Primarily nothing is given in the abstract (τὸ κεγωρισµένον), but every thing in the concrete. The primary faculties of the mind enter into action spontaneously and simultaneously; all our primary notions are consequently synthetic. When reflection is applied to this primary totality of consciousness, that is, when we analyze our notions, we find them composed of diverse and opposite elements, some of which are variable, contingent, individual, and relative, others are permanent, unchangeable, universal, necessary, and absolute. Now these elements, so diverse, so opposite, can not have been obtained from the same source; they must be supplied by separate powers. "Can any man with common sense reduce under one whatis infallible, and what isnot infallible?"527Can that which is "perpetually becoming" be apprehended by the same faculty as that which "always is?"528Most assuredly not.
Footnote 523:(return)Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.
Footnote 524:(return)Ibid., bk. vii. ch. viii.
Footnote 525:(return)Ibid., bk. v. ch. xx.
Footnote 526:(return)Ibid., bk. vii. ch. i., ii.
Footnote 527:(return)"Republic," bk. v. ch. xxi.
Footnote 528:(return)Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxii.; also "Timæus," § 9.
These primitive intuitions--the simple perceptions of sense, and theà prioriintuitions of the reason, which constitute the elements of all our complex notions, have essentiallydiverse objects--the sensible or ectypal world, seen by the eye and touched by the hand, which Plato calls δοξαστήν--the subject of opinion; and the noetic or archetypal world, perceived by reason, and which he calls διανοητικήν--the subject of rational intuition or science. "It is plain," therefore, argues Plato, "thatopinionis a different thing fromscience. They must, therefore, have a differentfacultyin reference to a different object--science as regards that whichis, so as to know the nature of realbeing--opinion as regards that which can not be said absolutely to be, or not to be. That which is known and that which is opined can not possibly be the same,... since they are naturally faculties of different things, and both of them are faculties--opinionandscience, and each of them different from the other."529Here then are two grand divisions of the mental powers--a faculty of apprehending universal and necessaryTruth, of intuitively beholding absolute Reality, and a faculty of perceiving sensible objects, and of judging according to appearance.
Footnote 529:(return)Ibid., bk. v. ch. xxi., xxii.
According to the scheme of Plato, these two general divisions of the mental powers are capable of a further subdivision. He says: Consider that there are two kinds of things, theintelligibleand thevisible; two different regions, the intelligible world and the sensible world. Now take a line divided into two equal segments to represent these two regions, and again divide each segment in the same ratio--both that of the visible and that of the intelligible species. The parts of each segment are to represent differences of clearness and indistinctness. In the visible world the parts arethingsandimages. ByimagesI mean shadows,530reflections in water and in polished bodies, and all such like representations; and bythingsI mean that of which images are resemblances, as animals, plants, and things made by man.
You allow that this difference corresponds to the difference ofknowledgeandopinion; and theopinionableis to theknowableas theimageto thereality.531
Footnote 530:(return)As in the simile of the cave ("Republic," bk. vii. ch. i. and ii.).
Footnote 531:(return)The analogy between the "images produced by reflections in water and on polished surfaces" and "the images of external objects produced in the mind by sensation" is more fully presented in the "Timæus," ch. 19.The eye is a light-bearer, "made of that part of elemental fire which does not burn, but sheds a mild light, like the light of day.... When the light of the day meets the light which beams from the eye, then light meets like, and make a homogeneous body; the external light meeting the internal light, in the direction in which the eye looks. And by this homogeneity like feels like; and if this beam touches any object, or any object touches it, it transmits the motions through the body to the soul, and produces that sensation which we callseeing.... And if (in sleep) some of the strong motions remain in some part of the frame, they produce within us likenesses of external objects,... and thus give rise to dreams.... As to the images produced by mirrors and by smooth surfaces, they are now easily explained, for all such phenomena result from the mutual affinity of the external and internal fires. The light that proceeds from the face (as an object of vision), and the light that proceeds from the eye, become one continuous ray on the smooth surface."
The eye is a light-bearer, "made of that part of elemental fire which does not burn, but sheds a mild light, like the light of day.... When the light of the day meets the light which beams from the eye, then light meets like, and make a homogeneous body; the external light meeting the internal light, in the direction in which the eye looks. And by this homogeneity like feels like; and if this beam touches any object, or any object touches it, it transmits the motions through the body to the soul, and produces that sensation which we callseeing.... And if (in sleep) some of the strong motions remain in some part of the frame, they produce within us likenesses of external objects,... and thus give rise to dreams.... As to the images produced by mirrors and by smooth surfaces, they are now easily explained, for all such phenomena result from the mutual affinity of the external and internal fires. The light that proceeds from the face (as an object of vision), and the light that proceeds from the eye, become one continuous ray on the smooth surface."
Now we have to divide the segment which representsintelligible things in this way: The one part represents the knowledge which the mind gets by using things as images--the other; that which it has by dealing with the ideas themselves; the one part that which it gets by reasoning downward from principles--the other, the principles themselves; the one part, truth which depends on hypotheses--the other, unhypothetical or absolute truth.
