basis of all that was to follow in the rest- tion by its first root, stands prominently the of Logic, as the instrument of Philosophy; first; and, for the same reasons as in the of Ideas, as its proper object; and, conse- other case, the 'Phædo' and 'Philebus' as quently, of the possibility and the condi- obviously the last. By the 'Phædo,' with tions of Knowledge. And as he formed its anticipatory sketch of natural philosothis first class by selection of the dialogues phy; by the 'Philebus,' with its discussion in which the theoretical and practical were of the idea of the good; as from an indikept completely separate, he formed the rect to a direct method, we pass to the last class by those in which the practical great constructive exposition of physics and speculative were most completely and ethics in the 'Timeus' and the 'Repubunited: the 'Republic,' the Timæus,' the lic.' And though not till we have arrived 'Critias,' and the 'Laws,' which he named at these, do we behold in its more complete the CONSTRUCTIVE dialogues. This left the significance the Philosophy of Plato, or second class to be determined by what may master his Idea of Science in any thing like be called a PROGRESSIVE Connexion, though its entire applicability to nature and to here the classification must be admitted to man,-yet are they so intimately founded assume a much less decisive character, and on previous investigations; in their comeven Schleiermacher allows a 'difficult ar- posite character so dependent on simple tificiality,' in this part of his arrange- and thoroughly examined principles; that ment. Generally, however, it may be con- to view even these final dialogues without ceded that the dialogues proposed for re- intimate regard to the two previous classes, servation to this class: the 'Theætetus,' the expecting still to reap and gather in the 'Sophistes,' the Politicus,' and 'Gorgias,' fruit of Plato's thought, would be as wise the Symposium,' the 'Phædo,' and 'Phile- as to withdraw from the foundation of some bus' by their prevailing treatment of the noble building the key-stones of the arches distinction between philosophical and com- on which it rests, and expect to see the mon knowledge in united application to two structure stand.* It has been this injustice proposed and real sciences, (Ethics and from which the philosopher has most largely Physics,) do certainly pass from Method to suffered, and from which Schleiermacher its Object, and treat, as it were progres- has most effectively relieved him.† sively, of the applicability of the principles in the first class to development in the third, where their use finally appears in objective scientific exposition.

Cicero was a great admirer of Plato, and thought that if Jove spoke Greek, he must talk it as it was written by Plato. Yet he says of him "Plato affirms nothing, but after producing many arguments, and examining a question on every side, leaves it undetermined." Here, even the accomplished Roman expected the building to stand upon air; forgetting utterly the needful connexions before set forth. It is an error of a different, but not less dangerous kind, which, pushing to its extreme the necessity of some guiding and connecting principle through the whole of the dialogues, makes of them all but one idea, and that a somewhat narrow and sectarian one.

For as with the relation of classes, so with that of particular dialogues. In the first part, for example, the development of the dialogistic method is the predominant object; and, in reference to this, as 'Phædrus' stands manifestly the first, 'Parmenides' as clearly stands the last not only because Parmenides' contains the most perfect exposition of that method, but because, in beginning to philosophize on the relation of ideas to actual things, it forms the point of transition to the second part. In this, the subject generally predominant, The useful study of Aristotle presupposes a as we have attempted to indicate, is the ex-mind already disciplined in high principles of planation of knowledge, and of the process science; while in Plato every step is carefully furof knowing in operation with regard to nished for the patient and laborious pupil, if he is which, the Theatetus,' taking up this ques-treme love of analysis in Plato, which makes it so only careful to select his road aright. It is this ex

These constituting, in combination, his dialectic or dialogistic method. See post, p. 490.

Ritter would connect with these the 'Parmenides,' which, however, seems to stand more properly as the dialogue of transition between the first and second classes: because it combines the most perfect exposition of the dialectical method, with that which is the direct object of the three dia logues first named in the text: namely, the ideas of Science and of Being as its object, and of right conduct having its only foundation in right science.

important to have mastered thoroughly the relative positions of his dialogues.

