(3). The conclusions at which Dr. Jackson has arrived are such as might be expected to follow from his method of procedure. For he takes words without regard to their connection, and pieces together different parts of dialogues in a purely arbitrary manner, although there is no indication that the author intended the two passages to be so combined, or that when he appears to be experimenting on the different points of view from which a subject of philosophy may be regarded, he is secretly elaborating a system. By such a use of language any premises may be made to lead to any conclusion. I am not one of those who believe Plato to have been a mystic or to have had hidden meanings; nor do I agree with Dr. Jackson in thinking that “when he is precise and dogmatic, he generally contrives to introduce an element of obscurity into the expostion” (Journal of Philology X 150). The great master of language wrote as clearly as he could in an age when the minds of men were clouded by controversy, and philosophical terms had not yet acquired a fixed meaning. I have just said that Plato is to be interpreted by his context; and I do not deny that in some passages, especially in the Republic and Laws, the context is at a greater distance than would be allowable in a modern writer. But we are not therefore justified in connecting passages from different parts of his writings, or even from the same work, which he has not himself joined. We cannot argue from the “Parmenides” to the “Philebus,” or from either to the “Sophist,” or assume that the “Parmenides,” the “Philebus,” and the “Timaeus” were “written simultaneously,” or “were intended to be studied in the order in which they are here named” (Journal of Philology XIII 38)) We have no right to connect statements which are only accidentally similar. Nor is it safe for the author of a theory about ancient philosophy to argue from what will happen if his statements are rejected. For those consequences may never have entered into the mind of the ancient writer himself; and they are very likely to be modern consequences which would not have been understood by him. “I cannot think,” says Dr. Jackson, “that Plato would have changed his opinions, but have nowhere explained the nature of the change.” But is it not much more improbable that he should have changed his opinions, and not stated in an unmistakable manner that the most essential principle of his philosophy had been reversed? It is true that a few of the dialogues, such as the Republic and the “Timaeus,” or the “Theaetetus” and the “Sophist,” or the “Meno” and the “Apology,” contain allusions to one another. But these allusions are superficial and, except in the case of the Republic and the Laws, have no philosophical importance. They do not affect the substance of the work. It may be remarked further that several of the dialogues, such as the “Phaedrus,” the “Sophist,” and the “Parmenides,” have more than one subject. But it does not therefore follow that Plato intended one dialogue to succeed another, or that he begins anew in one dialogue a subject which he has left unfinished in another, or that even in the same dialogue he always intended the two parts to be connected with each other. We cannot argue from a casual statement found in the “Parmenides” to other statements which occur in the “Philebus.” Much more truly is his own manner described by himself when he says that “words are more plastic than wax” (Republic IX 588 C), and “whither the wind blows, the argument follows” (ibid. III 394 D). The dialogues of Plato are like poems, isolated and separate works, except where they are indicated by the author himself to have an intentional sequence.
It is this method of taking passages out of their context and placing them in a new connection when they seem to confirm a preconceived theory, which is the defect of Dr. Jackson’s procedure. It may be compared, though not wholly the same with it, to that method which the Fathers practised, sometimes called “the mystical interpretation of Scripture,” in which isolated words are separated from their context, and receive any sense which the fancy of the interpreter may suggest. It is akin to the method employed by Schleiermacher of arranging the dialogues of Plato in chronological order according to what he deems the true arrangement of the ideas contained in them. (Dr. Jackson is also inclined, having constructed a theory, to make the chronology of Plato’s writings dependent upon it.5) It may likewise be illustrated by the ingenuity of those who employ symbols to find in Shakespeare a hidden meaning. In the three cases the error is nearly the same:—words are taken out of their natural context, and thus become destitute of any real meaning.
(4). According to Dr. Jackson’s “Later Theory,” Plato’s Ideas, which were once regarded as the summa genera of all things, are now to be explained as Forms or Types of some things only—;that is to say, of natural objects: these we conceive imperfectly, but are always seeking in vain to have a more perfect notion of them. He says (Journal of Philology XI 319) that “Plato hoped by the study of a series of hypothetical or provisional classifications to arrive at one in which nature’s distribution of kinds is approximately represented, and so to attain approximately to the knowledge of the ideas. But whereas in the Republic, and even in the ‘Phaedo,’ though less hopefully, he had sought to convert his provisional definitions into final ones by tracing their connection with the summum genus, the ἀγαθόν, in the ‘Parmenides’ his aspirations are less ambitious,” and so on. But where does Dr. Jackson