Thus, to explain a problem in geometry, the geometers make certain hypotheses (namely, definitions and postulates) about numbers and angles, and the like, and reason from them--giving no reason for their assumptions, but taking them as evident to all; and, reasoning from them, they prove the propositions which they have in view. And in such reasonings, they use visible figures or diagrams--to reason about a square, for instance, with its diagonals; but these reasonings are not really about these visible figures, but about the mental figures, and which they conceive in thought.
The diagrams which they draw, being visible, are the images of thoughts which the geometer has in his mind, and these images he uses in his reasoning. There may be images of these images--shadows and reflections in water, as of other visible things; but still these diagrams are only images of conceptions.
This, then, isonekind of intelligible things:conceptions--for instance, geometrical conceptions of figures. But in dealing with these the mind depends upon assumptions, and does not ascend to first principles. It does not ascend above these assumptions, but uses images borrowed from a lower region (the visible world), these images being chosen so as to be as distinct as may be.
Now theotherkind of intelligible things is this: that which theReasonincludes, in virtue of its power of reasoning, when it regards the assumptions of the sciences as (what they are) assumptions only, and uses them as occasions and starting-points, that from these it may ascend to theAbsolute, which does not depend upon assumption, the origin of scientific truth.
The reason takes hold of this first principle of truth, and availing itself of all the connections and relations of this principle, it proceeds to the conclusion--using no sensible image in doing this, but contemplates theidea alone; and with these ideas the process begins, goes on, and terminates.
"I apprehend," said Glaucon, "but not very clearly, for the matter is somewhat abstruse.You wish to prove that the knowledge which by the reason, in an intuitive manner, we may acquire of real existence and intelligible things is of a higher degree of certainty than the knowledge which belongs to what are commonly called the Sciences. Such sciences, you say, have certain assumptions for their basis; and these assumptions are by the student of such sciences apprehended not by sense, but by a mental operation--by conception.
"But inasmuch as such students ascend no higher than assumptions, and do not go to the first principles of truth, they do not seem to have true knowledge, intellectual insight, intuitive reason, on the subjects of their reasonings, though the subjects are intelligible things. And you call this habit and practice of the geometers and others by the name of JUDGMENT (διάνοια), not reason, or insight, or intuition--taking judgment to be something between opinion, on the one side, and intuitive reason, on the other.
"You have explained it well," said I. "And now consider these four kinds of things we have spoken of, as corresponding to four affections (or faculties) of the mind. INTUITIVE REASON (νόησις), the highest; JUDGMENT (διάνοια)(ordiscursive reason), the next; the third, BELIEF (πίστις); and the fourth, CONJECTURE, orguess(εὶκασία); and arrange them in order, so that they may be held to have more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth."532The completeness, and even accuracy of this classification of all the objects of human cognition, and of the corresponding mental powers, will be seen at once by studying the diagram proposed by Plato, as figured on the opposite page.
Footnote 532:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx. and xxi.
PLATONIC SCHEME OF THE OBJECTS OF COGNITION, AND THE RELATIVE MENTAL POWERS__________________________________________________________________________| || VISIBLE WORLD | INTELLIGIBLE WORLD| (the object of Opinion--δόξα). |(the object of Knowledge or| | Science--ίπυττήµη).____________|_________________________________|___________________________| | | || Things. | Images. | Intuitions. |Conceptions.____________|________________|________________|______________|____________And may be thus further expanded:__________________________________________________________________________| || VISIBLE WORLD. | INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.____________|_________________________________|___________________________| | | || Things | Images | Ideas | ConceptionsOBJECT | | | || ζὼα. κ.τ.λ. | ικονες. | ιδεαί. | δυενοήµατα.____________|________________|________________|_____________|_____________| | | || Belief. | Conjecture. | Intuition. |Demonstration.PROCESS | | | || πιοτις. | ειϰασια. | νόησις. | ίπισιηιη.____________|________________|________________|_____________|_____________| | | || SENSATION. | PHANTASY. | INTUITIVE | DISCURSIVEFACULTY | | | REASON. | REASON.| αiσθησις. | ϕαντασία. | νούς. | λόγος.____________|________________|________________|_____________|_____________| | | |MODERN | SENSE. | IMAGINATION. | REASON. | JUDGMENT.NOMENCLATURE|Presentative |Representative |Regulative | Logical| Faculty. | Faculty | Faculty. | Faculty.____________|________________|________________|_____________|_____________| || MEMORY. | REMINISCENCE| µνηµη. | αναµησις.| The Conservative Faculty-- | The Reproductive Faculty--| "the preserver of sensation" |"the recollection of the| (σωτηρια αισιν, σεως) [533] | things which the soul| | saw (in Eternity) when| | journeying in the train of| | the Deity."[534]|[Footnote 533: "Philebus," § 67] | [Footnote 534: Phædrus,| | § 62.]____________|_________________________________|___________________________
The foregoing diagram, borrowed from Whewell, with some modifications and additions we have ventured to make, exhibits a perfect view of the Platonic scheme of thecognitive powers--the faculties by which the mind attains to different degrees of knowledge, "having more or less certainty, as their objects have more or less truth."535
1st. SENSATION (αἴσθησις).--This term is employed by Plato to denote the passive mental states or affections which are produced within us by external objects through the medium of the vital organization, and also the cognition or vital perception or consciousness536which the mind has of these mental states.