† Schleiermacher is unhappily very often so profoundly obscure himself while he thus lights up Plato, that the reader who is not a student need hardly be referred to him: but the student laboriously disposed, and to whom German is a sealed book, will do well to make himself master of Mr. Dobson's praiseworthy translations of the Introductions of Schleiermacher, named at the head of this article.

In the First Book of the Acad. Quæst.

Such we think the reasoning wnich would provinces (subordinate because of inferior resolve the whole philosophy of Plato into certainty) of moral and natural science, a a scheme for the better education of the solid and consistent notion of the whole fayoung men of Athens:* not, it is to be add-bric of Platonic Thought will present itself ed, so recent a discovery as its last advo- to his mind. For he will have ascertained cate supposed, but some time put forth by its all-important distinctions between sciEberhard. For surely, if but one idea is to ence in its limited, and in its absolute form; be drawn from all the dialogues of Plato, between the ideal of science, and science and one purpose uniformly insisted on, it itself; between that which contemplates is much wiser to find it in what the classi- supreme truth, and that which is within the fication of Schleiermacher obviously sug- sphere of human cognition; between the gests; in what such an influence as we natural and the supernatural; between the have described that of Socrates to have properties of physical objects and the laws been would naturally produce; and by of real being: and again, between this abwhich, even in the character of the mistake solute science, or Philosophy, so realized, he commits, we can see Cicero himself to which is humanity's highest portion, and have been chiefly struck in going through the Wisdom, still far beyond the grasp of the Platonic writings. man, which belongs exclusively to God.t

And to the right judgment of all this, as the knowledge of the influence of Socrates upon Plato has been one of his most intelligent guides, so, when his task is com

and enduringly impressed upon him. It was the master teacher, he will still remember, who rejected all investigations as untenable which began with mere physical assumptions, and who, thereby, first instructed his great disciple in the necessity of commencing every inquiry with the idea of that which was to be its object, for estab

This, then, may be shortly stated as the first great and settled METHOD OF INVESTIGATION on scientific principles, of which there is any written record.. The soul of every part of the system of Plato is every-plete, it will remain the most prominently where prominent in the dialogues, as an Art of Dialectics. This is with him the science of all other sciences: the universal insight into the nature of all: the guide to each, the regulator of the tasks of each, and the means of judgment as to its special value: not only the preparatory discipline for investigation of truth, but the scientific method of prosecuting truth: combining in itself the practice of science, with the knowledge of the utility of its aims: discerning the essence of things, the being, the true, the constant: determining the respective differences and affinities of notions: ordering and disposing all things, discoursing of every thing, and answering every question presiding over the correct utterance of thought in language, as well as over thought itself: and, having thus as its object, Thought and Being, in so far as their eternal and unchangeable nature could be ascertained, therefore the Highest Philosophy.t

The first effort the student of Plato has to make, is thoroughly to comprehend the position of this great, general, and immutable science, in his philosophic scheme. When he has mastered so much, and can apply it, with the later dialogues, to the two

* See an Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato by the Rev. W. Sewell, late professor of moral philosophy in the University of Oxford. A writer of whom it is to be said, that however various and widely opposed the feelings likely to be suggested by his books, there can be but one opinion as to the plainness and power of his style-the extraordinary felicity and force of his illustration.

† Metaphysics: as, in this particular view, it was afterwards called.

*Ethics and Physics, being susceptible of continual modification and change, could never, in his lectics which treated of the unchangeable and everview, attain to the precision and certainty of Dialasting. The science of Nature, being a science of what never actually, only inchoately, is, must, in his view, resemble the mutability of its object. like manner, must be susceptible, like themselves, The doctrine of Human Conduct and Morality, in of modification and change. The Dialectic alone, treating of the Eternal, partakes of the certainty and immutability whereof it treats. It is certain, therefore, that the term, when implying his practical application of the Eleatic modes of inquiry into Pure Being, was Plato's expression for PHILOSOPHY: to the perfect completion of which, a combination of the two sciences of inferior certainty ly uses the word in its more limited sense, as coinwere yet required. At the same time, he frequentciding with the Logic of later philosophers. See ante, p. 487, where the term has been applied in that more limited sense, in treating of the elementary class of his dialogues, as the mere instrument of the method of which, in its larger sense, it is the practical application and completion.

