But first a word as to Plato's general tendency. We called him the purest of the Sokratics, and we found in Sokrates a Rationalist. This is far from agreeing with the widely current view which regards Plato as a mystic and a poetical enthusiast; but this view is thoroughly false. Lewes, who has opposed this notion with special energy, thus characterises him: "He wrote poetry in his youth; in mature age he wrote vehemently against it. In his dialogues he appears anything but dreamy;' anything but 'an Idealist,' as that phrase is popularly understood. He is a dialectician, a severe and abstract thinker, and a great Sophist. His metaphysics are of a nature so abstract and so subtle that they frighten away all but the most determined students. His views on morals and politics, so far from having any romantic tinge, are the ne plus ultra of logical severity; hard, uncompromising, and above humanity. He had learned to look upon human passion as a disease, and human pleasure as a frivolity. The only thing worth living for was truth. Dialectics was the noblest exercise of humanity." 47

47 Lewes, Hist. of Phil., i. 197. Compare, on the other hand, the approving words of Zeller, ii. (2te Aufl.), p. 355, as to the poetical character of the Platonic philosophy: "As an artistic nature was necessary to the production of such a philosophy, so in turn this philosophy would necessarily require to be embodied in artistic shape. The phenomenon brought into such near contact with the idea as we find with Plato becomes a beautiful phenomenon, the intuition of the idea in the phenomenon an æsthetic intuition. Where science and life so interpenetrate each other as with him, there science will only be communicated in lively description; and since what is to be communicated is an ideal, this description will necessarily be a poetical description." No doubt Lewes has under-estimated the artistic element in Plato's dialogues. Both de

scriptions are just, and not irreconcilable; for the plastic beauty, clear as the god of light, of the form in Plato, is indeed 'poetical,' in the wider sense of the word, but is not mystical or romantic. At the same time, however, the stubborn and pretentious dialectic, to which Lewes holds, is carried to an extent which is in fact not only extravagant, but is even disturbing to the artistic form; but it stands, moreover, with its dogmatism and its special pretentions to a 'knowledge' which is only gained by a systematic struggle, also in contradiction with the genuine poetical principle of true speculation, which relies more upon intellectual vision than

upon mediate knowledge. Plato's philosophy might indeed, if this artistic element had been carried out, have become the best model for the speculation of all time; but the

For all this, it cannot be denied that, historically, Platonism frequently appears in connection with enthusiasm, and that even the widely-digressing Neoplatonic systems find some support in Plato's doctrine; nay, amongst the immediate followers of the great master there were those who may be described as mystics; and the Pythagorean elements which they combined with the teachings of Plato find in these very teachings support and authority. We have besides these, of course, the extremely sober 'middle academy,' which also connected itself with Plato, and the beginnings of whose theory of probability may in fact be traced in Plato.

The truth is, that in Plato the Sokratic Rationalism outruns itself, and in the effort to elevate the sphere of reason high above the sensations, went so far that a relapse into mythical forms became inevitable. Plato ascended into a sphere for which man has been granted neither language nor powers of conception. He saw himself thus compelled to fall back upon figurative expression; but his system is a speaking proof that figurative expression for what is entirely supersensual is a chimera, and that the attempt to climb by this ladder to impossible heights of abstraction revenges itself in the predominance exercised by the figure over the thought, and by rushing to consequences in which all logical consistency perishes beneath the glamour of associations of sensuous ideas.48

combination of this element with the abstract dialectic, and logical severity, so sharply emphasised by Lewes, produces a heterogeneous whole, and especially by its total confusion of science and poetry created great confusion in later philosophy.

48 Zeller, ii. 2 Aufl., p. 361 ff. [E. T. 160 foll.], recognises, quite rightly, that the Platonic myths are not the mere garments of thoughts which the philosopher possessed in another shape, but that they are employed in those cases where Plato wishes to express something which he has no means of conveying in rigorous scien

tific form. It is wrong, however, to regard this as a weakness in the philosopher, who is here merely too much of a poet still, and too little of a philosopher. It lies rather in the nature of the problems on which Plato has here ventured that they cannot be treated in any but a figurative method. An adequate scientific knowledge of the absolutely transcendental is impos. sible, and modern systems which calls up the phantom of an intellectual knowledge of transcendental things, are in truth no whit higher in this respect than the Platonic.