2d. PHANTASY (φαντασία).--This term is employed to describe the power which the mind possesses of imagining or representing whatever has once been the object of sensation. This may be done involuntarily as "in dreams, disease, and hallucination,"537or voluntarily, as in reminiscence. Φαντάσµατα are the images, the life-pictures (ζωγράφηµα) of sensible things which are present to the mind, even when no external object is present to the sense.
Footnote 535:(return)"Republic," bk. vii. ch. xix.
Footnote 536:(return)"In Greek philosophy there was no term for 'consciousness' until the decline of philosophy, and in the latter ages of the language. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of other philosophers, had no special term to express the knowledge which the mind has of the operation of its own faculties, though this, of course, was necessarily a frequent matter of consideration. Intellect was supposed by them to be cognizant of its own operations.... In his 'Theætetus' Plato accords to sense the power of perceiving that it perceives."--Hamilton's "Metaphysics," vol. i. p. 198 (Eng. ed.).
Footnote 537:(return)"Theætetus," § 39.
The conjoint action of these two powers results in what Plato callsopinion(δόξα). "Opinion is the complication of memory and sensation. For when we meet for the first time with a thing perceptible by a sense, and a sensation is produced by it, and from this sensation a memory, and we subsequently meet again with the same thing perceived by a sense, we combine the memory previously brought into action with the sensation produced a second time, and we say within ourselves [this is] Socrates, or a horse, or fire, or whatever thing there may be ofsuch a kind. Now this is calledopinion, through our combining the recollection brought previously into action with the sensation recently produced. And when these, placed along each other, agree, a true opinion is produced; but when they swerve from each other, a false one."538The δόξα of Plato, therefore answers to the experience, or theempirical knowledgeof modern philosophy, which is concerned only with appearances (phenomena), and not with absolute realities, and can not be elevated to the dignity ofscienceor real knowledge.
We are not from hence to infer that Plato intended to deny all reality whatever to the objects of sensible experience. These transitory phenomena were not real existences, but they wereimagesof real existences. The world itself is but the image, in the sphere of sense, of those ideas of Order, and Proportion, and Harmony, which dwell in the Divine Intellect, and are mirrored in the soul of man. "Time itself is a moving image of Eternity."539But inasmuch as the immediate object of sense-perception is a representative image generated in the vital organism, and all empirical cognitions are mere "conjectures" (εἰκασίαι) founded on representative images, they need to be certified by a higher faculty, which immediately apprehends real Being (τὸ ὄν). Of things, as they are in themselves, the senses give us no knowledge; all that in sensation we are conscious of is certain affections of the mind (πάθος); the existence of self, or the perceiving subject, and a something external to self, a perceived object, are revealed to us, not by the senses, but by the reason.
Footnote 538:(return)Alcinous, "Introduction to the Doctrine of Plato," p. 247.
Footnote 539:(return)"Timæus," § 14.
3d. JUDGMENT (διάνοια, λόγος),the Discursive Faculty, or the Faculty of Relations.--According to Plato, this faculty proceeds on the assumption of certain principles as true, without inquiring into their validity, and reasons, by deduction, to the conclusions which necessarily flow from these principles. These assumptions Plato calls hypotheses (ὑποθέσεις). But by hypotheses he does not mean baseless assumptions--"mere theories--"butthings self-evident and "obvious to all;"540as for example, the postulates and definitions of Geometry. "After laying down hypotheses of the odd and even, and three kinds of angles [right, acute, and obtuse], and figures [as the triangle, square, circle, and the like], heproceeds on them as known, and gives no further reason about them, and reasons downward from these principles,"541affirming certain judgments as consequences deducible therefrom.
Footnote 540:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xx.
Footnote 541:(return)Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xx.
All judgments are therefore founded onrelations. To judge is to compare two terms. "Every judgment has three parts: the subject, or notion about which the judgment is; the predicate, or notion with which the subject is compared; and the copula, or nexus, which expresses the connection or relation between them.542Every act of affirmative judgment asserts the agreement of the predicate and subject; every act of negative judgment asserts the predicate and subject do not agree. All judgment is thus an attempt to reduce to unity two cognitions, and reasoning (λογίζεσθαι) is simply the extension of this process. When we look at two straight lines of equal length, we do not merely think of them separately asthisstraight line, andthatstraight line, but they are immediately connected together by a comparison which takes place in the mind. We perceive that these two lines are alike; they are of equal length, and they are both straight; and the connection which is perceived as existing between them is arelation of sameness or identity.543When we observe any change occurring in nature, as, for example, the melting of wax in the presence of heat, the mind recognizes a causal efficiency in the fire to produce that change, and the relation now apprehended is arelation of cause and effect544But the fundamental principles, the necessary ideas which lie at the basis of all the judgments (as the ideas of space and time, of unity and identity, of substance and cause, of the infinite and perfect) are not given by the judgment, butby the "highest faculty"--"theIntuitive Reason,545which is, for us, the source of all unhypothetical and absolute knowledge.