† Everywhere it is necessary to keep these distinctions in mind, when the philosophy of Plato is in question. The absolute science, or Philosophy, referred to in the text, realized the Platonic idea of a science which not only reviews and overlooks all others, but also, in order to do so, understands them, and comprises them within itself: and from which the inferenco came, that right conduct was dependent, as Socrates had taught, on right knowledge. But beyond this there was a Wisdom not accessible to man.

lishment of its rational end and design. The fact not to be lost sight of, is this: Hence it was that dialectics* became the that even when engendering many kinds of great power which it is in the hands of mysticism and heresy, it was a living and Plato; the very basis of his philosophy, actuating influence; that the power which the instrument with which he embraces the struck these heresies into corrupt and stagregions of being and of thought, and dis- nant continuance was not derived from him; covers their various parts and mutual rela- that he always reappeared with a pure and tions. Hence is it, also, that the influence genial impulse when the life of thought of Plato himself has been most eminent and again began to flow; and that, wherever lasting in the character of a GUIDE: of one History undertakes to record the struggles in whom the boundless material of rich re- and triumphs of religious belief, it is her flection was more attainable than the satis- first duty to look back to Plato, to ascertain faction of conclusive argument; whose the power he has exercised and is still exaim was less to settle the convictions of ercising in the world, and to understand the man at any given point, than to suggest sources which gave it life and all this lastmodes of reasoning, ever new and fertile, ing continuance. and lift the thoughts yet onward, more and more. It was the triumph of Aristotle, his successor and great rival in the intellectual empire, to hold the understanding stationary and fast bound, to the facts and quasicertainties in the midst of which he placed it; it was the aim and the work of Plato, at each new mental struggle, to sustain and to impel the reason that had broken bonds. When Cicero would have brought philosophy into Rome, it was Plato to whom he turned for help and guidance. When Christianity desired to avail herself of all her strength, it was in intellectual exercise with Plato that her fathers built up the system of the Church When Julian would have reformed Heathenism, his hope was in Plato. When it became necessary to remodel Christianity, at the head of the philosophical movement which marked the revival of literature, and paved the way for the reformation, Plato was seen. And so with every later struggle, whether with the Cudworths and Berkeleys against skepticism in our own country, or with the more modern stand of Germany against the spirit of the French academicians. It is quite im. material to the question of this influence, in what form it was always exercised: whether it has not been the source of many errors as well as of much truth; and whether it had not even been, not seldom, the cause of the disease it was called in to cure.

*Here named in its more limited sense.

† One of the most powerful schools of Platonists (not neo-Platonists, as Mr. Whewell has justly observed in his admirable History of the Inductive Sciences) was that formed in Italy at this period. It was headed by Picus of Mirandula in the middle, and by Marsilius Ficinus at the end, of the fifteenth century; and it embraced all the principal scholars and men of genins of the age; who seem to have been little conscious, amidst their elegant efforts to reconcile Platonism to the Popery of the day, of the great movement to which they were all the while contributing.

The direct action of Socrates, in the suggestion of form and method, has been shown: the action of the earlier thinkers, in supplying him with matter on which to exert this method, was scarcely less direct. We have seen Cicero describe his dialogues as the dialectic art of Socrates combined with the philosophy of Pythagoras. And from the latter extraordinary man he no doubt derived some of his most important views of ethics and of physics. The habitual application of both those departments of thought to his consideration of nature, was for example eminently Pythagorean; and from the conception of the mundane relations as certain harmonical laws capable of being universally determined, which he also learned in that school, had plainly been derived the ruling principle of his whole ethical theory-that the proportional and self-balanced is alone good, and that evil consists simply in deficiency or excess. But none of the labors of his predecessors were overlooked by Plato. He had them all constantly within view; and, by the mere power of the Socratic method in his hands, made each in its turn tributary to the evolvement of novel and striking truths. The mechanical view of nature, the dynamical physiology, alike bore fruit in his system;* and from the speculations of Heraclitus, as he took them in contrast with that Eleatic Theory to which there was so strong a bias in the whole character of his

