed by Aristotle, in the two last books of his Politics, as representing his own ideas of something like perfection, is evidently founded upon the Republic of Plato: from whom he differs in the important circumstance of not admitting either community of property or community of wives and children.
Each of these philosophers recognises one separate class of inhabitants, relieved from all private toil and all money-getting employments, and constituting exclusively the citizens of the commonwealth. This small class is in effectthe city—the commonwealth: the remaining inhabitants are not a part of the commonwealth, they are only appendages to it — indispensable indeed, but still appendages, in the same manner as slaves or cattle (vii. 8). In the Republic of Plato this narrow aristocracy are not allowed to possess private property or separate families, but form one inseparable brotherhood. In the scheme of Aristotle, this aristocracy form a distinct caste of private families each with its separate property. The whole territory of the State belongs to them, and is tilled by dependent cultivators, by whom the produce is made over and apportioned under certain restrictions. A certain section of the territory is understood to be the common property of the body of citizens (i.e.of the aristocracy), and the produce of it is handed over by the cultivators into a common stock, partly to supply the public tables at which all the citizens with their wives and families are subsisted, partly to defray the cost of religious solemnities. The remaining portion of the territory is possessed in separate properties by individual citizens, who consume the produce as they please (vii. 9): each citizen having two distinct lots of land assigned to him, one near the outskirts of the territory, the other near the centre. This latter regulation also had been adopted by Plato in the treatise de Legibus, and it is surprising to observe that Aristotle himself had censured it, in his criticisms on that treatise, as incompatible with a judicious andcareful economy (ii. 3. 8). The syssitia or public tables are also adopted by Plato, in conformity with the institutions actually existing in his time in Crete and elsewhere.
The dependent cultivators, in Aristotle’s scheme, ought to be slaves, not united together by any bond of common language or common country (vii. 9, 9): if this cannot be, they ought to be a race of subdued foreigners, degraded into periœci, deprived of all use of arms, and confined to the task of labouring in the field. Those slaves who till the common land are to be considered as the property of the collective body of citizens: the slaves on land belonging to individual citizens, are the property of those citizens.
When we consider the scanty proportion of inhabitants whom Aristotle and Plato include in the benefits of their community, it will at once appear how amazingly their task as political theorists is simplified. Theircommonwealthis really an aristocracy on a very narrow scale. The great mass of the inhabitants are thrust out altogether from all security and good government, and are placed without reserve at the disposal of the small body of armed citizens.
There is but one precaution on which Aristotle and Plato rely for ensuring good treatment from the citizens towards their inferiors: and that is, the finished and elaborate education which the citizens are to receive. Men so educated, according to these philosophers, will behave as perfectly in the relation of superior to inferior, as in that of equal to equal — of citizen to citizen.
This supposition would doubtless prove true, to a certain extent, though far short of that extent which would be requisite to assure the complete comfort of the inferior. But even if it were true to the fullest extent, it would be far from satisfying the demands of a benevolent theorist. For though the inferior should meet with kindness and protection from his superior, still his mind must be kept in a degradation suitable to his position. He must be deprived of all moral and intellectual culture: he must be prevented from imbibing any ideas of his own dignity: he must be content to receive whatever is awarded, to endure whatever treatment is vouchsafed, without for an instant imagining that he has a right to benefits or that suffering is wrongfully inflicted upon him. Both Plato and Aristotle acknowledge the inevitable depravation and moral abasement of all the inhabitants excepting their favoured class. Neither of them seems solicitous either to disguise or to mitigate it.
But if they are thus indifferent about the moral condition of the mass, they are in the highest degree exact and carefulrespecting that of their select citizens. This is their grand and primary object, towards which the whole force of their intellect, and the full fertility of their ingenious imagination, is directed. Their plans of education are most elaborate and comprehensive: aiming at every branch of moral and intellectual improvement, and seeking to raise the whole man to a state of perfection, both physical and mental. You would imagine that they were framing a scheme of public education, not a political constitution: so wholly are their thoughts engrossed with the training and culture of their citizens. It is in this respect that their ideas are truly instructive.
Viewed with reference to the general body of inhabitants in a State, nothing can be more defective than the plans of both these great philosophers. Assuming that their objects were completely attained, the mass of the people would receive nothing more than that degree of physical comfort and mild usage which can be made to consist with subjection and with the extortion of compulsory labour.
