Dialogues

thought. The question of pleasure and the relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly treated of elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The mean or measure is now made the first principle of good. Some of these questions reappear in Aristotle, as does also the distinction between metaphysics and mathematics. But there are many things in Plato which have been lost in Aristotle; and many things in Aristotle not to be found in Plato. The most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle is the disappearance of the Platonic dialectic, which in the Aristotelian school is only used in a comparatively unimportant and trivial sense. The most remarkable additions are the invention of the Syllogism, the conception of happiness as the foundation of morals, the reference of human actions to the standard of the better mind of the world, or of the one “sensible man” or “superior person.” His conception of ousia, or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a return to the poor and meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philosophy. The dry attempt to reduce the pre-Socratic philosophy by his own rather arbitrary standard of the four causes, contrasts unfavourably with Plato’s general discussion of the same subject (“Sophist” 242, 243). To attempt further to sum up the differences between the two great philosophers would be out of place here. Any real discussion of their relation to one another must be preceded by an examination into the nature and character of the Aristotelian writings and the form in which they have come down to us. This enquiry is not really separable from an investigation of Theophrastus as well as Aristotle and of the remains of other schools of philosophy as well as of the Peripatetics. But, without entering on this wide field, even a superficial consideration of the logical and metaphysical works which pass under the name of Aristotle, whether we suppose them to have come directly from his hand or to be the tradition of his school, is sufficient to show how great was the mental activity which prevailed in the latter half of the fourth century BC; what eddies and whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought, what transformations of the old philosophies were taking place everywhere, what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and nominalisms were affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of philosophy during this period is no less remarkable than the loss of freedom; and the two are not unconnected with each other. But of the multitudinous sea of opinions which were current in the age of Aristotle we have no exact account. We know of them from allusions only. And we cannot with advantage fill up the void of our knowledge by conjecture: we can only make allowance for our ignorance.

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There are several passages in the “Philebus” which are very characteristic of Plato, and which we shall do well to consider not only in their connection, but apart from their connection as inspired sayings or oracles which receive their full interpretation only from the history of philosophy in later ages. The more serious attacks on traditional beliefs which are often veiled under an unusual simplicity or irony are of this kind. Such, for example, is the excessive and more than human awe which Socrates expresses about the names of the gods (12 C), which may be not unaptly compared with the importance attached by mankind to theological terms in other ages; for this also may be comprehended under the satire of Socrates. Let us observe the religious and intellectual enthusiasm which shines forth in the following, “The power and faculty of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of the truth” (58 E): or, again, the singular acknowledgment in 23 C which may be regarded as the anticipation of a new logic, that “In going to war for mind I must have weapons of a different make from those which I used before, although some of the old ones may do again.” Let us pause awhile to reflect on a sentence (29 A) which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or to the original thinker of all ages: “Shall we then agree with them of old time, and merely reassert the notions of others without risk to ourselves; or shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the reproach which will await us”: i.e. if we assert mind to be the author of nature. Let us note the remarkable words (30 C), “That in the divine nature of Zeus there is the soul and mind of a King, because there is in him the power of the cause,” a saying in which theology and philosophy are blended and reconciled; not omitting to observe the deep insight into human nature which is shown by the repetition of the same thought (28 C) “All philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven and earth” with the ironical addition, “in this way truly they magnify themselves.” Nor let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth (29 A) at the “blasphemy” of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the world; or the significance of the words “those who said of old time that mind rules the universe” (30 D); or the pregnant observation (43 C) that “we are not always conscious of what we are doing or of what happens to us,” a chance expression to which if philosophers had attended they would have escaped many errors in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher point of view of abstract ideas (14 C, 15): or compare the simple manner in which the question of cause and effect (27) and their mutual dependence is