Plato and Platonism

THEORY

exion. Those tendencies combine and find their complete expression in what Plato's commentators, rather than Plato, have called the "theory of ideas," itself indeed not so much a doctrine or theory, as a way of regarding and speaking of general terms, such as Useful or Just; of abstract notions, like Equality

ther of all realists. Realism, as such, in the sense just indicated, is not in itself a very difficult or transcendental theory; but rises, again and again, at least in a particular class of minds, quite naturally, as the answer to a natural question. Taking our own stand as to this matter somewhere between the realist and the conceptualist:-See! we might say, there is a general consciousness, a permanent common sense, independent indeed of each one of us, but with which we are, each one of us, in communication. It is in that, those common or general ideas really reside. And we might add just here (giving his due to the nominalist also) that those abstract or common [152] notions come to the

of what is essential from what is unessential in the actual things about him, Plato passes by successive stages, which we should try to keep distinct as we read him, to what may be rightly called a "transcendental," what to many minds has [153] seemed a fantastic and unintelligible habit of thought, regarding those abstractions, which indeed seem to become for him not merely substantial things-in-themselves, but little short of living persons, to be known as pe

rom age to age preoccupy acuter minds, those difficulties about the Many a

ur reason itself in us. And whenever a young man gets his first taste of this he is delighted as having found the priceless pearl of philosophy; he becomes an enthusiast in his delight; and eagerly sets in motion- kinei + -every definition [154] -logos+-every conception or mental definition (it looked so fixed and firm till then!) at one time winding things round each other and welding them into one (that is, he drops all particulari- ties out of view, and thinks only of the one common form) and the

; though the questions we are apt to tear to pieces, organism and environment, or protoplasm perhaps, or evolution, or the Zeit-geist and its doings, may, in their turn, come to seem quite as lifeless and unendurable. As the theological heresy of one age sometimes becomes the mere commonplace of the next, so, in matters of philosophic enquiry, it might appear that the all-absorbing novelt

fruit and roses. Take a seed from the garden. What interest it has for us all lies in our sense of potential differentiation to come: the leaves, leaf upon leaf, the flowers, a thousand new seeds in turn. It is so with animal seed; and with humanity, individually, or as a whole, its expansion into a detailed, ever-changing, parti-coloured history of particular facts and persons. Abstraction, the introduction of general ideas, seems to close it up again; to reduce flower and fruit, odour and savour, back again into the dry and worthless seed. We might as well be colour-blind at once, and there [156] is not a proper name left! We may

hand) what we actually see, see and hear, is more interesting than ever; the nineteenth century as compared with the first, with Plato's days or Homer's; the faces, the persons behind those masks which yet express so much, the flowers, or whatever it may happen to be they carry or [157] touch. The concrete, and that even as a visible thing, has gained immeasurably in richness and compass, in fineness, and interest towards us, by the process, of which those acts of generalisation, of reduction to class and gen

de; his mind is [158] drilled perforce, to learn about it; and thereby is exercised, he may think, with everything except just the thing itself, as he cares for it; with other shells, with some general laws of life, and for a while it might seem that, turning away his eyes from the "vanity" of the particular, he has been made to sacrifice the concrete, the real and living product of nature, to a mere dry and abstract product of the mind. But when he comes out of school, and on the sea- shore again finds a fellow to his toy, perhaps a finer specimen of it, he may see what the service of that converse with the general has really been towards the concrete, towards what he sees

g the concrete phenomenon, but of enriching it, with the joint perspective, the significance, the expressiveness, of all other things beside. What broad-cast light he enjoys!-that scholar, confronted with the sea- shell, for instance, or with some enigma of heredity in himself or another, with some condition of a particular soul, in circumstances which may never precisely so occur again; in the contemplation of that single phenomenon, or object, or situation. He not o

oral phenomena, to the generalisation of aesthetic, political, ethical ideas, of the laws of operation (for the essence of every true conception, or definition, or idea, is a law of operation) of the feelings and the will. To get a notion, a definition, or idea, of motion, for example, which shall not exclude the subtler forms of it, heat for instance-to get a notion of carbon, which shall include not common charcoal only, but the diamond, a thing s

isrepresent them. In the transition from the particulars to the general, and again in the transition from the general idea, the mental word, to the spoken or written word, to what we call the definition, a door lies open, both for the adulteration and the diminution of the proper content, of our conception, our definition. The first growth of the Platonic "ideas," as we see it in Socrates, according to the report of Aristotle, provided against this twofold misrepresentation. Its aim is to secure, in the terms of our discourse with others and with ourselves, precise equivalence to wh

experience reveals it. Show us, not merely accidental truths about it; but, by the doing of what (Ti poiousa)+ in the very soul of its possessor, itself by itself, Justice is a good, and Injustice a bad thing. That illustrates exactly what is meant by "an idea," the force of "knowledge through ideas," in the particular instance of Justice. It will include perhaps, on the one hand, forms of Justice so remote from the Justice of our everyday experience as to seem inversions of it; it will clearly exclude, on the other hand, acts and thoughts, not it, yet, phenomenally, so like it, as to deceive the very gods; and its area will be expanded sufficiently to in