Viewed with reference to the special class recognized as citizens, the plans of both are to a high degree admirable. A better provision is made for the virtue as well as for the happiness of this particular class than has ever been devised by any other political projector. The intimate manner in which Aristotle connects virtue with happiness, is above all remarkable. He in fact defines happiness to consist inthe active exertion and perfected habit of virtue(ἀρετῆς ἐνέργεια καὶ χρῆσίς τις τέλειος — vi. 9. 3.): and it is upon this disposition that he founds the necessity of excluding the mass of inhabitants from the citizenship. For the purpose to be accomplished by the political union, is, the assuring of happiness to every individual citizen, which is to be effected by implanting habits of virtue in every citizen. Whoever therefore is incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, is disqualified from becoming a citizen. But every man whose life is spent in laborious avocations, whether of husbandry, of trade, or of manufacture, becomes thereby incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, and cannot therefore be admitted to the citizenship. No man can be capable of the requisite mental culture and tuition, who is not exempted from the necessity of toil, enabled to devote his whole time to the acquisition of virtuous habits, and subjected from his infancy to a severe and systematic training. The exclusion of the bulk of the people from civil rights is thus founded, in the mind of Aristotle, on the lofty idea which he forms of individual human perfection, which he conceives to be absolutely unattainable unless it bemade the sole object of a man’s life. But then he takes especial care that the education of his citizens shall be really such as to compel them to acquire that virtue on which alone their pre-eminence is built. If he exempts them from manual or money-getting labours, he imposes upon them an endless series of painful restraints and vexatious duties for the purpose of forming and maintaining their perfection of character. He allows no luxury or self-indulgence, no misappropriation of time, no ostentatious display of wealth or station. The life of his select citizens would be such as to provoke little envy or jealousy, among men of the ordinary stamp. Its hard work and its strict discipline would appear repulsive rather than inviting: and the pre-eminence of strong and able men, submitting to such continued schooling, would appear well deserved and hardly earned.
Oligarchical reasoners in modern times employ the bad part of Aristotle’s principle without the good. They represent the rich and great as alone capable of reaching a degree of virtue consistent with the full enjoyment of political privileges: but then they take no precautions, as Aristotle does, that the men so preferred shall really answer to this exalted character. They leave the rich and great to their own self-indulgence and indolent propensities, without training them by any systematic process to habits of superior virtue. So that the select citizens on this plan are at the least no better, if indeed they are not worse, than the remaining community, while their unboundedindulgencesexcite either undue envy or undue admiration, among the excluded multitude. The select citizens of Aristotle are both better and wiser than the rest of their community: while they are at the same time so hemmed in and circumscribed by severe regulations, that nothing except the perfection of their character can appear worthy either of envy or admiration. Though therefore these oligarchical reasoners concur with Aristotle in sacrificing the bulk of the community to the pre-eminence of a narrow class, they fail of accomplishing the end for which alone he pretends to justify such a sacrifice — the formation of a few citizens of complete and unrivalled virtue.
The arrangements made by Aristotle for the good government of his aristocratical citizens among themselves, are founded upon principles of the most perfect equality. He would have them only limited in number, for in his opinion, personal and familiar acquaintance among them all is essentially requisite to good government (vii. 4. 7). The principal offices of the State are all to be held by the aged citizens: the military duties are to be fulfilled by the younger citizens. The city altogether, with theterritory appertaining to it, must be large enough to be αὐτάρκης: but it must not be so extensive as to destroy personal intimacy among the citizens. A very large body are, in Aristotle’s view, incapable of discipline or regularity.
To produce a virtuous citizen,nature,habit, andreasonmust coincide. They ought to be endued with virtues qualifying them both for occupation and for leisure: with courage, self-denial (καρτερία), and fortitude, to maintain their independence: with justice and temperance, to restrain them from abusing the means of enjoyment provided for them: and with philosophy or the love of contemplative wisdom and science, in order to banish ennui, and render the hours of leisure agreeable to them (vii. 13. 17). They are to be taught that their hours of leisure are of greater worth and dignity than their hours of occupation. Occupation is to be submitted to for the sake of the quiet enjoyment of leisure, just as war is made for the sake of procuring peace, and useful and necessary employments undertaken for the sake of those which are honourable (vii. 13. 8). Aristotle greatly censures (see vii. 2. 5) (as indeed Plato had done before him) the institutions of Lacedæmon, as being directed exclusively to create excellent warriors, and to enable the nation to rule over foreigners. This (he says) is not only not the right end, but is an end absolutely pernicious and culpable. To maintain a forcible sovereignty over free and equal foreigners, is unjust and immoral: and if the minds of the citizens be corrupted with this collective ambition and love of power, it is probable that some individual citizen, taught by the education of the State to consider power as the first of all earthly ends, will find an opportunity to aggrandize himself by force or fraud, and to establish a tyranny over his countrymen themselves (viii. 13. 13). The Lacedæmonians conducted themselves well and flourished under their institutions, so long as they were carrying on war for the enlargement of their dominion: but they were incapable of tasting or profiting by peace: they were not educated by their legislator so as to be able to turn leisure to account (αἴτιος δ’ ὁ νομοθέτης, οὐ παιδεύσας δύνασθαι σχολάζειν — vii. 13. 15).