Footnote 542:(return)Thompson's "Laws of Thought," p. 134.
Footnote 543:(return)"Phædo," §§ 50-57, 62.
Footnote 544:(return)"Timæus," ch. ix.; "Sophocles," § 109.
Footnote 545:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xxi.
The knowledge, therefore, which is furnished by the Discursive Reason, Plato does not regard as "real Science." "It is something between Opinion on the one hand, and Intuition on the other."546
Footnote 546:(return)Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xxi.
4th. REASON (νοῦς)--Intuitive Reason, is the organ of self-evident, necessary, and universal Truth. In an immediate, direct, and intuitive manner, it takes hold on truth with absolute certainty. The reason, through the medium ofideas, holds communion with the world of real Being. These ideas are thelightwhich reveals the world of unseen realities, as the sun reveals the world of sensible forms. "The idea of the goodis thesunof the Intelligible World; it sheds on objects the light of truth, and gives to the soul that knows, the power of knowing."547Under this light, the eye of reason apprehends the eternal world of being as truly, yes more truly, than the eye of sense apprehends the world of phenomena. This power the rational soul possesses by virtue of its having a nature kindred, or even homogeneous with the Divinity. It was "generated by the Divine Father," and, like him, it is in a certain sense "eternal."548Not that we are to understand Plato as teaching that the rational soul had an independent and underived existence; itwas created or "generated" in eternity,549and even now, in its incorporate state, is not amenable to the conditions of time and space, but, in a peculiar sense, dwells in eternity; and therefore is capable of beholding eternal realities, and coming into communion with absolute beauty, and goodness, and truth--that is, with God, theAbsolute Being.
Footnote 547:(return)Ibid., bk. vi. ch. xix.; see also ch. xviii.
Footnote 548:(return)The reader must familiarize himself with the Platonic notion of"eternity" as a fixed state out of time existing contemporaneous with one in time, to appreciate the doctrine of Plato as stated above. If we regard his idea of eternity as merely an indefinite extension of time, with a past, a present, and a future, we can offer no rational interpretation of his doctrine of the eternal nature of the rational essence of the soul. An eternal nature "generated" in a "past" or "present" time is a contradiction. But that was not Plato's conception of "eternity," as the reader will discover on perusing the "Timæus" (ch. xiv.). "God resolved to create a moving image of eternity, and out of that eternity which reposes in its ownunchangeable unityhe framed an eternal image moving according to numerical succession, which we callTime. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to apply the terms,past, present, future, to real Being, which is immovable. Past and future are expressions only suitable to generation which proceeds through time." Time reposes on the bosom of eternity, as all bodies are in space.
Footnote 549:(return)"Timæus," ch. xvi., and "Phædrus," where the soul is pronounced ἀρχὴ δὲ ἁγένητον.
Thus the soul (ψυχή) as a composite nature is on one side linked to the eternal world, its essence being generated of that ineffable element which constitutes the real, the immutable, and the permanent. It is a beam of the eternal Sun, a spark of the Divinity, an emanation from God. On the other side it is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part550being formed of that which is relative and phenomenal. The soul of man thus stands midway between the eternal and the contingent, the real and the phenomenal, and as such, it is the mediator between, and the interpreter of, both.
Footnote 550:(return)Θυµειδές, the seat of the nobler--ἐπιθυµητικόν, the seat of the baser passions.
In the allegory of the "Chariot and Winged Steeds"551Plato represents the lower or inferior part of man's nature as dragging the soul down to the earth, and subjecting it to the slavery and debasement of corporeal conditions. Out of these conditions there arise numerous evils that disorder the mind and becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the condition of finite and multiform being into which we have "fallen by our own fault." The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The soul is now dwelling in "the grave we call the body." In its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the rational element is "asleep." "Life is more of a dream than a reality." Men are utterly the slaves of sense, the sport of phantoms and illusions. We now resemble those "captives chained in a subterraneous cave," so poetically described in the seventh book of the "Republic;" their backs are turned to the light, and consequently they see but the shadows of the objectswhich pass behind them, and they "attribute to these shadows a perfect reality." Their sojourn upon earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the body, a dreamy exile from their proper home. "Nevertheless these pale fugitive shadows suffice to revive in us the reminiscence of that higher world we once inhabited, if we have not absolutely given the reins to the impetuous untamed horse which in Platonic symbolism represents the emotive sensuous nature of man." The soul has some dim and shadowy recollection of its ante-natal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.
Footnote 551:(return)"Phædrus," § 54-62.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life's star,Has had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar,Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory, do we comeFrom God, who is our home."552
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life's star,Has had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar,Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory, do we comeFrom God, who is our home."552
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home."552
Footnote 552:(return)Wordsworth, "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," vol. v.
Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in the body, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul has yet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and purity, and bliss, in which it was first created. Its affinities are still on high. It yearns for a higher and nobler form of life. It essays to rise, but its eye is darkened by sense, its wings are besmeared by passion and lust; it is "borne downward, until at length it falls upon and attaches itself to that which is material and sensual," and it flounders and grovels still amid the objects of sense.
