So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of moral philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though, like the reader of the “Philebus,” we have a difficulty in distinguishing the different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point at which the human passes into the divine.
First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another—justice, holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ὐχ ἧ γένεσις πρόσεστιν), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as divine perfection.
Secondly, human perfection, or the fulfilment of the will of God in this world, and cooperation with his laws revealed to us by reason and experience, in nature, history, and in our own minds.
Thirdly, the elements of human perfection—virtue, knowledge, and right opinion.
Fourthly, the external conditions of perfection—health and the goods of life.
Fifthly, beauty and happiness—the inward enjoyment of that which is best and fairest in this world and in the human soul.
The “Philebus” is probably the latest in time of the writings of Plato with the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last development of his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of the Cynics and Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole (20, 21, 44, etc.); the relations of pleasure and knowledge to each other and to the good are authoritatively determined (63 and following); the Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux no longer divide the empire of thought (25 and following); the Mind of Anaxagoras has become the Mind of God and of the World. The great distinction between pure and applied science for the first time has a place in philosophy; the natural claim of dialectic to be the Queen of the Sciences is once more affirmed. This latter is the bond of union which pervades the whole or nearly the whole of the Platonic writings. And here as in several other dialogues (“Phaedrus” 265, Republic 534 and following, “Symposium” 210 and following, etc.) it is presented to us in a manner playful yet also serious, and sometimes as if the thought of it were too great for human utterance and came down from heaven direct (16 C, 25 B). It is the organization of knowledge wonderful to think of at a time when knowledge itself could hardly be said to exist. It is this more than any other element which distinguishes Plato, not only from the pre-Socratic philosophers, but from Socrates himself.
We have not yet reached the confines of Aristotle, but we make a somewhat nearer approach to him in the “Philebus” than in the earlier Platonic writings. The germs of logic are beginning to appear, but they are not collected into a whole, or made a separate science or system. Many thinkers of many different schools have to be interposed between the “Parmenides” or “Philebus” of Plato, and the Physics or Metaphysics of Aristotle. It is this interval upon which we have to fix our minds if we would rightly understand the character of the transition from one to the other. Plato and Aristotle do not dovetail into one another; nor does the one begin where the other ends; there is a gulf between them not to be measured by time, which in the fragmentary state of our knowledge it is impossible to bridge over. It follows that the one cannot be interpreted by the other. At any rate, it is not Plato who is to be interpreted by Aristotle, but Aristotle by Plato. Of all philosophy and of all art the true understanding is to be sought not in the afterthoughts of posterity, but in the elements out of which they have arisen. For the previous stage is a tendency towards the ideal at which they are aiming; the later is a declination or deviation from them, or even a perversion of them. No man’s thoughts were ever so well expressed by his disciples as by himself.
But although Plato in the “Philebus” does not come into any close connection with Aristotle, he is now a long way from himself and from the beginnings of his own philosophy. At the time of his death he left his system still incomplete; or he may be more truly said to have had no system, but to have lived in the successive stages or moments of metaphysical thought which presented themselves from time to time. The earlier discussions about universal ideas and definitions seem to have died away; the correlation of ideas has taken their place. The flowers of rhetoric and poetry have lost their freshness and charm; and a technical language has begun to supersede and overgrow them. But the power of thinking tends to increase with age, and the experience of life to widen and deepen. The good is summed up under categories which are not summa genera, but heads or gradations of