The education of the citizen is to commence with the body: next the irrational portion of the soul is to be brought under discipline — that is, the will and the appetites, the concupiscent and irascible passions: thirdly, the rational portion of the soul is to be cultivated and developed. The habitual desires are to be so moulded and tutored as to prepare them for the sovereignty of reason, when the time shall arrive for bringing reason into action (vii. 13. 23). They are to learn nothing until five yearsold (vii. 15. 4), their diversions are to be carefully prepared and presented to them, consisting generally of a mimicry of subsequent serious occupations (vii. 15. 15): and all the fables and tales which they hear recited are to be such as to pave the way for moral discipline (ib.); all under the superintendence of the Pædonom. No obscene or licentious talk is to be tolerated in the city (vii. 15. 7), nor any indecent painting or statue, except in the temples of some particular Deities. No youth is permitted to witness the recitation either of iambics or of comedy (vii. 15. 9), until he attains the age which qualifies him to sit at the public tables. Immense stress is laid by the philosopher on the turn of ideas to which the tender minds of youth become accustomed, and on the earliest combinations of sounds or of visible objects which meet their senses (vii. 15. 10). Πρὸς πάσας δυνάμεις καὶ τέχνας ἐστιν ἃ δεῖ προπαιδεύεσθαι καὶ προεθίζεσθαι πρὸς τὰς ἑκάστων ἐργασίας, ὥστε δῆλον ὅτι καὶ πρὸς τὰς τῆς ἀρετῆς πράξεις (viii. 1. 2).
All the citizens in Aristotle’s republic are to be educated according to one common system: each being regarded as belonging to the commonwealth more than to his own parents. This was the practice at Lacedæmon, and Aristotle greatly eulogizes it (viii. 1. 3).
Aristotle does not approve of extreme and violent bodily training, such as would bring the body into the condition of an athlete: nor does he even sanction the gymnastic labours imposed by the Lacedæmonian system, which had the effect of rendering the Spartans “brutal of soul,â€� for the purpose of exalting their courage (οἱ Λάκωνες — θηριώδεις ἀπεργάζονται τοῖς πόνοις, ὡς τοῦτο μάλιστα πρὸς ἀνδρείαν σύμφερον). He remarks, first, that courage is not the single or exclusive end to be aimed at in a civil education: next, that a savage and brutal soul is less compatible with exalted courage than a gentle soul, trained so as to be exquisitely sensible to the feelings of shame and honour (viii. 3. 3-5). The most sanguinary and unfeeling among the barbarous tribes, he remarks, were very far from being the most courageous. A man trained on the Lacedæmonian system, in bodily exercises alone, destitute even of the most indispensable mental culture (see below), was a real βάναυσος — useful only for one branch of political duties, and even for that less useful than if he had been trained in a different manner.
Up to the age of 14, Aristotle prescribes (ἥβη means 14 years of age — see vii. 15. 11) that boys shall be trained in gentle and regular exercises, without any severe or forced labour. From 14 to 17 they are to be instructed in various branches ofknowledge: after 17, they are to be put to harder bodily labour and to be nourished with a special and peculiar diet (ἀναγκοφαγίαις). For how long this is to continue, is not stated. But Aristotle insists on the necessity of not giving them at the same time intellectual instruction and bodily training, for the one of these, he says, counteracts and frustrates the other (viii. 4. 2-3).
The Lacedæmonians made music no part of their education: Isocrat. Panathen. Or. xii. p. 375, B.; they did not even learn ‘letters’ (γράμματα), but they are said to have been good judges of music (viii. 4. 6). Aristotle himself however seems to think it next to impossible that men who have not learned music can be good judges (viii. 6. 1).