e proper perspective, of Plato's house of thought. By its peculiarities, subsequent thought-philosophic, [164] poetic, theological-has been greatly influenced; by the intense subjectivities, the accidents, so to speak, of Plato's genius, of Plato himself; the ways constitutional with him, the magic or trick of his personality, in regarding the intellectual material he was occupied with-by Plato's psychology. And it is characteristic of him, again, that those peculiarities of his mental attitude are evidenced informally; by a tendency, as we said, by the mere general tone in which he speaks of Beauty, for instance, "as it really is," of all that "really is," under its various forms; a manner of speaking, no

here. The Platonic doctrine of "Ideas," as was said, is not so much a doctrine, as a way of speaking or feeling about certain elements of the mind; and this temper, this peculiar way of feeling, of speaking, which for most of us will ha

bout truth, that I am speaking. For the colourless, and formless, and impalpable Being, being in very truth of (that is, relative to) the soul, is visible by reason alone as one's guide. Centered about that, the generation, or seed, genos,+-the people, of true knowledge inhabits this place. As, then, the intelligence of God, which is nourished by pure or unmixed reason and knowledge (ak?rat?,+ unmixed with sense) so, the intelligence of every other soul also, which is about to receive that which properly belongs to it, beholding, after long interval, that which is, loves [166] it (that's the point!) and by the vision of truth is fed; and fares well; until, in cycle, the revo

scourse, in some other passages like it, Plato has gone beyond his master Socrates, on two planes or levels, so to speak, of specul

tions of Justice and the like, are become, first, things in themselves-the real things; and secondly, persons, to be known as persons must be; and to be loved, for the

ence, of what is essential in this or that, and common to every particular that goes by a certain common name; but are themselves rather the proper objects of all true knowledge, and a passage from all merely relative experience to the "absolute." In proportion as they lend themselves to the individual, in his effort to think, they create reason in him; they reproduce the eternal reason for him. For Socrates, as Aristotle understands him, they were still in service to, and valid only in and by, the experience they recorded, with no locus standi beyond. For Plato, for Platonists, they a

they make us what we are, as reasonable beings. The eternal Being, of Parmenides, one and indivisible, has been diffused, divided, resolved, refracted, differentiated, into the eternal Ideas, a multiple, numerous, stellar world, so to call it-abstract

power, is a condition of mind, of which the simplest illustration is primitive man adoring, as a divine being endowed with will, the meteoric stone that came rushing from the sky. That condition "survives" however, in the negro, who thinks the discharging gun a living creature; as it survives also, more subtly, in the culture of Wordsworth and Shelley, for whom clouds and peaks are kindred spirits; in the pantheism of Goethe; and in Schelling, who formulates that pantheism as a ph

auty becomes for Plato the central idea; the permanently typical instance of what an idea means; of its relation to particular things, and to the action of our thoughts upon them. It was to the lover dealing with physical beauty, a thing seen, yet unseen-seen by all, in some sense, and yet, truly, by one and not by another, as if through some capricious, personal self- discovery, by some law of affinity between the seer and what is seen, the knowing and the known-that the nature and function of an idea, as such, would come home most clearly. [170] And then, while visible beauty is the clearest, the most certain thing, in the world (lovers will always tell you so) real with the reality of something hot or cold in one's hand, it also comes nearest of all things, so Plato assures us, to its eternal pattern or prototype. For some reason, the eternal idea of beauty had left visible copies of itself, shadows, antitypes, out of all proportion, in their truthfulness and adequacy, to any copy, left her

husiasm of knowledge is literally an enthusiasm: has about it that character of possession of one person by another, by which those "animistic" old Greeks explained natural madness. That philosophic enthusiasm, that impassioned desire for true knowledge, is a kind of madness (mania)+ the madness to which

nto a human body). But to rise from things here to the recollection of those, is not an easy matter [173] for every soul; neither for those which then had but a brief view of things there; nor for such as were unlucky in their descent hither, so that, through the influence of certain associations, turning themselves to what is not right, they have forgotten the sacred forms which then they saw. Few souls, in truth, remain, to which the gift of reminiscence adequately pertains. These, when they see some likeness of things there, are lost in amazement, and belong no longer to themselves; only, they understand not the true nature of their affection, because they lack discernment. Now, of Justice, and of Temperance, and of all those other qualities which are precious to souls, there is no clear light in their semblances h

through the clearest of all our bodily senses, gleaming with utmost brightness. For sight comes to us keenest of all our bodily senses, though Wisdom is not seen by it. Marvellous loves, in truth, would that (namely, Wisdom) have afforded, had it presented any m

O

Pater's translation: "intellectual

on: "like to like." Variants of the phrase occur in many

translation: "under the influence of . . .

Pater's translation: "sets i

ter's contextual translation: "d

sage begins a

s. Liddell and Scott definition / E-text edito

poiousa. Pater's translati

on: "separable." The term occurs often in Aristotle

and Scott definition: "race, descent." Plato, Phaedrus 247a. 165. +Transliter

t?m?n ousan. Pater's translation: "the knowledge which

ato, Phaedr

on: "separable." The term occurs often in Aristotle

us. Liddell and Scott definition / E-text editor's translation: "Philosop

ation: erastas.

ipline of sensuous love;" more literally, the phrase means "thing

nd Scott definition: "madness, frenzy."

t editor's translation: "[he] is furni

ion: "seed, generation." Liddell and Scott def

sage begins at