But we shall reap the perfect fruits of wisdom in another and truer life. The immortality of the soul thus enters into Plato's philosophy, and he supports it by a number of proofs, most of which seem to us rather fantastic. It is, however, not easy to say to what extent Plato has in mind an individual immortality in the ordinary sense, or indeed to sift out, in his whole treatment of the matter, what is intended to be mere myth and poetry, from the philosophical truth that underlies it. After the separation of the soul from the body, the former undergoes various adventures, which Plato describes in a mythical vein in the Phado. Only the soul of the philosopher may pass at once to the realm of the Ideas, and be purged completely from the taint of earth; others, after undergoing purification, are subjected to a new incarnation, in which they take on the body for which their previous life has made them most fitted.

It will be apparent that such a conception carries with it a decided disparagement of the body, and of the world to which the body belongs. This, no doubt, is due in part to the wise man's perception of the futility and worthlessness, when judged by the true standard, of many of the interests which seem so important to us, when our immersion in trivial things deprives them of their true perspective. "Political ambition and office-getting, clubs and banquets, revels and singing maidens, do not enter into the philosopher's dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which he no more knows, than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean."1 And even when this attitude passes to the extreme of asceticism, it has a sufficient justification in the facts of life, to give it a certain measure of plausibility. "Each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail, and rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her, and makes her believe that

1 The@tetus, 173.

H

to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body, and having the same delights, she is obliged to have the same habits and ways, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure to the world below, but is always saturated with the body."1

But, also, there are serious consequences which flow from such an attitude. It implies that the philosopher is isolated from the common joys and common activities of his fellow-men. Occupied with the high things of the mind, absorbed in the beatific vision, he has no real interest left even for the political assemblies, the laws of the state, or "what has turned out well or ill in the city." "He is like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along, and when he sees the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if only he can live his own life, and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and good will, with bright hopes."2 It is evident how far this has travelled from the Greek ideal-accepted without question by Socrates of man's life as essentially a social life, a part of the state. With the separation that Plato makes, everything that pertains to this world becomes logically a matter of indifference. "The truth is, that only the outer form of him is in the city; his mind, disdaining the littleness and nothingness of human things, is flying all abroad, as Pindar says, measuring with line and rule the things which are under and on the earth, and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all, but not condescending to anything which is within reach." 3

It is this very marked dualism, then, between the world of Ideas and the world of things, the thought life and the life of the senses, the realm of moral activity and that of the natural desires and passions, the state and the individual, which is the greatest difficulty for Plato's philosophy as a system. How are we to bring the two sides into 1 Phado, 83. 8 Theatetus, 173.

2 Republic, 496.

relation? for clearly they must have a relation of some sort. There is no being satisfied with a theory which calmly denies the validity of the larger part of our nature. Why were senses and desires bestowed upon us? just in order that they might hinder us, and prevent us from attaining our true destiny? And if we carry the difficulty back to the more ultimate problem, and lay the blame on the inherent depravity of matter, why should there be a material world at all alongside the world of Ideas, and what is their connection? If the Ideas alone have a true reality, why should anything else exist? What is the nature of that which is not real, and yet is real enough to furnish a problem.

4. Plato's Later Philosophy. It is not to be supposed that these difficulties did not appeal to Plato himself. It is, indeed, not wholly fair to attribute outright to him the theory which leads to them. On the whole, his tendency is toward a dualistic separation. But to some extent he feels its unsatisfactoriness all along; and he constantly is coming back to a tardy recognition of the rights of concrete experience.

In the later years of his life, this recognition led Plato, in the opinion of some modern scholars, to at least a partial recasting of his theory. At any rate, it is clear that he saw its difficulties very plainly. In the Parmenides, he marshals these objections against his own philosophy. The connection between the Ideas, and things, on the supposition of their essential duality, is shown to be unintelligible. To say, as Plato has done, that things "imitate," or "participate in," the Idea, is to convey no concrete meaning. How, e.g., can the Idea of man be spread out to form the essence of a multitude of individual men, unless it is divisible? and if it is divisible, where is its unity as an Idea? Nor, again, is the knowledge of the Ideas by the human mind conceivable, if they exist thus in a realm apart; whatever they may be for God, they are beyond our reach entirely, and so they help us not at all in explaining things.

Whether, or to what extent, Plato has succeeded in overcoming the defects of his earlier standpoint, is a matter on which there is a difference of opinion. There is some ground for thinking that in his later works, influenced very possibly by his pupil Aristotle, he has attempted to get away from his previous dualism, to remove the Ideas from their isolation and bare self-identity, and make them give an account of themselves as actual principles for explaining things. So, in the Timæus, Plato takes in hand for the first time the problem of the physical world of science, though, again, in a more or less mythical form. By postulating over against the true and positive existence of the Ideas, a second principle, with at least a negative sort of reality, Plato attempts, through its union with the true reality of the Idea, to explain the phenomenal world, which we could not explain as coming from the Idea alone. This relationship is expressed as a timeless act of creation, by which God, the Demiurge, informs the chaos of Not-being with order and harmony, after the pattern which is represented in the Idea. Through the relation of the world of phenomena to this pattern in which it participates, the explanation of facts is ultimately teleological, as opposed to the mechanical explanation of the Atomists. Things exist for the sake of the whole; and since this whole is in the form of reason, and so of meaning, they can only be accounted for by being placed in their relation to the idea which represents the End, or Highest Good. In other dialogues, Plato deals more directly with the problem of knowledge as such. Since, however, his later theory, if he has one, is decidedly uncertain, and at any rate did not determine the direction of Plato's historical influence, we shall perhaps be justified in not considering it further.

5. The Academy. The school which Plato founded, and which was called the Academy, continued in existence several centuries after his death, although it passed through a number of vicissitudes. At different periods of its exist

ence, it represents different tendencies, and is known successively as the Older Academy, the Middle Academy, and the New Academy. Plato's real successor, however, and the one who succeeded in developing his thought in a genuinely significant way, is not found among the more orthodox followers who formed the Academy, but rather in Aristotle, the originator of a new and rival school.

LITERATURE

Plato, Dialogues, esp. Protagoras, Gorgias, Phædo, Phædrus, Re public, Euthydemus, Parmenides, Theatetus, Timæus.

Van Oordt, Plato and his Times.

J. Seth, Study of Ethical Principles.

Nettleship, Philosophical Lectures and Remains, 2 vols.

Nettleship, Theory of Education in Plato's Republic (in Hellenica). Bryan, The Republic of Plato.

Bosanquet, A Companion to Plato's Republic.

Zeller, Plato.

Pater, Plato and Platonism.

Ritchie, Plato.

J. S. Mill, Essays and Discussions.

Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory.

Martineau, Essays.

Grote, Plato, 3 vols.

Grote, History of Greece.

Collins, Plato.

Shorey, The Unity of Plato's Thought.

§ 12. Aristotle. The Peripatetics

Aristotle was born at Stagira, in 386 B.C. His father came of a family of physicians, and was himself physician to the king of Macedon. Aristotle received his philosophical education at the Academy in Athens, but owing to certain differences of standpoint, he ceased later on to call himself a disciple of Plato, and became in a way his rival. He was, however, profoundly influenced by the teachings to which he had listened, and perhaps is inclined, in the interests of his own originality, to exaggerate the real extent of the difference between himself and his former mas