*The dynamical view, in connexion with the reasonings of Heraclitus, suggested his theory of the universe as a perfectly living or ensouled being-subject to perpetual change and generation, but yet, in its exquisite order and just proportion, the only adequate representative of the rational ideas. On the other hand, the mechanical philosophers obviously gave him his view of body in general as a mere lifeless mass, deriving motion from causes extrinsic to itself, and in all things merely ministering to, as it is in all vigorously contrasted with, the self-inoving and immortal soul.

mind, we see the origin and the birth of the theory of IDEAS.

This great theory lies at the root of the Dialectics of Plato; and in any attempt to ascertain the course and objects of his thought, is the first matter that arrests attention. Indeed, when we have thoroughly mastered it, we have in some sort the key to all.

between both, and that which alone might reconcile the laws of matter to the ideas of pure intellect. This, accordingly, was the object to which he addressed himself. And from the result, from the realization of his aim in this respect, dates the principle of identity between philosophy and religion which governed Europe for many centu

ries.

It is not difficult to conceive in what way Tracing this IDEAL THEORY through its such a mind as that of Plato would be di- course in the actual dialogues, it is very rectly affected, when, penetrated with the striking to contrast its splendid influence, Socratic view of science, he applied him- and the magnificence of its range, with the self to its investigation, with the results of narrow and uninviting currents of thought the old philosophies before him. On the through which it works its way into existone hand, there was the opinion of, Hera- ence. It is while the field of dialectical clitus that all things were in a perpetual discussion is cleared and opened for the state of flux; that they were ever waxing right settlement of these opposing quesand waning; that they were constantly tions as to Being and Becoming, that it bechanging their substance; and that nothing gins to show itself. With that view we could be predicated of any thing as fixed: have been carried back into a discussion as beside which stood the practical and most to the nature of language; we are made mischievous inferer ce of the Sophists, that to feel that by false views of science all Man must therefore be the measure of all thought and language are involved in endthings. On the other hand, there was the Eleatic doctrine of immutable being that there was no multiplicity; that there was no becoming,* no change, no generation, augmentation, or decay; but that All was One, eternal, and at rest. Now, to the first, while he did not deny the reality of sensation, he had at once to oppose the doctrine he had derived from Socrates: that general definition (that idea of the One embracing Multiplicity) on which his whole notion of science stood, and which was in itself its own ground and authority. So, to the second, while of the reality of the permanent being he was fully convinced, he of course could not reconcile what he believed to be real in the mutable appearances and phenomena of nature. What, then, remained for Plato?

less confusion; and it is pointed out to us in what way language, rightly used, will make of necessity a distinction between certain forms or notions and yet combine them together. We are taken into all the intricacies of Greek syntax: and from such steps as that of the manner in which, in propositions, a noun is necessarily joined with a verb, we are shown how it is that becoming and being are in like manner inseparably united. These are laws of language as of thought, which may not be annulled. Thus the verb is the action, the noun is the active object; and as, in the unavoidable union of these two in the shortest sentence, it is set forth of some entity that it either is becoming, or has, or will become, something; so is it impossible, without setting aside all the laws of language, to separate the action from the agent, the predicate from the subject, becoming from being. From these arguments we are brought to the important question of definitions, immediately arising out of them. The mere Name of a subject, it is shown, predicates Being of it: and it is marked as the first step in classification, and in itself giving a certainty and fixity to things which is directly opposed to generation and becoming,-this mere act of naming the subject, or of affixing to it its general name, the name of its genus. Next we are instructed in another argument, which arises from the foregoing, to prove the utter absurdity of those who would not allow that different names could be employed for one and the same thing on the

and with it the predicates that might be asserted of it, Many; and in these, at last, should he reconcile what he believed to be true in the theory of sensible and ever changing things, with what he felt and knew to be true in that of an eternal and immutable nature.