Aristotle admits that music may be usefully learnt as an innocent pleasure and relaxation: but he chiefly considers it as desirable on account of its moral effects, on the dispositions and affections. A right turn of the pleasurable and painful emotions is, in his opinion, essential to virtue: particular strains and particular rhythms are naturally associated with particular dispositions of mind: by early teaching, those strains and those rhythms which are associated with temperate and laudable dispositions may be made more agreeable to a youth than any others. He will like best those which he hears earliest, and which he finds universally commended and relished by those about him. A relish for the ὁμοιώματα of virtuous dispositions will tend to increase in him the love of virtue itself (viii. 6. 5. 8).
Aristotle enjoins that the youth be taught to execute music instrumentally and vocally, because it is only in this way that they can acquire a good taste or judgment in music: besides which, it is necessary to furnish boys with some occupation, to absorb their restless energies, and there is none more suitable than music. Some persons alleged that the teaching music as a manual art was banausic and degrading, lowering the citizen down to the station of a hired professional singer. Aristotle meets this objection by providing that youths shall be instructed in the musical art, but only with the view of correcting and cultivating their taste: they are to be forbidden from making any use of their musical acquisitions, in riper years, in actual playing or singing (viii. 6. 3). Aristotle observes, that music more difficult of execution had been recently introduced into the agones, and had found its way from the agones into the ordinary education. He decidedly disapproves and excludes it (viii. 6. 4). He forbids both the flute and the harp, and every other instrument requiring much art to play upon it: especially the flute,which he considers as not ethical, but orgiastical — calculated to excite violent and momentary emotions. The flute obtained a footing in Greece after the Persian invasion; in Athens at that time it became especially fashionable; but was discontinued afterwards (Plutarch alleges, through the influence of Alcibiades).
The suggestions of Aristotle for the education of his citizens are far less copious and circumstantial than those of Plato in his Republic. He delivers no plan of study, no arrangement of sciences to be successively communicated, no reasons for preferring or rejecting. We do not know what it was precisely which Aristotle comprehended in the term “philosophy,� intended by him to be taught to his citizens as an aid for the proper employment of their leisure. It must probably have included the moral, political, and metaphysical sciences, as they were then known — those sciences to which his own voluminous works relate.
By means of the public table, supplied from the produce of the public lands, Aristotle provides for the full subsistence of every citizen. Yet he is well aware that the citizens will be likely to increase in numbers too rapidly, and he suggests very efficient precautions against it. No child at all deformed or imperfect in frame is to be brought up: children beyond a convenient number, if born, are to be exposed: but should the law of the State forbid such a practice, care must be taken to forestall consciousness and life in them, and to prevent their birth by ἄμβλωσις (vii. 14. 10).
Aristotle establishes twoagorain his city: one situated near to the harbour, adapted to the buying, selling, and storing of goods, under the surveillance of the agoranomus: the other called thefree agora, situated in the upper parts of the city, set apart for the amusement and conversation of the citizens, and never defiled by the introduction of any commodities for sale. No artisan or husbandman is ever to enter the latter unless by special order from the authorities. The temples of the Gods, the residences of the various boards of government functionaries, the gymnasia of the older citizens, are all to be erected in this free agora (vii. 11). The Thessalian cities had an agora of this description where no traffic or common occupations were permitted.
The moral tendency of Aristotle’s reflections is almost always useful and elevating. The intimate union which he formally recognizes and perpetually proclaims between happiness and virtue, is salutary and instructive: and his ideas of what virtue is, are perfectly just, so far as relates to the conduct of his citizens towards each other: though they are miserably defectiveas regards obligation towards non-citizens. He always assigns the proper pre-eminence to wisdom and virtue: he never overvalues the advantages of riches, nor deems them entitled on their own account, to any reverence or submission: he allows no title to the obedience of mankind, except that which arises from superior power and disposition to serve them. Superior power and station, as he considers them, involve a series of troubles — some obligations which render them objects of desire only to men of virtue and beneficence. What is more rare and more creditable still, he treats all views of conquest and aggrandizement by a State as immoral and injurious, even to the conquerors themselves.