And now, with all that seriousness and earnestness of spirit which is peculiarly Christian, Plato asks how the soul may be delivered from the illusions of sense, the distempering influence of the body, and the disturbances of passion, which becloud its vision of the real, the good, and the true?
Plato believed and hoped this could be accomplished byphilosophy. This he regarded as a grand intellectual discipline for the purification of the soul. By this it was to bedisenthralled from the bondage of sense553and raised into the empyrean of pure thought "where truth and reality shine forth." All souls have the faculty of knowing, but it is only by reflection, and self-knowledge, and intellectual discipline, that the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the vision of God. And this intellectual discipline was thePlatonic Dialectic.
Footnote 553:(return)Not, however, fully in this life. The consummation of the intellectual struggle into "the intelligible world" is death. The intellectual discipline was therefore µελέτη θανατου,a preparation for death.
The Platonic Dialectic is the Science of Eternal and Immutable Principles, and themethod(ὄργανον) by which these first principles are brought forward into the clear light of consciousness. The student of Plato will have discovered that he makes no distinction between logic and metaphysics. These are closely united in the one science to which he gives the name of "Dialectic" and which was at once the science of the ideas and laws of the Reason, and of the mental process by which the knowledge of Real Being is attained, and a ground of absolute certainty is found. This science has, in modern times, been calledPrimordialorTranscendental Logic.
We have seen that Plato taught that the human reason is originally in possession of fundamental and necessary ideas--the copies of the archetypal ideas which dwell in the eternal Reason; and that these ideas are the primordial laws of thought--that is, they are the laws under which we conceive of all objective things, and reason concerning all existence. These ideas, he held, are not derived from sensation, neither are they generalizations from experience, but they are inborn and connatural. And, further, he entertained the belief, more, however, as a reasonable hypothesis554than as a demonstrable truth, that these standard principles were acquired by the soulin a pre-existent state in which it stood face to face with ideas of eternal order, beauty, goodness, and truth.555"Journeying with the Deity," the soul contemplated justice, wisdom, science--not that science which is concerned with change, and which appears under a different manifestation in different objects, which we choose to call beings; but such science as is in that which alone is indeedbeing.556Ideas, therefore, belong to, and inhere in, that portion of the soul which is properly οὐσία--essenceorbeing; which had an existence anterior to time, and even now has no relation to time, because it is now in eternity--that is, in a sphere of being to which past, present, and future can have no relation.557
Footnote 554:(return): Within "the εἰκότων µύθων ἰδέα--the category of probability."--"Phædo."
Footnote 555:(return)"Phædo," § 50-56.
Footnote 556:(return)"Phædrus," § 58.
Footnote 557:(return)See note on p. 349.
All knowledge of truth and reality is, therefore, according to Plato, a REMINISCENCE (ἀνάµνησις)--a recovery of partially forgotten ideas which the soul possessed in another state of existence; and thedialecticof Plato is simply the effort, by aptinterrogation, to lead the mind to "recollect"558the truth which has been formerly perceived by it, and is even now in the memory though not in consciousness. An illustration of this method is attempted in the "Meno" where Plato introduces Socrates as making an experiment on the mind of an uneducated person. Socrates puts a series of questions to a slave of Meno, and at length elicits from the youth a right enunciation of a geometrical truth. Socrates then points triumphantly to this instance, and bids Meno observe that he had not taught the youth any thing, but simply interrogated him as to his opinions, whilst the youth had recalled the knowledge previously existing in his own mind.559
Footnote 558:(return)"To learn is to recover our own previous knowledge, and this is properly torecollect."--"Phædo" § 55.
Footnote 559:(return)"Meno," § 16-20. "Now for a person to recover knowledge himself through himself, is not this torecollect."
Now whilst we readily grant that the instance given in the "Meno" does not sustain the inference of Plato that "the boy" had learnt these geometrical truths "in eternity," and that they had simply been brought forward into the view of hisconsciousness by the "questioning" of Socrates, yet it certainly does prove thatthere are ideas or principles in the human reason which are not derived from without--which are anterior to all experience, and for the development of which, experience furnishes the occasion, but is not the origin and source. By a kind of lofty inspiration, he caught sight of that most important doctrine of modern philosophy, so clearly and logically presented by Kant,that the Reason is the source of a pureà prioriknowledge--a knowledge native to, and potentially in the mind, antecedent to all experience, and which is simply brought out into the field of consciousness by experience conditions. Around this greatest of all metaphysical truths Plato threw a gorgeous mythic dress, and presented it under the most picturesque imagery.560But, when divested of the rich coloring which the glowing imagination of Plato threw over it, it is but a vivid presentation of the cardinal truth thatthere are ideas in the mind which have not been derived from without, and which, therefore, the mind brought with it into the present sphere of being. The validity and value of this fundamental doctrine, even as presented by Plato, is unaffected by any speculations in which he may have indulged, as to the pre-existence of the soul. He simply regarded this doctrine of pre-existence as highly probable--a plausible explanation of the facts. That there are ideas, innate and connatural to the human mind, he clung to as the most vital, most precious, most certain of all truths; and to lead man to the recognitions of these ideas, to bring them within the field of consciousness, was, in his judgment, the great business of philosophy.
