Plato and Platonism

ainst that w

g is, but al

place; the Beauty which is the same, yesterday, to-day and for ever. In such ideas or ideals, "eternal" as participating in the essential character of the facts they represent to us, we come in contact, as he supposes, with the insoluble, immovable granite beneath and amid the wasting torrent of mere phenomena. And in thus ruling the deliberate aim of his philo

n this Zeno now enjoyed seems to have been very much the achievement of his youth, and came of a mastery of the sort of paradox youth always delights in. It may be said that no one has ever really answered him; the difficulties with which he played so nicely being really connected with those "antinomies," or contradictions, or inconsistencies, of our thoughts, which more than two thousand years afterwards Kant noted as actually inher

ngly irresistible facts, of such experience. Motion was indeed, as the Heracliteans said, everywhere: was the most incisive of all facts in the realm of supposed sensible fact. Think of the prow of the trireme cleaving the water. For a moment Zeno himself might have seemed but a follower of Heraclitus. He goes beyond him. All is motion: he admits.-Yes: only, motion is (I can show it!) a nonsensical term. Follow it, or rather stay by it, and it transforms itself, agreeably enough for the [30] curious observer, into rest. Motion must be motion in space, of course; from point to point in it,-and again, more closely, from point to point within such interval; and so on, infinitely; 'tis rest there: perpetual motion is perpetual rest:-the hurrican

g even Zeno as one of its institutors) opposes the seen to the unseen as [31] falsehood to truth. It was the beginning of scholasticism; and the philosophic mind will perhaps never be quite in health, quite sane or natural, again. The objective, unconscious, pleasantly sensuous mind of

e human mind always, all those unprofitable queries which hang about the notions of matter and time and space, their divisibility and the like, seemed to be stirring together, under the utterance of this brilliant, phenomenally clever, perhaps insolent, young man, his master's favourite. To the work of that grave master, nevertheless-of Parmenides-a very different person certainly from his rattling disciple, Zeno's [32] seemingly so fantastic doctrine was sincerely in service. By its destructive criticism, its dissip

rless, formless, impalpable existence (ousia achr?matos, asch?matistos, anaph?s)+ to use the words of Plato, for whom Parmenides became a sort of inspired voice. Note at times, in reading him, in the closing pages of the fifth book of The Republic for instance, the strange accumulation of te

ich is in truth:-well! one of the dry sticks of mere "natural theology," as it is called. In this he was but following the first, the original, founder of the Eleatic School, Xenophanes, who in a somewhat scornful spirit had urged on men's attention that, in their prayers and sacrifices to the gods, in all their various thoughts and statements, graceful or hideous, about them, they had only all along with much fallacy been making gods after their own likeness, as horse or dog too, if

ies. And yet, from another point of view, definition, qualification, is a negative process: it is as if each added quality took from the object we are defining one or more potential qualities. The more definite things become as objects of sensible or other empirical apprehension, the more, it might be said from the logician's point of view, have we denied about them. It might seem that their increasing reality as objects of sense was in direct proportion to the increase of their distance from that perfect Being which is everywhere and at all times in every possible mode of being. A [35] thing visibly white is found as one approaches it to be also smooth to the touch; and this added quality, says the formal logician, does but deprive it of

hat became very dear, as we know, to the Greek soul, to what was perhaps most essentially Greek in it, to the Dorian element there. Apollo, the Dorian god, was but its visible consecration. It was what, under his blessing, art superinduced upon the rough stone, the yielding clay, the jarring metallic strings, the common speech of every day. Philosophy, in its turn, with enlarging purpose, would project a similar light of intelligence upon the at first sight somewhat unmeaning world we find actually around us:-project it; or rather discover it, as being really pre-existent there, if one were happy enough to get one's self into the right point of view. To certain fortunate minds the efficacious moment of insight would come, when, with delightful adaptation of means to ends, of the parts to the

s at work in our own bodies or souls, in the stars, in or under the earth, their very definiteness, their limitation, will but make them the more antagonistic to that which alone really is, because it is always and everywhere itself, identical exclusively with itself. Phenomena!-by the force of such arguments as Zeno's, the instructed would make a clean sweep of them, for

e revelation to Israel in the midst of picturesque idolatries, "The Lord thy God is one Lord";+ only that here it made no claim to touch the affections, or even to warm the imagination. Israel's Greek cousin was to undergo a harder, a mo

, diligent modern scholarship has collected fragments of it, which afford sufficient independent evidence of his manner of thought, and supplement conveniently Plato's, of course highly subjective, presentment in his Parmenides of what had so deeply influence

in te kai h?s ou

; or, in the Latin of scholasticism, here inaugu

eleuthos; al?th

e other-that what is, is not; and by consequence that what is not

mmen atarpon? oute gar an gnoi?

ing are identical."-Famous utterance, yet of so dubious omen!-To gar auto voein estin te kai einai +--idem est enim cogitare et esse

een put on a quest (vain quest it may prove to be) after a kind of knowledge perhaps not properly attainable. Hereafter, in every age, some will be found to start afresh quixotically, through what wastes of words! in search of that true Substance, the One, the Absolute, which to the majority of acute people is after all but zero, and a mere algebraic symbol for not

at union with God which can only be attained by the literal negation of self, by a kind of moral suicide; of which something also may be found, under the cowl of the monk, in the clear, cold, inaccessible, impossible heights of the book of the Imitation. It presents itself once more, now altogether beyond Christian influence, in the hard and ambitious intellectualism of Spinoza; a doctrine of pure repellent substance-substance "in vacuo," to be lost in which, however, would be the proper consummation of the transitory individual life. Spinoza's own absolutely colourless existence was a practical comment upon i