The controversy respecting Universals first obtained its place in philosophy from the colloquies of Sokrates, and the writings and teachings of Plato. We need not here touch upon their predecessors, Parmenides and Herakleitus, who, in a confused and unsystematic manner, approached this question from opposite sides, and whose speculations worked much upon the mind of Plato in determining both his aggressive dialectic, and his constructive theories. Parmenides of Elea, improving upon the ruder conceptions of Xenophanes, was the first to give emphatic proclamation to the celebrated Eleatic doctrine, Absolute Ens as opposed to Relative Fientia:i.e.the Cogitable, which Parmenides conceived as the One and All of reality, ἓν καὶ πᾶν, enduring and unchangeable, of which the negative was unmeaning, — and the Sensible or Perceivable, which was in perpetual change, succession and multiplicity, without either unity, or reality, or endurance. To the last of these two departments Herakleitus assigned especial prominence. In place of the permanent underlying Ens, which he did not recognize, he substituted a cogitable process ofchange, or generalized concept of what was common to all the successive phases of change — a perpetual stream of generation and destruction, or implication of contraries, in which everything appeared only that it might disappear, without endurance or uniformity. In this doctrine of Herakleitus, the world of sense and particulars could not be the object either of certain knowledge or even of correct probable opinion; in that of Parmenides, it was recognized as an object of probable opinion, though not of certain knowledge. But in both doctrines, as well as in the theories of Demokritus, it was degraded, and presented as incapable of yielding satisfaction to the search of a philosophizing mind, which could find neither truth nor reality except in the world of Concepts and Cogitables.
Besides the two theories above-mentioned, there were current in the Hellenic world, before the maturity of Sokrates, several other veins of speculation about the Kosmos, totally divergent one from the other, and by that very divergence sometimes stimulating curiosity, sometimes discouraging all study as though the problems were hopeless. But Parmenides and Herakleitus, together with the arithmetical and geometrical hypotheses of the Pythagoreans, are expressly noticed by Aristotle as having specially contributed to form the philosophy of Plato.
Neither Parmenides, nor Herakleitus, nor the Pythagoreans were dialecticians. They gave out their own thoughts in their own way, with little or no regard to dissentients. They did not cultivate the art of argumentative attack or defence, nor the correct application and diversified confrontation of universal terms, which are the great instruments of that art. It was Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, that first employed dialectic in support of his master’s theory, or rather against the counter-theories of opponents. He showed by arguments memorable for their subtlety, that the hypothesis of an Absolute, composed of Entia Plura Discontinua, led to consequences even more absurd than those that opponents deduced from the Parmenidean hypothesis of Ens Unum Continuum. The dialectic, thus inaugurated by Zeno, reached still higher perfection in the colloquies of Sokrates; who not only employed a new method, but also introduced new topics of debate — ethical, political, and social matters instead of physical things and the Kosmos.
The peculiar originality of Sokrates is well known: a man who wrote nothing, but passed his life in indiscriminate colloquy with every one; who professed to have no knowledge himself, but interrogated others on matters that they talked about familiarly and professed to know well; whose colloquies generally ended by puzzling the respondents, andby proving to themselves that they neither knew nor could explain even matters that they had begun by affirming confidently as too clear to need explanation. Aristotle tells us1that Sokrates was the first that set himself expressly and methodically to scrutinize the definitions of general or universal terms, and to confront them, not merely with each other, but also, by a sort of inductive process, with many particular cases that were, or appeared to be, included under them. And both Xenophon and Plato give us abundant examples of the terms to which Sokrates applied his interrogatories: What is the Holy? What is the Unholy? What is the Beautiful or Honourable? What is the Ugly or Base? What is Justice-Injustice — Temperance — Madness — Courage — Cowardice — A City — A man fit for civil life? What is the Command of Men? What is the character fit for commanding men? Such are the specimens, furnished by a hearer,2of the universal terms whereon the interrogatories of Sokrates bore. All of them were terms spoken and heard familiarly by citizens in the market-place, as if each understood them perfectly; but when Sokrates, professing his own ignorance, put questions asking for solutions of difficulties that perplexed his own mind, the answers showed that these difficulties were equally insoluble by respondents, who had never thought of them before. The confident persuasion of knowledge, with which the colloquy began, stood exposed as a false persuasion without any basis of reality. Such illusory semblance of knowledge was proclaimed by Sokrates to be the chronic, though unconscious, intellectual condition of his contemporaries. How he undertook, as the mission of a long life, to expose it, is impressively set forth in the Platonic Apology.