And this was the grand aim of hisDialectic--to elicit, to bring to light the truths which are already in the mind--"a µαίευσις" a kind of intellectual midwifery561--a delivering of the mind of the ideas with which it was pregnant.
Footnote 560:(return)As in the "Phædo," §§ 48-57; "Phædrus," §§ 52-64; "Republic," bk. x.
Footnote 561:(return)"Theætetus," §§ 17-20.
It is thus, at first sight, obvious that it was a higher and more comprehensive science than the art of deduction. For itwas directed to the discovery and establishment of First Principles. Its sole object was the discovery of truth. His dialectic was ananalyticalandinductive method. "In Dialectic Science," saysAlcinous, "there is a dividing and a defining, and an analyzing, and, moreover, that which is inductive and syllogistic."562EvenBacon, who is usually styled "the Father of the Inductive method," and who, too often, speaks disparagingly of Plato, is constrained to admit that he followed the inductive method. "An induction such as will be of advantage for the invention and demonstration of Arts and Sciences must distinguish the essential nature of things (naturam) by proper rejections and exclusions, and then after as many of these negatives as are sufficient, by comprising, above all (super), the positives. Up to this time this had not been done, nor even attempted,except by Plato alone, who, in order to attain his definitions and ideas, has used, to a certain extent, the method of Induction."563
Footnote 562:(return)"Introduction to the Doctrines of Plato," vol. vi. p. 249. "The Platonic Method was the method of induction."--Cousin's "History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 307.
Footnote 563:(return)"Novum Organum," vol. i. p. 105.
The process of investigation adopted by Plato thus corresponds with the inductive method of modern times, with this simple difference, that Bacon conducted science into the world ofmatter, whilst Plato directed it to the world ofmind. The dialectic of Plato aimed at the discovery of the "laws of thought;" the modern inductive philosophy aims at the discovery of the "laws of nature." The latter concerns itself chiefly with the inquiry after the "causes" of material phenomena; the former concerned itself with the inquiry after the "first principles" of all knowledge and of all existence. Both processes are, therefore, carried on byinterrogation. The analysis which seeks for a law of nature proceeds by the interrogation of nature. The analysis of Plato proceeds by the interrogation of mind, in order to discover the fundamentalideaswhich lie at the basis of all cognition, which determine all ourprocesses of thought, and which, in their final analysis, reveal the REAL BEING, which is the ground and explanation of all existence.
Now the fact that such an inquiry has originated in the human mind, and that it can not rest satisfied without some solution, is conclusive evidence that the mind has an instinctive belief, a proleptic anticipation, that such knowledge can be attained. There must unquestionably be some mental initiative which is themotiveandguideto all philosophical inquiry. We must have some well-grounded conviction, someà prioribelief, some pre-cognition "ad intentionem ejus quod quæritur,"564which determines the direction of our thinking. The mind does not go to work aimlessly; it asks a specific question; it demands the "whence" and the "why" of that which is. Neither does it go to work unfurnished with any guiding principles. That which impels the mind to a determinate act of thinking is the possession of aknowledgewhich is different from, and independent of, the process of thinking itself. "A rational anticipation is, then, the ground of theprudens quæstio--"the forethought query, which, in fact, is the prior half of the knowledge sought."565If the mind inquire after "laws," and "causes," and "reasons," and "grounds,"--the first principles of all knowledge and of all existence,--"it must have theà prioriideas of "law," and "cause," and "reason," and "beingin se"which, though dimly revealed to the mind previous to the discipline of reflection, are yet unconsciously governing its spontaneous modes of thought. The whole process of induction has, then, some rational ground to proceed upon--some principles deeper than science, and more certain than demonstration, which reason contains within itself, and which induction "draws out" into clearer light.
Footnote 564:(return)Bacon.
Footnote 565:(return)Coleridge, vol. ii. p. 413.
Now this mental initiative of every process of induction is the intuitive and necessary convictionthat there must be a sufficient reason why every thing exists, and why it is as it is, and not otherwise;566or in other words, if any thing begins to be, something else must be supposed567as the ground, and reason, and cause, and law of its existence. This "law of sufficient(ordeterminant) reason"568is the fundamental principle of all metaphysical inquiry. It is contained, at least in a negative form, in that famous maxim of ancient philosophy, "De nihilo nihil"--"Ἀδύνατον γίνεσθαί τι ἐκ µηδενὸς προϋπάρχοντος." "It is impossible for a real entity to be made or generated from nothing pre-existing;" or in other words, "nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause."569This principle is also distinctly announced by Plato: "Whatever is generated, is necessarily generated from a certain αἰτίαν"--ground, reason, orcause; "for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be generated without a cause."570
Footnote 566:(return)"Phædo," § 103.
Footnote 567:(return)Suppono, to place under as a support, to take as a ground.