etual lethargy, the Parmenidean assertion of the exclusive reign of "The One," receives an unlooked-for testimony from the modern physical philosopher, hinting that the phenomena he deals with-matter, organism, consciousness-began in a state of indeterminate, abstract indifference, with a single uneasy start in a sort of eternal sleep, a ripple on the dead, level surface. Increasing indeed for a while in radius and depth, unde

was able to derive, by a [43] sort of compromise, from the impossible paradox of his ancient master. What was it,

er? ara heteron ti dynamen? hekatera aut?n pephyke? ouk ench?rei gn?ston kai doxaston tauton einai?)+ and thirdly, to illustrate that opposition, the figurative use, so impr

he Republic) if what is, is the object of knowledge, would

omethi

ning what is not? Consider! does not he who has opinion direct his opinion upon some

oss

mething; hasn't he? Yet after all what is not, is not a

tai

igned of necessity ignoran

ly: h

hen, nor what is not, i

o

ould be neither ign

eems

g beyond knowledge in clearness

e one, nor

oesn't it?) to be a darker thing than

h so; he

ie within

e

be midway, between

btedl

g of that kind would lie between that which is in unmixed clearness, and that which wholly is not; and that there would be,

gh

, what we call 'opinion' h

arl

which could rightly be called by neither term distinctly; in order that, if it appear, we may in justice determine

it not

s i

gs (aei kata tauta h?saut?s echousan)+ yet, on the other hand, holds [45] that there are the many beautiful objects:-that lover of sight (ho philotheam?n)+ who can by no means bear it if any one says that the beautiful is one; the just also; and

her it must be that

ul and ugly; and all

e things:-Do they se

than

at

y-will they at all more truly be called by these nam

ach of them will a

then-is it, more truly than it is no

unuch and his fling round the bat-with what, and on what, the riddle says he hit it; for these things also seem to set both ways,

presumably they will not appear more obscure than what is not, so as not to be, still more; nor more luminous than what is, so as to be, even more than th

we

f, it must be declared matter not of knowledge, but of opinion; to be apprehended

in effect, for Plato the true Being, the Absolute, the One, does become delightfully multiple, as the world of ideas- appreciable, through years of loving study, more and more clearly, one by one, as the perfectly concrete, mutually adjusted, permanent forms of our veritable experience: the Bravery, for instance, that cannot be confused, not merely with Cowardice, but with Wisdom, or Humility. One after another they emerge again from the dead level, the Parmenidean tabula rasa, with nothing less than the reality of persons face to face with us, of a personal identity. It was as if the firm plastic outlines of the delightful old Greek polytheism had found their way back after all into a

t upwards towards the light, broad, across the whole cavern. Suppose them here from childhood; their legs and necks chained; so that there they stay, and can see only what is in front of them, being unable by reason of the chain to move their heads round about: and

: he

ls of all sorts wrought in stone and wood; and, na

you describe: said he:

selves: I answere

tical equivalent of the doctrine of motion; and, as sometimes happens, what seems hopelessly perverse as a metaphysic for the understanding is found to be realisable enough as one of many phases of our so flexible human feeling. The abstract philosophy of the One might seem indeed to have been translated into the terms of a human will in the rigid, disinterested, renunciant career of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, its mortal coldn

ivided Intelligence, which dia pant?n phoita+-goes to and fro through all things, the Stoic pontiff is true to the Parmenidean schooling of his flock; yet departs from it also in a measure by a certain expansion of phrase, inevitable, it may be, if one has to speak at all about that chilly abstraction, still more make a hymn to it. He is far from the cold precept of Spinoza, that great re-assertor of the Parmenidean tradition: That whoso loves God truly must not expect to be loved by Him in return. In truth, there are echoes here from many various sources. E

physeos arch?ge, nomou meta panta kybern?n, chaireˇ

Philosophorum Gra

sed above all gods:

all power

e world was from Th

over al

flesh speak: for w

se a hymn unto Thee:

po

he heavens obeyeth T

d the

lights mixed togethe

ve all f

e upon earth apart

, nor in

the wicked do: b

l to set even the cro

ashioned and the ali

together all things

ev

be one in all thing

ed from our souls: t

erewith Thou h

y works for ever: as

e

O

: To Syngramma. Tran

ranslation: "the colorless, utterly formless, intangible essence." Plato, Phaedru

sia. Liddell and Scott def

n: to on. Translati

ple is that of

od behaviour, decency; 3. a set form or order: of states, government; 4. the mode or fashio

iddell and Scott definition: "prop

inition: "I. beginning, first cause, origin. II. 1

a legomena. Pater's translation

d is one LORD: . . ." See also Mark 12:29: "And Jesus answered him, The first o

text editor's translation: "Regarding

hat what is not, is not." Parmenides, Epe?n Leipsana [Fragmentary Song or Poem], line 35. Fragmenta Philosophorum Gr

Leipsana [Fragmentary Song or Poem], line 36. Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 118. Although I have left the quotation as Pater renders it, the semicolon shoul

's translation: "I tell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion: That which is not, never could you know: th

em est enim cogitare et esse"; in English, that may be translated, "Thinking and being are id

"at what point I begin; for thither I shall come back over again." Parmenid

aston tauton einai. E-text editor's translation: "opinion differs from scientific knowledge...To each of them belongs a different powe

an. Pater's translation: "ever in the same condition

finition "fond of seeing, fond of spectacles or shows." Thi

n: to on. Translati

djective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time." See also Marius the Epicurean, Vo

. Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1967 (reprint of the Paris, 1860 edition). Pater has translated Cleanthes' phrase koinos logos as "undivided Intelligence." The relevant verse reads, "su kateuthyn?s koinon logon, hos dia p

Cleanthes (300-220 B.C.), Hymn to Zeus, line 4. Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum, Vol. 1, 151. Pater

slation of the Hymn to Zeus. As above, the Greek is