1Metaphysica,A.p. 987, b. 2;M.p. 1078, b. 18.
1Metaphysica,A.p. 987, b. 2;M.p. 1078, b. 18.
2Xenophon Memorab. I. i. 16; IV. vi. 1-13.
2Xenophon Memorab. I. i. 16; IV. vi. 1-13.
It was thus by Sokrates that the meaning of universal terms and universal propositions, and the relation of each respectively to particular terms and particular propositions were first made a subject of express enquiry and analytical interrogation. His influence was powerful in imparting the same dialectical impulse to several companions; but most of all to Plato, who not only enlarged and amplified the range of Sokratic enquiry, but also brought the meaning of universal terms into something like system and theory, as a portion of the conditions of trustworthy science. Plato was the first to affirm the doctrine afterwards called Realism, as the fundamental postulate of all true and proved cognition. He affirmed it boldly, and in its most extended sense, though he also produces (according to his frequent practice) many powerful arguments and unsolved objections against it. It was he (to use the striking phrase of Milton3) that first imported into the schools the portent of Realism. The doctrine has been since opposed, confuted, curtailed, transformed, diversified in many ways; but it has maintained its place in logical speculation, and has remained, under one phraseology or another, the creed of various philosophers, from that time down to the present.
3See the Latin verses ‘De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit’ —“At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus,Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,� &c.
3See the Latin verses ‘De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit’ —
“At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus,Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,� &c.
“At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus,Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,� &c.
The following account of the problems of Realism was handed down to the speculations of the mediæval philosophers by Porphyry (between 270-300A.D.), in his Introduction to the treatise of Aristotle on the Categories. After informing Chrysaorius that he will prepare for him a concise statement of the doctrines of the old philosophers respecting Genus, Differentia, Species, Proprium, Accidens, “abstaining from the deeper enquiries, but giving suitable development to the more simple,� — Porphyry thus proceeds:— “For example, I shall decline discussing, in respect to Genera and Species, (1) Whether they have a substantive existence, or reside merely in naked mental conceptions; (2) Whether, assuming them to have substantive existence, they are bodies or incorporeals; (3) Whether their substantive existence is in and along with the objects of sense, or apart and separable. Upon this task I shall not enter, since it is of the greatest depth, and requires another larger investigation; but shall try at once to show you how the ancients (especially the Peripatetics), with a view to logical discourse, dealt with the topics now propounded.�4
4Porphyry, Introd. in Categor. init. p. 1, a. 1, Schol. Br.
4Porphyry, Introd. in Categor. init. p. 1, a. 1, Schol. Br.
Before Porphyry, all these three problems had been largely debated, first by Plato, next by Aristotle against Plato, again by the Stoics against both, and lastly by Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists as conciliators of Plato with Aristotle. After Porphyry, problems the same, or similar, continued to stand in the foreground of speculation, until the authority of Aristotle became discredited at all points by the influences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But in order to find the beginning of them, as questions provoking curiosity and opening dissentient points of view to inventivedialecticians, we must go back to the age and the dialogues of Plato.
The real Sokrates (i.e.as he is described by Xenophon) inculcated in his conversation steady reverence for the invisible, as apart from and overriding the phenomena of sensible experience; but he interpreted the term in a religious sense, as signifying the agency of the personal gods, employed to produce effects beneficial or injurious to mankind.5He also puts forth his dialectical acuteness to prepare consistent and tenable definitions of familiar general terms (of which instances have already been given), at least so far as to make others feel, for the first time, that they did not understand these terms, though they had been always talking like persons thatdidunderstand. But the Platonic Sokrates (i.e.as spokesman in the dialogues of Plato) enlarges both these discussions materially. Plato recognizes, not simply the invisible persons or gods, but also a separate world of invisible, impersonal entities or objects; one of which he postulates as the objective reality, though only a cogitable reality, correlating with each general term. These Entia he considers to be not merely distinct realities, but the only true and knowable realities: they are eternal and unchangeable, manifested by the fact that particulars partake in them, and imparting a partial show of stability to the indeterminate flux of particulars: unless such separate Universal Entia be supposed, there is nothing whereon cognition can fasten, and consequently there can be no cognition at all.6These are the substantive, self-existent Ideas, or Forms that Plato first presented to the philosophical world; sometimes with logical acuteness, oftener still with rich poetical and imaginative colouring. They constitute the main body and characteristic of the hypothesis of Realism.