Footnote 568:(return)This generic principle, viewed under different relations, gives--1st.The principle of Substance--every quality supposes a subject or real being.2d.The principle of Causality--every thing which begins to be must have a cause.3d.The principle of Law--every phenomenon must obey some uniform law.4th.The principle of Final Cause--every means supposes an end, every existence has a purpose or reason why.5th.The principle of Unity--all plurality supposes a unity as its basis and ground.
1st.The principle of Substance--every quality supposes a subject or real being.
2d.The principle of Causality--every thing which begins to be must have a cause.
3d.The principle of Law--every phenomenon must obey some uniform law.
4th.The principle of Final Cause--every means supposes an end, every existence has a purpose or reason why.
5th.The principle of Unity--all plurality supposes a unity as its basis and ground.
Footnote 569:(return)Cudworth's "Intellectual System," vol. ii. p. 161.
Footnote 570:(return)"Timæus," ch. ix.
The first business of Plato's dialectic is to demonstrate that the ground and reason of all existence can not be found in the mere objects of sense, nor in any opinions or judgments founded upon sensation. Principles are only so far "first principles" as they are permanent and unchangeable, depending on neither time, nor place, nor circumstances. But the objects of sense are in ceaseless flux and change; they are "always becoming;" they can not be said to have any "real being." They are not to-day what they were yesterday, and they will never again be what they are now; consequently all opinions founded on mere phenomena are equally fluctuating and uncertain. Setting out, therefore, from the assumption of the fallaciousness of "opinion" it examined the various hypotheseswhich had been bequeathed by previous schools of philosophy, or were now offered by contemporaneous speculators, and showed they were utterly inadequate to the solution of the problem. This scrutiny consisted in searching for the ground of "contradiction"571with regard to each opinion founded on sensation, and showing that opposite views were equally tenable. It inquired on what ground these opinions were maintained, and what consequences flowed therefrom, and it showed that the grounds upon which "opinion" was founded, and the conclusions which were drawn from it, were contradictory, and consequently untrue.572"They," the Dialecticians, "examined the opinions of men as if they were error; and bringing them together by a reasoning process to the same point, they placed them by the side of each other: and by so placing, they showed thatthe opinions are at one and the same time contrary to themselves, about the same things, with reference to the same circumstances, and according to the same premises."573And inasmuch as the same attribute can not, at the same time, be affirmed and denied of the same subject,574therefore a thing can not be at once "changeable" and "unchangeable," "movable" and "immovable," "generated" and "eternal."575The objects of sense, however generalized and classified, can only give the contingent, the relative, and the finite; therefore the permanent ground and sufficient reason of all phenomenal existence can not be found in opinions and judgments founded upon sensation.
Footnote 571:(return)"The Dialectitian is one who syllogistically infers the contradictions implied in popular opinions."--Aristotle, "Sophist," §§ 1, 2.
Footnote 572:(return)"Republic," bk. vi. ch. xiii.
Footnote 573:(return)"Sophist," § 33; "Republic," bk. iv. ch. xii.
Footnote 574:(return)See the "Phædo," § 119, and "Republic," bk. iv. ch. xiii., where the Law of Non-contradiction is announced.
Footnote 575:(return)"Parmenides," § 3.
The dialectic process thus consisted almost entirely ofrefutation,576or what both he and Aristotle denominatedelenchus(ἔλεγχος)--a process of reasoning by which the contradictoryof a given proposition is inferred. "When refutation had done its utmost, and all the points of difficulty and objection had been fully brought out, the dialectic method had accomplished its purpose; and the affirmation which remained, after this discussion, might be regarded as setting forth the truth of the question under consideration;"577or in other words,when a system of error is destroyed by refutation, the contradictory opposite principle, with its logical developments, must be accepted as an established truth.
Footnote 576:(return)Confutation is the greatest and chiefest of purification.--"Sophist," § 34.
Footnote 577:(return)Article "Plato," Encyclopædia Britannica.
By the application of this method, Plato had not only exposed the insufficiency and self-contradiction of all results obtained by a mereà posteriorigeneralization of the simple facts of experience, but he demonstrated, as a consequence, that we are in possession of some elements of knowledge which have not been derived from sensation; that there are, in all minds, certain notions, principles, or ideas, which have been furnished by a higher faculty than sense; and that these notions, principles, or ideas, transcend the limits of experience, and reveal the knowledge ofreal being--τὸ ὄντως ὄν--Being in se.
To determine what these principles or ideas are, Plato now addresses himself to theanalysis of thought. "It is the glory of Plato to have borne the light of analysis into the most obscure and inmost region; he searched out what, in this totality which forms consciousness, is the province of reason; what comes from it, and not from the imagination and the senses--from within, and not from without."578Now to analyze is to decompose, that is, to divide, and to define, in order to see better that which really is. The chief logical instruments of the dialectic method are, therefore,DivisionandDefinition. "The being able todivideaccording to genera, and not to consider the same species as different, nor a different as the same,"579and "to see under one aspect, and bring together under one general idea, many things scattered in various places, that, bydefiningeach, a person may make it clear what the subject is," is, according to Plato, "dialectical."580
Footnote 578:(return)Cousin's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy," vol. i. p. 328.