Plato, before attaching himself to Sokrates, had been introduced to the philosophy of Herakleitos, and had so learnt that there is no quiet persistent being, that everything is in constant flux. When, then, he thought he had discovered something permanent in the Sokratic definitions, and in the universal essence of things which is expressed in these definitions, he combined this doctrine with a Herakleitean element, in such fashion that he attributed true being, and the undisturbed permanence inseparable from it, to the universal alone; the individual things, on the other hand, are strictly not at all, but merely become. The phenomena flow away without reality: being is eternal.

We now know that the only ideas capable of definition are abstract, self-constituted ideas, such as those employed by the mathematician in order to approach infinitesimally near to the quantitative constitution of things, without, however, exhausting it by his formulas. Every attempt to define things breaks down: the conventional employment of a word may be arbitrarily fixed, but when this word is used to indicate a class of objects according to their common nature, it becomes evident, sooner or later, that the things have other relations and other distinguishing qualities than was originally supposed. The old definition becomes useless, and must be replaced by a new, which has in its turn no more pretensions to eternal validity than the first. No definition of a fixed star can prevent it from moving; no definition can draw a permanent boundary between meteors and other heavenly bodies. As often as research makes a great step forward, the definitions must give way, and individual things do not regulate themselves in accordance with our general notions, but these must, on the contrary, be determined by the particular objects which we perceive.

Plato carried further the elements of logic he had received from Sokrates. In him we find, for the first time, a clear idea of genera and species, of the co-ordination and

subordination of concepts; and he is fond of using the new achievement that he may, by the aid of division, bring light and order into the objects of discussion. This was, indeed, a great and important step forward, and yet even this immediately enlisted itself in the service of as great an error. There arose that hierarchy of ideas in which that which is most void of content was placed highest. Abstraction was the Jacob's ladder by which the philosopher ascended to certainty. The further he was from facts, the nearer he thought himself to truth.

Whilst Plato, however, exhibited universal ideas as the permanent in the fleeting phenomenal world, he saw himself further compelled to the pregnant step of separating the universal from the particular, and attributing to it a separate existence. Beauty is not only in beautiful objects, goodness not only in good men, but the beautiful, the good, quite abstractly regarded, are self-existent realities. It would lead us too far to discuss fully here the Platonic ideal theory: it is enough for our purpose to examine its foundations, and to see how from these foundations sprang that intellectual tendency which raised itself so high, as it supposed, above the vulgar empiricism, and which must, nevertheless, at all points, yield again to empiricism wherever it is a question of the positive progress of science.

So much is clear, that we need the universal and the process of abstraction in order to attain to knowledge. Even the particular fact, in order to become an object of knowledge, must be exalted above the Individualism of Protagoras by the supposition and demonstration of a perception. of something implying regular recurrence; that is, of the universal as against the individual of the average as against fluctuations. But knowledge thus begins at once to rise above mere opinion before it has directed itself to any special class of similar objects. We require, however, in addition, even before we can accurately know whole classes, general terms in order to fix our knowledge, and

to be able to communicate it; for the simple reason that no language could suffice to express all particulars, and because, with a language that did this, no understanding, no general knowledge would be possible, and the retention of such an infinity of meanings would be impossible. On this point Locke was the first to throw a clear light; but we must never forget that Locke, long as he lived after Plato, nevertheless stands in the midst of the great process by which the modern world freed itself from the Platonic and Aristotelian theory of things. Sokrates, Plato, and Aristotle, like their whole age, allowed themselves to be deceived by words. We have seen how Sokrates believed that every word must originally express the essence of the thing; the general name, therefore, would express the nature of the class of objects in question. Where there was a name, there a real existence was presupposed. Justice, Truth, Beauty, must mean 'something;' and there must accordingly be realities corresponding to these expres

sions.

Aristotle points out that Plato first distinguished the universal essence of things from the individuals, which Sokrates had not yet done. But Sokrates had, moreover, not held that peculiar doctrine of Aristotle as to the rela-. tion of the universal to the particular which we shall soon have to consider. Yet Sokrates had got as far as the theory that our knowledge has reference to the universal, and that is something quite different from the indispensableness of general notions for knowledge explained above. The virtuous man is, according to Sokrates, the man who knows what is pious or impious, what is noble or disgraceful, what is just or unjust; but in saying this, he had always in his eye the definition which he was ceaselessly in search of. The universal nature of the just, of the noble, not what is in the particular case just and noble, is sought. From the universal we must obtain the particular, but not conversely; for induction serves him in reaching the universal, only to make it clear to the mind,