5Xenophon, Memorab. I. iv. 9-17; IV. iii. 14.
5Xenophon, Memorab. I. iv. 9-17; IV. iii. 14.
6Aristot. Metaphys.A.vi. p. 987, b. 5;M.iv. p. 1078, b. 15.
6Aristot. Metaphys.A.vi. p. 987, b. 5;M.iv. p. 1078, b. 15.
But, though the main hypothesis is the same, the accessories and manner of presentation differ materially among its different advocates. In these respects, indeed, Plato differs not only from others, but also from himself. Systematic teaching or exposition is not his purpose, nor does he ever give opinions in his own name. We have from him an aggregate of detached dialogues, in many of which this same hypothesis is brought under discussion, but in each dialogue, the spokesmen approach it from a different side; while in others (distinguished by various critics as the Sokratic dialogues) it does not come under discussion at all, Plato being content to remain upon the Sokratic platform, and to debate the meaning of general terms without postulating in correlation with them an objective reality, apart from their respective particulars.
At the close of the Platonic dialogue called Kratylus, Sokrates is introduced as presenting the hypothesis of self-existent, eternal, unchangeable Ideas (exactly in the way that Aristotle ascribes to Plato) as the counter-proposition to the theory of universal flux and change announced by Herakleitus. Particulars are ever changing (it is here argued) and are thus out of the reach of cognition; but, unless the Universal Ideas above them, such as the Self-beautiful, the Self-good, &c., be admitted as unchangeable, objective realities, there can be nothing either nameable or knowable: cognition becomes impossible.
In the Timæus, Plato describes the construction of the Kosmos by a Divine Architect, and the model followed by the latter in his work. The distinction is here again brought out, and announced as capital, between the permanent, unalterable Entia, and the transient, ever-fluctuating Fientia, which come and go, but never reallyare. Entia are apprehended by the cogitant or intelligent soul of the Kosmos, Fientia by the sentient or percipient soul; the cosmical soul as a whole, in order to suffice for both these tasks, is made up of diverse component elements — Idem, correlating with the first of the two, Diversum, correlating with the second, and Idem implicated with Diversum, corresponding to both in conjunction. The Divine Architect is described as constructing a Kosmos, composed both of soul and body, upon the pattern of the grand pre-existent Idea — αὐτοζῷον or the Self-Animal; which included in itself as a genus the four distinct species — celestial (gods, visible and invisible), terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic.
The main point that Plato here insists upon is — the eternal and unchangeable reality of the cogitable objects called Ideas, prior both in time and in logical order to the transient objects of sight and touch, and serving as an exemplar to which these latter are made to approximate imperfectly. He assumes such priority, without proof, in the case of the Idea of Animal; but, when he touches upon the four elements — Fire, Air, Water, Earth — he hesitates to make the same assumption, and thinks himself required to give a reason for it. The reason that he assigns (announced distinctlyas his own) is as follows: If Intellection (Cogitation, Νοῦς) and true Opinion are two genera distinct from each other, there must clearly exist Forms or Ideas imperceptible to our senses, and apprehended only by cogitation or intellection; but if, as some persons think, true opinion is noway different from intellection, then we must admit all the objects perceived by our senses as firm realities. Now the fact is (he proceeds to say) that true opinion is not identical with intellection, but quite distinct, separate, and unlike to it. Intellection is communicated by teaching, through true reasoning, and is unshakeable by persuasion; true opinion is communicated by persuasion and removed by counter-persuasion, without true reasoning. True opinion may belong to any man; but intellection is the privilege only of gods and of a small section of mankind. Accordingly, since the two are distinct, the objects correlating with each of them must also be distinct from each other. There must exist, first, primary, eternal, unchangeable Forms, apprehended by intellect or cogitation, but imperceptible by sense; and, secondly, resemblances of these bearing the same name, generated and destroyed each in some place, and apprehended first by sense, afterwards by opinion. Thirdly, there must be the place wherein such resemblances are generated; a place itself imperceptible by sense, yet postulated, as a receptacle indispensable for them, by a dreamy kind of computation.