Footnote 579:(return)"Sophist," § 83.
Footnote 280:(return)"Phædrus," §§ 109, 111.
We have already seen that, in his first efforts at applying reflection to the concrete phenomena of consciousness, Plato had recognized two distinct classes of cognitions, marked by characteristics essentially opposite;--one of "sensible" objects having a definite outline, limit, and figure, and capable of being imaged and represented to the mind in a determinate form--the other of "intelligible" objects, which can not be outlined or represented in the memory or the imagination by any figures or images, and are, therefore, the objects of purely rational conception. He found, also, that we arrive at one class of cognitions "mediately" through images generated in the vital organism, or by some testimony, definition, or explication of others; whilst we arrive at the other class "immediately" by simple intuition, or rational apperception. The mind stands face to face with the object, and gazes directly upon it. The reality of that object is revealed in its own light, and we find it impossible to refuse our assent--that is, it isself-evident. One class consisted ofcontingentideas--that is, their objects are conceived as existing, with the possibility, without any contradiction, of conceiving of their non-existence; the other consisted ofnecessaryideas--their objects are conceived as existing with the absolute impossibility of conceiving of their non-existence. Thus we can conceive of this book, this table, this earth, as not existing, but we can not conceive the non-existence of space. We can conceive of succession in time as not existing, but we can not, in thought, annihilate duration. We can imagine this or that particular thing not to have been, but we can not conceive of the extinction of Being in itself. He further observed, that one class of our cognitions areconditionalideas; the existence of their objects is conceived only on the supposition of some antecedent existence, as for example, the idea of qualities, phenomena, events; whilst the other class of cognitions areunconditionalandabsolute--we can conceive of their objects asexisting independently and unconditionally--existing whether any thing else does or does not exist, as space, duration, the infinite, Beingin se. And, finally, whilst some ideas appear in us asparticularandindividual, determined and modified by our own personality and liberty, there are others which are, in the fullest sense,universal. They are not the creations of our own minds, and they can not be changed by our own volitions. They depend upon neither times, nor places, nor circumstances; they are common to all minds, in all times, and in all places. These ideas are the witnesses in our inmost being that there is something beyond us, and above us; and beyond and above all the contingent and fugitive phenomena around us. Beneath all changes there is apermanentbeing. Beyond all finite and conditional existance there is somethingunconditionalandabsolute. Having determined that there are truths which are independent of our own minds--truths which are not individual, but universal--truths which would be truths even if our minds did not perceive them, we are led onward to asuper-sensualand super-natural ground, on which they rest.
To reach this objective reality on which the ideas of reason repose, is the grand effort of Plato's dialectic. He seeks, by a rigid analysis, clearly toseparate, and accurately todefinetheà prioriconceptions of reason. And it was only when he had eliminated every element which is particular, contingent, and relative, and had defined the results in precise and accurate language, that he regarded the process as complete. The ideas which are self-evident, universal, and necessary, were then clearly disengaged, and raised to their pure and absolute form. "You call the man dialectical who requires a reason of the essence or being of each thing. As the dialectical man can define the essence of every thing, so can he of the good. He candefinethe idea of the good,separatingit from all others--follow it through all windings, as in a battle, resolved to mark it, not according to opinion, but according to science."581
Footnote 581:(return)"Republic," bk. vii. ch. xiv.
Abstractionis thus the process, the instrument of the Platonicdialectic. It is important, however, that we should distinguish between the method ofcomparativeabstraction, as employed in physical inquiry, and thatimmediateabstraction, which is the special instrument of philosophy. The former proceeds by comparison and generalization, the latter by simple separation. The one yields a contingent general principle as the result of the comparison of a number of individual cases, the other gives an universal and necessary principle by the analysis of a single concrete fact. As an illustration we may instance "the principle of causality." To enable us to affirm "that every event must have a cause," we do not need to compare and generalize a great number of events. "The principle which compels us to pronounce the judgment is already complete in the first as in the last event; it can change in regard to its object, it can not change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the greater or less number of applications."582In the presence of a single event, the universality and necessity of this principle of causality is recognized with just as much clearness and certainty as in the presence of a million events, however carefully generalized.
Footnote 582:(return)Cousin's "The True, the Beautiful, and the Good," pp. 57, 58.
Abstraction, then, it will be seen, creates nothing; neither does it add any new element to the store of actual cognitions already possessed by all human minds. It simply brings forward into a clearer and more definite recognition, that which necessarily belongs to the mind as part of its latent furniture, and which, as a law of thought, has always unconsciously governed all its spontaneous movements. As a process of rational inquiry, it was needful to bring the mind into intelligible and conscious communion with the world ofIdeas. These ideas are partially revealed in the sensible world, all things being formed, as Plato believed, according to ideas as models and exemplars, of which sensible objects are the copies. They are more fully manifested in the constitution of the human mind which, by virtue of its kindred nature with the original essence or being, must know them intuitively and immediately. Andthey are brought out fully by the dialectic process, which disengages them from all that is individual and phenomenal, and sets them forth in their pure and absolute form.