ground that the one is ever one, as the then, were the General Terms he had bemanifold is also invariably the manifold. fore vainly sought, and which, as belonging Thus, in the same connecting process of to Being in contrast from Becoming, could argument, thinking is exhibited to be a be made the objects of science and certain talking of the soul with itself; and as all knowledge. There were those forms, those speech is a combination of one word with Ideas, of the universal which would in one or many others, every word having its themselves include every type of the tranmeaning, thinking must of course be a sim-sitory; there was in each the subject, One, ilar combination of one thought with another. And by this time we have arrived at the necessity for the great art or science of discourse, dialectics, which shall regulate these combinations of thought; which shall preside over the faculty that investigates the properties of all sensations; and which must manifestly itself depend upon Definition. Then there follows immediately upon this, that all-important process which Definition implies: the finding of some general term which shall include a multiplicity of objects; together with the secondary but necessary process of explanation, as to wherein the term to be defined differs from others which belong to the same genus with it. And having proceed ed thus far, the greatest question of Dialectics comes within view, and with it the Ideal Theory of Plato dawns clearly upon

us.

Having mastered this elevation above the doubts and uncertainties that before arrested his progress, Plato beheld the Grander Idea to which all science, so considered, must have reference: and the mission of Philosophy upon earth, as well as the means for discharging it, stood plainly revealed before him. If the fleeting sensible were really true, it was to him, then, true only through the eternal essence of which it was the partaker: wherefore, with that divine art of dialectics, he would proceed to strip off those tissues of the temporal and mutable* in which all certainty and immutability clothe and cover themselves here, and redresst the errors and imperfect thoughts of man, in the recollection, and, as it were, re

existence, wherewith he, as every other transitory substance, had been connected in his origin. Man is the measure of all things; was the end of the philosophy of Protagoras. GOD is the measure of all things; was the beginning and the end of the philosophy of Plato.

What are these General Terms which are the object of the mind in the process of thought? Objects of sense they cannot be, for those are in a constant state of transi-newed presence, of the Great Source of all tion. "If," to adopt Aristotle's words in describing the origin of the Platonic ideas, "there is to be any knowledge and science, it must be concerning some permanent natures, different from the sensible natures of objects; for there can be no permanent science respecting that which is perpetually changing." Where, then, were these per- The means of judgment as to what share manent natures to be found? The ques- Socrates may have had in this method and tion took Plato back to the proof he had result, have, in a preceding article, been just established: that, independently of the placed before the reader. Aristotle, after senses, the soul possesses a faculty of its describing the invention of inductive reaown by which it investigates the common sonings and universal definitions, quoted and the general: and suggested the answer, in the article referred to, adds this remark: that by means of reflexion, and through the "Socrates, however, did not make univerunderstanding or rational contemplation, sals or definitions separable from the obwould it alone be possible to become cog-jects; but the Platonists separated them, nizant of such natures. As opposed to the and these essences they termed ideas." transitory knowledge which sensation con- To which may be added, since it is importveys, this which the intellect apprehends would be constant and permanent; unproduced, imperishable, and ever identical with itself; a pure and absolute entity; such as the soul, if it could purify and free itself from the agitations and hindrances of body, would plainly and palpably behold. There,

* Metaph. 1. 6, xiii. 4.

* So Schleiermacher, speaking of the proof in the Gorgias: "Therefore, the highest and most generul problem of philosophy is exclusively this-to

apprehend and fix the essential in that fleeting

chaos.

ני

† Sartor Resartus is the quaint but expressive phrase, under which a great original thinker of modern days sets forth the ends and objects of philosophy.

Quoted at p. 357 of F. Q. R., No. 60.