We see here that the proof given by Plato, in support of the existence of Forms as the primary realities, is essentially psychological: resting upon the fact that there is a distinct mental energy or faculty called Intellection (apart from Sense and Opinion), which must have its distinct objective correlate; and upon the farther fact, that intellection is the high prerogative of the gods, shared only by a few chosen men. This last point of the case is more largely and emphatically brought out in the Phædrus, where Sokrates delivers a highly poetical effusion respecting the partial intercommunion of the human soul with these eternal intellectual realities. To contemplate them is the constant privilege of the gods; to do so is also the aspiration of the immortal soul of man generally, in the pre-existent state, prior to incorporation with the human body; though only in a few cases is such aspiration realized. Even those few human souls, that have succeeded in getting sight of the intellectual Ideas (essences without colour, figure, or tactile properties), lose all recollection of them when first entering into partnership with a human body; but are enabled gradually to recall them, by combining repeated impressions and experience of their resemblances in the world of sense. The revival of these divine elements is an inspiration of the nature of madness; though it is a variety of madness as much better than uninspired human reason as other varieties are worse. The soul, becoming insensible to ordinary pursuits, contracts a passionate devotion to these Universal Ideas, and to that dialectical communion, especially with some pregnant youthful mind, that brings them into clear separate contemplation disengaged from the limits and confusion of sense.
Here philosophy is presented as the special inspiration of a few, whose souls during the period of pre-existence have sufficiently caught sight of the Universal Ideas or Essences; so that these last, though overlaid and buried when the soul is first plunged in a body, are yet revivable afterwards under favourable circumstances, through their imperfect copies in the world of sense; especially by the sight of personal beauty in an ingenuous and aspiring youth, in which case the visible copy makes nearest approach to the perfection of the Universal Idea or Type. At the same time, Plato again presents to us the Cogitable Universals as the only objects of true cognition, the Sensible Particulars being objects merely of opinion.
In the Phædon, Sokrates advances the same doctrine, that theperceptionsof sense are full of error and confusion, and can at best suggest nothing higher than opinion; that true cogitation can never be attained except when the cogitant mind disengages itself from the body and comes into direct contemplation of the Universal Entia, objects eternal and always the same — The Self-beautiful, Self-good, Self-just, Self-great, Healthy, Strong, &c., all which objects are invisible, and can be apprehended only by the cogitation or intellect. It is this Cogitable Universal that is alone real; Sensible Particulars are not real, nor lasting, nor trustworthy. None but a few philosophers, however, can attain to such pure mental energy during this life; nor even they fully and perfectly. But they will attain it fully after death (their souls being immortal), if their lives have been passed in sober philosophical training. And their souls enjoyed it before birth during the period of pre-existence; having acquired, before junction with the body, the knowledge of these Universals, which are forgotten during childhood, but recalled in the way of Reminiscence, by sensible perceptionsthat make a distant approach to them. Thus, according to the Phædon and some other dialogues, all learning is merely reminiscence; the mind is brought back, by the laws of association, to the knowledge of Universal Realities that it had possessed in its state of pre-existence. Particulars of sense participate in these Universals to a certain extent, or resemble them imperfectly; and they are therefore called by the same name.
In the Republic, we have a repetition and copious illustration of this antithesis between the world of Universals or Cogitables, which are the only unchangeable realities and the only objects of knowledge, — and the world of Sensible Particulars, which are transitory and confused shadows of these Universals, and are objects of opinion only. Full and real Ens is knowable, Non-Ens is altogether unknowable; what is midway between the two is matter of opinion, and in such midway are the Particulars of sense.7Respecting these last, no truth is attainable: whenever you affirm a proposition respecting any of them, you may with equal truth affirm the contrary at the same time. Nowhere is the contrast between the Universals or real Ideas (among which the Idea of Good is the highest, predominant over all the rest), and the unreal Particulars, or Percepta, of Sense, more forcibly insisted upon than in the Republic. Even the celestial bodies and their movements, being among these Percepta of sense, are ranked among phantoms interesting but useless to observe; they are the best of all Percepta, but they fall very short of the perfection that the mental eye contemplates in the Ideal — in the true Figures and Numbers, in the real Velocity and the real Slowness. In the simile commencing the seventh book of the Republic, Plato compares mankind to prisoners in a cave, chained in one particular attitude, so as to behold only an ever-varying multiplicity of shadows, projected, through the opening of the cave upon the wall before them, by certain unseen realities behind. The philosopher is one among a few, who by training or inspiration, have been enabled to face about from this original attitude, and to contemplate with his mind the real unchangeable Universals, instead of having his eye fixed upon their particular manifestations, at once shadowy and transient. By such mental revolution he comes round from the Perceivable to the Cogitable, from Opinion to Knowledge.